The Epic is a genre that spans across time and culture. A few titles include from Dante’s Divine Comedy, to The Lord of the Rings, to The Epic of Sundiata . The influence of the Epic was intended as Melville wrote Moby Dick. Melville uses several choice elements of an Epic story to create a new American form of it to suit his time and his viewpoints. Although there are some variations among readers and critics on what defines a story as an “Epic” story, there is a general agreement on certain literary devices that appear in almost all of the major Epics. The University of Idaho laid out that an Epic story has six key elements. These elements include a great hero, incredible acts of strength, a large setting, supernatural forces, an exaggerated…show more content… The whales, especially Moby Dick himself, are regarded as large, supernatural monsters and often compared to something like gods and even ghosts of whales are believed to haunt the ship. After their deaths, the whales are still considered formidable. There is a scene where the Pequod comes across a group of nesting whales and it is described as a mystical experience for the men. During one night, the crew hears “A cry so plaintively wild and unearthly-like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all of Herod’s murdered Innocents…they…for some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly listening…while that wild cry remained within hearing” (Melville 661). The men at least believe the cause of the cries to be supernatural and it has a hypnotizing effect on them. Even being around the ocean marks something unusual and otherworldly about the ship itself for its crew. It is the Mast-Head of the ship that proves to be mystical for Ishmael. “To and fro I idly swayed in that enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it was withdrawn” (373). Because he is surrounded by the mysteries of the ocean and the largeness of ship and left open to the infinite, it entices Ishmael into the wonders of his own mind. It also leads…show more content… Ishmael makes numerous references to old legends where heroes slayed evil sea monsters-such as Perseus and St. George, to name a few. He argues that “let not knights of that honorable company…never eye a Nantucker with disdain, since even in our woolen frocks and tarred trowers we are much better entitled to St. George’s decoration than they” (467-468). Since the whales themselves are considered monsters, then killing them is a tremendous task that can make a plain American countryman a hero. Stubb receives his moment of glory when he kills a whale and then cements his victory by eating a steak from its meat. But whale-killing is not the only great deed accomplished in the plot. Queequeg manages to help save the ferry they travel in as well as rescue two men from drowning- a Nantucket man from the ferry, and the other is Tashtego who falls into the body of the whale as it sinks into the
