Captain Ahab is a character most people can recognize by name alone. One does not need to read Herman Melville’s novel to know he is a leading character in “Moby Dick,” and there is a rather legendary literary aura to the name alone. In the novel, he is expressed no differently: Ahab is a character of mystery with otherworldly language often used to describe him. He is a spoken-of figure only for twelve chapters alone, giving the reader time to develop an image of the man long before he appears in the text. Moreover, there is a second force Ahab is often compared to linguistically throughout the text, one that he utilizes in his battle against the whale: the sea. But while Ahab may see himself as a master of the sea, the water is a much stronger, more imposing force. What dooms Ahab is his own humanity: his unwillingness to relent, his obsession, and deteriorating mental state wreak devastation on the crew he manages. While both forces are initially described with godlike language, the truly limitless sea seems to act in juxtaposition with Ahab’s deterioration of mind.
To compare Ahab and the sea, first look at the language being used. Throughout the novel, Melville uses many words to describe the ocean as ethereal. In Ishmael’s initial arguments for why traveling the sea is worthwhile, he writes, “Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning” (Melville 9). The character calls attention to the divine qualities of the ocean, claiming in question that there is something about the sea that exhibits a godlike status. Later on in the novel, words signifying immeasurableness are used quite often: the “infinite series of the sea,” and “Infinite blueness” (149, 516). There is a quality to the ocean that is above man, transcending their limits (Ishmael also describes the “limitless, uncharted seas” (174)). Melville wants to express the ocean as a larger-than-life force, worthy of that god status. This is the case in many pieces of literature and mythologies (as Ishmael begins to mention). With the novel, the ocean takes on a character of its own which transcends man.
Captain Ahab is also described with similar language. At first glance, this seems to heighten the captain’s character through the comparison. In chapter sixteen, the first mentions of the captain are made by Peleg:
He is a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ’mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! (80)
The others see Ahab as close to transcending normal man as humanly possible. He is skilled and intimidating. Legend is sowed in his character when Ishmael does not physically see the captain for a great length of time. The narration builds the mystery behind the man, having others talk and tell stories of the captain. As with the sea, Ahab is seemingly legendary. When he first comes aboard, the captain does not even show his face but is “invisibly enshrined within his cabin” (99). The language alone here denotes a more otherworldly quality to Ahab’s character within the narrative, for the word enshrined is often associated with holy spaces. When Ahab does appear, Ishmael is impressed by him: “I was struck with the singular posture he maintained… Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable willfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance” (119). With the same language used to describe the ocean, Ishmael describes Ahab’s fortitude and willfulness as infinite. However, noticeably other characters see the humanity in their captain: he is known to be troubled by the loss of his leg, acting “not well.” As the story progresses, this illness becomes more visible.
Ahab’s mental state is most likely a result of a life-long internal conflict. While a full history of the man is left unknown, the reader is aware that his widowed mother was presumably insane and died shortly after his birth. Whatever early incidents in his life led the man to the sea. Ahab was seen as a “swearing good man,” and a decent captain (80). However, in Ishmael’s early musings, he writes the following of men (particularly with bible-given names):
And when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature’s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that man makes one in a whole nation’s census—a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. (74)
Ishmael goes on to talk about how these “if either by birth or other circumstance” these men “have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature” (74). Essentially, Ishmael is speaking to Ahab’s nature. While he is a powerful man, enough to be able to spend his life at sea, there is a morbidity that must be rooted in Ahab’s past. It is not until the loss of his leg that Ahab snaps and those around him become aware of his issues, but there seems to be hesitance to think of Ahab as being any less than powerful. The loss of his leg set in motion an existing problem in Ahab, which is deeply rooted in his own humanity.
What is also important to note is how Ahab, as a captain, holds some degree of mastery over the sea. It is his job to understand how the industry works, as well as the basics of the ocean. While this is not out of the ordinary for any sea captain, Ahab is using his knowledge to seek revenge on one of the ocean’s residents. In his mind, the sea is both a tool and an enemy, for while Ahab “knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale’s food; and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey,” the chase he brings the crew on is wild and pointless (188). The sea is limitless, and Ahab is relentless. He will not stop until he gets his whale, regardless of how long it takes. Unfortunately for Ahab and the crew, this chase does not end well.
This vengeance is what makes Ahab more man than god, and is what grounds him as a human. The captain has a declined mental state caused by the trauma he endured. The crew and the captain are all aware that Ahab is unwell mentally, as Ishmael points out in chapter forty-one: “human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted” (176). This obsession he harbors leads him to take dire risks with his crew, which inevitably lead to crew to their deaths. The limitlessness and god-like qualities of the captain have shifted, and it is his obsession and mental unwellness that is infinite.
The symbolism offered in “Moby Dick” is seemingly endless. However, the sea as a symbol of a larger-than-life force, takes on a character of its own whose enormity is only comparable to Captain Ahab. While the ocean is universally seen as having a divine quality to it, the captain of the Pequod has a rather godly or legendary air among men. Moby Dick as a novel seems to be making a stance here: there is an underlying argument that man cannot transcend nature or the ethereal forces that control the earth. Captain Ahab may have started off above other men and infinite in character; however, by the end of the novel it is only his obsession that transcends men. Man is not larger than life, and Ahab’s tragic end is an example of this. In the end, the only comparison left between Ahab and the sea left seems to be the coldness.
Works Cited
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Edited by Hershel Parker. Norton, 2018. Digitial.
