{"id":1129,"date":"2010-03-02T22:19:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T02:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1129"},"modified":"2010-03-02T22:19:37","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T02:19:37","slug":"ahabs-last-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1129","title":{"rendered":"Ahab’s last words"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell\u2019s heart I stab at thee; for hate\u2019s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus<\/em>, I give up the spear!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ahab speaks these words- his last, after Moby Dick destroys The Pequod in the last chapter before the epiloque.\u00a0 During this chapter the pace of the plot has significantly picked up and the sense of the looming tragedy is very heightened.\u00a0 Like many other words from Ahab, these again show how devoted he is to the chase and killing of Moby Dick.\u00a0 As even in his last words, he does not show any signs that his plan may have not been such a good idea.\u00a0 Even with his last breaths he is damning and cursing Moby Dick, solidifying his hate of the whale.\u00a0 It is also interesting that he says “sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool” because shortly after this, The Pequod goes down into a vortex, which in a sense, is a common pool where most of the crew drowns and dies.\u00a0 Ahab also cries that “from hell’s heart I stab at thee” and this made me wonder if the thought that he was going to hell, and was vowing that even in the afterlife he would chase Moby Dick.\u00a0 Though Ahab admits that the whale has one since it is “all destroying” he also says that it is “unconquering” and in this way, in his last words Ahab is refusing to let the whale defeat his spirit and as a final act of defiance curses the whale with his last breaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell\u2019s heart I stab at thee; for hate\u2019s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}