{"id":1410,"date":"2010-03-05T16:06:03","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T20:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1410"},"modified":"2010-03-05T16:06:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T20:06:03","slug":"the-wayward-shepherd-ahab-and-the-road-to-perdition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1410","title":{"rendered":"The Wayward Shepherd: Ahab and the Road to Perdition"},"content":{"rendered":"

After viewing the\u00a0 film The Exorcist<\/em>, directed by William Friedkin for a religion class, I started wondering about the role of organized religion in Melville\u2019s novel, Moby Dick<\/span>.\u00a0 My result: the realization that Captain Ahab, as captain of the vessel called the Pequod<\/em>, is the shepherd of his crew.\u00a0 Ahab is the priest and father of a nautical parish, a lonely church set on the sea.<\/p>\n

Why make this analogy, you ask?\u00a0 It is simple.\u00a0 Melville was a religions man, raised in a family of devout Calvinists, in a time when possession and demonic powers were still feared to some extent, no matter how small.\u00a0\u00a0 It was key to Calvinists that one not fall from the path of righteousness, and this path was beset on all sides by Satan and his minions. Yet Ahab, as the priest and leader of his men is a failure.\u00a0 He has fallen from the path.\u00a0 He is the perfect example of a spiritual leader who has failed and follows a path of darkness.<\/p>\n

The first step in Ahab\u2019s fall was his worship of a false idol.\u00a0 Ahab turns away from God and begins to worship the White Whale.\u00a0 And in this context, where the sea is the cruel unforgiving, dark region of the earth, they are passing through hell to find his \u201cgod.\u201d\u00a0 He leads goes astray, taking his flock, and this being the case, he dooms them all to hell and a watery grave.\u00a0 They meet a cruel fate for turning away from goodness.\u00a0 Even at the beginning of the novel, the right path is shown: in the church, in the sermon of the preacher, Jonah\u2019s tale is described, and this should warn them that hell is found in the watery deep.<\/p>\n

Throughout the book this is a fascinating thread to follow.\u00a0 Ahab repeatedly defies the Christian God and, as the leader of his crew, he takes them with him.\u00a0 He is truly a failed shepherd that has led his flock into the mouth of the beast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After viewing the\u00a0 film The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin for a religion class, I started wondering about the role of organized religion in Melville\u2019s novel, Moby Dick.\u00a0 My result: the realization that Captain Ahab, as captain of the vessel called the Pequod, is the shepherd of his crew.\u00a0 Ahab is the priest and father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[163,332,331,334,333],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-ahab","tag-church","tag-exorcist","tag-false-idols","tag-hell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","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=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}