Moby Dick Ahab's Actions

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Moby Dick is a story about a dangerous journey to catch and kill a whale. The protagonist Ahab pursue's this whale solely based on his vengeance. With this goal of capturing said whale Ahab and his crew go on the trip to find it. Ahab is desperate, his passion turned into an unhealthy obsession where his unethical decision making, contorted values, and mistaken symbolism of the whale lead him to his death. Moby Dick was written in 1851 by Herman Melville. Melville was a writer of novels and poetry. Born in New York City in 1819, Melville grew up having a nice life due to his father's success and an import merchant. Later on, in Melville's life, he went on some sea journeys himself. He recalled moments where he was hired to work on whaling …show more content…
Ahab risks the lives of his entire crew just for his own selfish reasons. He disregards his crew and claims he will search forever in order to find Moby Dick. Ahab values his hunt for Moby Dick more than the lives of his crew. He risks their lives time after time just in order to fulfill his goal of getting revenge against Moby Dick. His flaws are the reason that the Pequod gets destroyed and his whole crew was killed by Moby Dick. Ahab wants revenge; he struggles to get it and fails. The sinking of the Pequod marked the end of Ahab's pursuit of the evil whale. Even after Fedallah tells Ahab of the hearses he would see before his death, he ignores them both. To conclude, based on the text, it can be assumed that Moby Dick is merely a large and unusually colored sperm whale. All the reader knows about the whale is filtered through the opinions and superstitions of the whalers. Narratively, Moby Dick functions as merely a mirror for the characters of the story. Ahab's tragic journey, unethical decision making, contorted values, and mistaken symbolism lead to all their deaths. A whale who was merely defending himself was symbolized as evil and needed to taken down. The reality of the whale is so unimportant that he doesn't even make an actual appearance until the novel's
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