A man cut away from the stake: Enter Ahab....
It takes 27 chapters peppered with ominous warnings of our ship’s captain before we and Ishmael get to see Ahab in the flesh in his self-titled chapter. I’ve been reading this book off and on, over and over again since 1995, and I always have a different take. And now, I have to admit that I feel a great deal of empathy for him.
I was 23 when I first read Moby-Dick, and in general, I had issues with so-called authority—at the time I was kick first, and ask questions later. At one point, when I was considering an additional tattoo, I specifically remember thinking that I would never accept a job in an organization in which it would be a problem for me to have a visible tattoo. (Of course, at the time, I didn’t have something like Queequeg’s harpooner skills—in the end, I think that most organizations are willing to overlook a few pagan markings, if you have enough talent and expertise ; )
Anyway, when I was in my twenties, I thought of Ahab as this complete tyrant. Someone so obsessed with his own desires and compulsions and unfathomable monomania that he completely disregarded the lives of his crew and company. He was a cruel, heartless monster.
I was right. But now, I also see a more sympathetic side.
I’m not going to make excuses for him, and I don’t even have great explanations, but the descriptions of his physical and mental scars and losses, his obsessive watch on the deck, and his disregard for anything that might bring him the slightest moment of calm almost break my heart.
“And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.”
“Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!”
What horrors did Ahab experience that brought him here? Yes, he’s obsessively chasing after the whale that scarred and maimed him, but how does he get to this point? What exactly took hold of him? What seeped into his soul and now bears down with an intolerable, unbearable weight? How is someone able to so completely lose track of everything that roots him to this world and instead turn violently toward a completely futile and ultimately fatal pursuit?
and why does that seem so sympathetic to me now?
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
I was 23 when I first read Moby-Dick, and in general, I had issues with so-called authority—at the time I was kick first, and ask questions later. At one point, when I was considering an additional tattoo, I specifically remember thinking that I would never accept a job in an organization in which it would be a problem for me to have a visible tattoo. (Of course, at the time, I didn’t have something like Queequeg’s harpooner skills—in the end, I think that most organizations are willing to overlook a few pagan markings, if you have enough talent and expertise ; )
Anyway, when I was in my twenties, I thought of Ahab as this complete tyrant. Someone so obsessed with his own desires and compulsions and unfathomable monomania that he completely disregarded the lives of his crew and company. He was a cruel, heartless monster.
I was right. But now, I also see a more sympathetic side.
I’m not going to make excuses for him, and I don’t even have great explanations, but the descriptions of his physical and mental scars and losses, his obsessive watch on the deck, and his disregard for anything that might bring him the slightest moment of calm almost break my heart.
“And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.”
“Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!”
What horrors did Ahab experience that brought him here? Yes, he’s obsessively chasing after the whale that scarred and maimed him, but how does he get to this point? What exactly took hold of him? What seeped into his soul and now bears down with an intolerable, unbearable weight? How is someone able to so completely lose track of everything that roots him to this world and instead turn violently toward a completely futile and ultimately fatal pursuit?
and why does that seem so sympathetic to me now?
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
posted by Erica at 6:50 PM
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