Moby Dick Further Study Questions - Macmillan Readers

Further Study Questions Answer key Upper
I would argue that Moby Dick is not deliberately setting out to kill Ahab. We see evidence of this in
the final three-day battle. Although on the first day the whale does attack Ahab’s boat, he does not
attack the captain once he is in the water, but swims away. On the second day of the final battle when
Fedallah is killed, Moby Dick again sends Ahab and his whaling boat crashing into the water. Ahab is
left floating in the water for some time, but Moby Dick does not attack him.
On the third day, Moby Dick first attacks the other two whaling boats, but leaves Ahab’s alone.
Starbuck begs Ahab to give up the hunt:
“It’s not too late to stop the hunt! Look how Moby Dick swims away from you. It is you who
look for him, not he who looks for you. Let him go, sir!”
What does the whale represent?
It has been suggested that Moby Dick represents God, evil, fate and the power of nature. He is seen
as all-powerful and god-like. He is described as destructive and aggressive, attacking whaling boats
and killing whalers, and so he might be seen to represent evil. If we see Ahab’s death as inevitable,
then Moby Dick is a symbol of Ahab’s tragic fate: to die at his own hands (or by his own rope) killed by
his obsessive need for revenge. Moby Dick can also be seen as a symbol of the power of nature, and
Ahab’s hunt as man’s obsessive need to control and overcome the powers of nature.
Ishmael
5 Ishmael’s character
What do we know about Ishmael and his past life? Why does he decide to go whaling?
We know very little about Ishmael’s past life. We know that he has been to sea before and that he
chooses to go to sea when he is feeling irritable and bad-tempered and because there is nothing on
shore to interest him. He chooses to be a sailor because he cannot afford to be a passenger, but he
doesn’t want to be a captain because ‘I do not want to be responsible for other men’. He is fascinated
by whales and whaling ships and it is his dream to hunt and catch a whale.
Ishmael tells the story of Moby Dick. Can we trust his descriptions of events and people? Why/why
not?
On the surface, Ishmael seems to be a fairly reliable narrator. He describes scenes and actions in
detail and does not pass judgement on the characters he describes. But his narration is a first person
narrative, and therefore is subjective.
As a character in the novel, he is simply one of the crew, yet he escapes the common fate that awaits
the whole crew, the ship and its captain. He is the only survivor and this affects his narration. He
is telling the story with hindsight. He knows what happens at the end of the hunt, and the whole
rhythm, pace and shape of his narrative is influenced by this.
We have to question his reliability when he narrates events that he never actually witnessed, for
example, when Starbuck picks up Ahab’s gun and considers the possibility of killing the captain and
rescuing the crew from their fate.
Macmillan Readers Moby Dick 8
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