"MOBY-DICK" OR "THE WHITE WHALE" (1851)

Melville composed the first American prose epic, 'Moby-Dick’. (An epic is generally a long poem on an important theme.) Although 'Moby-Dick' is presented in the form of a novel, at times it seems like a prose poem, it is difficult to read for two reasons. Much of the talk in the novel is sailor talk, and much of the language is purposely old-fashioned, for effect. This technique of Melville's style was inspired by the great authors of Elizabethan England. The plot of 'Moby-Dick' deals with the ceaseless conflicts between good and evil, of nature's indifference to man 'visibly personified and made practically assailable. Melville makes this conflict live for us not by putting it into simple statements but by using symbols - that is, objects or persons who represent something else. 'The White Whale, Moby-Dick', symbolizes nature for Melville, for it is complex, unknowable and dangerous. For the character Ahab, howewer, the whale represents only evil. The prime symbol of good that is destroyed by evil - and in this case is destroyed by a consuming desire to root out evil - is the captain of the ship Pequod, a man named Starbuck. And the prime symbol of the good that is destroyed by evil -and in this case is destroyed by a consuming desire to root out evil - is the captain of the Pequod, Ahab. A man with an overwhelming obsession to kill the whale which had crippled him, he is Melville's greatest creation. He burns with a baleful fire, becoming evil himself in his thirst to destroy evil.