ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
Since whaling was dangerous but could bring in much cash it could really be placed
almost in the category of being a soldier at war. Ishmael says, “No dignity in whaling?
The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the
South! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to
Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and
fifty whales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity
who boasted of taking as many walled towns” (Melville 152). And, “Then here I pro-
spectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my
Yale College and my Harvard” (Melville 153). In Nantucket, whaling was, “...a
bloodlust and pride that bound every mother, father, and child in a clannish commit-
ment to the hunt. There was a secret society of young women on the island whose
members pledged to marry only men who had already killed a whale (Philbrick 13).
Throughout Moby Dick we see many phrases that depict the whale as a monster. Ish-
mael said (for his reason to embark on a whaling adventure), “Chief among these mo-
tives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and
mysterious monster roused all my curiosity” (Melville 48). And, “For so revoltingly
appalling was the White Whale’s aspect...” (Melville 590).
Captain Ahab, who lost one leg in an encounter with a white sperm whale, is deter-
mined to find and kill whom he called “Moby Dick.” He incites his crew and moti-
vates them with the promise of gold. “Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed
whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-
headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke – look ye, whosoever
of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!” (Mel-
ville 202). He becomes more vengeful as the book moves on: “He piled upon the
whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race
from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s
shell upon it” (Melville 225). And, “Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby-Dick!”
cried Ahab, “thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand! – Down!” (Melville 597), and
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple
with thee; from hel