Literary Analysis of Moby-Dick: Themes and Characters

Narrative Plot and Core Summary of Moby-Dick. A young man who calls himself Ishmael, bored with and depressed by life on land, decides to join the crew of a whaling ship, where he is quickly befriended by a kindly Polynesian pagan named Queequeg. Soon, however, Ishmael also encounters the grim, maniacal, but imposing Captain Ahab—an obsessive yet eloquent man who is determined to pursue and kill a famous white whale named Moby Dick, whom Ahab considers the embodiment of evil and whom he blames for crippling him by biting off his leg in an earlier encounter. Eventually, the maddened captain succeeds in tracking down and attacking the giant whale, but his obsession results in death and destruction for himself, his ship, and his entire crew—all except Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale.

Humor, Foreshadowing, and Narrative Function. Melville begins this novel—his greatest work and one of the triumphs of world literature—by focusing not on Ahab or the whale but on Ishmael and Queequeg, two of the most appealing fictional characters ever created. Most readers reading Moby-Dick for the first time, and knowing only that the book has a reputation as a dark and tragic epic, will be surprised by the wit, humor, and droll comedy of the opening chapters. Melville had a sure comic touch, and it is nowhere more in evidence than in the beginning of this book. Ishmael memorably reports, for instance, that he tends to go to sea when he finds himself feeling depressed or bitter: "whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet," or whenever he finds that "it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball" (3). In other words, rather than committing violence against others or killing himself, he sails the world's oceans, knowing that "meditation and water are wedded forever" (4).

The Strategic Function of Opening Comedy. Humor of this sort proliferates in the opening chapters, but it (as does everything else in the novel) serves multiple purposes. Thus, the comedy of the book's opening helps intensify the tragedy that will eventually ensue. The self-deprecating, self-mocking humor of Ishmael helps emphasize, by contrast, the brooding darkness of Ahab when we meet him later. The early references to coffins and funerals foreshadow the deaths that eventually overtake everyone except (ironically) Ishmael himself. Meanwhile, Ishmael's humor cannot disguise (in fact, it highlights) his thoughtfulness, his wisdom, and his breadth and depth of character. From the start he seems an intelligent, perceptive, humble man—a person who is capable of appreciating the world and of laughing at himself, and thus a man who is much better balanced than the monomaniacal Ahab. As Ishmael himself later puts it with his typically understated wisdom, "A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to be spent in that way. And the man that has anything laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than perhaps you think for" (29). Surely these last words apply to Ishmael himself. He instantly seems an attractive character; we like him and want to see what happens to him, and thus Melville immediately makes us want to read further.

Cross-Cultural Encounters and Aesthetic Symbolism. One of the most memorable events for Ishmael is, of course, his early encounter with Queequeg, the tattooed Polynesian harpooner (allegedly a head-hunting cannibal) with whom Ishmael is forced to share a bed in a cheap and seedy inn. When Ishmael first enters the inn (while looking for inexpensive lodging), he immediately spots an old, grimy "oil-painting so thoroughly be-smoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could in any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose" (12). Obviously this painting, which dimly depicts a huge whale attacking a ship in stormy seas, symbolizes Melville's own novel—a book that, as with the painting, will yield up its secrets only in response to "diligent study" and "systematic visits" and "careful inquiry". Melville, in short, is not simply writing a straightforward and exciting adventure story (although he did produce a work of real excitement); he is crafting a book deliberately designed to suggest mystery and provoke deep and prolonged thought. He tried to create in this book (as in the painting the book describes) "a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity ... that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath to yourself to find out what that marvellous [sic] painting meant" (12–13). The adjectives here are significant: Melville works his wonders by creating complexities, by crafting ambiguities, by dealing in shadows and shades rather than preaching any simple black-or-white message. His novel is so rich precisely because it is so complex. As the dim yet compelling painting does, the book both provokes and rewards close attention and "diligent study".

The Encounter with Queequeg and the Bonds of Fellowship. Ishmael's next memorable encounter is not with a literal painting but with a painted man. As an exhausted but apprehensive Ishmael tries to sleep on a mattress he thinks must be "stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery" (20), into his darkened room enters Queequeg, the fearsome roommate he has been awaiting. Queequeg (who has been out late, trying to sell the last of his supply of shrunken heads) is a dark, giant, quiet man who is tattooed from head to foot. As Ishmael watches this "head-peddling purple rascal" in silent fascination (21), the newcomer begins worshipping a tiny black statue—"a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby" (22). In passages such as this (and they are legion), Melville reveals his wonderful gift for exact and memorable description, while this whole scene shows his talent for vivid contrasts (as in the juxtaposition of the calm cannibal and the nervous paleskin) and his thematic interest in cross-cultural encounters. When the surprised Queequeg discovers an unexpected stranger in his bed, comic mayhem erupts, but after the innkeeper reassures him that Ishmael has paid for a spot in the bed, the unlikely couple settle in for a comfortable snooze. As Ishmael comments, with splendid panache and superb alliteration, "For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely-looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian" (24). Ishmael's open-minded tolerance is one key to his character: He is a man with few hardened prejudices, and thus he is capable (as the inflexible Ahab is not) to learn from experience, of overcoming his pride, and of accepting others—and life itself—on their own terms. Ishmael is the butt of Melville's (and the inn keeper's) humor in this opening section of the book, but he is already revealing a capacity for wisdom, friendship, and thoughtfulness that will stand him in good stead throughout the novel.

Democratic Fellowship vs. Tyrannical Isolation. Few moments in American literature are as laugh-out-loud funny as the first encounter of Ishmael and Queequeg, although the scene the next morning (when Ishmael awakens to discover Queequeg's huge arm draped around him) is not far behind. Melville plays the moment for all its comic overtones, but he also begins to suggest the real bond of affection that has now begun to develop between this unlikely pair. Later, as their friendship grows, Ishmael reports how Queequeg "clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply" (51). As the novel develops, we will see that Queequeg is a man of his word: He is willing to put himself at risk not only for Ishmael but also for others, and indeed it is thanks to Queequeg that Ishmael survives the whaling voyage. Ishmael may have begun the novel feeling depressed, aggressive, and isolated, but by chapter 10 he has acquired "A Bosom Friend" (49), and Melville has begun to develop one of the novel's major themes: the contrast between the democratic fellowship of equal human beings (despite any superficial differences of cultural background or religious belief) and the lonely, proud, tyrannical isolation and domination personified by Ahab. The affectionate bond between Ishmael and Queequeg symbolizes Melville's best hopes for the wider human community, but the dark destructiveness of Ahab symbolizes his recognition of the dangers of egotism run rampant. By skillfully sketching the appealing bond between Ishmael and his new friend, Melville makes us realize the limitations of the kind of smugly superior "civilization" that can condemn a man like Queequeg as a "simple savage". In addition, by making us feel (and share) the affection between Ishmael and Queequeg, Melville enhances our sense of the final tragedy of the novel, when an ugly obsession not only destroys Ahab but obliterates this beautiful friendship. Ahab's death is tragic, but it is Queequeg's death that opens the most painful wound.

Religious Allegory and the Prophetic Pulpit. Melville's talent for creating memorable characters is on display again with the brief but vivid appearance of Father Mapple, an old whale hunter who now serves as preacher at the Whaleman's Chapel, where both Ishmael and Queequeg (with many others) spend their last Sunday before heading out to sea. Mapple is a comically eccentric character: He not only climbs a rope ladder to enter a towering pulpit that looks like the prow of a ship (and then pulls the ladder up after him!), but also orders his scattered flock to congregate together by proclaiming, "Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard—larboard gangway to starboard! Midships, midships!" (41). The incongruity of such language used by a preacher makes us laugh, but it also exemplifies one of the charms of Melville's novel: We are entering a world with its own rules, its own customs, its own lingo—a world with all the fascination of something that is foreign to everyday existence. At the same time, this world is obviously relevant to our own experience. Melville thus manages to put us in exotic surroundings, populated with intriguingly unfamiliar characters, and yet also deal with some of the most timeless issues of human life. Mapple's sermon is a case in point: He addresses his congregants as "shipmates" (42), and he tells the biblical story of Jonah and the whale as if it had happened yesterday to a man of his own acquaintance (as when the ancient sailors of the scriptural text call each other "Jack," "Joe," and "Harry" [43]). Melville thus achieves the kind of colloquial freshness and unexpected twists that help make his book so lively, yet the sermon clearly deals with larger philosophical issues relevant to human life in general and to the later plot of the novel. This is clear, for instance, when Mapple proclaims that "if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists" (43). Obviously these words resonate with the plot of Moby-Dick: Ahab will prove himself a man incapable of obeying God by disobeying himself. Similarly relevant are Mapple's later words when he declares, "Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self" (48). On the one hand, Ahab is himself an example of this sort of "inexorable self," and to some degree he earns our admiration for his determination and courage; on the other hand, he is also one of the "proud gods and commodores of this earth" of whom good men (such as Ishmael) must be wary. Father Mapple's sermon is just one of the many ways by which Melville now begins to complicate and darken the initially comic tone of his book, introducing grim hints of foreboding and already implying the moral and spiritual dimensions of his developing tale.

Forebodings and the Demonic Stature of Captain Ahab. Forebodings now begin to proliferate. Ishmael and Queequeg sign on as crew members of a ship called the Pequod, which (Ishmael tells us) "was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient Medes" (69). Likewise, the Pequod itself will eventually be extinguished. Ahab, the captain of the ship, is nowhere to be seen—a fact that already lends him an air of mystery and that makes his eventual first appearance a matter of suspense. He is described by one of the ship's owners in suitably ambiguous terms: He is "sort of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he isn't well either. . . . He's a queer man, Captain Ahab—so some think—but a good one. . . . He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man" (78–79). As the contradictions and complexities, the assertions and qualifications, pile up, Melville stokes our interest (as well as Ishmael's) in the mysterious captain, and that interest builds to an even higher pitch when Ishmael and Queequeg are later confronted by a shabby, disfigured stranger, who, calling himself Elijah (the name of a biblical prophet), enigmatically warns them about Captain Ahab's dark past and about their own ominous futures if they choose to sail on the Pequod. Thanks to Elijah's "ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk," Ishmael now begins to feel "all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions" (93), but for the moment he dismisses them, and he and Queequeg board the ship, prepared to sail. They later discover that Ahab (appropriately enough) has already gone aboard in the darkness of night and is now holed up in his cabin, unseen by most of the crew. The ship sets sail (ironically) on a gloomy Christmas Day—a date normally associated with joy and renewal, but darkened here by Ishmael's description of the Pequod as it "blindly plunge[s] like fate into the lone Atlantic" (105). From now until the very end of the book, Ishmael and his shipmates have left dry land behind. They are now the inhabitants of a small, isolated world (populated, symbolically, by sailors from across the globe) in which a still-invisible and increasingly mysterious Ahab reigns supreme. Only after the ship is well under way does Ahab appear and announce his obsessive purpose: to pursue and destroy the huge white whale that once ripped off his leg, thereby maiming his spirit as well as his body and leaving him thirsty for revenge. Ultimately his quest leads to his own death and to the deaths of most of his crew.

Interpretive Models of Captain Ahab. Ahab is clearly one of the most complicated and intriguing figures in world literature, and much of the commentary on Moby-Dick struggles to explain or understand him. He has been compared to Satan (especially the Satan depicted in Milton's Paradise Lost) but also viewed as an embodiment of the Freudian id (uncontrolled by reason or conscience). He has been interpreted as a symbol of humans' protest against fate and limitations but also as a representative of existential suffering and despair. He has been interpreted as a symbol of American imperialism, of capitalist greed, and of the demagogues who either sought fanatically to destroy slavery or who, by compromising with slave owners, symbolically sold their souls to the devil to pursue their narrow political ambitions. On the other hand, Ahab has also been regarded more sympathetically: as a reflection of the universal fear and hatred of all that seems malign and inscrutable in the universe; as a man whose honesty, courage, and suffering make him a genuinely tragic figure; and as a kind of scapegoat who plays out a common human fantasy of slaying pain and banishing deprivation. More commonly, however, Ahab is seen in darker terms: as a totalitarian dictator—eloquent, obsessed, but driven by destructive impulses (a Hitler before his time); as a blasphemous defier of God and of a godly natural order; as the personification of a death wish that destroys others in the process of destroying itself; as an epitome of malevolent egotism; and as a person so driven by hate that he eventually loses all capacity to love. Like all the great tragic figures of Western literature (including Prometheus, Faust, Macbeth, Lear, and Manfred), Ahab seems at once appalling and appealing, repulsive and inspiring, a simultaneous focus of fear and of pity. He is one of the great dark heroes of our culture, and his obsession with the whale becomes an archetypal symbol of any fixation that leads to self-destruction. Ahab sees (or seeks) meaning in the universe, even if that meaning is black and grim. He is a dark quester, handicapped by pride, intent on slaying not a dragon but a whale.

Symbolic Multiplicity of the White Whale. That whale, Moby Dick, has been the subject of almost as much critical speculation as Ahab himself. Some readers have seen the whale as a symbol of the brute facts of existence, with which all humans must come to terms. Others have interpreted the whale as an embodiment of our deepest psychological mysteries, especially the mystery of evil. To some the whale seems both divine and demonic; to others the beast symbolizes fate or predestination; while to others still the whale is an example of the morally indifferent forces of nature. Critics who take a psychological or biographical approach to the novel have interpreted the whale as a symbol of debilitating parental power—imposing limits (almost to a castrating degree) but also inspiring an obsessive response. The whale can be seen as a kind of unloving God, provoking both awe and rebellion, or it can be seen as precisely the kind of nature myth that suited the 19th century: an image of nature as raw and untamed, beautiful but intimidating, and in need (at least in Ahab's mind) of being conquered and subdued. Whales in Moby-Dick are at the center of a great industrial enterprise typical of the increasingly commercial era in which Melville lived, but the white whale is the special object of the kind of mythic hunt that is as old as mankind itself—a hunt that symbolizes man's search for meaning in a puzzling universe.

Ishmael's Character Arc and Stylistic Mastery. Although Ishmael, the narrator, has often been overshadowed in critical commentary by Ahab and the whale, he is himself an immensely appealing and intriguing figure. Some analysts have seen him as Melville's alter ego, in both his darker and his lighter aspects (such as his tendency to depression and his capacity for humor). Many see him as the most complex character in the book—a person who, because of his openness, curiosity, intelligence, thoughtfulness, appreciation of irony, and distrust of absolutes, is able to learn, develop, and finally survive to share his complicated wisdom with his readers. Ishmael, it is often said, is the most balanced character in the book; unlike Ahab, he remains unblinkered and not only retains but enjoys a capacity for friendship and love. Unlike Ahab, as well, he can tolerate ambiguities; he feels no need to impose a single, obsessive interpretation on the universe; he is a genial skeptic, and during the course of the Pequod's voyage he leaves his opening depression behind him and learns to appreciate the value of life and love. The story of the book is in one sense the story of Ishmael's mental and moral growth, and as he learns we learn with him. He is our representative among the crew, and although (in one sense) his survival is preordained (for if there were no survivor, there would be no one to tell the tale), in another sense his rescue at the end can be seen either as an example of providence, or as a chance accident, or as a tribute to the qualities of character that make Ishmael so fine a representative of all that is best in human nature. Without intending or seeking to be so, Ishmael is the anti-Ahab, the man of sanity and moderation in a world controlled by a madman.

Language, Register, and Dramatic Form. Moby-Dick is compelling, however, not simply because of its characters or themes or plot but especially because of its style. The range of Melville's language is immense: Sometimes it is colloquial and slangy, while it often attains a dignity and eloquence that reflect its author's intimate familiarity with the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, and whole shelves of other Western classics. Melville is interested in hard facts (as in his detailed descriptions of the art and science of whaling), but his vocabulary is also often mythic and inspired. He can be funny, but he can also be profound; he can craft long, detailed descriptions but can also create vivid dialogue and write literal drama. Often the novel turns into a play, complete with stage directions, soliloquies, and asides; at other times the narrative suspense and excitement are overwhelming. Melville is sometimes jocular, sometimes meditative; he can spin out long, ever-flowing, ever-growing sentences, or he can be brutally abrupt. Like all great writers, he is, first and foremost, a master of the language, and as his hero Shakespeare did, he coined scores of words, revived many others, played subtle variations on common terms, and seemed (in this book at least) never at a loss for something to say or an inventive way to say it. Moby-Dick impresses us, if for no other reason, as an example of the splendid resources of the English language in the hands of a master writer. No one since Shakespeare had put the language through its paces better than Melville in Moby-Dick; no one was more alive than he was to the sound and rhythm and potential poetry of English prose.

Comparative Analysis and Pedagogical Questions. The thematic and structural complexity of the text provides a basis for comparative literature studies:
1st point: Influence of Shakespeare — Compare and contrast Moby-Dick with a great Shakespearean tragedy, such as King Lear. Analyze how the two works are similar in themes, plot, characterization, and style, examining what kinds of sympathy are felt for Lear and Ahab, and whether either man is a more tragic figure than the other.

2nd point: Relationship to Hawthorne — Examine how Ahab in Moby-Dick resembles Aylmer in "The Birth-mark," particularly in terms of motivation, character, behavior, and ultimate fate, detailing how the two characters differ, the ways in which each is destructive, and whether either is admirable.

3rd point: Generic Classification as a Prose Epic — Evaluate common definitions of the epic genre and compare Moby-Dick to epic poems such as Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, or Milton's Paradise Lost, discussing the ways in which Melville's novel exhibits epic elements and how Ahab resembles or differs from Homer's Odysseus or Milton's Satan.

4th point: Democratic Ideals and National Context — Discuss how Moby-Dick deals with the ideals of democracy, specifying in what respects the novel is specifically American and in what respects it is relevant to people throughout the world.

5th point: Comparative Study with Mark Twain — Contrast Moby-Dick with Mark Twain's (Samuel Langhorne Clemens's) Huckleberry Finn, focusing on its use of colloquial language, humor, the motif of a journey, and its presentation of relations among people of different cultures and races.