Indeed, Ahab does see himself as a David based character since he seeks revenge against the White Whale.\u00a0 In the Bible, David sought revenge against Goliath, who “was over nine feet tall” (1 Samuel 17:1-58, New International Version).\u00a0 In a similar fashion, Goliath is as monolithic compared to David, as the White Whale is to Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab sees himself as the David character facing a Goliath, or Moby Dick.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, the Post-Classical Jewish traditions emphasized Goliath as the one who represents paganism, as opposed to David, who is seen as the champion of the God of Israel. Knowing that David defeated Goliath in his youth, and later became a King, exactly shows that as one falls, another rises.\u00a0 Clearly, David seized Goliath’s power and became a very important and influential figure in society.\u00a0 David, from the Bible, even appears to have almost the same character and personality as Captain Ahab does.\u00a0 “This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.\u00a0 Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves;\u00a0 for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands” (1 Samuel 17:1-58).\u00a0 David here is aggressive\u00a0 and seeks to exact revenge.\u00a0 Captain Ahab also has the same fire\u00a0 and obsessive passion to exact revenge and achieve his goals, as does David. \u00a0 The manner in which David prepares for war and battle against the Goliath, parallels with the way in which Captain Ahab intends to finally bring down and kill Moby Dick.\u00a0 The irony of it all is that Captain Ahab does not become victorious as he does not manage to survive.\u00a0 However, much of David’s personality and character resonates with Captain Ahab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indeed, Ahab does see himself as a David based character since he seeks revenge against the White Whale.\u00a0 In the Bible, David sought revenge against Goliath, who “was over nine feet tall” (1 Samuel 17:1-58, New International Version).\u00a0 In a similar fashion, Goliath is as monolithic compared to David, as the White Whale is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","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=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":819,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}