Moby Dick Symbol Paper

Moby Dick Symbol Paper

Moby Dick Symbol Paper

Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick has many different meanings behind the dangerous and awarding life of a whaler. Melville uses many rhetorical devices such as symbol as a way to describe the real meanings of the story in a way the reader can translate and make into their own philosophical findings. Such an example of symbol will be the oils of the sperm whale. This symbol that is repeated throughout the novel signifies the importance of renewal and that of spiritual cleansing.   “The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue.” The oil could also mean a renewal of hope in finding Moby Dick, justifiable by Melville’s reference to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras who wrote a doctrine named metempsychosis which means a “passage of the soul from one body to another” This could perhaps infer to the reader that this “metempsychosis” could be a passage of the body’s renewal at the sight of the sperm oil.
Another example of symbol would be the doubloon and the use of the zodiac and other mythological devices seen in Moby Dick’s pages. This piece of metal with their interesting carvings and even more bizarre nature allows stories and superstition to erupt on the Pequod. This could translate to the reader as a belief system in which all humans must rely on in order to survive: The belief that there is something out there in the world that is greater then ourselves. Melville uses books, maps and almanacs as a scientific symbol to counter act the religious doubloon. This can portray to the reader the difficulties of the new generation of ideas back when Melville first wrote this piece (In 1851 when Moby Dick was first published the US was going through the first of the anti-slavery fights. This was a time when the northern colonies were fighting to obtain equal delegates and votes in the Senate and the issue of slavery challenged both political and moral thinking.)
And last is the most interesting of...