Moby Dick By Hermann Melville
~The Conviction of Ahab~
Captain Ahab stands before the Masthead on the Deck of the Pequod, the whaling ship yelling to the crew to gather under him. Captain Ahab, a true depiction of a rugged sailor, with leathery tawny sun stained skin, a scar running down the side of his face, and missing both his right hand and left leg seems to be well fitting a character that would be as wild spirited as he shows himself to be in this passage. The one legged captain, nails a sixteen piece golden coin to the Wooden beam of the masthead, and calls out to his fellow shipmates, telling them that “whoever takes the life of the white whale called Moby Dick, would be the fellow that received this large golden piece”. Moby Dick being the whale that took his leg, and also the same thing that gave him the long scar that stretched down to his jaw Captain Ahab has a strong thirst for revenge on the animal. But as it explained, his thirst for revenge on the whale is more that just getting retribution for his leg, it is also something more to Ahab. A short bit of whaling philosophy amidst the waves of the north atlantic.
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“Aye, aye!” Shouted the harpoonist and the seamen, running closer to the excited old man: “A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!”
“God bless ye,” He seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye, men. Steward! Go draw the great measure of grog. But what’s this long face about, Mr.Starbuck; whilt thou not chase the white whale? Art not game for Moby Dick?”
“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of death too,l Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but i came here to hunt whales, not my commanders vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thoust get it, captain Ahab? It will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”
“Nantucket Market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house of the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!”
“He smites his chest,” whispered stubb, “what’s that for? Methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”
“Hark ye yet again-- the little lower layer. 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. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him 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 principle, i will wreak that hate upon him.
Talk not to me of blasphemy man”
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To Ahab, nature is a wall, a mindless identity that hides any sort of conscious being. To Ahab, man is caged inside nature's walls just like any of the other beings that live inside nature. But he should, if he gets a chance, break free. To Ahab, Moby dick is nature… huge.. Much bigger than him. A force of nature. He hates the fact that the whale is a force of nature.. And moreover, he hates that the whale seemed to pick him for reeking its tragedy on the world of man… it ate his leg. To him it is double the insult that his life had been clipped in the actions of the legendary whale named Moby Dick.
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