om the furnace; as to and from, in their front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Peqoud, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul. (Melville)Melville’s use of phrases and words such as “unholy,” “huge pronged forks,” “red hell,” “flames,” and “blackness” show the Perquod as the vehicle of a satanic captain. The “monomainiac commander”, Captain Ahab, is intent on using any and all means necessary to get revenge on the white whale. This can be compared to Satan’s eternal fight for revenge against God for casting him out of heaven.A more gentle, uncorrupted, light is cast upon the sea. The sea is a vast, blue space in which the lives of the crew aboard the Pequod. Melville’s descriptions of nature have a romantic sense to them. Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—long dived from noon,—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I, the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly fell that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. ‘Tis iron—that I know—not gold. ‘Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal. (Melville)Most objects, such as characters and settings, a...
