Moby Dick
In the novel "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, the apparent themes:good vs. evil, civilized vs. uncivilized, and conventional vs. unconventional are throughout the book, but they are not as superficial as they seem. In treating the theme good vs. evil, the apparent message is one of Ahab being the innocent victim. A man disfigured and tormented by a beast of nature. In juxtaposition to that the whale can be perceived as being evil because of what he did to man. However, if we are to look at this objectively we would have to admit that man is also a creature of nature, and therefore you would have to ask, what represents evil in the novel; Moby Dick or Ahab? Throughout the book Ahab defies God. He speaks
By simply looking at Melville's style of writing we can see that the conventional vs. Melville has us believe that Queequeg is born into civilization. By looking deeper into the ambiguities of Melville's writing, we are able to understand the ambiguities of life. "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as a lamb. In order for his book not to have seemed blasphemous at the time it was written, Melville had to veil his unconventional opinions under the guise of convention. Through these actions we are shown that Ahab is more representative of the evil side of nature then Moby Dick. Moreover, since Ahab is so obsessed with killing the whale he puts his entire crew in jeopardy which does not only go against mans law (a captain must never put his crew or ship in danger for his own selfish intentions), but also goes against God's law (mans indifference towards other men is sinful in God's eyes). These depictions are not what society wants to read about, and that is why Melville's book breaks literary convention in both a literal way and in a figurative way. The book also incorporates the theme civilized vs. Queequeg sees the world unobscured by the dogmatism of Christianity, which allows Ishmael to look at the world for what it is, not what religion tells you it is. Melville's breaking of literary convention in his writing, foreshadows his underlying depiction of the religious and social beliefs of the time.
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Acceptance Essays
