Moby Dick

Thrusting his head halfway into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger.  Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.

But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it!  It has happened before.  Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses – that’s all.  Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”

“Aye, but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate, gloomily.

The storm that set upon the Pequod was a terrifying, quasi-supernatural event in the eyes of the crew.  The lightning which struck the masthead was a very bad omen, as was the burning harpoon and the stove boat.  Just in case the readers weren’t getting the symbolism, Fedallah even prays to the lightning which holds the ship in its grip.  To find the ship’s compasses turned in the opposite direction the next morning, against the natural and obvious dictates of the sun, serves as yet another warning that the Pequod is sailing straight into the jaws of doom.

The connection between magnetism and electricity was discovered in Europe several decades before Moby Dick was written, but it seems unlikely that many whalers (beyond the educated Ishmael) would have been well-informed of these developments.  For most people at the time, magnetism was a mysterious force which probably seemed supernatural.  The compass, in particular, was heavy with allegories which made it particularly well-adapted to superstition.  On the open ocean, with only the sun, stars, and compass to guide the ship, the calculations and instruments of navigation took on a mystical aura.  The steering of a ship can be easily seen akin to the steering of a soul, and the methods of steering therefore take on divine significance.  When Ahab first smashes his sextant and is then confronted with the turned compasses, it seems that the ship has been doomed to go both ethically and literally adrift.  Ahab’s solution, demonstrates his mastery of theater and a special sort of mad confidence in his ability to forge his own fate.

“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point a true a way as any.”

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow.  But Starbuck looked away.

Ahab recognizes all of the potential for despair that the turned needles might provoke among the crew, and by magnetizing a new needle he also takes control of the men.  He symbolically rejects the judgement of fate placed upon the Pequod during the storm, and chooses his own path.  Starbuck is not convinced, however, and sees Ahab’s actions as a blasphemous attempt to challenge what should not be questioned.  In the final sentence of the chapter, Ishmael seems to agree:

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.

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