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:
“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)
“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)
“For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)