The need for acceptance in Moby Dick stems from the broad range of characters aboard the Pequod.
This study will examine both interpretations in the context of the novel as a whole and will combine the two to explore an interpretation of Ahab’s monomaniacal obsession with the white whale, which previous studies have not addressed. Melville specifically chooses to create an entirely male cast of characters, and two interpretations of what I have found manhood to symbolize in Moby Dick are firstly, an innate desire in all humans for dominance over other beings, and secondly, an innate desire in all humans for acceptance from other beings.
Undeniably, Moby Dick is peppered with passages that comprise ambiguous homoeroticism, revenge for emasculation, and male unity, which suggests that fraternal bonds are an integral part of not only the plot of Moby Dick, but also the meaning of the novel as a whole. Some have called whaling “an avatar for the most base, violent, and stringent version of masculinity available in the mid-nineteenth century” (Dillard 20), while others attribute Melville’s plot and setting to a contradictory response to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (Paglia), in which a woman is the main character and the story happens on land. “All the individualities of the crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear guilt and guiltlessness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.” - Melville 415Ĭritics have long concerned themselves with the theme of male bonding, or at least manhood, in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
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