Captain
Ahab,
Melville’s symbol of every man, struggles with Moby Dick, the unknown and unknowable, and emerges less than whole. In his determination to conquer the unknowable, he loses
what makes him human. Ever since the loss of his leg, Ahab has been on a desperate quest to destroy Moby Dick, the creature who severed it. Ahab believes that Moby Dick is
the source of all evil, and so feels that destroying the whale would rid his
soul of suffering. However, in order to be focused and driven enough to reach this goal, Ahab must
separate himself from
humanity and the human aspects of himself.
Moby Dick is, to Ahab, “the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung” (Melville 175). He represents that which can only be partly known and not fully understood. After all, “the living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight” (250). Because he cannot conquer the unknown, Ahab becomes frustrated, angry, and hostile. To Ahab, “all that most maddens and torments;…all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil…were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick” (175). Ahab’s quest is more than simply vengeance for the loss of his leg; it is a symbolic battle between man’s desire for knowledge and the unfathomability of the universe.
However, Ahab’s single-mindedly determined pursuit of the whale causes him to break his connections with people and lose his humanness. There is little motivation in comfort, and therefore to remain motivated and focused on his task, Ahab subconsciously distances himself from things that make him comfortable and human. He finds that things that once soothed him have lost their power. In chapter 37, he muses, “Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more” (160). Earlier, just before throwing away his pipe, he commented, “How now, this smoking no longer soothes” (124). These are both examples of his subconscious need to rid himself of human comfort in order to continue moving forward. Ahab is more deliberate in isolating himself from his fellow man. He never speaks at meals, making the officers’ supper stifling and awkward, when by contrast the harpooneers laugh and joke and are sociable. He refuses to participate in gams, which are part of the normal social order of the seafaring world, with ships that cannot aid him in his quest. In his monomaniacal quest to conquer the whale, he becomes less than human.
To Melville, man, as represented by Ahab, encounters evil and loses his soul in the process. Like Adam, Ahab encounters a serpent and defies God; but unlike Adam who becomes human through the knowledge of good and evil, Ahab loses his humanity to his quest to attain power over his world.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Bantam Classic. 1981.