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Is it accurate to say that Ishmael becomes Ahab at the end of this?
He's endured far worse at the hands of Moby-Dick than Ahab, losing Queequeg and witnessing untold destruction and the loss of an entire ship's worth of crew. Both experiences result in obsession, but manifested in different ways, Ahab with an unquenchable lust for vengeance and Ishmael with a desire to catalogue and understand everything there is to know about the whale, hence his writing of the book and particularly the cetological chapters.
Compare the ending of the chapter "Of Whales in Paint etc." where Ishmael claims he'd hunt the constellation Cetus if he could, "to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond [his] mortal sight" to the passage where Ahab claims he'd "strike the sun if it insulted [him]". Both quotations demonstrate their respective characters' angst when confronted with their insignificance and lack of control over a cruel and uncaring natural world.
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>>9073492
wrong, all wrong. it's just a big metaphor for gay sex. stop reading so far into it. Melville was just a communist subversive.
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>>9073492
Not sure if I fully agree with this. I could go into more detail, but I am unsure if I could reason my point well. Instead, I will focus on one aspect of your last line. You state that they are confronted with "insignificance and lack of control over a cruel and uncaring natural world," and they certainly are confronted with this. However, there are hints that this world is not so uncaring in Ishmael's case. One such example comes from the epilogue. Consider this line:
"The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks."
At least for Ishmael, nature is not entirely uncaring. His shipmates may have perished, but this line does resist against the idea that he lives in a completely "cruel and uncaring natural world".
I hope you understand my point, as I am not exactly a scholar and you have explained your argument better than I have explained mine.
Lastly, your conclusion ignores some of the subtler hints that Ishmael indeed conquers his death-hypos mentioned at the beginning. For further reading on this topic, see chapters 6 & 7 of The Salt Sea Mastodon:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=Kb6FdqTDOQIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
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>>9073500
haha kek good point my man
upvoted
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>>9073492
No, Moby was the good guy and Ishamel got mixed up with very bad company. (A band of chaotic evil pillager barbarians, basically.)
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>>9073492
Ahab became a monomaniac, with his focus on one thing only. While Ishmael was interested in everything, not just whaling.
From the earlier chapters Ishmael is shown to have this interest before his experience with Moby-Dick.
Also, there are parts in the book where Ishmael acknowledges that some things can't be understood by humans, so I wouldn't say he is obsessed with understanding everything about the whale.
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>>9073492
you need to read the book again my dude
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>>9073597
>what is a squeeze of the hand
nope, no homoerotic content here, by golly!
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>>9073901
>any feeling of comradery, friendship or closeness between men is automatically gay.
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>>9074083
>squeezing sperm
>not a teensy bit gay
cmon.
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