Just a moment...

“Into this wild Abyss
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave—
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,-- ”
49 Fifty years ago, for example, Henry A. Murray claimed that “Melville’s Satan is the spitting image of Milton’s hero . . . the stricken, passionate, indignant, and often eloquent rebel angel of Paradise Lost, whose role is played by Ahab.”50 On such an interpretation Melville’s Moby Dick takes the place of Milton’s God, and Ahab’s prideful,
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