This research examines the dreaded fate of the Pequod, Captain Ahab's vessel in Moby-Dick, as a foregone conclusion, based on Melville's liberal use of biblical imagery and symbolism as a device of foreshadowing the climax of the narrative. The plan of the research will be to set forth the overall pattern of ideas and events in the book and then to discuss how Melville uses biblical allusion as a device for articulating the thoughts that inform the development of the narrative.
The major line of narrative action in Moby-Dick deals with the obsession of Captain Ahab, a whaling ship's captain, to search the oceans for a white whale he has named Moby-Dick, which maimed him on a previous voyage. Ahab's determination to exact revenge leads him to repeatedly shift course at sea until he finds the whale -- for which he is no match. Except for Ishmael, a shipmate who tells the story, Ahab and all on the whaler, the Pequod, are lost when the frenzied white whale rams it.
The biblical underpinnings of Moby-Dick can be discerned in two major ways. The story, though narrated by the rather urbane schoolmaster Ishmael, is organized around incidents involving extreme forces, urgent emotions, and the highest of stakes, not unlike the violent stories of the Old Testament or the outrageous images of the book of Revelation in the New Testament. Aside from that are myriad allusions to specific texts, characters, incidents, and images in the Bible. Chiefly the referents are from the Old Testament, but Ishmael repeatedly positions himself as a "good Presbyterian Christian" (Melville 81) who is nothing if not a paragon of 19th-century American social virtue and personal decency.
More generally, Moby-Dick can be interpreted as having an allegorical pattern, not only because the names of the various characters have analogues in the Bible but also because throughout the narrative, Judeo-Christian sensibilities and social ideas flowing therefrom are arr...