Yin F. answered • 03/21/21
Life can't be lived in full without music, art, and literature.
Not sure how precise you would like this to be answered but one line in this chapter provides an imagery of what role Moby Dick plays during the struggle between him and the whalers. "...but maddened by yesterday’s fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven." In a literary perspective, the 'corrosion' that happened from the previous day's attack doesn't seemingly describe just the physical injuries he sustained but rather comparison that is described in the latter part of the sentence, 'the angels that fell from heaven'. It's almost like a corruption. And in this whole chapter, as the whalers attempt to defeat Moby Dick, the whale destroys one ship after the other and the whalers felled one by one until at the very end of the chapter, we read the scene of Tashtego going down with his ship into the depths of 'hell'. The picture painted here is like a final foreboding prediction of what might have happened to everyone else who thought to attempt finishing the job.
So here, Moby Dick isn't just a whale, but one that took the lives of many people, and represented the destruction of the ships with just a swing of his tail. And it's symbolized throughout the whole chapter in the dreary atmosphere and sense of despair the text describes.
