This is yet another foreshadowing device, for it shows that Moby Dick is nothing but an animal with no conscience and that Ahab's need for revenge will inevitably lead to his own death and that of the entire crew aboard the Pequod. In a very moving moment in the chapter "The Musket," Starbuck's moral ethics are put to the supreme test, for after a severe typhoon, goes below deck to inform the sleeping Ahab that the dangerous weather has subsided. He finds a loaded musket just outside Ahab's door and in that instant "there strangely evolved an evil thought" in his head -- "Shall this crazed old man be... suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?" (pg. #). Yet Starbuck, as a result of his religious/moral beliefs, finds it impossible to kill Ahab in order to save the crew from certain destruction. With this, Melville is foreshadowing the fact that it will be Moby Dick that destroys the Pequod and the crew.

Before the actual sighting of Moby Dick and the three-day chase that ends with the whale destroying the Pequod and the foreshadowed death of Starbuck, Ahab and all the rest of the crew except for Ishmael, Melville describes the sea as azure and steel-blue and then relates, "Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched his shadow in the water... From beneath his slouched hat, Ahab dropped a tear into the sea... " (pg. #). This is yet another foreshadowing device which indicates that Ahab, by seeing his shadow on the surface of the sea, will one day become part of it through drowning, and the tear symbolizes his realization that this will surely come to pass.

In the chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale," Ishmael tells the reader that "It was the whiteness of the whale above all things...

The disguise of whiteness makes bloody creatures more horrible. The marble pallor of the dead, ghosts rising in the milk-white fog" (pg. #). This is another foreshadowing device that symbolizes death for the crew of the Pequod, for they will all become "ghosts" after drowning, and their faces will take on the "marble pallor" of death. In Melville's mind, whiteness is far more terrible than blackness, for white represents true death, much like the draining of blood from a body; it also represents the sea itself, the waves of white as they roll endlessly and forever.
When Queequeg becomes ill by knowing that his death is near, he calls on the ship's carpenter to build him a coffin to Queequeg's exact measurements. He then carves strange figures on the coffin, much like the tattoos on his body. And when the Pequod and all its crew are drowned, the lone survivor, being Ishmael, is saved by using the coffin as a lifeboat and then drifts to safety. With this, Melville is foreshadowing Ishmael's survival, but this also goes back to the time when Ishmael was being "cradled" in the arms of Queequeg at the Spouter's Inn which foreshadowed the fact that Queequeg would be Ishmael's savior.

Thus, the application of foreshadowing in Melville's Moby Dick allows the reader to share in the adventures of Ishmael, Queequeg, Captain Ahab, Starbuck and, of course, Moby Dick, the great and powerful "White Whale." But the most important aspect of foreshadowing in the novel is that it provides the impetus to the reader to keep on reading despite the novel's length and complexity which in the end makes it a very satisfying experience.

Bibliography

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. 2nd. ed. New York: Norton & Company, 2002.