Why is ahab obsessed with killing moby dick

To deny that multiplicity, to crush it all down into a binary opposition, as Ahab attempts, is to risk wrecking yourself. At last, even Ahab cannot maintain his extremist position. As the book nears its conclusion, more and more doubt burrows into his soliloquies. Instead, he wonders if he has any control at all over his own actions. But instead he abdicates responsibility for his actions by invoking fate as the force that drives him on: the ship will not turn for home.

The Ahab that wins out, then, is the Ahab of the night described in The Candles, when he waves a burning harpoon above the heads of his crew. His worst fear is that he is incapable in the face of the challenges of the world; that he would become castrated by life when trusting in his own activity.

Like the heroes of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who took his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of evil.

Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the whale. The White Whale is ultimately a metaphor. A metaphor, like a symbol, has to do with an object representing an idea or a different, non-literal object.

The White Whale is frequently used as a metaphor for an obsession, usually in the sense of a goal that you chase but are unlikely to attain. For Ahab, blasphemy is no vice. When Moby Dick is eventually sighted, a disastrous three-day chase begins.

Entangled by the line of his own harpoon, Ahab falls overboard and drowns as the whale dives and takes him along. Answer Expert Verified The planks are dented because, Ahab, the captain of the ship has an amputated leg, and the dents represent the frequency of his walking up and down the deck with his peg leg.

It is swallowed by the whale. It sinks to the bottom of the ocean. What symbolic meaning do you find in the comparison between Ahab and the mast? Ahab is expressing fear and apprehension prior to this his next attempt to kill Moby-Dick and that Starbuck is making one last futile effort to persuade Ahab to forgo the quest.

When the crew signed aboard the Pequod, the voyage was to be nothing more than a business venture. However, in the following excerpt, Ahab makes clear to the crew that his purpose is to seek revenge against Moby-Dick. What does Ahab make the harpooners do once they have promised to pursue the white whale?

Ahab says that the crew will hunt Moby-Dick. The Pequod chases Moby-Dick for two days. The Pequod catches up with Moby-Dick. Captain Ahab is a one-legged captain of the whaling ship Pequod. Dante writes that Alexander the Great—a man adored throughout Italy—suffers greatly; this allusion to the Lord of Asia puts emphasis on the fact that anyone can go to Hell and even great people must pay for their sins. Fortunato has done many things against Montresor that slowly get to him.

Montresor got tired of Fortunato doing him wrong, so he decides that he was going to get back at him. Montresor would make sure that Fortunato never does him wrong again, proving that he is a man full of revenge. His jealousy is what motivates him to start manipulating everyone in order to get revenge. His actions done in jealousy cause multiple deaths and make a great man turn into an insecure and irrational one.

He creates a domino effect in which every action has a consequence that benefits him but slowly ruins everyone around him.

Quiet Kill He was astounded at how far the ripples of the past had extended into the present and at how Coz remained consistently inconsistent. Second, first chance I get, gonna cut your guts out then slice your throat.

On the whole, envy changes people in ways they never thought would exist. Even though all envious entities start off ordinary people they can be corrupted and taken hostage by this emotion. Envy is an ever growing vine that keeps getting bigger and stronger as it feeds on your terrible thoughts and actions.

Envy changed men like Jack and Minh Nguyen as both of them took it to the extreme by committing terrible acts of violence.