The Innumerable Meanings of Moby Dick Essay - 817 Words

The Innumerable Meanings of Moby Dick Call me Ishmael. The first line of this story begins with an assertion of self-identity. Before the second page is reached, it becomes quite clear to me that within this assertion of self-identity lay an enticing universality. Ishmael represents every man somehow and no man entirely. He is an individual in his own right, while personifying a basic human desire for something more, something extraordinary. As his name implies, he is an outcast from a great family (p.18). Although we all share Ishmaels yearning for adventure (however deeply hidden it may be), to throw aside our civilization (despite its discontents ) could mean societal suicide. So, we look through his eyes, we cling to his†¦show more content†¦When our world becomes too restrictive and societys dictates threaten to overwhelm him, rather than lashing out at his fellow landlocked prisoners he quietly takes the ship (p. 18). And for those too apprehensive to leave the safety and steadiness of land, Ishmael recoun ts his adventure so that others can vicariously experience his freedom. Here we have come across one of the many wonders of story telling: Stories allow us to see things we might not have the audacity to see ourselves and to become things well beyond our own perceived potential. And so we turn to stories to fill our voids, to quench the fires of our hopes and dreams, to calm our restless spirits. We might choose security rather than spontaneity and comfort rather than jeopardy, but we are able to do so and remain sane only with promise of participation in something outside of ourselves. Through our relationships to the boundless expanse inherent in the telling of stories, the great flood gates of the wonder-world swing open (p. 20). The story of Moby Dick is particularly compelling, as it presents us with the ungraspable phantom of life and then subsequently offers us the key to it all (p. 20). Through a first person narrative dictating a story intrinsically linked to the universality of human restlessness, Melville offers each of us a window of reprieve. We may choose to take it as an important life lesson and throw caution and practicality to the wind inShow MoreRelatedWhitman and Homosexuality Essay3150 Words   |  13 Pagesintellects, whose imaginative sympathies penetrate beyond sexual differences. They are very seldom homosexuals in the vulgar sense of the word...[His] eroticism...was sublimated into a fatherly love of innumerable sons and into magnificent poems of the comradeship of true democracy( 201-02). Along these same lines, James E. Miller, Jr. in his chapter Calamus: The Leaf and the Root, of his 1957 publication, A Critical Guide to LeavesRead MoreVictorian Novel9605 Words   |  39 Pagesthe United States. â€Å"History is the essence of innumerable biographies†, claimed Carlyle. Biography itself had a huge influence on the shape of the Victorian fiction. The biography takes its origin back in the Romantic experience of a unique and developing individual reflected in the genre of ‘self-development romance’. However, the romantic biography did not bring the subject to the novel but rather changed its scope of focus to the nature and meaning of human life itself. That concept found a strong