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Moby Dick
Moby Dick’s symbolic meaning is hard to pin down, and the indeterminateness of it is in large part the point of Melville’s novel. There are a few things we can say for sure: Moby Dick is,...
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Moby Dick
The rising action are the points in the plot and the description of characters that lead to suspense and to the climax. In Moby Dick, much of the book contains the rising action, starting with...
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Moby Dick
First, according to a search on the Google Ngram viewer, this particular phrase "living life to its fullest" originated in the 1920s, had a few brief years of moderate popularity, and then did not...
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Moby Dick
In discussing the sense of tragedy in Moby Dick, it is important to focus on Captain Ahab. The captain of the Pequod, Ahab is a half-crazed, megalomaniacal tyrant bent on hunting and killing the...
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Moby Dick
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick concludes with a three-day chase for the legendary white whale. Led by the relentless Captain Ahab, who lost ships and his leg to the monstrous whale, the chase is a...
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Moby Dick
"Anthropomorphism" is the correct term for this type of literary device. Anthropomorphism is very similar to personification, the literary device in which an inanimate object is given human...
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Moby Dick
...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending. -Moby Dick This passage from Chapter XVII,...
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Moby Dick
In Melville's Moby Dick, nature is a great force that humans must reckon with. Ishmael understands the power of nature. Even when cataloguing the whale in the system of cetology, Ishmael...
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Moby Dick
You must be referring to the bizarre religious rite Ahab performs in "The Quarter Deck" chapter to consecrate his crew and ship in the quest to destroy Moby Dick. At one point, Ahab orders his...
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Moby Dick
The excerpt is from Chapter 36, "The Quarter Deck." Here, Ahab is ordering Mr. Starbuck to send the entire crew "aft," that is, to the quarter deck, the rearmost deck of the ship, generally...
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Moby Dick
In Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick, Captain Ahab wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone ivory because the whale Moby Dick destroyed Ahab's leg in an earlier incident. Then, in Chapter...
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Moby Dick
While Ishmael is absent from parts of the narratives and digresses with scientific discussion of the whale, he at first links himself with Queequeq and then pairs with himself through much of the...
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Moby Dick
Moby Dick has been interpreted in several ways as an allegory, a narrative in which the characters and events are symbolic or metaphoric for deeply meaningful abstract ideas or qualities; that is,...
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Moby Dick
Starbuck represents a kind of rationality, and conventional Christian morality, in contrast to Ahab’s personal revenge-centered worldview. Starbuck is the one who is able to question Ahab’s...
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Moby Dick
Often, readers of Melville's Moby Dick focus on the relationship between Ahab and Moby Dick, as the entire novel arguably revolves around this relationship. However, it's worth considering the...
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Moby Dick
In Chapter 36 of Moby-Dick, "The Quarter-Deck," Ahab convinces (most of) his crew to join his personal quest for vengeance against the white whale Moby Dick by inciting their passions: Drink, ye...
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Moby Dick
With Ishmael and Ahab there is clearly a dichotomy: the humble man of no family or special rank, a godly man who develops relationships with other men and of the spirit, and the ungodly, god-like...
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Moby Dick
This is a great question, because it's easy to do all three, even during the course of a single chapter. However, I actually primarily pity Ahab, because I see him as a tragic, nearly...
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Moby Dick
Stubb learns that inscrutable as Ahab might be, "he has that that's bloody on his mind." In Chapter 29, Stubb encounters Ahab at night on deck. Ahab has taken to pacing the deck after the others...
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Moby Dick
At the end of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the White Whale (Moby Dick) rams into the Pequod, sinking her and killing all aboard, except Ishmael. Ahab also perishes when he gets tangled up in a...
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Moby Dick
The largest conflict is between Ahab (and, to some extent, his crew) and the whale Moby-Dick. While this is the central conflict that drives the novel, there is also a persistent conflict between...
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Moby Dick
In Chapter 24 of Moby Dick, Melville makes a case for the nobility of whaling as a profession. He uses many fantastic examples and allusions to prove his point that, throughout history, whaling has...
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Moby Dick
Ishmael is both the protagonist and narrator of the story. As evidenced by his own words, he is a man who craves adventure and welcomes testing his wits against any respectable adversary. He is...
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Moby Dick
Romanticism was a literary movement in which authors and artists reacted to changes that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. During the Industrial Revolution, America became a hotspot of...
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Moby Dick
Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick is narrated in first person by Ishmael. Interestingly, Ishmael opens the book from a narrator's perspective looking back on the past, as we see in the phrase,...
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Moby Dick
Romanticism is a literary style that emphasizes Man vs Nature. The struggle is a universal one and an individual one. The idea that man can affect nature and nature can affect man is an integral...
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Moby Dick
Ahab had lost his leg to Moby Dick. In Chapter 41, Ismael relates the history of Ahab's encounter with Moby Dick. Moby Dick had been known to turn around on those who chased him; the great whale...
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Moby Dick
According to Aristotle, a tragic hero has several key characteristics. 1. A flaw or error of judgement 2. A reversal of fortune brought about because of the error in judgment 3. The hero should...
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Moby Dick
The first stories that men shared happened on water. The seat of civilizations were founded there, on rivers and ports, and their navies spread influence far and wide. The Phoenicians...
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Moby Dick
Certainly a pivotal chapter in Moby Dick, Chapter 36 provides the readers their first insight into Captain Ahab, who reveals to his crew the purpose of the ship's voyage. He immediately takes...
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Moby Dick
Ahab's quest is significant for a variety of reasons. Ahab's quest shows the consuming nature of revenge. Ahab is singular in his focus. He is almost epic in how he sees his purpose as revenge...
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Moby Dick
We first see Ishmael's Christianity and Christian morality portrayed in the very first chapter, especially in the famous opening line, "Call me Ishmael." In Hebrew, the name Ishmael can be...
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Herman Melville
Long a motif in American literature, innocence with the term "American Adam" emerged from the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville,and even Poe. Stepping onto the shores of America,...
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Moby Dick
Everyone will always think of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick as a story about Captain Ahab's quest to find the great white whale. Actually there is a lot more to the book than that. For one...
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Moby Dick
We might identify a number of "great questions" posed by Melville's novel. Thematically the novel presents questions relating to man's relation to his fellow man in terms of moral responsibility....
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Moby Dick
The sailor Ishmael narrates the beginning of Moby Dick. The book’s first chapter opens with a strong first-person voice saying, “Call me Ishmael.” Ishmael goes on to explain why he is...
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Moby Dick
The major theme of the novel that the symbol of the whale itself supports is the limits of human understanding. At the beginning of the novel the narrator tries to discuss the topic of whales and...
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Moby Dick
In Chapter 36 of Moby Dick, Captain Ahab calls the entire crew together on the quarter deck and makes the following announcement: "All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a...
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Moby Dick
Ahab is destroyed well-before the Pequod meets Moby Dick. He is consumed by his over-riding fixation, his "mono-mania" directed at the white whale and characterized by irrational rage. This is...
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Moby Dick
The greatest attempts at realism and the expression of "the real" in the novel relate to whaling. A good portion of Melville's long book is dedicated to documenting life on a whaling ship,...
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Moby Dick
Herman Melville does not specify what happens to Moby Dick after the whale destroys the Pequod and all the whaling boats, killing everyone but the narrator Ishmael. Captain Ahab is caught in a...
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Moby Dick
The novel clearly presents Ahab as a man who is tortured by his obsession and who does everything in his power to force his men to follow him to their destruction as they chase the white whale over...
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Moby Dick
The major theme of the novel that the symbol of the whale itself supports is the limits of human understanding. At the beginning of the novel the narrator tries to discuss the topic of whales and...
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Moby Dick
The central conflict in this novel is defined by the pursuit of the white whale, Moby Dick. Other conflicts are developed and resolved over the course of the book, but Ahab's pursuit of the whale...
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Moby Dick
The name of the Pequod's second mate is Stubb. He is a native of Cape Cod, and is described as a "happy-go-lucky, neither craven nor valiant" man. He is an extremely experienced and competent...
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Moby Dick
Moby Dick is, first of all, a fictional or ficticious whale, invented by Melville as part of his novel, as an antagonist to Captain Ahab. He is also a symbolic whale, standing for all kinds of...
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Moby Dick
I don't see Ishmael as either the protagonist or the antagonist in Moby Dick. Ishmael is the narrator, and as such he reminds me of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. It is Captain Ahab whose...
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Moby Dick
Moby Dick is a sperm whale. According to Wikipedia: The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is a large toothed whale (odontocete) belonging to the order Cetacea. You can read more about Moby Dick...
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Moby Dick
Starbuck and Queequeg best represent "good" or goodness. Starbuck is the most beloved member of the crew and Queequeg is the most loving. These traits are demonstrated through direct exposition...
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Moby Dick
The transcendentalist movement, made famous by writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau originated from the ideas of the importance of nature and the natural world and man's...