The Irresistible Art of Moby Dick

Much as I don’t care for the plot of the book, I will admit that as a piece of literature, Moby Dick is one of the best symbolic works I’ve read. One of the ways I know if a story has good symbolism is if I can imagine visual motifs to illustrate them. If a book’s plot can be conveyed or at least alluded to on a T-shirt, for example, probably has at least one major symbol.

Maybe it’s just a matter of the colors—a white sperm whale on a dark background—that makes for dynamic visuals. Maybe it’s just because I’m a sucker for animal art in general.  Maybe it’s simply that I like sperm whales, and any time I try to anthropomorphize Moby Dick into an epitome of the world’s evil like Captain Ahab does, the unfortunate outcome is not very profound: just the part of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where a whale materializes in midair over an alien planet and has to come to grips with its existence on the way down to the ground.  

Whatever the reason, part of me wishes that I did love the book, so that I could buy, make, or wear these sorts of artistic renditions of the novel. Since I am more of a begrudging admirer, forced to admit the aesthetic value of Herman Melville’s writing Style, I’ll just leave these links and images here for others with better Taste to enjoy:  

Name Symbolism in Herman Melville’s "Moby Dick"

As I said in my last entry, I assume that in most written works authors include things deliberately—for instance, names of character. In the case of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or, The Whale, some names might be chosen for the sake of authenticity, like Starbuck, which was a common Nantucket Quaker name amongst whalers.* Others are subtly symbolic, the way a sledgehammer subtly drives home a nail:

Ishmael – means “God hears.” The character in the Bible was the outcast son of Abram. Since he says “Call me” and never gives a first or last name, this probably is not his real name. So he must have chosen this alias for a reason. 

Herman Melville's Moby Dick: Father Mapple’s Sermon and the Book of Jonah

It’s my assumption when reading any work that whatever is included or excluded by the author is done intentionally. So what is the reason Melville includes a full sermon at the outset of Moby Dick? The account of Jonah makes it clear that Melville is foreshadowing some event or theme that will follow later in the narrative. Jonah is one of my favorite books of the bible, because of its complexity despite being only “four yarns” (or chapters) long, and also because I find Jonah as a character to be very relatable.

Father Mapple sums up the themes of the book of Jonah as “A story of sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah.” I agree with this summary, with one exception: that this is only the first part of Jonah’s story, and the second part is equally as important. In the first part as discussed by Father Mapple, Jonah is comparable to Ishmael, as they both are wanderers in a sense—Jonah running away from God, Ishmael seeking to escape from the world in general. But this comparison waxes feeble when contrasted to the similarities between Jonah and Ahab.