Question

How does Melville indirectly characterize Ahab in the opening paragraphs of the excerpt? How is this characterization consistent with Romanticism, and how does it resemble some of Hawthorne’s characterization from The Scarlet Letter?:

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Answer 1

One might wonder how Herman Melville was able to write a story such as Moby Dic so realistically. It is because he spent time on a whaling ship that sailed out of the same port from which Ahab's ship departs. The element of realism in this novel of adventure and obsession is born of personal experience.

On January 3, 1841, he sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the whaler Acushnet, which was bound for the Pacific Ocean..