ther that being a loving Deity, Moby Dick embodies “the Old Testament Calvinistic conception of an affrighting Deity and his strict commandments”(Murray 42). T. Walker Herbert states that Moby Dick represents a God run amok (112-114). Ahab’s feelings toward a God he feels has unjustly wronged him is his inciting force to chase Moby Dick around the world.What Captain Ahab is seeking, by way of symbols and allegories, is the grand mystery of the universe. Ahab wishes to search heaven for the secret of human woe and suffering (Hillway 89) and wrest the secrets away (Spiller 455). Ahab believes God is punishing him unjustly, and Ahab’s mad quest is to avenge this private insult (Murray 46). Melville uses allusions to the Bible to emphasize this classic struggle between manand God. Ishmael says that Ahab is chasing a “Job’s whale round the world” (Melville 177). In the Old Testament, Job claims that God has unjustly wronged him, similar to Ahab’s belief. By comparing Job and Ahab, Melville forces “readers to consider God’s character, especially as it relates to human suffering” (House 213). Ahab conveys all of humanity’s protests against the injustices of fate, Melville makes Ahab the symbol ofhumanity and Moby Dick a symbol of God, conferrer of Fate. “When Ahab strikes at Moby Dick . . . he does so in a mad desire for revenge on God, whom he holds responsible for its [evil’s] existence” (Braswell 150). Ahab refuses to accept the fact that limitations on humans prohibit them from attacking God, yet Ahab tries. “A contemporary French critic got a the heart of the matter when he said that the only reason Ahab tries to harpoon Moby Dick is that he cannot harpoon God” (Braswell 151).Ahab’s blasphemous hunt of Moby Dick has made him a sinner against God. By striking back at fate Ahab has become the mirror image of his Old Testa...
