For the following entries of Heroes and Villains, we of Xlibris Publishing will be exploring characters that blur the line between good and evil. Rarely can people be broken down into simply good or evil. People are complex, this is a basic truth. Xlibris Publishing hopes authors will take something interesting from the upcoming entries. Great characters tend to be multifaceted, having traits both abhorrent and admirable. We will begin this set of entries with Captain Ahab, hunter of the great white whale Moby Dick.
Who is Captain Ahab?
Captain Ahab is one of the main characters of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In Melville’s novel, Ahab is the captain of the whaling ship the Pequod. His friends or closest comrades call him a “grand, ungodly, god-like man.” He is 58 years old by the context of the novel, and beforehand has lead a varied and adventurous life. Born and raised by a madwoman, Ahab had graduated from college and spent time with cannibals. It is said by the residents of Nantucket Isle, Ahab’s home, that the captain had wielded his lance against “stranger foes than whales.” In his adventures Ahab survived storms and fought Spaniards. It is during one of these adventures that Ahab’s leg was taken by a monstrous white whale, an injury that gnaws at his sprit and mind and made worse by his reliance on a whalebone prosthetic leg.
What does Captain Ahab do?
By the time the story begins and he is introduced, Ahab is raising a crew to go whaling on his the Pequot. Ahab is very open about desire to avenge himself on the white whale Moby Dick. To motivate his crew in aiding him on his vendetta Ahab offers a gold doubloon to the first man who sights the great beast. Over the course of the novel, the sheer force of Ahab’s personality seems to spread the hunger for revenge amongst much of the crew, including the narrator. The further the Pequod goes on its journey, the more Ahab grows eerie and strange.
He becomes aloof, foregoing interaction with passing whaling ships as is custom on the seas. He acts oddly, speaking to the head of a freshly slain whale, asking it of the ocean deep. Increasingly, the captain grows less concerned with whaling for profit and more concerned with finding Moby Dick, till all other things are meaningless. Stranger still much of the crew also becomes invested with Ahab’s quest, as if a madness were spreading among the crew. They follow a path of witnesses and victims left in the whale’s wake, with Ahab spending over twenty hours at a time on the deck. He even refuses to aid another ship in searching for its survivors. All in order the white whale that took his leg.
Ultimately the Pequod finds Moby Dick, and it is Ahab who first spots the beast and thus claims the doubloon. In the epic chase and battle with the whale, Ahab loses boats and crewmen, yet still he persists. Ahab succeeds in stabbing Moby Dick, only for the act to be ineffective and to lash him to the whale before it dives. Ahab drowns, and then in a rage Moby Dick destroys the Pequot leaving few survivors.
Xlibris Publishing will return with part 2 of Heroes and Villains: Captain Ahab.
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By Ian Smith