Monday, November 17, 2008
Cap’n Ahab
Posted by Zach in News

 

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destorying but unconquering whale, to the last I grapple with thee: from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.  Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!  And since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!  THUS, I give up the spear!”

Forgive my rather mediocre rendering of Ahab.  It certainly isn’t worthy of the beauty of the text.  This post is likely to be haphazard.  I just want to post a couple of passages from the book that I like.  I especially like the melodrama.  Here’s a bit where Ahab talks trash about Moby to a fellow sailor.

“Look ye, Nantucketer; here in his hand I hold his death!  Tempered in  blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!”

Ahab’s self-awareness smacks of high tragedy.  He knows his obsession with the whale means death, but his fatalism forbids him to change course.  The fact that he refers to himself in the third-person suggests that he’s abdicated himself of first-person responsibility.

“Ahab is forever Ahab man.  This whole act’s immutably decreed.  ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled.  Fool!  I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.  Look thou, underling!  that thou obeyest mine.”

Permit me one more.  This one’s terrific.

“Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profunditiy.  But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul.  That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him: the step-mother world, so long cruel–forbidding–now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however willful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless.  From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.”

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