Almost all the characters on the Pequod absolve themselves of responsibility and allay their melancholia by attributing actions and events to Providence or fated destiny. Melville\u2019s Calvinistic pre-determinism is at work here, but I argue that he ultimately rejects it in the case of Ahab. In the chapters leading up to the final chase of Moby Dick, Starbuck\u2019s dire warnings against continuation of the voyage are a counter to Ahab\u2019s claims of lack of agency.<\/p>\n
Here are some phrases and sentences that show the overwhelming obsession with fate in the last quarter of the novel.<\/p>\n
\u2018Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of \u201cHo! The fair wind! Oh-he-yo, cheerly, men!\u201d <\/em>the crew singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.\u2019 492<\/p>\n \u2018\u2026the fated Pequod\u2019 498<\/p>\n \u2018\u2026they were not grieved at this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfillment of an evil already presaged. \u2018 502<\/p>\n \u2018But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight.\u2019 516<\/p>\n \u2018Ha! Yonder! Look yonder, men!\u2019 cried a foreboding voice in the wake.\u2019 518<\/p>\n \u2018By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder, windlass, and Fate is the handspike.\u2019 522<\/p>\n As Ahab\u2019s monomania degenerates into raving incoherence, he increasingly blames his state on Fate. In a sense, this voyage was meant to occur in the scheme of things. Starbuck desperately cautions against Ahab\u2019s proposals, but \u00a0to no avail. Perhaps it was an attempt to get through Ahab\u2019s madness to the reasoning part of his mind, with the lesson that Ahab had indeed chosen this path and could depart from it if he so wanted.<\/p>\n Melville, Herman. Moby Dick<\/em>. Signet Classic. 1998<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost all the characters on the Pequod absolve themselves of responsibility and allay their melancholia by attributing actions and events to Providence or fated destiny. Melville\u2019s Calvinistic pre-determinism is at work here, but I argue that he ultimately rejects it in the case of Ahab. In the chapters leading up to the final chase of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","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=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}