{"id":560,"date":"2010-02-07T20:46:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T00:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=560"},"modified":"2010-02-07T20:46:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T00:46:59","slug":"captain-ahab-and-captain-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=560","title":{"rendered":"Captain Ahab and Captain Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The chapters in which we are introduced to Captain Ahab remind me of J.M. Barrie\u2019s similar character, Captain Hook from <em>Peter Pan<\/em> (1904). Both are fearless, rough men of the sea, providing a source of treachery and deceit as the antagonists in their respective plots.\u00a0 Hook\u2019s loss of his hand to a crocodile parallels Ahab\u2019s loss of his leg to a whale.\u00a0 Both men choose inanimate objects in attempts to make themselves whole\u2014a hook for a hand, and an ivory peg leg.\u00a0 The destruction of these limbs compels the two captains to obtain revenge upon the monsters that caused physical as well as mental damage.<\/p>\n<p>As a narrator, Ishmael speculates on the underlying psychological motives Ahab has for pursuing Moby-Dick:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2026Ever since that fateful encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations.\u00a0 The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them\u2026 All evil to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. (Melville, 179)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Consumed by the humility and tangible loss of a part of himself, Ahab focuses all his mental powers and energy into exacting revenge upon the whale to regain a sense of his authority, not only over the sea, but over nature itself.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help but speculate that Ahab will meet a similar end as that of Captain Hook\u2014he will ultimately be defeated by the creature that crippled him in the beginning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The chapters in which we are introduced to Captain Ahab remind me of J.M. Barrie\u2019s similar character, Captain Hook from Peter Pan (1904). Both are fearless, rough men of the sea, providing a source of treachery and deceit as the antagonists in their respective plots.\u00a0 Hook\u2019s loss of his hand to a crocodile parallels Ahab\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sources-or-literary-allusions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560","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=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}