Thousands of writers make use of symbols in order to push the lessons that they try to teach through their stories; Herman Melville is most certainly one of these writers. In his novel, “Moby Dick”, Melville illustrates a whaling tale through the eyes of a man who asks to be called Ishmael. In order to get away from the mundaneness of life, as well as to restore his mental sanity, Ishmael joins the crew of a whaling vessel, the Pequod. The ship’s crew and captain, Ahab, are hunting a specific white whale known to some as Moby Dick, a whale that Ahab has harsh feelings towards. In the end, it is Ahab’s obsession with exacting his revenge upon the white whale that causes numerous deaths. The overall lesson of the novel is not simply that …show more content…
This can be understood through the tales and myths that surround the whale; these superstitions are shown when Ismael states that, “One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time” (Melville 1464). Thus, since he is all-powerful and mighty, Moby Dick takes the lives of sailors as he pleases. Such is the case with those aboard the Pequod; despite his victims’ efforts to postpone their deaths, the only one who actually manages to survive the swift cleansweep of death is …show more content…
As it is stated at one point in the novel, “Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod’s quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white wake” (Melville 1476). It takes no certain direction of its own - it merely goes whichever way the searcher and the mind decide to guide it. As the Pequod is directed across the sea in search of the white whale, it takes quite a beating (as any ship does), but as a direct result of its captain and crew, it ultimately meets an untimely end as it is destroyed by the same thing that it hunted. Through the lense of the allegory, though, this shows that as one goes throughout life searching for life’s meaning, they not only become mental, but their body also takes a beating until it can no longer go on. Accordingly, all of this leads to the conclusion that the sea represents the journey of life and the path towards understanding. Throughout the novel, the sea seems to react the most when the white whale is nearby, making things a bit hectic when conflict occurs. For the allegory, this happens to symbolize how the searcher is at the mercy of the obstacles along the way on the path to understanding, which is controlled by God; just like how Ahab was at the mercy of the sea, which seemed to react the