For my final essay, I’m not 100% sure I will write about this but one thing has been on my mind throughout the semester is the fact that the boat was referred to as a woman and why that matters/ is important. When the story mostly consists of men, the most important “woman” is the boat aka the foundation for them whale men. My thoughts on this are all over the place at the moment and pretty messy so I need to focus on what I’m trying to say about this.
First of all, what the fudge!? How can it just end like that!? As I am happy that this journey of reading Moby Dick is over, I’ll kind of miss it. The ending of obsession for the whale and rage he filled up in his system for years caused it to be his doom. In Moby Dick’s final chapter, Melville transforms the Pequod into a tragedy, revealing on how Ahab’s obsession becomes a force that destroys not only himself, but his entire crew too. The quote, ” And his whole captive force, folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it”, (624) captures the intensity of this destructive power with such intensity. It demonstrates on how Ahab “captive force” suggest that the sailors are no longer in control of themselves, but of Ahab’s consuming will. Melville, also, compares the Pequod as Satan, a figure whose associated with rebellion and pride, just like in his own story on how he fell from the heavens through defiance, Ahab’s ship refuses to sink “till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her,” suggest that his downfall is so intense that it contaminates everything that’s innocent and pure.
Melville’s fascination for using biblical and mythological imagery to portray obsession as a spiritual catastrophe amazes me every time I would read a chapter. I’ll probably (maybe no, maybe so) miss this weird, quirky book.
In chapter 133, our crew finally comes face to face with Moby Dick, their deadly foe. In the skirmish that ensues with him, Ahab and other mariners fall into the sea after Moby Dick bites their boat in half, and then he starts circling them. In page 599, Melville writes, “Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,–though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst.” Our captain, this indomitable force of revenge and hate, seems fragile. In this passage, Melville brings to our attention two important points: Ahab is old and he is missing a leg. While these things have been discussed in the story before, they were really never liabilities, but now they have completely humanized Ahab for us and even made him seem weak. The picture Melville paints for us of old Ahab struggling to stay afloat in the water undercuts the image of the powerful and maniacal sea captain we have been getting up until now. Ahab’s element is sailing the sea, but being in the water itself has made him vulnerable like never before. He is tragically unequipped for this environment although he has spent his life in it. Not only do we realize that Ahab’s greatness has limits because of his physical condition, but because he is a mere human. The phrase, “helpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst” prompts us to think about the littleness and inadequacy of man in the face of nature. Even great Ahab is helpless in the sea and his head in the water is compared to a bubble. What is a bubble in the vastness of the ocean? This moment is prompting us to juxtapose the previous idea we had of Ahab, of supernatural power, with his current helplessness brought about by nature. The indomitable spirit of man (or his obsessive hatred) is nothing in the face of the natural world. Our power is an illusion that bursts like a bubble as soon as we touch the water. Melville destroys our previous perception of Ahab and uses imagery to illustrate a larger truth about humanity, that when faced with the savageness of nature, our greatness and power are revealed to be constructs of our own creation, and that though it might be easy for us to forget, nobody can tame the sea.
In chapter 113,” The Forge”, Melville transforms Ahab’s pursuit towards Moby Dick into a haunting, obsessive and desire of defying the divine. In this chapter, Ahab’s newly forged harpoon is his last solution to everything that’s become of his obsession, he makes it a symbol of both his vengeance and doom. In the quote, “ This done, pole, iron, and rope-like the Three Fates-…” Melville depicts the harpoon with the myth of “The Three Fates” who represent life and death, but also Ahab’s demise. Through the mythic imagery, sound, tone, and madness, Melville reveals Ahab’s madness and defiance against the divine and transforms him into the victim, but also the pursuer of his own consequences of his actions towards desire of wanting to control something that is beyond the realism of human nature. Melville wants us, the audience, to know the obsession and the definition of rage.
The connection towards the “pole, iron, and rope” to “the Three Fates” connects Ahab’s weapon to Greek Mythology, the story of the three goddesses, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who are known as the deciders of the past, present, and future, they cut the thread of life, the human life they decide on how long you get to live. The pole is the beginning that holds everything together, this is the moment where Ahab’s journey begins. The iron represents giving the weapon its shape, length, and the purpose of the weapon’s destination. And the rope presents us the connection between the whale and the ship, which it also demonstrates on how rope kills whalers like snapping, entangles and drags men under the sea. It represents the thread of life and how it easily can snap you in an instant. This whole thing is a cycle for Ahab, his destiny has been already fulfilled and he sealed his doom and the crew’s.
“Ivory log, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank,”(533), the sounds of the leg echoing through the ship creates an eerie, echoing soundscape. His presence is eerie and hollow like a ghost roaming the ship he’s pavemented to. Its sounds symbolize emptiness and death. Ahab’s movements are dominant and doom which gives us a reminder on who he is and his whole concept of revenge in the story. He makes the ship feel melancholic, empty and dark. Melville is already giving us hints, “ piteous” “wretched” and “melancholy” using a tone of tone which it obviously gives us a foreshadowing of the ship’s doom. It slowly becomes the sound of destruction of the ship and of Ahab too. Melville demonstrates in this quote,” Oh Pip! Thy wretched laugh ….”, it shows how the laugh of Pip is a mockery towards everything around mimicking Ahab like a mirror reflecting on his doom and slowly uncontrollable madness.
Ultimately, Melville’s portrayal of Ahab in Chapter 113, reveals about a man who’s beyond the limits of reality and seeking the imagery of a realm beyond the human limits, by sealing his destiny long before the final battle between him and Moby Dick. Through these images, Melville demonstrates Ahab’s attempt of command by taking the role of a God, who’s untouchable and in control of everything around him. Melville demonstrates to us the consequences of men who pursue the urge of power, control and rage.
Starbuck had been an adversary for Ahab throughout the novel, but as the voyage progressed, Starbuck could only rely on hopeful illusions to face the noxious reality. In Chapter 114, The Gilder, Melville’s use of forceful diction and stark contrasts reveals how humans cling to imagination to cope with horrifying truths.
Melville uses forceful diction to show Starbuck’s coping mechanisms. On page 535, Melville wrote in Starbuck’s perspective, “‘Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!—Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways.’” “Loveliness unfathomable” tells of Starbuck wanting to believe in a positive outcome, and “Tell me not of–” tells of the truths Starbuck wants to reject; the facts that have been happening. He wants to forget and go home, a common coping mechanism for people with trauma.
Melville uses stark contrasts to show Starbuck’s mental state. He wrote Starbuck to explicitly say this because Starbuck was holding on to what little hope he had left. On page 535, Starbuck continued, “‘Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.’” The contrasts, especially the last line, paints Starbuck’s psychological struggle and reliance on imagination. The word “oust” here means to remove, meaning Starbuck wants to replace fact with faith, and memory with “fancy”. Perhaps here, fancy means imagination, and in this case, Starbuck is saying he’d rather believe in faith and imagination than accept fact and memory. This ties into the religious context, where believing that a mental construct exists feels more satisfying than facing reality.
Melville’s use of diction and contrasts highlights Starbuck’s mentality. The diction had shown Starbuck’s conviction with his iron-willed beliefs. The contrasts between faith/fancy and fact/memory show not only the internal conflict in Starbuck’s morals, but also how he wants to be a good man in a world of cruelty. Applicably, people in real life struggle more in living with fact and memory than believing themselves in faith and imagination.
In Chapter 135 “The Chase – Third Day,” we get a lot of excitement. The part of this chapter I would like to focus on is actually the very last sentence of the chapter: “Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago” (Melville 624). I find it difficult to think of a more poetic last sentence to end this whaling expedition; a reminder that the ocean was here long before us, and it will be here long after. Ahab and the rest of the Pequod tried to conquer what is unconquerable, and their need for revenge against Moby Dick is what caused their demise. I think we all saw that one coming. The last sentence of this chapter gives me an almost calming vibe, as if the ocean is unbothered by what has just happened. It has seen many men like Ahab, and has delivered a similar fate to those men who try to defy it. Ahab, the man who considered the ocean his home more so than the land, meets his poetic fate in that very place.
Everything that the novel has shown us, taught us, critique us, and confused us comes to conclusion with this chapter. I feel relieved honestly, but it’s bittersweet because I have never once gone into such an in depth analysis of any material as I have with Moby-Dick this semester. From the days where I couldn’t stop reading it, to the days where I got 5 minutes in and decided that was enough. This novel is truly one of the most daunting and incredible pieces of art I have ever seen, and I’m so glad I don’t have to read it ever again (just kidding, but not really).
Herman Melville’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 how the life-threatening labor of workers is used for the enrichment of others, 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 is more important than morals and lives.
In Chapter 16, titled “The Ship,” Ishmael meets Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad, the owners of the Pequod, for the first time prior to the ship’s departure. Being the owners of the ship, both the captains will take a majority of the profit that is made from the Pequod’s whaling expedition. However neither one of them will step foot on the ship during its journey, and instead they will stay on land and reap the benefits of the hardworking and life-threatening labor done by the crew members of the Pequod: “ ‘Thou are speaking to Captain Peleg – that’s who ye are speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners and agents…’ People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest” (Melville 80-82). Captain Peleg and Bildad are able to avoid the risks of whaling, but by being owners of the ship they will still share most of the profit earned by the crew members during the Pequod’s dangerous expedition. This shows the disparity in industrial capitalism; the ones at the top will do the least amount of labor, yet they will still make the most amount of money. Melville compares the investment and ownership of whaling vessels to that of the reader’s investment in stocks. Like some stocks, the money that comes with whaling involves destruction, corruption, and death. Putting a profit over a life, whether it be whale or human, shows the immorality of the industry, and how capitalism has created a society in which people are only so interested in their own gain that they don’t care what has to be done in order to get it.
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. 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.
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. Another example of this occurs in Chapter 96, “The Try-Works.” In this chapter, the reader is introduced to the process of turning whale fat into oil, something that many consumers of the product do not see: “These fritters feed the flames… the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of the funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgement; it is an argument for the pit” (Melville 462). This description of the creation of whale oil shows a side that the consumer does not see; workers in harsh conditions, breathing in smoke that is not meant to be inhaled, working in a strong stench of burning blubber, the Pequod is both a ship and an industrial factory. The whaling industry makes its profit off the ignorance of their consumers, no doubt hiding the harsh realities that go into it.
Herman Melville’s novel, Moby-Dick, is a critique of capitalism and how it has severely affected American society. Melville uses the whaling industry as a critical analysis on capitalism, demonstrating how the poor treatment of workers, the disparity between consumer and laborer, and the immorality of capitalism has turned America into a country in which profit is more important than lives, whether that life be whale or human.
Throughout the entire novel, Ahab has been portrayed as a lord, a God, or an almighty being high above the Pequod and its crew. In Chapter 134, the second day of the chase, Moby Dick has single-handedly torn down all notions of Ahab’s power (despite Ahab surviving). Moby Dick uses the harpoon lines against the crew, capsizing multiple boats and even killing the Parsee, Ahab’s dopple-ganger. He has singled out Ahab numerous times and snapped his ivory leg, leaving him mad, unstable, and reliant on the level-headed members of the crew. Ahab’s own madness and vengeful approach to Moby Dick stirred a rage inside the whale that will ultimately lead to his own downfall.
Above all of this, Ahab’s harpoon, bathed in Pagan blood and cursed in Latin, was told to be the one harpoon that could kill Moby Dick, had to be abandoned. Starbuck has talked of omens numerous times over the pages of the last few chapters, but in Chapter 134, we can see all the bad omens arising against Ahab alone; he will not succeed in his pursuit of killing Moby Dick – the whale is stronger and more adapt to maneuver the ocean and its elements in his favor while tearing down all the stability Ahab has relied on during his voyage. Everything Ahab has is crumbling around him in his pursuit of the white whale. From all of this, we can see that Ahab’s feverish pursuit of whiteness will be his worst decision, tearing down the one thing that has kept him elevated above the rest of the crew for decades; his journey to find whiteness has completely dismantled his power and ultimately left him with nothing, bitter and angry.
In Chapter 97, “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 quite lonely life at sea. Yet, like much of Moby-Dick, this moment actually contains a deeper, unsettling paradox. What begins as just a factual observation about whale oil, which happens to be the literal “food of light,” expands into a moral and metaphysical reflection on the cost of illumination itself. Melville’s language transforms physical light into a spiritual metaphor, complicating the whaleman’s apparent purity by revealing the violence and destruction that make such light possible in the first place. Through this sentence, Melville explores the moral ambiguity of enlightenment, suggesting that the pursuit of knowledge and progress always casts shadows. To “live in light,” in this sense, is not a state of purity but 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 oil, which is the material substance that, once extracted from the whale, refined, and then burned, illuminates homes, streets, and cities across the world. The whaleman literally harvests the world’s light from the sea, working amid furnaces, boiling blubber, and lamps that glow through the ship’s night. In this sense, he does indeed always “live in light.” Yet even within this literal interpretation, Melville’s phrasing evokes something even more mythic to the reader. The whaleman becomes not merely a laborer of the ocean but more of a Promethean figure, the one who 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, sustained by something perishable, in this case, even living. That food, of course, is the whale itself, whose body becomes the actual physical foundation of civilization’s brightness. Melville’s specific word choice here in this sentence collapses 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 into fuel. In that transformation, the whaleman stands as both the agent and the witness of light’s creation. The one who participates in an enterprise that makes human vision possible, even as it stains that very same vision with blood.
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: we are supposed to believe that the whaleman’s purpose aligns with his environment, his labor mirrored by his world and their desires. But then the symmetry between “seeks” and “lives” suggests more than any type of coincidence; it implies justification. If he “lives in light,” then perhaps his violent work is redeemed by its very luminous result. Melville toys 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, but its context undercuts that quiet 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 just an 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 depends on something we extinguish.
This irony reveals Melville’s larger philosophical concern with the relationship between knowledge and violence. The pursuit of enlightenment, whether that may be through scientific, intellectual, or spiritual ways, requires a certain amount of dissection, penetration, and the laying bare of what was once whole or known by the consumer. 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 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 that they can reach for. Yet, this light is often accompanied by a terrifying glare that threatens to consume those who labor within 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 a certain amount of 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 or angelic image, as if the whalemen are chosen vessels through whom divine radiance enters the world. Yet at the same time, Melville destabilizes this association by placing such holiness in the hands of those engaged in an act of 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.
The communal aspect of this illumination adds another layer of complexity as well. The whaleman’s labor produces the oil that fuels lamps across nations, so his private suffering enables collective vision. 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 peril and deprivation, while the consumers of that light remain untouched by its very violent and barbaric 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 its science, industry, and expansion, rests directly upon the bodies of those rendered seemingly invisible by the glow. Ishmael’s phrasing exposes that blindness even as it embodies it: the sentence itself glimmers with poetic beauty, concealing the blood and labor it describes. Melville thus implicates language, and maybe even literature itself, in this economy of light, where aesthetic pleasure risks masking any type of 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, but in Moby-Dick, light often blinds as much as it reveals. The whalemen’s proximity to flame makes them less capable of seeing beyond it; the brightness becomes overwhelming, distorting any perception. The lesson 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 entails.
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 burn for understanding, who turn the world and its animals into literal 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 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 very trace of what it consumes.
Towards the beginning of chapter 134 I read this part which had their impending doom coming for them. “Clinging to a spar with one hand some reached for the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destory them.” This foreshadows what is to come of their fates in just one more chapter as they finally come across the whale.
These lines prove that these men were ready for what was to come upon them with this mission to find and kill this whale. “Clining to a spar” illustrates that these men were armed with the means to kill this whale with their harpoons. “Impatient wavings” shows that their are waiting to see this whale so they can kill him immediately and get this mission over so that they can get their money that Ahab promised them. Some of their other crewmates waited patiently as they were “shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight” showing that they were waiting for the sun to go down as they were in their positions waiting to see the whale breech in the water. They were very adamant about finding this whale as this was Ahab’s wish, to find and kill the whale even if it was dangerous. The line “all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate” shows that these men were in a vulnerable position abord the Pequod as they were hunting down the thing that would surely destory them easily. They were all in their designated spots in case the whale was seen to that they can easily take him down. Ahab was so crazy that they did all of this for a whale that he was so passionate about killing that they “strove through that infinate blueness” the world’s many oceans so that he can take vengance against this whale. This Moby Dick is the most dangerous and powerful creature in this ocean and they wanted “to seek out the thing that might destory them” which again proves they would do all of this for money and passion.
Ahab and these men were so adamant about finding this whale that it does lead to their destruction in the end. This foreshadowing shows us that they are doomed in the end. They won’t return home, Ahab won’t get his victory, but they did so much to get to this point.