Characters
The crew-members of the Pequod are carefully drawn stylizations of human types and habits; critics have often described the crew as a "self-enclosed universe". There are 30 crew members, and as there were thirty states in the union at the time, it has been suggested that, in its diversity, Melville meant the Pequod to be a metaphor for America.
Read more about this topic: Moby Dick
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)