Symbolism In Moby-Dick

In literature sometimes animals, objects and characters are personify to convey or symbolize different themes, in the fiction book Moby Dick by Herman Melville this is the case. Moby-Dick is the story of Ahab the captain of a whaling ship who embarks in a quest to hunt a white whale that bit off one of his legs, the story is told by the main character Ishmael who is a sailor in Ahab’s ship, which ends in a tragic ending where everyone dies except for him. Herman uses metaphors, symbolism, and personification to express different themes throughout his book. He uses Ishmael- the main character- to symbolize how often people feel that life is meaningless and what they resolve to do because of it, Queequeg a cannibal is used to represent the ignorance

Who ain't a slave? Tell me that… I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view” (30.) Miller in this case expresses how everybody is a “slave”, which could in fact be true even in this period of time because at some point in everyone’s life you take orders and follow them even if you don’t agree, everybody works for someone and follows orders given to them, “The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills” (31), Everything we do is based around money, it is needed everywhere you go and it Miller believes it to be the root to all