Moby Dick

Moby Dick Paper

In every great literary work there is a symbolic element that makes the author’s message more detectable to his readers. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick there is the idea of the “counterpane” of humanity. This theme is mixed in throughout the story as a symbol of the world’s multiculturalism. Melville shows that the world is a counterpane of diverse cultures, races, and environments, in which we are always connected by our humanity. Melville also uses the open sea as a metaphor for the world and mankind.
The most obvious counterpane in Moby Dick is the crew of the Pequod. Every shipmate on board the Pequod brought some sort of different culture and background to the ship. The three colored harpooners and the three white mates each had their own beliefs about life. The other members of the crew such as Fedallah, Pip, Ahab, and Ishamael made up one big mixture of cultures. It is interesting how the white crew on the ship who in their wildest dreams never thou...