How Is Captain Ahab Despicable

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick illustrates a journey across seas in pursuit of discovery, freedom, and vengeance. From the beginning, an aura of mystery surrounds Captain Ahab, as Melville waits to introduce him until well into the novel. The obscurity surrounding Ahab causes an uneasiness amongst the crew that continues throughout the novel. After the attack that left him missing a leg, Ahab views Moby-Dick as evil personified; to Ahab, killing the whale means killing all evil. Ahab’s thirst for blood turns him into a cold-hearted man whose sole purpose is to crucify the white whale.

Captain Ahab always had the desire to go after Moby Dick. His obsession grew even deeper when the great white whale took his leg. He spent several years trying to go after the whale. By being the captain of the ship, he had crew members come along on his journey to help slay the whale. His passion grew deeper each day as he lived amongst the ship and set sails to complete his mission.

He tells his crew, "He tasks me; he heaps me; I see him in outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.” He tries to convince his crew that what he's doing is for a good cause. Ahab is willing to do whatever it takes to convince his crew to help him on his journey to kill Moby Dick. Ahab has to persuade them that hunting Moby Dick is more important than earning a profit. Ahab persuades his crew shows that he willing to kill his crew if it means having a better chance at achieving his

As with The Yellow Wallpaper, Moby-Dick is based on Hermann Melville's real experience aboard a whaler, with countless parallels between his time on the Acushnet and the happenstance of the events in the novel. In addition, Melville incorporates historical events from his lifetime, including the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex and the alleged killing of the whale Mocha Dick, who attacked ships with premeditated ferocity. In the dense pages of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, there emerges a message about revenge’s resulting descent into madness. After the whale Moby Dick destroyed his boat, captain Ahab attempted to attack the whale, however he ended up suffering the loss of his leg. With a lack of medical care while voyaging across the seas,

I think Ahab is mad, just the way he is and talk about thing like I think this man is crazy like he lost his mind. He thinks its his prophecy that he had to go dismember the whale that got him, hes just crazy, hes just so obsessed with catch this whale and kill it. Ahab considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale like theirs nothing else in the world to do but hat and because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in his case both psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh world. Hes trying to fight something that's not really worth fighting.

Starbuck implores Ahab to stop chasing Moby Dick and to, “let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! (531) He knows that Ahab’s conviction is waning, and Starbuck is trying to do the right thing the only way that he knows how. As seen in Chapter 123: “The Musket” Starbuck is a good man, and while he may have contemplated shooting Ahab, he eventually did what was right and put the gun down. Starbuck follows the rules and the chain of command, and he know that the only way that the Pequod will set sail for Nantucket would be with Ahab’s order. But nonetheless, Starbuck tries anyways, and begs with Ahab to go home. But Ahab does not listen, and they continue on their quest for Moby

Melville showcases this characteristic of the crew throughout the text by capriciously changing narration in certain chapters to give the perspective of how each character perceived it in their minds. The perspective of Ahab is most interesting as it also shares the same desperate need for purpose and meaning found in Ishmael’s musings, “ he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it…beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them” (470). Ahab, like most of the Pequod lives off the ideal of an individualized fate, and because the Moby Dick took away his leg, Ahab feels that his destiny is to slay the beast since there must be a reason for his constant pain that he feels every day; the attack could not have been a senseless tragedy in Ahab’s mind. He needs something to justify his pain and so inadvertently makes a delusional destiny for himself that he must be the one to kill the whale. He cannot accept the idea of freak accidents and unfairness. He cannot accept that his quest may be insignificant in the grand scope of things which fuels his pursuit and makes it a priority that he be the one to kill the whale, “‘Where was he?- not killed!- not killed!’ cried Ahab, closely advancing. ‘How was it?’” (576). Ahab’s selfish justification gives him tunnel vision to the world around him and this encounter affirms that by showing his distressed hope for the whale to still be alive so he can kill it himself. The whale being killed by someone else would refute his destiny and set his life into turmoil. At this moment he needs the Whale to be alive, he does not care for the crew of the Pequod, the Rachael or the actual mission of the boat, only the survival of his most sworn enemy. This is an overarching tone and folly for all characters that lead to nowhere except grief such as

His most famous book, Moby Dick, features the observant narrator, Ishmael, aboard the Pequot, a ship captained by the menacing one-legged Captain Ahab. Having lost his limb in a previous voyage to an enormous sperm whale named Moby Dick, Ahab scans the seven seas in manic search of revenge against the giant. Queequeg, Ishmael’s menacing best friend, and the rest of the crew are subjected to extreme jeopardy and later death due to Ahab’s monomaniacal disregard for bad omens and danger. The whale slices the boat clean in half and none survive to tells of its greatness except Ishmael.

As if this whale has some sort of overruling power that they are actually unaware of and that have only heard from stories. However Ahab interprets this whale to be nothing less than evil based off of his leg being scavenged by Moby Dick previously, so his mission is solely for revenge.

Moby-Dick is considered to be one of, if not the, best novels in American history. Harper & Brothers first published it in 1851 in New York. In England, it was published in the same year under the title, The Whale (“Moby Dick”). Melville explores topics and themes that were scarcely spoken of and never even seen in a novel. In the novel, the Pequod, which is the ship, is named after a Native American tribe that was exterminated when the white settlers arrived. It is a symbol of death and doom and foreshadows event that occur later in the novel. Melville brings some very controversial themes to light in the novel. Revenge is one of the main themes of Dark Romanticism and Melville uses it to drive every action taken by Ahab. This is seen early on in the novel as Ahab explains to the crew why he has a peg leg and that he wants to enact his revenge on Moby Dick (Melville 160-161). “Moby Dick is, fundamentally, a revenge tragedy. It’s about one man’s maniacal obsession with vengeance. It’s about finding an object on which to pin all you anger and fear and rage, not only about your own suffering, but also about the suffering of all mankind” (“Moby

Just as King Ahab turned away from God and experienced a forewarned fate, Captain Ahab abandoned God and was killed by Moby-Dick. It is ironic, then, that Ahab seems to abandon God while hunting the white whale. Moby-Dick, in a similarly biblical fashion to Ahab, represents a prominent figure: God. As described by Melville: For, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out—a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.”

While Ahab was still the obedient captain he once was, he was one of the most successful and higher rewarding captains. Unexpectedly, in the midst of a whaling, Ahab and his crew encountered the whale he now refers to as “Moby Dick” or “the white whale.” The crew initiated in capturing the whale, but this whale was different. Rather than capturing the whale, the whale captured Ahab and though Ahab escaped, he did not escape entirely. Moby Dick had dismembered and consumed half of one of Ahab’s legs. Ever since this incident, Ahab’s one and only desire or, as stated in the text, “...his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought” has been to kill Moby Dick; which soon turns him obsessive (Melville). Ahab would not let anyone or anything stop him from achieving his goal, “...’I’ll chase him ‘round Good Hope, and ‘round the Horn, and ‘round the Norway Maelstrom, and ‘round

Captain Ahab is wanting to seek revenge on the white whale because it took off his leg and he did not get a chance to kill it. He puts finding the white whale over the safety of his crew by taking them into elaborate settings. He did not care that the oil barrels were leaking, that resulted in them losing oil, which meant they were losing money.

Consequently due to his personal growth as a character, Ishmael's divine spirit becomes saved and he himself is rescued from certain death. Captain Ahab remains unable to accept the concepts of transcendentalism, his pursuit of Moby-Dick is relentless and without mercy. His character has no opportunity for growth or discovery as he shuns the advice of everyone, whilst in pursuit of the white whale. Due to this his fate becomes irrevocably sealed and he is doomed to fail his mission and perish at the mercy of his quarry.

Similar to Ahab, the Samuel Enderbys’ captain has donated a limb to Moby-Dick, but unlike the Pequod’s leader, the Englishman wants to keep away from the White Whale, arguing, “ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? … He’s best left alone” (368). The one-armed captain, head of a ship named for a wealthy British merchants, describes his experience to the one-legged monomaniac, who is overly excited, but the Englishman does not approach the experience as a spiritual battle like Ahab. Interrupting the captain, Ahab exclaims his highlights of his effect on the whale, claiming credit for the harpoons and scars decorating that wild beast. The Samuel Enderby’s captain continues “good-humoredly” (365). The Englishman did not know that he had lost his arm to the Moby-Dick for some time after the attack, but when he found out the identity of his opponent, he forfeited two chances to repeat his attempt at capturing oil from the White Whale. To the Englishman’s sage like attitude, Moby-Dick was nothing more than a remarkably profitable catch, while to