The first lines of this classic are: “Call me Ishmael”-does this summarize the heroe’s conflicts?
Does his identification with the Biblical character alert us to his travilas ahead? Any Melville experts care to comment?
The name “Ishmael” contains all the thematic elements that will come together to form this fascinating novel about fish (the “Ish–” of the name) and whales (the “–mael”). Anything else, you’re reading into it.
Yes
Ishmael-lost and fatherless. The last 3 words of the book are “find another orphan”. Ishmael has been on the journey and witnessed the struggles. But in the end, he’s left alone and without any answers.
Also look for a lot of good archetypes in the book and lucifer symbolism with Ahab…
And the fish; look out for fish. And whales, which according to Melville, are a kind of fish. So keep an eye peeled for fish imagery.
hang in there, Ralph.
Yes, hang in there Ralph, like a fish hanging on a hook. Come to think of it, that’d be more enoyable than reading Moby Dick, so you wouldn’t be all that bad off if you took my took the advice literally. Hang from a rusted, barbed hook thrust through the tissue of my cheek, or read Moby Dick again?
Hmmmmm.
Can I get back to you on that? that’s a serious dilemma. Can I volunteer to scoop out a summer-fermented PortaPotty with my eyelids instead?
“What do you do when you see a whale, boys?”
So, what does Moby Dick (the whale, not the book) symbolize? Why is Ahab obsessed with him? What’s it all about, eh? Here’s my two paragraph take.
Moby Dick symbolizes God to Ahab. God has made Ahab suffer, so Ahab hates God/Moby Dick, and seeks to kill the whale as revenge against God. “Strike through the mask!” Ahab believes he can gain some measure of revenge, even if Moby Dick is only an agent of God, not God literally.
But Melville is more subtle. The real horror is that Moby Dick is not God, that God didn’t make Ahab suffer. Ahab suffers for no reason, nothing caused his suffering except a morally blank universe. If Ahab feels his suffering is morally significant because there is some sort of agency causing it, but this is not true. Ahab’s tragedy is that he is seeking revenge against God, but God does not exist.
Yeah, plus fish.
Ha! Gotta hand it to you, lissener.
What have you got against Moby Dick?
I thought the book was great. Now granted, I read it a few years ago of my own volition, and was never assigned it in some fawking English class.
Ahab has been relegated to English class required reading material lists.
The Whale ain’t got nuttin’ on that.
Lemur, I have nothing against Moby Dick. It’s a great book for those who are obsessed with fish.
What does ISHMAEL mean in hebrew? It seems to me that the hero is “gone to sea” because he has been rejected by his father…and on the whaler “Pequod” he meets his surrogate father (Queque?).
Anyhow, I know that Ahab feels that he is out for revenge against god-but he is bested by the whale, and the hero winds up floating on Queque’s coffin/
How does this involve Ishmael?
Moby Dick is a book about obsession, written in an obsessive manner - a point lampooned from the very beginning by the authour, in his introductory pages on whale-references.
It is a masterpiece that people either love or hate. Often, those hating it object to having to read hundreds of pages about whaling to get to the plot. However, it seems clear to me that the whaling obsession is part of the message, which is about obsession after all.
Ooh, I love this stuff. Here’s what I got out of Moby Dick:
“Ahab” is meant to suggest A Halibut. It’s a contraction—A’ha’b’. This signifies that Ahab represents a fish. This is confirmed textually by the fact that Ahab is a flat, one-sided character—like a halibut! Add to this the fact that, when spoken, “Ahab” sounds kind of like “squab,” as pronounced in certain East Coast whaling dialects of eighteenth and nineteenth century America, when the speaker is suffering from alchohol poisoning. The relevance of this requires a slightly more careful analysis than the previous one, as a squab is not a fish, but a bird. Specifically, “squab” is what a pigeon is called when it’s prepared as food, and squab is universally known to taste like chicken. In this way it can be seen to suggest a close parallel to halibut (which also tastes kind of like chicken, when broiled and served with a heavy sauce; preferably with a cream base, as pointed out by Gardener in his seminal work Moby Dick: Fish, Fish, Fish, Fish, Fish)–specifically, A halibut, or, as we’ve just learned, A’ha’b’.
“Pequod” reveals almost as much under enlightened scrutiny. Here we have the obvious rhyme (not too subtle, Herman!) with cod, and scrod. In this way we discover that on the subconscious level, Pequod is a symbol for fish. Add to this the confirmatory fact that, when rotated 180 degrees, the word Pequod is revealed as the word ponbed (or ’pon bed, another classic Melvillean contraction), and fish is often served pon [a] bed of rice.
Thus we can see the infinitely intricate means by which Herman Melville, truly one of the great fish novelists of his place and time, enriches a masterwork like Moby Dick with layer upon layer of fish imagery.
Y’ever hear the one about the two old maids from Beacon Hill who went down to the Boston docks once every month to get scrod?
We don’t know that. We know that Ahab dies. But the fate of Moby Dick is never revealed. He doesn’t float to the surface and go belly up. He doesn’t spout, roar, and swim off. He just vanishes. Leaving the reader and Ishmael, without answers
[I refuse to use spoilers. If you haven’t read Moby Dick, get out of this thread!]
Doesn’t he in fact kill everyone from the Pequod (except Ishmael), and sink the Pequod itself, before vanishing?
This is really a sweet little angle you’ve got on it, lissener. You’ve clearly done your own homework here. Let’s draw our line out further with an attempt on it from the back door.
When I see a halibut, swimming dumbly in the oily waters, I envision its fins as tiny translucent wings. It beats them against the unfeeling elemental waters, yearning to break the surface, to soar beyond its physical limitations (kinda like Ginger in Chicken Run). The awkward beating of a chicken’s wings as it breasts the dark ocean reminds me, firstly, of bleu cheese sauce, and secondly, of the noble squab. The “aub” sound of squab evokes our word for another seabird: the "aulb"atross (need I say more?).
Over 92% of your average albatross’s diet consists of fish. Q.E.D.: Tha’r she blows.