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Spiritual Landscapes In Moby Dick

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Inner dimensions and psychic landscapes are the real stuff of Melville’s writing Herman Melville’s Moby Dick reveals the inner world of its characters. This essay aims to explore the inner dimensions and psychic landscapes of young Ishmael and his captain, Ahab, as constructed in the novel.
The novel is a first person narrative, mostly represented through the eyes of Ishmael, as a narrator: “Call me Ishmael.” (Melville 21) “A first person narrator is an ‘I’ (occasionally a ‘we’) who speaks from her/his subject position. That narrator is usually a character in the story, who interacts with other characters; we see those interactions through the narrator 's eyes, and we can 't know anything the narrator doesn 't know.” (Leveen) However, Ishmael is not the only one who gets the stage, as another example could be of Captain Ahab’s thoughts “’Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve.” (Melville 170). This first person …show more content…

He is the symbol of the universal orphan, the projection of the American identity, who must be educated in order to develop” (Oltean). The character realizes his need for the journey to an extent, as he states “whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth … I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can” (Melville 21). During his voyage, he talks about the risks of contemplating dangerous, but tempting thoughts which can even end in death “Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man!” (404). Ishmael acknowledges these risks, attempting to discover the ‘truth’ of things, looking deeper into matters, such as when he refers to Queequeg, the savage: “You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooing, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart” (65). Having thus the right mindset, he is prone to further

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