Moby Dick

Ahab’s all-consuming monomanical vindictivness is most readily explained by his missing leg. The loss of this appendage has such a devastating effect on the psyche that he ceases to be among others in the world, or can not be in the world, until he captures Moby Dick.  Albeit, general psychology and common sense gives the reader the impression that Ahab’s mad quest is but a symptom of something deeper, a character trait fundamentally more insidious than a generalized insecurity resulting from a lost limb. The lost leg becomes but a symbol of a fallen nature. Speaking to the carpenter tasked to make a new leg, Ahab remarks:

‘Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?’ (Melville 454)

Ahab must be speaking of something else here. Something irretrievably lost but keenly needed for his vitality or redemption. Melville gives us no answers through this part of the story. Captain Boomer, of the Samuel Enderby, also lost a limb to Moby Dick. His take on the matter is decisively different from Ahab’s:

‘No, thank ye, Bunger,’ said the English captain, ‘he’s welcome to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?’ – glancing at the ivory leg. (Melville 426)

Of course, Ahab’s disinterestedness in this advice is what will soon doom him and the Pequod to danger and disaster. The plot thickens.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Signet Classic, 1998.

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