Moby Dick: Moral Ambiguity

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it is the dichotomy between the respective fortunes of Ishmael and Ahab that the reader is left with. Herein lies a greater moral ambiguity than is previously suggested. Although Ishmael is the sole survivor of the Pequod, it is notable that in his own way, Ahab fulfills his desire for revenge by ensuring the destruction of the White Whale alongside his own end. Despite the seeming superiority of Ishmael’s destiny, Melville does not explicitly indicate so. On the contrary, he subtly suggests that Ishmael’s survival is lonely and empty upon being rescued: "It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." (724) That single instance of the appellation "orphan" as applied to Ishmael speaks volumes when taken in light of the destruction of the Pequod and her crew. Melville’s inclusion of Ishmael’s survival as an epilogue, a suffix attached to the dramatic destruction of the Pequod, suggests that ...

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of the whale," Stubb sees economic gain in the valuable whale oil, subtly hinted at by his overbearing gloating upon his first kill. In the harpooneers, we see a violent savageness, even in Queequeg’s otherwise loving nature. To Ahab, the whale is a emblem of pure evil. Even prudent, rational Starbuck looks on the whale as a dumb animal, which it is his duty to exploit.

The terror that Ishmael perceives is a consequence of his own vague fear of the whale’s "nothingness." What Ishmael fears is the mystical, terrifying manifestation of white in the natural world, coupled with its subversion of the sense of purity attached to whiteness in the human world. Ishmael is distinguished from ...

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