What I found most interesting about the novel Moby Dick is the way in which it calls into question the power and the status of man. While humans tend to think that we are above all else, as we cultivate land, hunt sea-life, and take what we want when we want it. While I am unsure of the intentionality of the message, I believe the novel calls into question how powerful we really are.<\/p>\n
Most notable we see this in the death of the Pequod\u2019s crew. Ahab, after believing that he was more powerful then the whale, and thus, able to kill him, succeeds in getting not only himself, but his whole crew killed (with the exception of Ishmael), and even his ship destroyed.\u00a0 It seems to send the message that when you underestimate, disrespect, and exploit the earth and its creatures, no good will come of it.<\/p>\n
As we discussed earlier in the semester, this could be a larger message about man\u2019s exploitation of the earth. If we continue to abuse the earth, just like Ahab in his quest for dominance over the whale, most likely we will end up killing ourselves before we succeed in killing the earth.<\/p>\n
The novel also suggests the cyclical nature of the universe. Just as the Pequod chases whales, specifically, Moby Dick, the Pequod gets chased by the pirate ship in the Grand Armada<\/em>.\u00a0 This could serve to illustrate how ocean life, and life in general, is more cyclical and less hierarchical then we would like to think. Everyone who lives, will one day die. All powerful nations are eventually surpassed by the power of another. And perhaps one day man will be replaced in its supremacy by something else. There are larger forces at play, and when it comes down to it, no one is all powerful. Man, therefore, will not succeed in selfishly serving his own purposes, without consequences to himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What I found most interesting about the novel Moby Dick is the way in which it calls into question the power and the status of man. While humans tend to think that we are above all else, as we cultivate land, hunt sea-life, and take what we want when we want it. While I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-criticism","category-whaling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1293,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}