Moby Dick Lesson Plan

Why might it have been better for Pip to have drowned the second time he fell into the ocean?

Pip is essentially condemned to death, quite cruelly, and by luck he survives. The psychological weight of the event is so great that it pushes Pip into insanity, for he cannot effectively grasp the fact that the crew members of the Pequod would have let him die. Melville will return to the repercussions of this event later in the novel when Pip comes into contact with Captain Ahab, yet until then the significance of this chapter is that it demonstrates that the crew members of the Pequod are perfectly able to sacrifice others in order to perform their whaling tasks. However,...