The Literature Book

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undermining of Christian orthodoxy,

and of other religions too, is a

strand running through the novel.

Assembling the crew on deck,

Ahab makes the three “pagan”

harpooners drink from the hollow

heads of their steel harpoons, in a

scene that resembles a sacrilegious

mass. He calls them his cardinals

and their drinking vessels chalices,

urging them to swear death to

Moby Dick. To the harpoon point,

anointed with blood, that he will

use to skewer the whale, he later

says mockingly in Latin: “I baptize

you, not in the name of the Father

but in the name of the Devil”—a

sentence that Melville described to

Hawthorne as the book’s “secret

motto.” He wrote to Hawthorne that

he had written “a wicked book,”

and, in an earlier letter, that his

novel was “broiled in hell-fire.”

The ship itself, painted black

and festooned with the enormous

teeth and bones of sperm whales,

is reminiscent of the funeral ship

of some dark, tribal religion—

Melville describes it as a “cannibal

of a craft, tricking herself forth in

the chased bones of her enemies.”

At night, the fires used to melt the

whale blubber turn it into a “red

hell.” In this way, even the setting

of the novel picks up the note of

subverted faith that is so often

sounded in the action and dialogue.

Drama and poetry

The book uses devices that are

more often associated with drama

than with novels, including

soliloquies (speeches sharing a

character’s thoughts directly with

the audience), stage directions,

and even, in Chapter 40 (“Midnight,

MOBY-DICK

Forecastle”), a short dramatization.

In depicting self-destructive

ambition, Melville was inspired

by the Elizabethan tragic hero:

Ahab has echoes of Shakespeare’s

tragic hero-villain Macbeth, of King

Lear in his heartless unreason, and

of Hamlet in his impulse to avenge.

In an essay of 1850, Melville wrote

of admiring the “deep far-away

things” in Shakespeare and the

vital truths that are spoken by his

“dark characters.” Melville used

explicitly Shakespearean means

to express his vision, from the

soliloquies already mentioned (used

with great power by Shakespeare)

to intense, elevated language to

prose that actually has the cadence

of blank verse (the unrhymed,

rhythmic poetic line).

Melville also drew inspiration

for the language of the book from

John Milton’s epic blank-verse

poem Paradise Lost. There are

parallels too with Samuel Taylor

Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner—the albatross

brought down by the mariner is

equivalent to Melville’s whale.

Encylopedic elements

The use of various elements from

drama and poetry, with the bold

originality that helps to make

Moby-Dick such a major landmark

The Nantucket whaling ship Essex

encountered a large sperm whale in

the Pacific Ocean in 1820 and sank. It

was one of several events that inspired

Melville to write Moby-Dick.

I see in him outrageous

strength, with an inscrutable

malice sinewing it.

Moby-Dick

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