Moby Dick essays

Moby Dick essays The novel Moby Dick is the story of how Ishmael the narrator came to set sail on a fateful whaling voyage. He travels to Nantucket, where he visits the docks to find a ship; he discovers the Pequod. As Ishmael and his friend Queequeg make their way to board the ship, they meet a haggard looking, wild-eyed man who calls himself Elijah. He warns them against sailing with the Pequod, and hints that there might be something to fear about their mysterious captain, Ahab. Although Ishmael has not yet met Ahab, he dismisses the Elijahs warning, and the two set sail with the Pequod on Christmas Day. Ishmael is introduced to the rest of the ships crew: the first mate, Starbuck, the second mate, Stubb, and the third mate, Flask. Finally, after several days at sea, the men meet their captain, Ahab: a fierce looking Nantucketer with a white streak in his hair leading to a scar down the side of his face, and with one false leg made of ivory. Ahab paces the deck, and does not talk to the men nearly at all ... until one day he nails a piece of Spanish gold to the main mast of the ship, announcing that whoever first spies a white whale will receive it as a reward. This white whale, called Moby Dick by Ahab, seems to cause him considerable anxiety; he reveals that it was Moby Dick who bit off his leg. The sailors seem excited at their potential reward, and vow to hunt Moby Dick to the death. Ahab, meanwhile, speaks to himself in terms that suggest his maniacal obsession with the Whale. As the Pequod continues on her course, Ahab grows more and more obsessed with finding and killing Moby Dick even holding a kind of black mass in which he uses the blood of his harpooneers to cool the blade of a new, deadly harpoon. In the closing chapters of the novel, Ahab heads the ship into a dangerous storm, allows most of her instruments to break down, and ultimately abandons any p ...