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Moby Dick In The Biblical Lens of The Tower of Babel

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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.

Final Essay: The Price of Illumination

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            In Chapter 97 of Moby-Dick titled “The Lamp,” Ishmael writes, “But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light.” (Melville 466) The sentence appears simple, even poetic, as if merely describing the sailor’s surroundings: a man whose work deals literally with oil and flame, dwelling in brightness amid his dangerous and lonely life at sea. Yet, like much of Moby-Dick, this moment contains a deeper, unsettling paradox. What begins as a factual observation about whale oil, which just so happens to be the literal “food of light,” expands into a moral and metaphysical reflection on the cost of illumination for humanity itself. Melville’s language transforms physical light into a spiritual metaphor, complicating the whaleman’s apparent purity by revealing the barbarism and destruction that make such light possible. Through this sentence, Melville explores enlightenment as a morally compromised condition, one sustained by violence, ecological destruction, and the illusion of human mastery, suggesting that the pursuit of knowledge and progress always casts shadows. To “live in light,” in this sense, then, is not a state of purity but actually one of contradiction: a human condition sustained by the very darkness it seeks to overcome.

            At its surface level, Ishmael’s statement describes the basic reality of the whaling industry. The “food of light” refers to whale and the oil their bodies contain, which is the material substance that, once extracted, refined, and burned, illuminates all homes, streets, and cities across the world. The whaleman literally harvests the world’s light, working amid hot furnaces, boiling blubber, and lamps that glow through the ship’s night. In this sense, he really does indeed “live in light.” Yet even within this literal interpretation, Melville’s phrasing evokes something much more mythic to the reader. The whaleman becomes not merely a manual laborer but more of a Promethean figure, the one who actually brings fire to humanity at great personal and moral cost. The “food of light” recalls both nourishment and sacrifice, suggesting that illumination must be fed and sustained by something perishable, in this case, even living. That food, of course, is the whale itself, whose body becomes the actual physical foundation that civilization’s brightness comes from. Melville’s specific word choice collapses any of the boundaries between consumption, destruction, and enlightenment. The world’s ability to “see” depends on an ongoing act of death, on the rendering of life into death and then into fuel. In that transformation, the whaleman stands as both the agent and the witness of light’s very creation. The one who participates in an enterprise that actually makes human vision possible, even as it stains that very same vision red with blood.

            This moral and ecological tension resonates with John Gillis’s argument in “The Blue Humanities,” where he emphasizes how human societies have long been entangled with oceans and water bodies not only materially but symbolically: “In studying the sea, we are returning to our beginnings” (Gillis 1). Just as Ishmael observes the whaleman’s labor producing civilization’s light, Gillis reminds us that human history and culture are inseparable from the watery spaces that sustain and give life to them. The whaleman’s extraction of oil mirrors humanity’s broader patterns of constantly exploiting the natural world for our own illumination, both literal and metaphorical. Water, like whale oil, is simultaneously a source of life and a medium of danger, a reminder that human progress depends on and often threatens the ecosystems we inhabit. By connecting Melville’s imagery in Moby-Dick to Gillis’s broader reflections, it becomes clear that the whaleman’s “light” is emblematic of a planetary dynamic: human advancement and environmental cost are inseparable, and the pursuit of clarity or knowledge is not innocent.

            Melville’s syntax deepens this tension through its balance and rhythm. The clause “as he seeks the food of light” establishes a more causal, almost moral equivalence between the two: we are supposed to believe that the whaleman’s purpose actually aligns with his environment, his labor is mirrored by his world. But then the symmetry between “seeks” and “lives” suggests more than coincidence; it implies justification, possibly even sanctification for the whaleman’s actions and livelihood. If he “lives in light,” then perhaps his violent work is redeemed by its very luminous result for the world. Melville seems to toy with this logic, allowing the sentence to hover between affirmation and irony. The actual structure of the line reads like a moral proverb to the audience, neat and almost comforting in style, but the context within and around it undercuts that simplicity. Ishmael’s narrative at this point describes the grisly processes of rendering blubber into oil, how the ship is transformed into a floating factory, and the men laboring in smoke and heat. The “light” that surrounds them comes from the fires of their own making. What appears as divine illumination is in fact industrial glow, born from the destruction of the very creatures they hunt. Melville’s juxtaposition of the spiritual and the mechanical turns the whaleman’s work into a representation for human progress itself: every light we kindle must depend on something we extinguish. Death in exchange for life and vice versa.

            Steve Mentz’s discussion of the blue humanities in his article “The Blue Humanities after John Gillis” underscores this very dynamic, emphasizing the ethical and poetic stakes of human engagement with water and marine life: “Aristotle’s claim that poetics combines pleasure and pain seems especially noteworthy for a blue humanities focus on the watery parts of the world that both allure and threaten human bodies.” (Mentz 139) The whaleman’s labor is therefore not only a technical process but an ethical and moral encounter with the sea as an active force. By harvesting whales, humans seem to attempt to try and impose their own order on the ocean, extracting utility and light from it, yet the ocean still is able to retain all of its agency in shaping consequences, both material and moral. Melville’s sentence encapsulates this tension: to “live in light” is to participate in a dialogue with the natural world that illuminates the very real human desire for knowledge while simultaneously revealing the costs of mastery.

            This irony reveals Melville’s larger philosophical concern with the relationship between knowledge and violence. The pursuit of enlightenment, whether scientific, intellectual, or spiritual, requires dissection, penetration, and the laying bare of what was once whole or known. In this sense, the whaleman’s rendering of the whale parallels Ishmael’s own rendering of meaning. To “seek the food of light” is to participate in an endless process of finding and then breaking down the world in order to understand it. Melville’s language often blurs this line between the physical and the epistemological: the same curiosity that drives men to cut open whales also drives them to dissect nature, God, and in turn, themselves. The “light” they seek is both literal and figurative, an emblem of reason, discovery, and power for them to constantly reach for. Yet, this light is often accompanied by a terrifying glare that threatens to consume those who labor within and around it. When Ishmael writes that they “live in light,” the statement becomes disturbingly double-edged. The same light that signifies enlightenment may also suggest a possible damnation. In Melville’s moral universe, illumination is never innocent.

            The phrase “lives in light” also carries theological resonance. Light has long been a symbol of divinity, purity, and truth, from the opening words of Genesis, “Let there be light,” to the Christian notion of spiritual illumination. To “live in light,” then, evokes an almost saintly image, as if the whalemen are chosen vessels through whom divine radiance is allowed to enter the world. Yet at the same time, Melville destabilizes and destroys this association by placing such holiness in the hands of those engaged in such an act of violent slaughter against seemingly innocent creatures. The whalemen are both creators and destroyers; their light is a paradoxical mixture of grace and guilt. This inversion echoes throughout Moby-Dick: the line between sanctity and sin is perpetually blurred. Melville suggests that human beings cannot separate their search for truth from their capacity for destruction. The whaleman’s “light” thus becomes a microcosm of civilization’s moral compromise: with every advancement, every brightening of the world, there is a hidden darkness that always lies just beneath the surface.

            Furthermore, the communal aspect of this illumination adds another layer to the complexity. The whaleman’s labor produces the oil that fuels lamps across nations, so his private suffering on the ocean enables a collective vision on land. Melville uses this image to question the ethics of progress built on invisible toil. Those who may “live in light” aboard the Pequod do so through much peril and deprivation, while the consumers of that light on land remain untouched by its very violent origins. This disconnect mirrors the broader human tendency to enjoy the benefits of knowledge or comfort without ever thinking about or confronting their cost. The “light” of modern civilization, such as in its science, industry, and expansion, rests directly upon the bodies of those rendered invisible by the glow. Ishmael’s phrasing exposes that blindness even as it still embodies it: the sentence itself glimmers with poetic beauty, concealing the blood and violent labor it describes. Melville thus implicates language, and maybe even literature itself, in this economy of light, where aesthetic pleasure risks masking any moral awareness. To read Moby-Dick attentively is to recognize the shadow that every illumination casts.

            In this way, the passage encapsulates Melville’s broader meditation on the limits of human vision. To “live in light” may seem to promise clarity at first, but in Moby-Dick, light often blinds as much as it reveals. The whalemen’s proximity to the flame makes them less capable of being able to see beyond it; the brightness becomes overwhelming, distorting any sense of perception. The lesson to the reader is clear: illumination, when pursued without humility, leads to madness. Ahab, too, “lives in light” of his own making. A constant fiery, obsessive glow that consumes him. His monomaniacal vision is a different form of enlightenment, a search for ultimate truth that obliterates everything else in its way. In this sense, the whaleman’s “light” is both the beginning and the very end of human aspiration. It represents the desire to know, to see, to master, and then the inevitable self-destruction that such strong desire and mastery entail.

             Mentz’s argument sharpens this problem of vision by situating the whaleman’s labor within what he calls the novel’s recurring “salt water refrains,” which emphasize the “masterless ocean” as a force that “overrun[s] all boundaries.” (Mentz 139) If light is supposed to promise clarity, the ocean persistently undermines that promise by refusing any type of stable divisions between mastery and submission, knowledge and ignorance, or human intention and natural response. The whaleman may believe that extracting oil allows him to impose order on the sea, transforming its creatures into fuel for illumination, but Mentz reminds us that the ocean itself exceeds and destabilizes any form of claims of control. Its boundary-overrunning nature reveals how human enlightenment is always provisional, enacted within an environment that will always resist being fully known or mastered. In this context, the whaleman’s “light” becomes not a triumph over nature, but rather a fragile assertion made within a space that constantly dissolves any of the distinctions light is meant to secure. The sea does not clarify; it overwhelms, exposing the limits of vision and the arrogance of believing that illumination can ever be total or final.

            Ishmael’s brief but poignant reflection in Chapter 97 shows Moby-Dick’s entire philosophical tension in a single sentence. The whaleman’s life of light is both his glory and his doom, a very real figure for humanity’s contradictory condition. We are creatures who quite literally burn for understanding, who turn the world and its animals into fuel for our enlightenment, yet in doing so, we run the very real risk of extinguishing ourselves along the way. Melville’s imagery reminds us that every light depends on its opposite, that there can be no illumination without shadow, no knowledge without a cost. The “food of light” that sustains civilization is inseparable from the death that feeds it and allows it to grow. Through this paradox, Melville exposes the moral and metaphysical price of human illumination. To “live in light” is to live with that awareness, to recognize the darkness within the glow, and to be able to see, even in the brightest of flames, the trace of what it consumes. By reading Melville through the frameworks offered by Mentz and Gillis, readers can understand that illumination is never solely human or abstract; it is inseparably ecological, historical, and moral.

Works Cited

Gillis, John R., et al. “The Blue Humanities.” National Endowment for the Humanities, 2013, www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/mayjune/feature/the-blue-humanities.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Penguin Books, 2003.

Mentz, Steve. “A poetics of planetary water: The blue humanities after John Gillis.” Coastal Studies & Society, vol. 2, no. 1, 13 Oct. 2022, pp. 137–152, https://doi.org/10.1177/26349817221133199.

Final Essay – Melville’s Critique on Capitalism

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Herman Melvilles’s novel, Moby-Dick, serves as a critique of capitalism and its effect on American society. Throughout the novel Melville uses the whaling industry as a metaphor for capitalism; he demonstrates the life-threatening labor of workers in the whaling industry and how crewmembers on the Pequod are merely seen as a commodity for profit, how material wealth overrides the morality of those working and living in a capitalist society, and the disconnect between the consumer and the laborer. The novel shows readers that capitalism in America has created an individualistic society in which profit and gain take precedent over morals and lives.

In Chapter 93, “The Castaway,” Melville uses the character Pip to highlight how workers are seen as a commodity for profit in American capitalist society, and how the life-threatening labor of those in the whaling industry are put aside in order to make a profit.. While chasing a whale, Pip leaps overboard and is caught by the rope connected to the whale. With the only option to save him being to cut the rope and freeing the whale, Pip is reluctantly saved by Stubb, who berates him for the incident: “ ‘Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I wont pick you if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump any more.’ Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loves his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence” (Melville 452). Pip is told by Stubb that his life is not worth more than any amount of money that could be made from the whale. Profit over life, unsurprising considering the money is made off of the killing of whales. Melville shows the harsh reality of the industry, how workers are seen as expendable and should not be considered anything more than a commodity and a way to gain wealth. Directly after this, Pip falls overboard once more, and the cruelty of capitalism is shown in full effect: “Pip jumped again… when the whale started to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller’s trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word… Stubb’s inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb… For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that fishery” (Melville 452-454). This time, Stubb sticks to his word and puts the potential profit of the whale over the life of Pip. Melville also points out how this is a common occurrence in the industry, and to not judge Stubb too harshly for his immoral decision. Too often it is seen in America that the lives of workers are less important than the money that is made off of them. Capitalism has created a society that does not care about the loss of life so long as the money keeps coming in. Pip’s life did not matter to Stubb or to any of the other members on the boat, as they were too focused on killing the whale that could make them some money. Perhaps even more so, Melville uses Pip, a Black American, to demonstrate how another industry puts the importance of profit over life and morality; slavery. Still the major issue in America at the time of the novel’s publication, slavery is capitalism in its most cruel form. The gaining of profit off of the buying and selling of humans, forcing them into unpaid labor, and treating them like they are inferior. This chapter goes to the full extent in showing the brutality and viciousness of capitalism in America, and how money overrides morals.

In Chapter 36, titled “The Quarter Deck,” Melville demonstrates how Captain Ahab is able to use a form of currency, in this case a golden doubloon, to influence the crewmembers into overriding their moral obligations to the original journey, allowing Ahab to take full control of the Pequod and manipulate and bribe the crewmembers into doing his bidding. “ ‘Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke – look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gould ounce, my boys!’ ‘Huzza! huzza!’ cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast” (Melville 176). Captain Ahab is able to use the gold doubloon as an economic incentive for the crewmembers on the Pequod, demonstrating how monetary items can be used to exploit workers into doing harmful and dangerous things. Here, Ahab is using the doubloon as a way to gain the trust of the crewmembers on the ship, and to steer them into dangerous waters away from their original whaling expedition in order to conquer his own personal and malicious goal, which will result in the death of most of those on board. In this chapter, Melville is showing the reader how the doubloon is a metaphor for capitalism; under capitalism, it is normalized for morals, ethics, and safety to take a back seat to money and personal profit. Melville is criticizing how capitalism has essentially bribed everyone into thinking that money is at the top of the pedestal, and all other values and ethics must be ignored if you wish to be at the top. The pursuit of wealth results in the loss of morals, and the men on the Pequod do not care what it takes to be the one who gets Captain Ahab’s gold doubloon.

Throughout the novel Melville shows the dangers of the whaling industry. He goes into the harsh details of killing whales and the production of whale oil, a product used by many Americans at the time; by doing so Melville is able to demonstrate the disconnect between consumers and laborers under capitalism. In Chapter 61, titled “Stubb Kills a Whale,” Melville gives the reader a brutal detailing on the killing of a whale by Stubb: “And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst! ‘He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,’ said Tashtego” (Melville 311-312). The production of whale oil comes at a cost. The harsh killing of whales in a most vicious form, of course dangerous for whales but also the men tasked with killing them. Consumers are not the ones going out into the ocean and harpooning a whale until it is dead, yet they are the ones using the oil for simple things like candles, lamps, and soap. The reader sees the production of squeezing the sperm out of the whale in Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand.” While this chapter may be known for other things, it demonstrates what the worker sees versus what the buyer sees. Ishmael describes the grisly process which goes on inside of the blubber-room: “With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan’s feet are shoeless… If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistant’s, would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men” (Melville 458). The process of creating this oil is unknown to the consumer, yet they use it to light lamps and to make soaps, candles, and other cosmetics. Melville here is showing the reader how the consumer doesn’t see what goes on inside the blubber-room, but rather they only see the finished product as something that is clean and seemingly pure. Capitalism thrives on consumers not knowing how products are made. Capitalist societies are able to make huge amounts of profit as a result of the harsh labor of others, those who lose limbs doing a job that they hardly get paid for, and the buyer is ignorant to all of it. Poor working conditions and cheap wages are the backbone of capitalism, for its exploitative nature will allow for nothing else.

A scholarly titled, “Moby Dick and the Crimes of the Economy,” written by author Vincenzo Ruggiero and published by the Oxford University Press, explores the idea of Moby-Dick in terms of an economical system in which the reader should note that in the novel we see the exploitation, the violence, and the corruptness in capitalism. When discussing the comparison of the whaling industry and Captain Ahab, Ruggiero writes: “Ishmael’s criticism of Ahab’s excesses diverts him, though not completely, from criticizing the whaling industry itself (Moretti 1996: 32). His condemnation wavers because he is unable to establish whether it is the logic of that industry which creates the Ahabs or whether the captain’s excesses are the result of a subjective, pathological, drive…Surely, Ahab is full of ira et studio and is incapable of running his business with a spirit of formalistic imper constant violation of the official rules, however, can only partially be attributed industry in which he is involved, and his crimes are mainly extrinsic to that industry” (Ruggiero 103-104). Here it seems as though Ruggiero suggests that Ishmael is more comfortable with critiquing Ahab rather than criticizing the whaling industry as a whole. While Ahab’s behavior is certainly inexcusable, it does not take away from the fact that the entire industry is flawed, and that its immoral values is what could have led to the madness of Ahab and the corruption of the crewmembers on the Pequod. Ruggiero is offering the idea that the systemic structure of capitalism should be at blame, not just one man who takes it to the extreme. In another scholarly article, “Melville’s Economy of Language,” published by Cambridge University Press, author Paul Royster criticizes the blame of Ahab for what is the fault of the whaling industry. He writes, “Viewing Moby-Dick as a less than radical critique of American capitalism coincides with one of the plot’s central features: Ahab’s rebellion against God, economy, and nature. Ahab has no respect for the commercial purposes of the Pequod’s voyage, yet the form of his opposition to the system of eco­nomic relations serves ultimately to reinforce the values of the bourgeois order. Ahab’s madness, his usurpation of power, and his rigid authoritarianism all deflect criticism away from the economic system that launched the Pequod” (Royster 322). Just like what Ruggiero is suggesting, Royster believes that by blaming Captain Ahab for what happens in the novel, the whaling industry and capitalism are not held at fault. Ahab goes against the original plan of the Pequod’s journey, yet he still reinforces the standards of the bourgeois in his acts of self gain, harsh labor conditions, and ruling by authoritarianism. However this should not take away from the fact that the Pequod is only in this position because of the whaling industry and capitalism. Without the whaling industry, there would be no Pequod nor would there be a Captain Ahab, and the capitalist values that attempt to conquer the ocean would cease. Both Ruggiero and Royster are asking the readers to look more in depth into what Melville is writing; do not look at a character like Ahab without seeing the underlying meanings in the novel. Captain Ahab is a product of capitalism and the whaling industry, and to solely blame him for the destruction of the Pequod and the men on board is to not hold capitalism’s systemic issues responsible.

Herman Melville’s novel, Moby-Dick, is a critique of capitalism and how it has severely affected American society. Melville uses the whaling industry to criticize capitalism, while demonstrating the poor treatment of workers, the disparity between consumer and laborer, and the immorality of capitalism. Both scholarly articles also discuss the importance of blaming the entire whaling industry and capitalism as a whole for what happens in the novel, not just the actions of Captain Ahab. To read Moby-Dick is to inherently read a novel that discusses how capitalism is to blame for turning America into a country in which profit is more important than lives, whether that life be whale or human.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale. Edited by Andrew Delbanco and Tom Quirk, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003.

Ruggiero, Vincenzo. “Moby Dick and the crimes of the economy.” British Journal of Criminology, vol. 42, no. 1, 1 Jan. 2002, pp. 96–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/42.1.96. 

Royster, Paul, “Melville’s Economy of Language” (1986). Faculty Publications, UNL Libraries. 1. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/1 

Final Essay

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Diego Aguirre

Professor Pressman 

ECL 522

16 December 2025

An Ode to the Working Class

The Great American Novel, Moby Dick, offers readers with a plethora of rich subject matter to dive into through its tale that is not so much about hunting a whale. A common reading of the novel is that in treating the Pequod as a nation-state representative of the 1850s United States, Herman Melville criticizes the unjust practices of our capitalist democratic republic. In Moby Dick, Melville employs medieval language to expose the hierarchical systems rooted in our country that have prevented the working class from getting the recognition they deserve; he further uses this language of nobility to flip the narrative as he celebrates the working class that has lifted this country on its back. 

Before discussing how Melville does this, it’s important to look at one of his sources of inspiration: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar.” In it, Emerson touches on the ramifications of the increased specialization of workers in the United States. He writes “Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry” (Emerson). This evaluation from Emerson can be applied to most other physical laborers that fuel the nation, such as whalemen. Despite their importance to the growth of the United States, they’re treated as just another group of “Man sent out into the field” and are “seldom cheered.” Recognizing this, Melville writes an entire novel around whaling to make sure that this essential part of our whole is not forgotten. 

Of the many terms ascribed to the novel’s central characters, including the whales, one of the most interesting is their association with the medieval era. In the adjacent chapters, “The Advocate” and “Postscript,” Melville asserts “Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared a ‘royal fish’… we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!” (121, 123). In suggesting that both whaling and whales themselves are “imperial” and “royal”, Melville is prompting us to reconsider how we view them, especially since they are sourcing the materials used in coronations for those at the top. He continues with this language in the subsequent chapters “Knights and Squires.”

Melville introduces the crew of the Pequod through a medieval caste to highlight the hierarchy of both whale ships and the United States of America. The shared title of Chapters 26 and 27, “Knights and Squires,” is already enough to indicate a divide between the crew. The mates Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, white men from Nantucket, Cape Cod, and Tisbury, assume the position of knight. Directly under each of them is their “savage” squires: Pacific islander Queequeg, Gay-Header Indian Tashtego, and the imperial negro Daggoo. Though they are all described to be more physically capable and reliable, hence their position as the harpooners in such a violent and vital industry, their non-white skin creates a clear distinction in their status.

This dynamic in which the white man leads extends to the rest of the unnamed crew, and many other American industries as well:

As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. (Melville 131)

Melville’s emphasis here is to remind us who it was that labored the most in the founding of our country. Even though “not one in two of the many thousand men” in the whaling industry were born in America (immigrants), most never received the title of officer, nor the benefits expected for someone who puts in the most work. In the specific case of the Pequod, we are never given the names of a majority of the crew who keep the ship operating; they don’t receive the focus given to their king Ahab, his knights Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, or even their squires Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. At the base of the ladder, few of them receive proper recognition in spite of their importance in maintaining the ship. Within the context of 1850s America, this group stands in for the enslaved, unrecognized as humans to the highest degree as they were stripped of their rights, yet expected to provide the labor necessary to maintain the growth of the nation.

Melville then directly calls out the same structure in the “American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads.” These foundational industries that served to protect and expand the United States ran off of the same design that let the mass contributors go unnoticed and unappreciated while the ones in charge received all of the attention and glory. The employees of these industries, mostly immigrants, were used in service of further increasing the position of the white man with the conquering of Mexican land and expansion towards the West; they were the ones that made it possible, but the end goal was never in favor of them. 

With some effective word choice, Melville then starts to hint towards who actually deserves our praise: “the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles.” In deliberately leaving native uncapitalized, Melville presents the replacement of the Native American by the white man who have claimed the term for themselves. Considering this appropriation, liberally seems to be the native Americans’ loose assumption that they should provide the brains. Meanwhile, the rest of the world generously supplies the muscles. By suggesting that the rest of the world is more benevolent, Melville questions the legitimacy of the white man at the head to challenge the structures of all the American industries he has just described.

All of this culminates in the fact that these imperative industries were established with hierarchical systems that placed one group, the white man, above the rest who were not even deemed worthy of recognition. In the context of 1850s America, specifically in the increased national attention towards slavery and the continued Westward expansion, Melville draws attention to the structures behind the categorization of humans as more or less and breaks down the reasoning of these systems to show how unreliable they are. This faulty system is at the core of the Pequod, positioning Ahab as the king of the ship. However, Melville treats this as a cautionary tale of what happens when democracy shifts to monarchy, when kings are valued over their subjects, and when any opposition is considered rebellion.

As Ahab takes after King Lear in his descent into madness, Melville applies the noble traits expected of a king to another group of characters: the harpooners. In his journal article “Moby-Dick and American Political Symbolism,” Alan Heimert offers a possible reason on why they are treated as such. The harpooners: 

are representative of the three races on which each of the American sections, it might be said, had built its prosperity in the early nineteenth century. Stubb’s squire is an Indian; Starbuck’s comes from the Pacific islands. And Flask, perched precariously on Daggoo’s shoulders, seems, like the southern economy itself, sustained only by the strength of the “imperial negro.”(Heimert 502)

The harpooners fitting perfectly into Moby Dick’s allegory of the United States, Melville constantly shines an honorary light on them for their heroics. While Queequeg receives the most attention out of all of them, the most poignant scene of Melville’s praise is “Flask, perched precariously on Daggoo’s shoulders” referenced by Heimert.

In “The First Lowering” to hunt whales, Melville zooms in on a peculiar scene where, acting as a mast-head, the “noble negro” Dagoo bears the “vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious, little Flask” upon his shoulders (241). This scene on Flask’s boat serves as a microcosm of the United States in which the black man literally uplifts the white; Melville uses this to reverse the preconceived notions of nobility based on race all while praising the stability of the foundational Daggoo. 

At the start of this scene, it is described that little King-Post (Flask) was “recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead” in hopes of satisfying his “large and tall ambition” (Melville 240). In a situation where these men are chasing their profits, it’s important to note that the ambitious yet little King-Post could not satisfy his desires by himself. Fortunately for him, his harpooner Daggoo “volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal” (Melville 240). Daggoo’s volunteering of himself as a pedestal, or mast-head, recalls the generosity of “the rest of the world” and it can also be viewed as a reclamation of power. If we are to view this scene as a representation of the United States in the 1850s, Daggoo willingly offering himself directly goes against the subjugation of slaves’ labor. Daggoo is proud to offer himself as a mast-head because their unified work is what will lead to their success in this whale hunt.

Though there may be something to argue about Daggoo maintaining the status of an object, specifically one that lets the white man stand upon him, Melville proposes we change our minds about which position is praiseworthy. He writes:

But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. (Melville 241)

It would be easy to forget that this all occurs during their first chaotic whale hunt since Daggoo is described as “sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty.” Maintaining his posture on the small boat rocking against the rolling waves is a second nature to Daggoo; he is able to stand firm and support the little Flask in all his “barbaric majesty.” No longer is Flask referred to as little Kind-Post, now Daggoo receives the title of majesty. Melville uses his common trick of pairing opposing terms, barbaric and majesty, to overthrow the idea that they’re meant to be separate. He continues to use this honorific language as “the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form.” Again, Melville gives praise to the ones that not only withstand the pressure of nature and those they’re uplifting, but are in harmony with its flow. It’s no surprise that “the bearer looked nobler than the rider,” for Daggoo, and the many noble negroes enslaved by the majestic barbarians of nineteenth century America, were the pedestal that provided the stability that Flask and all the other snow-flakes relied on to satisfy their ambitions.

While Melville sings the praises of Daggoo, Flask seems to have fallen from grace. He was already stripped of his title of King-Post, but Melville only continues to mock the attitude of this snow-flake: “truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro’s lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that” (Melville 241). Flask seems to have now been reduced to a spoiled and bratty prince. He maintains his lively and obnoxious attitude, trying to lord over the boat, stamping with impatience, but his power has diminished. He knows how reliant he is in this situation too, as he does not dare add one heave to “the negro’s lordly chest.” Melville can’t help but sprinkle in more compliments for Daggoo, again referring to him as “lordly,” now bearing not only Flask, but his authority as well. Then Melville closes this scene with one last comparison for both men: Flask is assigned to the “Passion and Vanity” that stamps “the living magnanimous earth” that is Daggoo. The once lordly King-Post, now just a vain bundle of intense emotion and pride, can only try and stamp his desires upon the generous and forgiving Daggoo. But in this celebratory scene of Daggoo, we are presented with an alternative to the United States in which the noble negro refuses altering for the ones they bear on their backs.

In the context of their first frenzied chase of whales, it is important that Melville stops for a second to focus on this comedic scene of Flask and Daggoo. By positioning the mast-head Daggoo as noble, majestic, firm, and magnanimous, we are left to commend him rather than the ambitious, ostentatious, vain, snow-flake Flask. A whale boat in which the ambitions of the head are prioritized over the stability of the pedestal cannot even participate in the chase. The humbling mockery of Flask and glory given to Daggoo is a direct reversal of the narratives that have persisted since nineteenth century United States, in which the figureheads are praised while the people they stand upon are belittled, mocked, ignored, enslaved, and persecuted. 

Ultimately, Melville’s treatment of Daggoo here is how the working class should’ve always been treated. But from our country’s inception to the present, this established hierarchy has been used by those in power to ignore and vilify those at the bottom, ranging from our history of slavery to today’s targeting of the immigrants that are a vital part of this nation’s workforce. Recognizing this back in the nineteenth century, Melville proposes that we reconsider who is nobler between the bearers and the riders. Should we desire a different fate than the doomed Pequod, the United States needs to take after Melville and celebrate the ones before the mast, the ones that keep our nation afloat. 

Works Cited

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” 1837

Heimert, Alan. “Moby-Dick and American Political Symbolism.” American Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4, 1963, pp. 498–534. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2710971. Accessed 16 Dec. 2025.

Melville, Herman, et al. Moby-Dick, Or, The Whale. Penguin Books, 2003.

“(waves for thought).” Creative Final Project

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Here is the link to the Google Doc in case it doesn’t appear correctly: (waves for thought).

Writing this final project was like being aboard the Virginia Reel, twisting, turning, pivoting, plummeting, rising, and falling. My time with Emerson was personally revolutionary; I carry his call for fierce individualism and the necessity for one’s relationship with nature with me. I look up at the clouds we walk under and see my reflection in the waves of the turtle pond, bonding with the world around me and forming my own relationship with it. I hear my classmates talk about their education, their days, and I hear the murmuring heartbeat of America’s past, present, and future. In everything, I see Emerson’s message and call to action. And that is why I saw it reflected throughout Melville’s novel, Moby Dick. 

Though there is no evidence that Melville read or regularly engaged with Emerson’s “American Scholar,” his novel Moby Dick can be read in dialogue with and in reflection on Emerson’s work, affirming Emerson’s overarching call for experimental learning, intellectual independence, and the value of nature. By reading Moby Dick as a reflection of Emerson’s “The American Scholar,” the novel becomes a living fossil of the American Renaissance and an attempt to realize Emerson’s American individuality through scholarly work. Reading Melville’s work alongside Emerson’s touches on one of Emerson’s central messages throughout “The American Scholar”: individuality. It is in the combined effort and mediations of multiple diverse scholars that we find the call to action posed to scholars in America’s Renaissance. Through a return to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar,” I seek to relate Melville’s relation to the call to action that Emerson presents through his work, showing how this unconfirmed relationship between the two American scholars defines the historical and academic context of our nation, shaping the development of an American literary identity grounded in experience, embodied knowledge, and cultural self-definition. 

At first, I wanted to experiment with the structure of my poem and explore the forms of Emerson’s and Melville’s works. But then, every attempt that I had at the playful organization of Emerson’s quotes and Melville’s quotes felt off and not fluid. I began thinking about how these two American scholars are engaging in the same larger conversation on American individuality and identity, and what is a conversation but two columns? The dialogue between Emerson’s call to action in “The American Scholar” and Melville’s Moby Dick is indirect, meaning there is no confirmation or evidence that Melville read Emerson’s work and created his novel as a direct response. However, it is still part of a broader national conversation. A conversation between two individuals could be organized into two columns, weaving and bouncing between them to form a larger whole. However, because the two scholars are part of a bigger discussion on the essence of America, it didn’t make sense to have one column represent Melville and the other Emerson. Instead, their quotes are interwoven and braided to form a larger message, just as their prospective works function together. 

There are distinct similarities between Emerson’s call and Melville’s various messages throughout his novel, particularly in Emerson’s transcendentalist perspective on nature, Melville’s emphasis on bodily experience over academic structures, and the overarching value placed on self-reflection. Just as Emerson calls for “man thinking,” Melville not only thinks for himself on how to contribute to the larger American identity, but writes a central narrator who prioritizes deep, critical thought for over 600 pages (Emerson, “The American Scholar”). Similarly, as Emerson tells his audience to trust themselves, Melville writes a character who trusts himself so bodily in his mission to catch the whale that it wholly consumes him, leading to his downfall. Ahab’s character demonstrates a critical point for the broader construction of American identity: the ability for scholars to think for themselves, work with one another, and disagree. Though Melville presents a character who touches on Emerson’s call to “trust yourself,” he cautions against too much trust, thus allowing his novel to embody his own individual representation of American identity. Like Emerson warns, thinking as everyone else makes you “a cog in the machine,” stripping away any uniqueness (Emerson, “The American Scholar”). Ahab’s character exemplifies scholarly dialogue, though indirectly. In terms of citations, Moby Dick’s footnote and citation style are unclear and wholly unique, part of the novel’s larger puzzle. In my creative attempt, the citations are purposely not clearly cited. This was part of an effort to address the fluidity between the two messages: both authors are independent American scholars, yet their work blends to form something larger than themselves. Both Emerson and Melville work to break down barriers of the classified and unclassified, the known and unknown, the singular and collective. I attempt to outline the shared overlap between the two others, the overlap that paints the field of American literature today.

And because my poem does not have an actual works cited, here is my works cited:

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” Essays: First Series, 1841. Norton Critical Edition, edited by Joel Porte, W. W. Norton, 1982, pp. 3-21.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Penguin Classics, edited with an introduction by Andrew Delbanco and notes by Tom Quirk, Penguin Classics, 2002.

Final Essay

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Darian Murillo

ECL 522

Professor Pressman

December 10, 2025

Psychological, obsession and depression

In Melville’s Moby Dick, madness is not a distant presentation, but mostly a storm that’s brewing in their mind. Herman Melville demonstrates the characters in the Pequod who are fighting their inner demons during their time sailing at sea they start to reveal their obsession, grief and isolation can wrap someone’s brain in a turmoil. Herman Melville uses Ahab’s obsessive monomania, Pip’s traumatic experience psychological break, and Ishmael’s existential crisis to explore how unaddressed mental health struggles not only shape that person’s inner conflict. Melville illustrates three different psychological responses to suffering, eventually suggesting that psychological struggles form the moral and narrative course of Moby Dick. 

In Chapter 1, “Loomings”, Ishmael reveals the emotional crisis he’s going through, that pushes him into joining the sailing crew and Melville uses vivid imagery for his depression. In the quote, “ Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street…”(4), when Ishamel describes a “damp, drizzly November” in his soul, the cold weather becomes a metaphor for his inner life, such as cold and heavy clouded. What I noticed was the repetition of the word “whenever” creates a rhythm that mirrors the nature of his depressive state and how it returns during these random episodes of despair like a cycle over and over again. One thing I found noticeable in the quotes was Ishmael’s fascination with death: the coffin warehouses, follows funerals, saying his mind goes into the darkness even when he doesn’t want to. Melville mentions the word “hypo” defining down which meant how Ishamel had his moments of despair and downfall that was taking such control of him that “it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street..” (4) its almost like a reference to suicidal thoughts. The whole paragraph of the chapter, not only shows us Ishmael, the protagonist, but the whole theme of the story just by hearing the first couple of sentences and Melville demonstrating us Ishmael’s journey as a task to survival from the storm inside his head.

In chapter 44, Ishmael explains how obsessed Captain Ahab has become on planning his hunt for Moby Dick. Melville writes,” God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates”,(220), in this passage Melville explores how obsession can transform the human mind into its own tormentor and how easy it is to lose yourself to madness when the thoughts come too deeply to torment the human mind. He transforms Ahab as a victim and the creator of his own madness. The phrase,” God help thee” is recognizing that Ahab is suffering and no one can save him, but Him. When he says the “creature” it represents the madness being born inside of him from his obsession with Moby Dick, while comparing him to Prometheus due to both being defiant and both being punished for not fulfilling their duties. Melville uses imagery to warn us, the audience, about the conception of madness of the human mind, becoming too much of a delusion of something we can’t let go.

I recently read in my rhetoric writing class Terry Eagleton’s, “Literary Theory: An Introduction,” one of his chapter, psychoanalysis, in this quote, “ Every human being has to undergo this repression of what Freud named the ‘pleasure principle’ by the ‘reality principle’, but for some of us, and arguably for whole societies, the repression may become excessive and make us ill,” (Eagleton, 131) ,Eagleton discusses that psychoanalysis views that humans are driven by unconscious desires and compulsions that they don’t comprehend, which comes as a clear example: Ahab’s obsession with Moby Dick. 

In chapter 93 of Moby Dick, Ishmael reflects, ” So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weak or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God,”(454) the quote transforms the idea of madness from being known as weak into a form of divine understanding. We see Pip, a young cabin boy who is left adrift in the vast ocean, who experiences trauma so badly, he loses touch with humanity itself. I think Melville often uses and questions the human definitions of sanity and reason, like in this chapter, he demonstrates in a tragic and spiritual way. Melville shows, in Pip’s point of view, explores how the moments of extreme isolation and suffering can lead to a person’s beyond reasoning of humanity. What’s the whole obsession with the sanity of the human mind that peaks Melville’s interest towards it?

Pip’s experience reminds me of Annie Cresta from The Hunger Games. Just like Pip, Annie endures the overwhelming trauma from not just witnessing her tribute member being decapitated in front of her, but also from drowning after the whole arena malfunctioned. Her being from District Four (known to be a district of water and fishing) she knew how to swim and was the only survivor hence made her the winner. But at what cost though? She’s considered unstable by the Capitol due to her losing her mind and going insane after her traumatic experience; she was found basically useless, but that also shows her fragility and how cruel the world can be. Both of these characters embody how innocence collides with inhumanity, such as sensitivity, being mistaken for madness, and is their true response to their suffering. Both Pip and Annie challenge society’s discrimination of sanity being called mad for no good reason at all. Both characters are gentle souls who have endured enough trauma that it transforms their sanity into understanding.

In conclusion, Melville presents psychological suffering as an inescapable condition of human existence. In my opinion, I think the book is mostly about survival both physically and mentally. Throughout the book, Melville demonstrates psychological problems in power, obsessions and control with his characters, especially with Ahab slowly becoming consumed by the darkness and self-destruction.  Psychological or now, in the modern era, mental health struggles is an unavoidable part of human existence, even in such a time where it wasn’t recognized properly. Melville uses survival as a coping mechanism for his characters in order for them to recognize their inner darkness which can be the only way to endure it.

Work Cited

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, 1983.

‌ Melville , Herman, et al. Or, the Whale. Or, the Whale. London, Penguin Classics, 2003.

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Week 16 – The Final One! What Have I Learned?

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Through the course of the class, I have learned so much! Learning about Melville was so interesting and has not left me once since the day of learning about it, especially about how the novel transformed after reading his large print copy of Shakespeare. Personally, however, I feel that last class we had was really the biggest moment of learning. Hearing others felt insufficient as students and writers really did comfort me as I have been feeling much of the same for as long as I can remember. It’s a beautiful reminder than we all are so harsh to ourselves, and yet can have such empathy for those around us. I feel so fortunate to have been able to take this class this semester, having the novel be one of the final classes seems poetic, especially since I’m not the biggest fan of American Literature around this time; definitely not the case any longer and am very excited to read more from this period. My peers are so brilliant and have such new and different ways of processing information and seeing the world so uniquely, I really can’t help but have hope in writers and artists to create something profound, something moving, something akin Moby-Dick of our time.

What I’ve learned this semester

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This class has definitely been unlike any other English course I’ve taken before. Usually we read anywhere between 4-5 novels throughout the semester, not really giving us anytime to analyze and go into depth like we did in this class with Moby-Dick. To be honest I enjoyed this experience a lot more compared what I’m used to. I think that by focusing on one novel, a really intense one at that, it definitely gave me a chance to fully explore my thoughts and emotions on the book instead of just skimming through it and not really going in depth with it. Moby-Dick is also unlike any novel I have ever read before. Going into this semester I was intimidated by it, and I think throughout the semester it was still pretty intimidating, but there definitely was a point where I was able to embrace that and remind myself that this novel is like that for most people. I cannot think of a better way to learn and analyze a novel; by hearing from my classmates and having discussions about the novel, it gave me more insight and allowed me to view the book from multiple perspectives.

This class challenged me in a way I’m not used to, and I’m very glad that it did. In the end I’m now feeling like a better reader and writer, and I’ve definitely brushed up on my analyzation skills that haven’t really been used like this in a long time. I think that every English major, or any major in general, should take this course if they want to learn not only about a great novel, but about different perspectives on life. To read this timeless classic is to change your life, and I’m so glad that I was able to experience that for myself.

Learning to See the Light in Moby Dick

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As the semester comes to an end, I’ve been thinking back about how this class changed the way I read Moby-Dick, but also how I read literature in general. When we started, the novel felt overwhelming to me because it was too big, too strange, too full of digressions about whales and ropes and blubber to make any sense. But somewhere along the way, I think through our weekly blog posts and close-reading exercises, I started to see that Moby-Dick isn’t a book you “get” in one go. It’s a book that teaches you how to read it as you move through it. And that process of learning to slow down, to focus on a single sentence, even a comma, ended up being one of the most valuable things I’m taking from the course.

One of the biggest skills I developed this semester was close reading. Before this class, I understood the concept in theory, but actually practicing it every week forced me to go beyond surface-level interpretation. I am (still) learning how to zoom in on a phrase and unpack it until it opens into a whole world of meaning. Whether I was analyzing Starbuck’s desperate moments or Ishmael’s reflection that the whaleman “lives in light” in Chapter 97, I realized that Melville’s writing rewards slow attention. The more I practiced explication, the more I started noticing how Melville builds entire ideas out of tiny details: the way the color white becomes terrifying, the way light turns both holy and hellish, and the way the ocean becomes a metaphor for the unknown parts of ourselves.

A huge part of that shift came from how this class framed Moby-Dick within Blue Humanities. I had never thought about literature through an oceanic perspective before, and Blue Humanities helped me see how Melville uses the ocean to rethink what it means to be human. Instead of centering land, stability, and certainty, he places us in water: fluid, unpredictable, and unknowable. The ocean in Moby-Dick becomes a space of connection and vulnerability. Seeing the novel through this lens made me appreciate the environmental undertones, too. When Ishmael describes the killing, boiling, and rendering of whales in such detailed but industrial language, it becomes impossible not to think about ecological violence and the human hunger for mastery over it. Blue Humanities gave me a way to understand these sections not as digressions, but as essential parts of the novel’s argument about power, exploitation, and the actual cost of human progress.

Thinking back on the blog posts we wrote throughout the semester makes me realize how much my relationship to the novel has changed. At first, I was kind of confused but interested, not fully sure how to approach such a massive, chaotic text. But each post forced me to commit to something specific. That practice taught me that meaning doesn’t come from “finishing” the book; it comes from engaging with the tiny details that build it. By the time we reached the final chapters, I wasn’t intimidated by Melville’s style anymore. Whether Melville is describing the ocean as a mirror of human consciousness or showing the consequences of obsession through Ahab, the book constantly asks us to look inward and outward at the same time. What I learned in this class goes far beyond Moby-Dick itself. I learned how to slow down, trust my observations, and use textual evidence to build ideas instead of relying on summaries or generalizations. I learned how to treat literature as something alive, something that reveals new meanings depending on where you point your attention.

Moby Dick and the Antebellum Period – Week 15

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As was discussed numerous times during the semester, a big reason for Moby Dick “flopping” during its initial publication was because slavery alongside many of the topics that Herman Melville argues against were key factors that contributed to the social and economic aspects of the United States during that time. Moby Dick as a whole single-handedly dismantles the ideologies that the United States was built and founded upon and argues for more thoughts against these ideologies than for them, which is understandably a difficult thing for people (let alone an entire country) to grasp and work towards. Even now, with some readers of Moby Dick either not enjoying or arguing against the themes and topics that Melville incorporates into his novel, we can still see the difficulty in grasping how the United States “democracy” is not a democracy, and the overzealous and monomaniacal thinking of our president(s) contributes to a sheep-like mindset amongst the greater public, thus creating an institution that works against the United States and its people rather than for them. While reading the articles, the mention of the “American phenomenon” (Riegel, 7) made me realize how detrimental the single mindset and communal way of thinking has become for American people. We have already constructed a history that still impacts us to this day, and yet we continue to make some of the most subtle mistakes that were made in the past in present day that could lead us down a path of joint destruction just as Ahab and the crew aboard the Pequod lead themselves down.