Moby Dick Forshadowing

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Foreshadowing the Doomed Ahab-session In the epic novel, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville tells the story of Ahab’s obsessive quest to kill the monster of a whale that had devoured his leg. On the surface it would seem that it is a simple tale of revenge, but as we dig deeper into Ahab’s mind, we find that many of his own personal anxieties and doubts are symbolized against his hatred of the whale. Though we have all heard (and now read) the tragic ending after going back and analyzing some the text one has to notice the enormous amounts of foreshadowing throughout the story. Many omens are also revealed to Ahab that also hint at the outcome of his quest, however as Ahab is himself, he chooses to only pick the omens he likes. When the story concludes the reader can see how Ahab’s obsessive nature lead the Pequod to destruction as well as notice Melville’s use of prophecy and omens to emphasize the dangers of hubris. Though his crewmembers saw him as a “grand, ungodly, god-like man” (75), Ahab wanted to be “more than ye, ye great gods, ever were” (142). He thought that if he could slay the whale that had wronged him, it would prove that he was even greater than the gods. However this obsessive idea invaded his thoughts until it came to define him: “Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him . . . all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations” (154). Religious references seem to occur heavily within the novel, especially that pertaining to Christianity. Melville uses the Bible’s story of Jonah as a means to foreshadow that Ahab cannot escape God’s predestined path for him: “He thinks a ship made by men will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth” (45). Another example of foreshadowing is when the Pequod’s

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