Ahab Says of Himself Herman

Ahab Says of Himself

Herman Melville's Moby Dick

Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power. Damned most subtly and malignantly! Damned in the midst of Paradise!"

Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby Dick, is a profound, philosophical meditation on life centered on the symbolic hunt for the white whale. The divine connotations of the whale are evident. In Melville's works, nature is transparent enough to allow a glimpse of the metaphysical reality beyond it. However, the struggle of man who is left to drift alone in a world which surpasses his comprehension powers, with the nature around him is something that Melville specifically emphasizes. The whale is pursued by the mad Ahab in a desperate attempt to find its "talismanic truth," its metaphysical secret. Ishmael, in his turn, observes that the ocean is a symbol for everything there is, for life itself in its plenitude. The white whale inspires metaphysical awe, while the sea in its endlessness intimates infinity and predisposes men to melancholic dreaming. Moby Dick is thus a satiated allegory, in which man is seen as caught between the awful metaphysical realities. Both Ahab and Ishmael symbolize the human condition: they stand alone in front of the overwhelming and saturated world.

Thus, significantly the whale functions almost as a variable symbol in the book, with a different meaning for each of the main characters. Interestingly enough, the main characters in the novel form two different pairs, according to the "high perception" of reality which animates them: Ishamael and Queequeg and Ahab and Starbuck. As Melville directly states in the novel, for Ishamael and Ahab the whale means something very different. At the same time, Queequeg and Starbuck respectively, are the more human counterparts of the extremely melancholic Ishmael and of the mad Ahab.

Ishmael is the Platonic philosopher for whom the whale and the ocean on which they float represent the metaphysical truth hidden beyond the immediately visible. He certainly has a high perception of the world, and his ever melancholic mood leads his to endless contemplation on the deep mysteries of the universe. Ishmael himself intimates the way in which his perception differs from that of Ahab. He thus confesses to a metaphysical dread of the whale's whiteness, the pure blankness which translates the infinite and ungraspable hollowness that hides just beneath the colorful surface of things. Moreover, the deep ocean rolling under the Pequod is another source of ceaseless meditation for Ishmael: "With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I -- being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude, -- how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders..." (Melville, 155-156) Significantly, Ishmael is inefficient as a watcher for whales on the mast. His own deep thoughts steal on him, dragging him away from reality. He cannot catch and kill the whale or take any active attitude in front of the inscrutable mysteries of the world, as he is too engulfed in his own contemplation: "Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent- minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber..."(Melville, 156) the image of the swinging waves suggests the existence of a supreme soul underneath it all. Reality is pictured thus not as an empirical world, but as profound and mysterious reality. For Ishmael, the whale which breaches out of the waves is the symbol of the mystery that this reality contains. Therefore, nothing is as it seems. The visible carcass of the natural world is but a mask that hides the metaphysical truth from the eyes of man. Again significantly, Ishmael loses his fixed identity, uniting his soul with the rollicking waves: "Lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly- discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it."(Melville, 157) This semi-conscious state of almost pure and selfless contemplation is probably the best rendering of Ishmael's high perception of reality. For Ishmael thus the whale is a question mark, something that offers infinite contemplation.

On the other hand, the half savage pagan, Queequeg, with whom Ishmael can be easily paired as a character, is utterly detached from his surroundings, living in absolute content and serenity. He can also be called a philosopher, but he is obviously much more human than the lofty Ishmael: "Yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy..."(Melville, 51) Queequeg, although an endowed with a profound mind himself, does not share in the absolute high perception that Ishmael is tortured by.

The other set of characters, formed by Ahab and Starbuck, have a very different perception of reality. In a different way, but to the same degree as Ishmael, Ahab is the slave of a transcendental perception of the universe. Without contenting himself with the mere contemplation of the hidden reality, Ahab madly chases Moby Dick, seeking a monomaniac revenge on the dumb brute for having dismembered him. To him the mad quest is an imperative and not a question. Constantly and arduously, Ahab pursues his obsession, struggling with the transcendental and not merely recognizing its existence. Through Ahab, Melville offers an almost tragic view of the human condition: the whale, which symbolizes the ultimate truth, can not be possessed. The captain goes mad in his search of the whale, and dies eventually. The whales are compared suggestively with the mute Sphynxes, the holders of truth but at the same time its hiders, since they cannot speak and express it. The metaphysical beyond the obvious reality refuses to give its secret. Moby Dick is the symbol of the diver, who can go a long way beneath the surface of things, to the core of reality. There it can find out all the secrets of the ocean, as opposed to the drifting man, a mere sailor who is confined to the outer reality and can only hunt the truth when it breaches out of the waves for an instant: "I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights."(Melville, 501) Ahab restlessly challenges the invisible power symbolized by the whale. Probably the most evocative metaphor that he uses to describe the monster is its similarity to a wall: "All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough."(Melville, 161-162) the comparison of the whale with a wall emphasizes Ahab's maddening endeavor to break the ultimate resistance of truth and conquer it. Thus, he is not fascinated like Ishmael by the metaphysical, he wants to own it and vanquish 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. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."(Melville, 162) in Ahab's struggle with the inscrutable, he never ceases to be a personality himself, refusing to be daunted by its overwhelming force. The ultimate desire to kill the whale shows Ahab's obsession with obtaining an absolute victory over the unknown. The captain is obviously haunted by the same high perception of reality as Ishmael is, with the addition that his strife is extremely personal.