Moby Dick Essay, Research Paper

What the point is about?

The fresh Moby Dick is the narrative of how Ishmael the storyteller came to put canvas on a fatal whaling ocean trip. He travels to Nantucket, where he visits the docks to happen a ship ; he discovers the Pequod. As Ishmael and his friend Queequeg make their manner to board the ship, they meet a Haggard looking, wild-eyed adult male who calls himself Elijah. He warns them against sailing with the Pequod, and intimations that there might be something to fear about their cryptic captain, Ahab. Although Ishmael has non yet met Ahab, he dismisses the Elijah s warning, and the two set canvas with the Pequod on Christmas Day.

Ishmael is introduced to the remainder of the ship s crew: the first mate, Starbuck, the 2nd mate, Stubb, and the 3rd mate, Flask. Finally, after several yearss at sea, the work forces run into their captain, Ahab: a ferocious looking Nantucketer with a white run in his hair taking to a cicatrix down the side of his face, and with one false leg made of tusk.

Ahab paces the deck, and does non speak to the work forces about at all & # 8230 ; until one twenty-four hours he nails a piece of Spanish gold to the chief mast of the ship, denoting that whoever first spies a white giant will have it as a wages. This white giant, called Moby Dick by Ahab, seems to do him considerable anxiousness ; he reveals that it was Moby Dick who bit off his leg. The crewmans seem excited at their possible wages, and vow to run Moby Dick to the decease. Ahab, meanwhile, speaks to himself in footings that suggest his maniacal compulsion with the Whale.

As the Pequod continues on her class, Ahab grows more and more haunted with happening and killing Moby Dick even keeping a sort of black mass in which he uses the blood of his harpooners to chill the blade of a new, deathly harpoon. In the shutting chapters of the novel, Ahab heads the ship into a unsafe storm, allows most of her instruments to interrupt down, and finally wantonnesss any pretence of carry oning an ordinary whaling ocean trip. Finally, Ahab finds the White Whale, and spends three consecutive yearss doing efforts on its life. The demonic giant attacks the delicate whaleboats with jaws and tail, finally droping the Pequod itself, and killing Ahab. Merely Ishmael, who floats safely distant from the scene of slaughter, survives and is rescued.

What does the point reveals about compulsion?

The fresh Moby Dick shows Ahab s resolved chase of the white giant, Moby Dick, which is the lone thing he lives for and is finally the thing he dies for as Mo

by Dick equine distempers him with his ain harpoon line. Ahab is finally killed because he was obsessed with capturing and killing Moby Dick. These events reveal through the character of Ahab and his compulsion with Moby Dick that compulsion is evil, will take over a individual s life and lead to their death.

An Analysis of the construction and linguistic communication characteristics used to shpae the perceptual experience of compulsion.

In the fresh Moby Dick, monologue, addresss, character s actions and the powerful use of certain words are used to determine the perceptual experience of compulsion.

In chapter 36, Captain Ahab announces, I ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round Hell s fires before I give him up. Starbuck, the symbol of good who contrasts with Ahab s darkness, refuses to travel along with the Captain s compulsion, indicating out that they were here to run all giants, non one in peculiar. Ahab, nevertheless, will hold none of Starbuck s expostulations. Alternatively, he makes a address uncovering the power of his compulsion: it isn T merely that Moby Dick chewed off his leg. Rather, it is that Moby Dick represents, for Ahab, an cryptic thing that feeds his lunacy. God maintain me! & # 8211 ; maintain us all! susurrations Starbuck, now cognizant that he is in the presence of immorality.

After that, Ahab, utters a monologue that farther demonstrates his insanity even declaring, I m amuck, I m madness maddened! He vows that he will dismember his dismemberer, and will non be swerved from his end of capturing the white giant.

Ahab sits in his cabin, analyzing maps of the sea and old log-books, incorporating information about where sperm giants have been seen and where their migrations normally take them. Ahab so traces lines on one of his charts but in a manner that suggests that he is mapping out the whereabouts of one giant in peculiar. In fact, the full ocean trip appears to hold been planned to co-occur with Moby Dick s noted visual aspects. Ahab seems to be animated merely by one thing: to go the oceans of the universe infinitely in hunt of the white giant. Even at the terminal of the novel when the boats are wrecked and some people are dead, Ahab still remains focussed on killing Moby Dick.

The monologue, addresss, and words uttered by Ahab and his actions are used to shpae the perceptual experience of compulsion. The reader is left with the cognition that when a individual is obsessed, all their attending is focused towards the object of the compulsion, that nil else affairs and they are even willing to decease in the chase of the compulsion.