Character Analysis

Ahab

• The Character of Ahab

Ahab is the captain of the Pequod's. Long before his first appearance, there is an air of mystery about him. When the narrator Ishmael inquires about the captain, he is told that Ahab is a man of few words but deep meaning. From this we can see clearly that Ahab is a complicated character.

When Ahab speaks, others will easily listen to him and be moved by his powerful persuasion. When the time he gathers the crewmen and requests their support in the purpose for the voyage: to hunt down and kill the White Whale, he asks a series of questions that call for collective responses, and then the crewmen are increasingly excited. In the end, all of the crewmen except for the first mate, Starbuck, are all in the monomaniacal goal of pursuing the White Whale.

• Ahab vs. Moby-Dick

When the first mate, Starbuck, accuses Ahab of blasphemy for seeking revenge against the White Whale, Ahab doesn’t consider it a vice. He once says that he would “strike the sun if it insulted me.” Ahab wants to take control of the nature. To him, the White Whale is the evil force which is his true enemy, and he believes that the evil force wants to injure him, to limit his role in the world.

Ahab refuses to submit to any higher power. He does not worship or even acknowledge the superiority of forces beyond himself. Ahab is ungodly but god-like; perhaps he even wants to be God.

• Ahab’s Fate

But we can see a different side of Ahab when the day before the Pequod's first encounter with the White Whale. For the most part, Ahab is a character who does not change throughout the novel due to his only obsession with killing the White Whale, but here he wavers. Ahab recalls his forty years at sea, of these years he has not spent three on the land. He calls himself a “fool,” but when Starbuck tries to persuade him to turn back and go home, Ahab says he is no longer in control of his fate. Like the force behind the White...