Ahab Man Or God?
Ahab Man Or God?
"Call him Ahab, a “grand, ungodly, god-like man” in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (85). He is a man whose enthusiasm is so great, mission so inspirational, and manner so intense that few can resist the urge to follow him in his journey to kill the white whale. Although Ahab is only a man, he controls his ship like he is God fighting evil.
Ahab looks “like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them”(128). On his forehead, is a prominent “lividly whitish” scar that runs down his face, neck and under his clothes (129). The scar looks like the mark of a lightning bolt. His physique is compared to a sculpture of solid bronze or an impressive oak tree. Ahab’s wrinkled brow bears a resemblance to his numerous sea charts. On his face is a grim look, “an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrendable willfulness in his features” (129). He has an artificial leg, a barbaric, white ivory prosthesis “fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw”(130).
From the start of the novel, Ahab creates an aura of secrecy. With his powerful speech and the incentive of the gold doubloon, Ahab has the crew in his power. What to the crew is a journey to kill Moby Dick is to Ahab a journey of pride and a quest against evil. When Ahab first encountered Moby Dick, he lost more than just his leg. He lost his soul. He has no connection to any other person or thing beyond the leviathan. Therefore he befriends Pip who, like him, is an outcast as well. The crew sees Pip as being crazy, but because of his charisma, he is the only one who can be close to Ahab. When he witnessed the terror and rage of the sea, he was driven mad. “The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up but drowned the infinite of his soul.” (440) Ahab too had sacrificed the infinite of his soul, but replaced it with his burning desire to destroy the evil white whale. Moby Dick was more than an evil white whale, however, to Ahab he was Lucifer himself. ...