Moby Dick

Ahab’s Depravity and Dissonance

While reading the text, I couldn’t help but feel a disconnect between Ahab’s supposed darkness and Melville’s rendering of him.  In other words, the highly embellished, melodramatic descriptions of Ahab’s monomania are not convincing.  It is one of the few (perhaps inconspicuous) flaws of the novel and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been remarked on more often.  I’ll quote a few lines which, taken by themselves, do not flesh out the essence of the man and therefore leave the reader dissatisfied.

‘Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.’ 191 – Most of the writing on Ahab’s monomania is crafted in this decontextualized manner, with the exception of the two page soliloquy in the last quarter of the novel.

‘…in Ahab’s case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own.’ 195

‘In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.’ 498

Captivating descriptive prose without adequate character build up lends itself to the aforementioned dissonance. One wonders if this was intended by Melville. Is this truly a story about a depraved individual driven by monomania and overcompensation to a vengeful self-destruction? Or is it more a story of nature and community and philosophy? I’m left confused about the centrality of Ahab the man and his standing vis-à-vis the other characters on the Pequod..

Does anyone else sense the forced nature of his ‘evil’?

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Signet Classic. 1998

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