I learned how to communicate ideas clearly and think more critically in this class. I also discovered new strategies for organizing my work, and expressing my thoughts with confidence. These skills helped me grow as a writer, and a learner as well. My final takeaway is that effective communication can make any project stronger, and more meaningful. To be honest about what I am writing here through this simple blog, that the most interesting part of my learning in the class was when you usually used to divide us into groups because when you did that to our class, it makes us more active, and as students used to share and learn from each others finally, I want to thank you as my professor for spending a lot of your time guiding and teaching us what was necessary for us to earn and understand the novel.

Moby-Dick

Pro. Jessica Pressman

November 30, 2025

 Money, Power, and the Moral Economy of Whaling and Slavery in Moby-Dick

In Chapter 99 of Moby-Dick, titled “The Doubloon,” Herman Melville transforms a single gold coin into a world of meanings. Ahab nails a Spanish doubloon to the mast and promises it as a reward to whoever first spots the white whale. The coin becomes more than a mere incentive: it becomes a mirror in which every sailor sees his own desires, fears, and moral limitations. Melville’s description of the coin, “The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self” (Melville 465).  Ahab’s obsession links the whaling voyage to the economic and moral foundations of nineteenth-century capitalism, an era when wealth was generated through both whaling and slavery. The image of the “round gold” that mirrors the “rounder globe” encapsulates Melville’s critique of a global system driven by profit and pride. Money, symbolized by the doubloon, connects the Pequod’s hunt for whales to the wider history of empire, labor, and exploitation. In this essay, I will argue that “The Doubloon” exposes the moral blindness of capitalism by revealing how both whaling and slavery rely on the same logic of commodification. Through close reading of Melville’s imagery of gold, reflection, and pride, I will show how Ahab’s coin becomes a microcosm of the global market—one that turns both human beings and nature into instruments of profit. The “round gold” nailed to the Pequod’s mast is not just a piece of metal; it is a symbolic world. Melville’s repetition of the word round, “round gold,” “rounder globe”, underscores how economic circulation mirrors the motion of the world itself. Gold, like the Earth, moves in cycles: mined from one continent, traded through another, and melted down into new forms. In Melville’s time, Spanish doubloons were colonial artifacts, minted from gold extracted by enslaved or coerced labor in the Americas. Thus, the coin aboard the Pequod carries a hidden history of human suffering. When Melville writes that the coin is “but the image of the rounder globe,” he reveals how money condenses global relations into a single, glittering surface. The image conceals the reality of labor that produced it. Similarly, the whaling industry relied on invisible chains of exploitation, sailors from colonized nations, racial hierarchies aboard ships, and dangerous labor that enriched merchants far from the sea. As Charles Olson notes in Call Me Ishmael, “The sea-trade was America’s first factory,” a system where “the whale was a slave” and the sailor only slightly freer (Olson 47). What I want to connect here is that the money used for buying whales is very similar to the money that was used for buying the slaves, and comparing whales with slaves in one hand with the value of money in the other hand, it looks like that money is very important to buy anything even the conscious of others. For example, voting in the election which is happening now a days in most democratic countries; they consider themselves they are following democratic order. The doubloon’s circularity thus symbolizes the moral economy of the nineteenth century: a closed system of extraction and consumption. Melville’s description that the coin “mirrors back” each man’s self implies that capitalism depends on projection—each participant sees personal meaning in what is, in truth, a collective delusion. Just as Ahab sees his pride reflected in the coin, so did slaveholders and merchants see divine justification in their wealth. Melville’s image of the “magician’s glass” exposes this illusion. The coin enchants those who gaze upon it, masking the suffering that sustains its gleam.

To understand why Melville invests so much meaning in a gold coin, it is essential to consider the world economy in which Moby-Dick was written. Published in 1851, Moby-Dick emerged during a period when both the whaling industry and slavery were central to American prosperity. Whale oil illuminated cities, lubricated machines, and symbolized progress. Yet behind this industry was a system of brutal labor conditions, racialized hierarchies, and ecological violence. The same society that celebrated industrial innovation also justified the enslavement of millions. The whaling ship and the slave plantation may appear to belong to different worlds—one hunting animals in the open ocean, the other exploiting human beings on land—but both shared a moral foundation: the belief that the natural world and the human body were resources to be owned, measured, and sold. Melville subtly connects these two economies through imagery of gold and labor. When he writes that “Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them,” he speaks to the human cost of both whaling and slavery. The phrase “great pains” recalls the toil of sailors who risk death for profit, as well as the suffering of enslaved people whose pain was literally converted into wealth. The “small gains” echo the reality that even those who profited—captains, shipowners, plantation masters—were spiritually impoverished. Toni Morrison, in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, argues that white American literature often relies on a “shadowed African presence” that remains unacknowledged but essential (Morrison 33). Melville’s doubloon operates in precisely this way: it gleams because it hides the dark histories of exploitation that produced it. The “rounder globe” is not an innocent sphere but one mapped by slavery, conquest, and trade. Melville’s passage therefore turns the Pequod into a floating miniature of the world economy ship whose cargo is ideological as much as oil. Ahab’s identification with the coin, “the firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; … all are Ahab”, reveals how personal ambition fuses with the capitalist pursuit of profit. The coin does not merely promise wealth; it symbolizes power, pride, and conquest. Ahab’s ego becomes indistinguishable from his economic motive. Like a slaveholder or merchant, he sees himself as a master of the world, destined to bend nature to his will. The phrase “as proud as Lucifer” connects economic pride to spiritual rebellion. Lucifer’s sin was not poverty but ambition—desiring godlike control. Ahab’s fixation on Moby Dick mirrors this same sin. Both whaling and slavery spring from the same arrogance: the belief that one being has the right to dominate another. The gold coin, glittering in the sun, is thus a secular idol—a false god that commands sacrifice. Gregory S. Jay, in “Melville’s Economy of Pain,” observes that Melville “treats profit as the residue of pain converted into abstract value” (Jay 112). This insight helps illuminate the line “Great pains, small gains.” Every drop of whale oil, every ounce of gold, every pound of cotton represents transformed suffering. Melville’s poetic inversion—pains producing gains—captures how capitalism converts life into commodity. The mirror imagery also speaks to moral blindness. When Melville writes that the coin “mirrors back his own mysterious self,” he implies that each man’s interpretation of the doubloon reveals his character. Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask each read the coin differently—one sees divine providence, another luck, another appetite. This diversity of readings underscores that money has no inherent meaning; it reflects the moral state of its beholder. In Ahab’s case, the reflection is monstrous. His obsession with the coin—and the whale it represents—shows how greed becomes a form of possession.

However, The Pequod is a microcosm of the nineteenth-century world order. Its diverse crew, Black, Indigenous, Asian, and white sailors, represents a miniature empire driven by a single goal: profit. The ship’s name itself, “Pequod,” recalls the exterminated Pequot tribe, reminding readers that America’s economic expansion rests on conquest. The gold coin nailed to its mast becomes a flag of empire. The roundness of the coin mirrors the roundness of the Earth, suggesting that global capitalism is circular: it consumes endlessly but never reaches fulfillment. Melville’s use of the phrase “magician’s glass” suggests illusion and self-deception. The sailors are enchanted by the coin just as nations are enchanted by gold. The doubloon’s shine blinds them to its history—it was likely minted from colonial plunder, its gold dug by enslaved or indebted workers in South America. Christopher Benfey’s the American Adam provides a useful framework for reading Ahab as an archetypal figure of American ambition. Benney describes Melville’s heroes as “self-made men who seek to master the world through solitary will” (Beeney 89). Yet Melville exposes the violence beneath this myth. Ahab’s mastery leads not to creation but to destruction. His pursuit of the whale—driven by a coin—parallels the nation’s pursuit of expansion through slavery and industry. The Pequod’s final wreck symbolizes the inevitable collapse of a system built on domination. In both whaling and slavery, value is extracted from bodies—animal or humans without regard for their suffering. Melville’s description of “great pains, small gains” can be read as a moral equation. The “pains” are physical and spiritual; the “gains” are material and fleeting. Melville thus inverts the capitalist promise of endless growth. His language anticipates Marx’s critique that labor under capitalism becomes alienated—that the worker’s pain enriches someone else. The line “Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them” also reveals a profound theological dimension. The phrase “ask the world to solve them” suggests that those who look to material wealth for meaning will be disappointed. The world offers no solution because it is itself corrupted by greed. In this sense, the coin is not only an economic symbol but a spiritual test. Each man’s reflection in the coin reveals whether he sees the divine or the demonic in gold. Melville’s genius lies in how he fuses these levels, economic, psychological, and spiritual, into a single image. The doubloon is both a literal coin and a mirror of civilization’s soul. Its roundness suggests perfection, yet it is also a closed loop of desire. The same circular motion that drives the Earth also traps humanity in cycles of exploitation. Melville’s “round gold” thus becomes a prophetic warning: the world’s wealth is also its curse. VI. The “Magician’s Glass”: Seeing and Refusing to See The most haunting phrase in the passage— “like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self”—invites reflection on perception itself. The mirror both reveals and deceives. A magician’s glass, after all, is a tool of illusion: it shows what the viewer wants to see. Melville anticipates modern critiques of ideology—how social systems make people complicit in their own domination. “It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So, this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world” P.471). In The Doubloon, each sailor interprets the coin differently, but none question the system that gives it power. Similarly, in the nineteenth century, few questioned the moral legitimacy of industries like whaling or slavery. Both were seen as natural facts of progress. The coin’s surface, smooth, bright, and beautiful, conceals the rough reality of the world it represents. Melville’s use of reflective imagery throughout Moby-Dick—the sea as mirror, the whale’s head as mirror, now the coin as mirror—suggests that self-knowledge is inseparable from confronting moral complicity. To see oneself truly, one must look beyond the surface of gold. But as Melville implies, most men cannot bear that sight. They prefer the comfort of illusion—the “magician’s glass” that flatters their pride. Melville’s meditation on the doubloon extends far beyond the whaling ship. His insight into how money mirrors the human soul remains urgently relevant in a world still driven by profit at the expense of life. The same logic that turned whales into barrels of oil and people into property persists in modern economies that treat labor and nature as disposable. When Melville writes, “Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them,” he anticipates our own disillusionment with material wealth. The pursuit of profit, like Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick, promises fulfillment but delivers ruin. The Pequod’s destruction becomes an allegory for the self-destructive tendencies of capitalist civilization. Toni Morrison’s reminder that American literature is haunted by the legacy of slavery helps us read Moby-Dick as a text that struggles with its own complicity. The gold coin, after all, is both a literal reward and a symbolic burden—it shines with the light of stolen labor. By linking the hunt for whales to the buying and selling of humans, Melville reveals how deeply capitalism corrupts moral vision. The power of The Doubloon lies in its prophetic universality. Melville suggests that “all are Ahab”—that each person participates, knowingly or not, in systems of domination. The coin’s mirror reflects not only Ahab’s pride but the reader’s own. We, too, live in a world where gold—now digital, abstract, global—continues to dictate value. Melville’s warning remains clear: to worship gold is to risk losing one’s soul.

As to conclude, “The Doubloon,” Melville compresses the entire moral and economic history of the nineteenth century into a single image of gold. The coin represents the world’s wealth, its violence, and its blindness. Through the language of reflection— “round gold,” “rounder globe,” “magician’s glass”—Melville exposes how capitalism turns both human and natural life into profit while concealing its own cruelty behind beauty. By connecting the whaling voyage to the slave economy, Melville reveals that these two systems share a common origin in pride and greed. The Pequod’s doomed pursuit of the whale mirrors America’s pursuit of empire—relentless, self-destructive, and morally bankrupt. The line “Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them” stands as a moral epitaph for modern civilization. It warns that a world obsessed with gold will ultimately be consumed by its own reflection. In the end, Melville’s vision remains both tragic and redemptive. The gold coin, though corrupt, forces self-recognition. To look into the “magician’s glass” is to confront the truth that we, too, are Ahab—participants in cycles of desire and exploitation. Only by acknowledging this reflection can humanity hope to break the circle of “round gold” and rediscover value beyond price.

Works Cited

Benfey, Christopher. The American Adam: Essays on Melville, Emerson, and Hawthorne. University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Jay, Gregory S. “Melville’s Economy of Pain.” American Literature, vol. 61, no. 1, 1989, pp. 109–128.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or The Whale. 1851. Edited by Hershel Parker, Norton Critical Edition, W. W. Norton, 2018.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Harvard University Press, 1992.

Olson, Charles. Call Me Ishmael. City Lights Books, 1947.

” Melville’s description that the coin “mirrors back” each man’s self implies that capitalism depends on projection—each participant sees personal meaning in what is, in truth, a collective delusion” (Moby-Dick).

For my final project on Doubloon, I still need to deepen my understanding of how its in-game economy evolves over time. I want to learn more about the factors that cause Doubloon value to rise or fall so I can better explain its trends. I also need to refine my data visualization to make the project clearer and more engaging. Another task is improving my analysis by comparing Doubloon to similar virtual currencies. Finally, I must review my conclusions to ensure they clearly connect back to the project’s main questions.

“A gentle joyousness-a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam” (Chap. 133, P. 596). In this passage from The Chase-First Day, Melville describes the White Whale with and almost divine gentleness, comparing its movement to mythic scenes like Jupiter abducting Europa, by invoking classical imager and emphasizing the whale’s “mighty mildness of repose, “Melville transforms the whale from a mere animal into a majestic, supernatural presence that surpasses even the gods. The poetic rhythm, the rich mythological allusion, and the contrast between calmness and power elevate the whale into a symbol rather than a creature. This matters because it shows how Ahab’s hunt is not just a physical chase-it is a confrontation with something beyond human understanding, a force that exists outside normal categories of danger or beauty, The description reveals why the whale holds such psychological power over Ahab and the crew: it embodies mystery, divinity, and terror al at once.

Class 522

Dr. Jessica Pressman

Nov. 16, 2025

The Immortal Mystery of Fadlallah: Time, Symbolism, and the Measure of Obsession in

Moby-Dick

In Chapter 73 of Moby-Dick, Stubb offers a strange remark about Fedallah, the enigmatic Parsee who serves as Captain Ahab’s shadow and spiritual double: “‘Do you see that mainmast there?’ pointing to the ship ‘well that’s the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod’s hold and string ‘em along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do ye see; well, that wouldn’t begin to be Fedallah’s age. No, all the coopers in creation couldn’t show hoops enough to make oughts enough’” (356).  At first glance, the line reads like another piece of Stubb’s humor–hyperbolic, riddling, and absurdly nautical. Yet beneath the surface, Melville loads the passage with meaning about time, immortality, and the inscrutable forces that drive men to destruction. This quote concerns Stubb’s comic attempt to measure Fedallah’s supposed agelessness. This passage involves Melville’s intricate use of shipboard imagery, numerical metaphor, and grotesque exaggeration to suggest that Fedallah transcends ordinary human temporality. Melville transforms Fedallah from a mere harpoon into a symbol of the eternal, demonic energy propelling Ahab’s quest reminder that obsession and fate operate beyond human scales of time or understanding.

  Stubb’s description turns the Pequod’s mast and its cargo of casks into instruments of impossible calculation. The author invites the listener to imagine using the ship’s mainmast as a figure one, then stringing together all the hoops from the barrels in the hold as zeros—forming a number so large it could never represent Fedallah’s true age. Within the literal conversation, Stubb is jesting with his crewmates, turning Fedallah’s strange silence and foreignness into material for dark humor. Fedallah is already a source of superstition among the sailors, who see him as spectral and uncanny; Stubb’s exaggeration that he is older than arithmetic itself extends into myth. The image of endless hoops recalls the circular nature of time and labor aboard the whaling ship. The coopers, who make and repair barrels, represent the endless repetition of maritime life—hoop after hoop, voyage after voyage, sealing whale oil inside containers that in turn fuel the world’s machines. By claiming that even “all the coopers in creation” (Melville,) could not make enough hoops to measure Fedallah’s age, Stubb inadvertently admits that Fedallah belongs to a realm outside human industry and progress. His age cannot be “made” or “counted.” In the passage, it is clear the sailor attempts to define the indefinite, but the hyperbole invites the reader to see Fedallah not as mortal, but as a timeless force whose origins preceded the Pequod, its crew, and perhaps even humanity itself.

Melville constructs the line with layered imagery that transforms ordinary shipboard materials into symbols of cosmic proportion. The mast is the ship’s spine, its center of balance, and in this paragraph, it functions as the axis of measurement against which Fedallah’s inhuman longevity is compared. By pairing the mast with “hoops” from the hold, Melville juxtaposes the linear with the circular: the vertical aspiration of the mast against the cyclical repetition of the hoops. Together they evoke the twin structures of time—linearity and recurrence—neither of which can contain Fedallah. Melville’s diction also reveals how humor masks dread. The rustic slang, “coopers in creation”, and the rhythm of Stubb’s speech maintain his usual tone of comic disbelief, yet the joke betrays anxiety. Stubb, though genial, is disturbed by Fedallah’s eerie stillness and nocturnal presence on deck. Humor becomes his defense against fear. This can occur when we think about something that is going to happen in our life, and that event really takes place maybe by chance, just like Ahab’s feelings regarding his spear, expecting that he is going to hunt the whale, and he really hunts the whale. Even if it happens by chance, it gives us great symbolic that we may achieve successful jobs in our life. Fedallah’s unmeasurable age thus connects him to mythic eternity. Furthermore, the language of manufacture and measurement (“coopers,” “hoops,” “oughts”) underscores Melville’s critique of industrial rationality. The men aboard the Pequod are creatures of the whaling economy, trained to quantify and contain nature’s excess—the oil of leviathans turned into barrels, numbers, and profit. Fedallah, however, refuses containment. The more the sailors attempt to quantify him, the more he eludes measurement. In that sense, Melville uses the idiom of maritime commerce to stage the limits of human reason in the face of metaphysical mystery. What matters to us is we should be very patient when we miss a chance or failure then we shouldn’t give up at all, but we should try our best another time so that we can be able to achieve our goal in life and learn from our failure.

The deeper significance of this passage lies in how it situates Fedallah as the symbolic counterpoint to Ahab’s temporal humanity. If Fedallah’s age exceeds all possible human reckoning, he becomes the embodiment of fate, the eternal principle of destruction that Ahab mistakes for personal will. To say that Fedallah is older than all the hoops ever made is to say that Ahab’s madness is not new, it is part of an ancient cycle of pride and retribution repeating across ages. By this point in the novel, Fedallah has already emerged as a figure of prophetic fatalism. His cryptic predictions later in the text confirm that he functions less as a man than as an oracle or daemon. The sailors’ jokes about his immortality foreshadow his role as the unearthly witness of Ahab’s doom. The unending “hoops” represent the cyclical nature of Ahab’s obsession: each attempt to master the whale only tightens the loop of his bondage. Fedallah’s immeasurable age mirrors the timeless recurrence of obsession itself—how humanity perpetually rebuilds its own prisons of ambition and revenge. On a broader scale, the passage reveals Melville’s philosophical meditation on time and meaning. The Pequod’s voyage is a microcosm of human history, violence, and spiritual blindness. Stubb’s playful arithmetic, turning barrels into zeros, exposes the absurdity of trying to quantify what is infinite. In that absurdity lies Melville’s warning: human reason, commerce, and even faith collapse before the immensity of existence. To laugh at Fedallah’s age is to mock our own ignorance of time and mortality.

“It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; the, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if fat over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns” (P.539).In Chapter 116, page 539 of Moby-Dick, the passage captures the quiet end of a violent hunt, when both the sun and the whale “stilly died together.” The scene shifts from action to stillness, marking the close of day and the crew’s return from their labor at sea. Melville uses rich, poetic imagery “crimson fight,” “rosy air,” and “vesper hymns” to transform the bloody battle of whaling into something almost spiritual. The blending of death and beauty creates a paradoxical calm, as if nature itself pauses to mourn and pray. This moment reveals hoe the whalers’ brutal world is still bound to natural rhythms of life and death. The sea becomes both a trave and a cathedral, merging violence with reverence, It reminds readers that even amid human destruction, there exists a strange harmony an uneasy peace between man, nature, and the setting sun.

“I was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we were slowly sailing over a seepy, vapory, mid-day sea, that the many nose on the Pequod’s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes aloft, A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea”(Moby-Dick).

The Roth Beneath the Sea, In this scene from Moby-Dick Chapter 91, “The Pequod Meets the Rose-Bid,” Melville introduces the nauseating odor of decaying whales drifting near the Pequod. The quote from Sir Thomas Browne about searching “in vain” for ambergris-the valuable substance found in a whale’s body-sets the tone for a futile and grotesque pursuit of profit amid death and decay. Melville uses sensory imagery, especially the “peculiar and not very pleasant smell,” to contrast the sailors’ physical revulsion with their economic desire. The men’s willingness to seek wealth even in rotting flesh reflects how greed overrides natural human disgust. Stub’s casual remark about “drugged whales” turns death into an everyday business transaction, exposing the moral numbness that whaling culture breeds. This passage reveals Melville’s critique of capitalist obsession and moral corruption. The quest for ambergris symbolizes the human drive to extract value from even the most repulsive and lifeless remnants of nature. Through this grotesque yet vivid moment, Moby-Dick warns how the pursuit of profit can dull both the senses and the soul, leaving humanity adrift in moral decay.

I attended the meeting on Wednesday 29, 2025 from 12:00 am to 1:00 pm and from 1::00 pm to 2:00 pm and from 7;00 pm to 8:00 pm. What we learned from the first meeting was that we all gathered together professors and students talking together about the M A so that to encourage us to continue studying so that to build our successful future, and after that there were some good connections between the professors and the students visiting them in their offices while giving us some candy because of the Halloween occasion, and we shared our thoughts and perspectives among each others, it was really helpful to build strong relationships among us. At the evening we met with poet that cam from Florida and we listened to some literary poems, they were amazing, and some students bought some his own poems book so that to encourage the poet himself. And here is a picture that I took with the poet.