President Ahab

Moby Dick is winding down and I have entered into the section where Melville is fleshing out his hero, Ahab. This is the section where most readers pick the story back up after skipping over the weird stuff in the middle where Melville is piecing together his unintelligible (or at least disorganized) philosophical arguments.

From chapter 112, Ahab wakens from his brooding with a burning fire in his heart. He asks the blacksmith to forge him a new spear, bringing the blacksmith some horse-shoe pieces:

“Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work.”

“I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I’ll blow the fire.”

After working over the pieces, forming the perfect spear, Ahab wants to harden his blade and asks his shipmates for their blood…

“No, no- no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.

“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.

After spending half of the book masking Ahab’s true nature Melville’s narrator suddenly paints a picture not just of a man monomaniacally chasing Moby Dick for revenge, but a man filled to the brim with Hubris. Through each encounter with Ahab we learn that he places himself not just as master of the men on his ship, not just above the white whale, but over God himself. In Latin Ahab says “I baptize you NOT in the name of the father but in the name of the DEVIL!” and then hardens the weapon in the blood of his men.

After the forging of his weapon, Ahab and Ishmael are on the sea hunting whales and Ish stares out at the rhythms of the sea and falls into one of these now customary “fugue states” and ponders the nature of life once again.

Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,- though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,- in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:- through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.

This is Melville on repeat – he’s doubling down on his idea that all humans do is vanity and that we can barely know our own intentions so how can we understand God? We can’t, he says here, not until we die. I will admit that I tend to be more Old Testament; there is no knowing after death, there is merely what we do here and now that matters and we need to make our peace with what we have done or what we have not done in this life.

After catching a whale, Ahab and Parsee (his oarsman) must sit watch for they cannot row back to the boat in the dark. Parsee tells Ahab of his vision for Ahab’s death – that there will be two hearses and that only hemp can kill Ahab.

The first hearse’s plumes float over the sea with the waves as the pallbearers; this is Moby Dick. The second hearse made of American wood (the Pequod). Ahab laughs these off – asking where will there be hearses at sea! Parsee adds that he will be Ahab’s pilot on the day of his doom but it’s the rope which Ahab mistakes for the hangman’s noose and at this faulty logic declares “I am immortal then, on land and on sea!”

Ahab continues on his pride rampage. Ahab navigated by day using a quadrant. After figuring his latitude by spotting the precise zenith of the sun, Ahab curses the quadrant

“Foolish toy! babies’ plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores,and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man’s eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth’s horizon are the glances of man’s eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament.Curse thee, thou quadrant!” dashing it to the deck, “no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level deadreckoning, by log and by line; THESE shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye,” lighting from the boat to the deck,“thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!”

Now believing himself to be immortal, having forged a blade of hellfire quenched in blood, Ahab brushes aside science and civilization. We may be tempted to think that Ahab is angry that the quadrant can only tell him where he is but not Moby Dick, and that’s true. But it’s also true that Ahab decides to lean solely on his own skill – dead-reckoning, the log and line, and a compass – to pilot the boat from here on out. These aren’t mere actions of anger or frustration but of a man who thinks he is above science and even nature.

Scholars suggest that Melville drew up Ahab after listening to a Lecture by Nathaniel Hawthorne on how Shakespeare would pick one flaw in a character and amplify it to a morbid degree. Is it pride which infects Ahab but a pride gone beyond simple vanity and manifest as arrogance. These may seem to be the same thing but pride is an inward focused flaw – it makes us overvalue ourselves – while arrogance is an outward focused contempt for others.

Shakespeare’s King Lear is prideful. When he decides to split his kingdom among his three daughters he asks each of them to publicly declare their adoration for him. Lear is taken in by his serpent-tongued daughter Goneril and her effusive love for him – she loves him more than eye sight and freedom! – and immediately awards her a generous portion. Next steps up Regan and she says she loves her father more than Goneril, in fact more than joy itself! And Regan gets her portion. But Cordelia, the youngest and most beloved by the king, is the foil for the other two sisters: she tells her father the truth. Cordelia tells the king that when she marries, she will take half of her love with her to her husband. Lear is stricken. He tells Cordelia her truth will be her dowry and divides the kingdom between the other two sisters instead.

It all goes downhill from there but what makes Lear a tragedy is that he realizes he was wrong and we have an entire play full of Lear suffering the consequences of his pride, including the ultimate sacrifice of losing the only one(s)* who really loved him. Never once does Ahab change course.

As soon as Ahab destroys his quadrant the Pequod is blown into a typhoon. There lightning strikes all around and the ship is set aglow with flaming tips of plasma. Starbuck and Stubb order the crew to lower the chains (which act as lightning rod – directing the energy of the lightning into the seas and away from the boat) but Ahab climbs out of his bunk, declares himself “Old Thunder”, and tells the crew to leave the chains. All around the “corpusants” (candles) burn bright white, glowing ever whiter as electricity gathers. Starbuck sees the way clear: to the windward side, the storm; to the leeward side, homeward, he sees clear skies.

Where Lear challenged the storm but retreated to shelter (thanks to the ever-faithful Kent) Ahab takes the chains into his own hands and shouts defiance to the storm:

“Look up at it; mark it well; the white flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood against fire! So.”

Then turning- the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eve, and high-flung right arm, he stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.

“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whenceso’er I came; whereso’er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”

[Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them.]

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling in some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!”

Ahab’s harpoon alights with the St.Elmo’s Fire, the crew screams out in terror at this evil portend and Starbuck seems for a second to rally the troops – ready to mutiny. But Ahab throws down the chains, grabs the glowing spear, and walks among his men. He reminds them of their solemn blood oath to hunt Moby Dick and in a dramatic moment, blows out the flame on the tip of his spear.

Where Lear had a moment’s compassion for poor Kent and sought refuge in the storm – “Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart; That’s sorry yet for thee” – Ahab has none.

Ahab proclaims himself the lord of thunder and lightning and the Pequod, sails in tatters, bobs in an angry sea, headed toward its doom.

Qq

*Kent is said to commit suicide after Lear dies, though Lear doesn’t experience that death the way he does Cordelia.