A Brief Analysis of the Religious Significance in Moby Dick
Melville's masterpiece, "Moby Dick" is the world's cultural heritage. Religious significance of it is still relatively less researched. Melville’s religious belief is very complex, difficult to determine. First, God is in his mind, the God in "the Bible • Old Testament ", people have to fight against their own mind to follow God’s wishes. He’s God is also the God of the universe, which means that the white whale has represented the divine nature. He questioned God's mercy in "the Bible". In the early19th century, Transcendentalism is raised in a number of writers. Melville, lost faith in the industrial revolution, too. So he was trying to search of a destruction and rebirth in the whaling adventure.
In "Moby Dick", the most attractive role is the Captain Ahab. His experience is almost the same as revenge tragedy in the Elizabeth period，being both hero and villain ,most people should not be compared with him. His mind and will, courage and conviction make him a best man above others. However, the novel more than once asserted that he was paranoid and stubborn and his hatred white whale as a symbol of evil.His name came from a story of Bible.
"Moby Dick "is a legendary white whale, the novel shows the symbols of its multiple meanings from the perspective of different characters. In the pagan’s view, it is calm and serene at times, but sometime become a brutal sea monster of terror; mad Buddha Bailey treat it as God of the earthquake; in the eyes of Ahab, "It is all the rage and pain to people, enough to stir up things stinks, all truth with malice, and all the things people thinking about the magical life and mysterious spirits heresy, and all the evil, etc, are Moby Dick."
It is the evil and terror in Ahab’s heart; it is the enemy difficult to conquer and must be destroyed. But to Ishmael, the white whale represents both noble peace and terrorist death, it is the opposite of all the universe, the combination of contradictions, a symbol of the universe’s wide and mystery of God's boundless divine power, fate and the future of mankind, It is important to give Ishmael enlightenments not simply to destroy, but to strive to improve awareness, the pursuit of truth.
Maple priests use the language of whaling, established by the story of whaling, to express an idea which is hard to understand: the most perfect "self "can be reached only through the elimination of "self" .Faith is a problem through the whole book. Even if he sometimes does not know what to believe and who to believe in the circumstances, he still keeps the faith. For example, in "Moby Dick" Chapter 48, in the night of the storm, they put a boat down to search the whale but nearly met disaster, and the standard-bearer Kui Kui sat there, as a symbol of the people without any belief in despair, supporting their hope in weakness "
Captain Ahab willing to abandon the comfortable life on land to isolate dangerous sea, the motivation the surface is to kill the white whale for revenge, but in reality is to find himself and the spirit of peace and freedom;