Moby Dick Research Paper

Michael D. Irving
Mr. Bruno
English IV Period 5
November 17, 2014 Themes, Styles and Techniques of Herman Melville Herman Melville, born in New York City on August 1, 1819, was burdened with hardship nearly his entire life. As a youth, Melville contracted a case of scarlet fever which permanently impaired his vision. His parents, Allan and Maria Melvill (later amended to Melville), had an extraordinarily troubled relationship, leaving an impression on young Herman that would later influence much of his work. His father crippled the family’s once booming fur and cap business, forcing Melville to work on some of the sea voyages which provided much of his captivating inspiration for his most critically acclaimed work, Moby Dick. Though

Braswell ably contends that having cast himself loose from his earlier partial orthodoxy, Melville deliberately  undertook to write a “wicked book”. With Ahab as his mouthpiece, he accused the Deity of permitting evil in the universe. There is no denying the heretical tone of the book and the skill with which Melville creates this tone by the imprecations Ahab hurls at the leviathan-god, the symbols of diabolism which surround the wicked captain, and the “wild, mystical, sympathetically feeling” which Ishmael feels for the feud. Mr. Braswell’s admiration for Melville’s skill as a blasphemer carries him so far that he neglects, though he does not ignore, an important aspect of the novel. Melville was not yet ready to be a complete blasphemer. (Thorp 241)
In this excerpt, Thorp relates Melville’s inner rebellion against the orthodoxy of the Presbyterian faith to Ahab’s rebellion against faith in Moby Dick. It is evident that Thorp heeds the direct relation between author and character depicted in Moby Dick, as Melville voices his own misgivings about his faith through the personal struggles of his characters

Melville went to extreme lengths to ensure that almost every aspect of his novels had a deeper, more significant meaning to it. Examples of these symbolistic references can be found in almost any novel, poem or other literary piece rendered by Melville. There are near countless examples of citable symbolism is Melville’s works, such as the symbolism of the ocean in Moby Dick. In just one novel, Melville uses the ocean as a symbol or gentleness, harshness, coldness, opacity, destruction, life and death (Hamilton 417-419). This, of course, can be tacked on to the innumerable religious references and symbols used not only in Moby Dick, but in Melville’s trio of South Sea novels. In addition to granting deeper meaning to large scale items, Melville gave symbolic meaning to even the most seemingly minuscule, such as the color white. In Moby Dick, the antagonistic whale is the “white whale”. Just this preface alone stirs a sense of ambiguity and confusion. In nearly any literary or biblical story or parable, white is representative of innate purity and goodness. By forcing this paradox upon the reader, Melville portrays a dualistic nature which startlingly defeats any literary expectations (Creeger 147). In Melville’s lesser known work Redburn, Melville used seemingly one sided aspects of the novel to remark on the arising social problems