Zachary Capulong
Professor Pressman
ENGL 522
12/17/2025
Moby Dick has been compared to many religious texts, especially those from the Bible. The books of Jonah, Job, and Ecclesiastes are often referenced when understanding Herman Melville’s novel. However, not many have connected the Pequod to Genesis 11:1-9. In the Bible, these verses were the full story of the Tower of Babel, which is often seen as the origins of multicultures and languages. It’s seen that way because the story is about a people who were united in one language. Because everyone can communicate, they could also share the same ideas and agree with each other. So they decided to band together to create a city and stay together. Worse, they wanted to build a tower that could reach the home of the God that put them on Earth in the first place. This novel has a deep inspiration from Genesis 11:1-9, especially through the Pequod, from the story of the Tower of Babel. It reenacts the biblical story not through shared language, but through shared imagination imposed by Ahab. Through Ahab’s authority, the diverse crew of the Pequod becomes unified under a single vision, transforming the ship into a modern, floating Babel. They collectively attempt to challenge the unconquerable. This is especially evident in Moby Dick’s chapters 36 and 135, which capture the Tower of Babel’s story at sea, fighting a creature that’s just as elusive and unreachable as Heaven. Conversely, the tower builders were confused by the sudden diversity of languages, preventing them from understanding each other. In other words, their teamwork was wrecked by nature’s judgement, just like Moby Dick did to the Pequod. It reveals how ambition in the hands of arrogance can ultimately trigger catastrophic consequences.
The drive to conquer the sublime requires first a unifying declaration. Moby Dick and the Tower of Babel story both have that central idea of a collective human will. The only difference is that the Pequod started with people from different backgrounds, but Captain Ahab changed that. In under one speech, he gathered the crew’s spirit with a doubloon: an alluring incentive they wouldn’t refuse. In chapter 36, The Quarter-Deck, Ahab cried, “Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” (pg. 181) With his charisma and intellect, Ahab convinced his crew to help him with his obsession. This is the ambition he wanted to share with the crew of the Pequod. And just like Ahab’s vengeance, the builders of the Tower of Babel aimed to reach the heavens with their construction. In Genesis 11:4, the Bible stated, “And they said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (KJV) The fact the Bible went out of its way to say “they said” means it was not what God allowed. Both statements are declarations to challenge what they thought was only conquerable with cooperation. In a scholarly article, someone had focused on Ahab’s vanity, but also brought up Ahab’s drive. In Shuyang Xu’s article, “Ahab’s Hat was Never Restored: The Theme of Vanity in Moby-Dick with Reference to Ecclesiastes,” they mentioned, “The volatile mood, ecstatic passion, morbid obsession, and tyrannical authority exuded in his chase for Moby Dick are a peculiar demonstration of his vivacity; and his blasphemous way in putting himself onto any God is his fearless belief in free will and human power.” (pg. 37) This quote fully encapsulates Ahab’s role in the Pequod. His mood, passion, obsession and authority were powerful forces that shaped an entire crew. These factors, particularly Ahab’s charisma, were what let the Pequod to follow an ambition that could ultimately lead to their destruction. Xu’s analysis helps explain how Ahab’s authority does not remain personal, but spreads throughout the crew. He lets his obsession become a collective project rather than an individual fixation. Plus, the way Ahab spoke to steer the crew makes him look like he’s above divine authority. It’s no different to the people who said they’d built the Tower of Babel. Bobby Kurnia Putrawan, the writer of “Centripetal-Centrifugal Forces in the Tower of Babel Narrative,” said, “Babylon was the prototype of all nations, cities, and empire… represented man’s megalomaniacal attempt to achieve world peace and unity by domestic exploitation and power.” (pg. 202-203) Ahab’s “God hunt us all” and Genesis’s “lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” are fates both have tried to avoid. This is blasphemy in both accounts. One directly challenged God, the other used God’s name in vain, and both tried to unite their people to do their bidding.
What sealed the fate of these people is that everyone, the tower builders and the Pequod’s crew, had, at least mostly, successfully congregated and agreed to complete their ambitions. Both groups were unanimous and feasted on their arrogance. Ishmael, in one of his rare first-person narrations in Moby Dick, caught “a wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling (that) was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine.” (pg. 194) This moment marked the transformation of Ahab’s obsession into a shared imagined reality. This was not coercion or obedience, it was sympathy and connection. Through the eyes of Ishmael, Melville gave us the perspective of the rest of the crew. The Pequod fell for Ahab’s charisma and wanted what he wanted. Metaphorically, they began to speak the same language as him. This fulfilled Genesis 11:6, which said, “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language… nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (KJV) “One language” doesn’t just mean its literal meaning, it also meant that everyone was under the same fervor. With this much hype, the collective ambition was no longer rhetorical. It became crystal clear that the Pequod, just like the tower builders of Babel, united as one. In the article, “Babel and New Jerusalem: Two Urban Expressions of Theological Contrast,” the writer, Fearrien, wrote, “Instead of following God’s plan to spread over the earth, their construction project shows their desire to function outside of God’s wishes.” This is symbolic to the fact the Pequod was meant to be just a whaling ship. The only crew member who opposed Ahab’s monomania, Starbuck, underlined the very function the Pequod was supposed to be: “I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance.” (pg. 177) Just like the Pequod had an original purpose, the tower builders of Babel were originally meant to spread themselves throughout the planet. But the Pequod became a hunting ship, and the tower builders began to build the tower. Both of these ambitions perverted their foundations.
These unrestrained aspirations were punished by the very beings they wanted to conquer. The tower builders of Babel spread out as they could no longer build together. The Pequod sunk as Moby Dick destroyed the ship, dispersing the crew and destroying their distorted order. Both stories ended in a people’s collapse. In chapter 135, The Chase – Third Day, some of Ahab’s last words were, “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee…” (pg. 623) Ahab struggled to fulfill what he wanted, all because Moby Dick the whale wouldn’t let him. As the captain sunk, so did the entire crew. Moby Dick was the deliverer of the Pequod’s punishment, who pursued to kill the whale. In Genesis 11:9, it was said, “Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. ” (KJV) In a way, the place the Pequod was sunk can also be called Babel, as it is where Moby Dick scattered the Pequod ship into pieces. The whale itself functions like God’s divine hand: not as a moral deity, but as a force that halted a collective effort that goes against it, the remnants spreading off where the waves take them. Putrawan, in his article about the Tower of Babel, included, “Most of the many perspectives on the themes of this narrative fall into two categories: first, it is about the divine action against humanity’s hubris and rebellion and second, it is about the divine action against humanity’s reluctance to disperse.” (pg. 194) Moby Dick, the novel, also tackles these two categories, although in different frameworks. Moby Dick, the natural judge, acted against the Pequod’s hunt, and also against the crew’s willingness to follow Ahab’s madness. Both of which still lead to the same concluding collapse. Xu goes on to support this narrative by saying, “…all the ordeals and obsessions involved to fulfill the mission proves to be null and void…” (pg. 37) All their efforts were futile; these ambitions that go against what natural order wanted. This does not mean to involve the order that the past originally thought to be natural, such as hierarchy and respect. It was purely the matter of arrogance, the desire to overcome a higher power that is undeniably more powerful.
When you approach things the wrong way, what you wanted would be your own undoing. That’s one of the many angles to take when reading Moby Dick, and the Tower of Babel is a great lens to witness Ishmael’s journey, or Ahab’s obsession. Whichever way the novel is read, it is with certainty that reading this whale of a novel needs a lens to set sail. If someone were to read this book without knowing most of the references other than the Tower of Babel, using this biblical story is a valid perspective to understand the Pequod’s chase. From Chapter 36 and onwards, Moby Dick followed a path of formation, internalization, and the collapse of unified ambition. The Pequod and the tower builders showed that not all dreams are meant to be chased. When such ambitions have risks too valuable to simply discard, such as human lives, they become soul-crushing motives. Moby Dick definitely explores this idea through Ahab and the crew of the Pequod’s perspectives, and arguably through Moby Dick’s as well. Through this lens, the novel is revealed to be merely not a novel of individual obsession but as a warning of collective imagination. Like Babel, the Pequod collapsed not because they were different, but because they believed and acted for a single, dominating vision. They were too united. Melville reimagines Genesis 11 for his modern world, which effectively spread to ours. Moby Dick showed that the combination of unity and misguided ambition is dangerous when left centralized and unchecked.
Works Cited
Fearrien, B. D. “Babel and New Jerusalem: Two Urban Expressions of Theological Contrast.” Religions, vol. 16, no. 8, 2025. MDPI, https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/16/8/982
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale. Edited by Andrew Delbanco and Tom Quirk, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003.
Putrawan, Bobby K., Ludwig Beethoven J. Noya, and Alisaid Prawiro Negoro. “Centripetal-Centrifugal Forces in the Tower of Babel Narrative (Gen 11:1–9).” Old Testament Essays, vol. 35, no. 2, 2022, pp. 189–210. SciELO, https://scielo.org.za/pdf/ote/v35n2/04.pdf
The Holy Bible: King James Version. BibleGateway, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11%3A1-9&version=KJV
Xu, Shuyang. “Ahab’s Hat Was Never Restored: The Theme of Vanity in Moby‑Dick with Reference to Ecclesiastes.” Contemporary Education Frontiers, vol. 3, no. 2, 2025. PDF, https://journal.whioce.com/index.php/cef/article/download/720/661.