Moby Dick by Herman Melville

First Draft: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Throughout American literature, there have been various perspectives as to what the exact relationship nature had with mankind. To many authors, nature is portrayed as an enigmatic divinity that controlled man with its omnipotent powers as man is seen cowered at its whim. Ahab, antagonist in the narrative Moby Dick by Herman Melville, was a man depicted as the complete opposite to the one often described in early American literature. Ahab is described as a man who had such an immense jealousy towards nature’s godlike power; it led him to become encapsulated in a revenge plot against Moby Dick that entangled him with demonic advisory, Fedallah, and weaponry, the blood-forged harpoon. One could associate this novel with the 1824 short story, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, written by Washington Irving. Tom Walker was a man who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for wealth as a mortgage broker. Both men had made Faustian bargains in an attempt for a supremacy that goes against nature’s order. Their actions eventually led to retaliation, by nature, resulting in their deaths.

Melville used Moby Dick as a justified force of nature that demonstrates merciless verdicts on those who deserve punishment. The foundation of Ahab’s jealousy towards Moby Dick is cemented when the reader finds out that he is consulted by Fedallah, a suspicious sailor speculated to have connections with Satan. Ahab is so engrossed in his plot to kill such a mighty being that he feels the only way to do so is by using demonic ways. Fedallah is seen prophesizing and using superstitions that seem otherworldly to mentor the captain of the Pequod. Fedallah uses many fallacies to entrance Ahab to the point where Ahab believes that only a harpoon forged in pagan’s blood would kill a whale such as Moby Dick. This knowledge Ahab seems to acquire from an evil force is disastrous for he and his crew. Although