A Determined Observation and the Investigation of Moby Dick as a Symbol of Evil

Abstract

This paper investigates the themes and symbols of evil, pain, and suffering in the novel, Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, in which the narration is about a whale namely Moby Dick that attacked on the ship crew deadly in the ocean while the whale is in the white color which ought to be a symbol of the good spirit or the angel of the sea; but his evil nature and destructive attempts on the  voyagers reveal  him with   a  terrible  and  dreadful  appearance  which personifies and symbolizes to place for an evil object. The white whale, Moby Dick is an antagonist that plays a vital, dominant, and prominent role of the main character in the novel. Here, Moby Dick is not only a book about the protagonist Ahab’s quest for the White Whale, but Moby Dick also is an experience of the quest. It is full of the sea and the religious symbols. In this novel, symbols are based on both characters and objects. Some symbols are based on such characters as Ishmael, Queequeg, Ahab, Eliza, and Fedallah, whereas the objects, such as the White Whale - Moby Dick, the ship Pequod and the sea and the Cogfin. Related to the theory of symbolism, there are three kinds of symbols – natural symbols, conventional symbols, and private symbols. The mechanism of symbols has been applied in the form of pain and suffering in this paper that proves the white whale, Moby Dick is as a private symbol of an ambiguous creature precisely evil because of its evil nature and the destructive attempts throughout the novel.