Moby Dick

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank in his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity.  But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul.  The glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother wold, so long cruel – forbidding – now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless.  From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such a wealth as that one wee drop.

This incredibly sensitive, tender moment is unexpected for its sweetness.  Leading up to “The Symphony,” a gloom had gathered around the Pequod.  The storm, Queequeg’s coffin, and the meeting with the Rachel set a morbid tone, and lead the reader to believe that a terrible fate was about to befall the ship and its crew.  But as Ahab rose one morning, intent with the knowledge that he was drawing close to Moby Dick, a strange thing happened.  The sky and sea which he had been immersed in for decades sparked a sign of humanity in him.  Instead of trying to “pierce the profundity,” he at last resigned himself to allow his guard down against nature.  Interestingly, nature is as a “step-mother” to him.  Here, Melville may be insinuating that Ahab is simply not of this world.  His mother, if he has one, must be fundamentally different than the earth which humanity has long viewed as its mother.

The image of nature Melville shows here – comforting, gentle, and kind – is a nature that doesn’t show up very much in other parts of the book.  He wrote of nature as mysterious, dangerous, murderous even, but not often in the traditional “mother” format which has defined humanity’s conception of nature for so long.  His return to that theme, on the eve of the great battle with Moby Dick, seems puzzling.  It aligns with the strange sense of beauty and magnificence that Ishmael feels upon first seeing Moby Dick up close for the first time.  As Ahab and his men draw closer and closer to the “true” embodiment of the natural world, the more and more obvious is their total ignorance of its essence.  Instead of finding hate or malice as he stares into the ocean’s depths as he probably expects, Ahab finds compassion and solace.  Rather than come to terms with this difference, however, he shuts himself off to what he does not understand, and gives up his own agency to his delusional conceptions of his fate.

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