because of the torment of his obsession. This is illustrated when he throws his favorite pipe into the sea. The pipe is a symbol of peace and tranquility. Ahab himself is trapped in madness and states, “May God damn us all if we do not hunt. Moby Dick to his death!” Ahab obviously knows what he is doing, “Drub brute blasphemy-kills and mutilate out race. I would strike the sun if it offended me? ” And he would not let Moby Dick get away this time no matter what the circumstance is. We can see Ahab as a tormented man, he suffers in physical and mental pain, and is obsessed by only one thing, vengeance against the whale. This does not allow him room in his heart for love and affection for others. The whale symbolizes a thing; he must destroy to regain what he has lost in his life, his freedom, and his mastery over his world. He sees his encounter with the whale as a defeat. By being maimed by the whale he is no longer the unconquerable, immortal godlike sea captain. He knows that in this pursuit he may die and so may his crew. Ahab has accepted the fact the beast is much more than an animal, but he still persists in his quest for vengeance, this constant struggle between Ahab and the whale indicate man’s ongoing conflict with god. Like Ahab, no matter how often or in what manner God makes his will known to us we always seem to stray a way from that. Here Ahab or man does not ignore the will of God but he also challenges it. He is a man who we know has been to sea for years, three voyages, neglecting his wife and child in Nantucket. He is a loner with no friends. No one can come close to him. He is feared. Numerous examples support that something is not quite right with his mental state.
In the novel, we learn that he has stowed away, much to the surprise of the crew, a mysterious group of oriental men who act, as Ahab’s own personal whaling crew, designed specifically to hunt Moby Dick. It seems that, the leader, Fedallzah, is perceived by the crew as having a dark influence over Ahab. Stubb at one point confides to Flask that he thinks that Fedallzah is the devil himself and Flask thinks that Ahab may have struck a deal with him.
Another example that demonstrates his madness is the sad case of Pip, the
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castaway. The small African boy is required to replace an oarsman on Stubb’s boat; he is cast overboard and nearly drowned. From the experience, he goes mad. Pip seems to have been sacrificed for the sake of Ahab’s obsession. We see a similar story in Ahab’s own life. He abandons his own wife and child. Seeming to remember back to those days, he shows a small sign of affection toward the insane Pip. When the Pequod meets the whaling ship, the Samuel Enderby, on the high seas we get a look at the mindset of Ahab opposed to the mind of a rational and sane sea captain. Captain Boomer suffers a similar fate to that of Ahab’s at the wrath of the white whale. Instead of a leg he loses his hand. Whale ivory replaces his hand. The two engage in a discussion. Ahab is interested in knowing the location of the whale. Captain Boomer does not want to have anything to do with the whale and he thinks Ahab is crazy for wanting to pursue him and risk further bodily injury. Along the long journey, the Pequod encounters some problems with whale oil leaking. Starbuck immediately tells Ahab that they need to fix the problem or they would loose their profits. Ahab does not want to waste time in his pursuit of Moby Dick. In the chapter “Pequod meets the Bachelor,” we see the contrast of what could have been the fate of the Pequod. The Bachelor is a ship with a happy crew loaded with a large cargo of whale, headed home. Had not a mad man been the captain of the Pequod, the same happy ending would have resulted instead of the tragic one we will see later on. Later, the ship meets another ship, the Rachel. Ahab asks the usual question about the whereabouts of the white whale. Captain Gardinar of the Rachel it turns out is missing a boat with his young son in it and needs the aid of the Pequod to find the boy. Ahab seems more interested in the subject of the white whale than the missing boy. Ahab refuses his plea for help. His refusal shows how his mania has overtaken his sense of human decency.
Ahab, the Pequod’s obsessed captain, represents both an ancient and a typical modern type of hero. He is a man distinguished by courage and ability, who is admired for his qualities and achievements. Peleg describes Ahab as a “...grand,
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ungodly, god-like man, captain Ahab; does not speak much but when he does speak, then you may well listen. ”[4] Peleg tells that he is “… moody, desperate moody and savage sometimes.” “… better to be a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.”[5] The captain maintains a strong sense of dignity. He is single-minded in his pursuit of the whale, using a mixture of charisma and terror to persuade his crew to join him. As a captain, he is dictatorial but not unfair. At moments he shows a compassionate side, caring for the insane Pip and musing on his wife and child back in Nantucket.
Like the heroes of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. His tremendous overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to the forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the white whale because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil. According to the critic M.H. Abrams, such a tragic hero moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves. Ahab delivers all of humanity’s protests against the injustices of fate; Melville makes him the symbol of humanity, “when Ahab strikes at Moby Dick, he does so in a mad desire for revenge on God, whom he holds responsible for its evil’s existence.”[6] Ahab refuses to accept the fact that limitations of humans stop them from attacking God; he tries his best to do so, “a contemporary French critic got the heart of the matter when he said that the only reason Ahab tries to harpoon Moby Dick is that he cannot harpoon God.” [7]
Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in his case both psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh world. He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic opposition that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him toward what he considers a destined
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end.
IV. The Symbolic Meanings of Counterpane
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a symbolic element that makes the novel more clear and more real to his reader is the idea of the “counterpane”, or tapestry, of humanity which is woven through out the story as the symbol of the world’s multiculturalism. Melville develops the symbolism on at least three levels, proving that the world is indeed a counterpane of diverse cultures, races and environment.
On a great scale, Melville uses the sea as a metaphor for the world and mankind. There are many creatures that depend on the water, and others who depend on the creatures that depend on the water. In order for everything to be balanced, people must learn to coexist peacefully when they try to meet all of the different needs they may have. The multiple ships that the Pequod meets at the travel represent different cultures of people. For instance, the Jungfrau [or virgin] is a ship from Germany, while the Rosebud is from France, and the Town Ho comes from Nantucket. Not only are the different ships different in style and accent, but also their views on whaling and life are all greatly varied as well. There is also a great irony in the meetings of the Pequod with other ships. “…another homeward bound whale man, the Town Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians.”[8] Whales are not running the ship that comes from one of the most “white” places in the whaling world! The multiculturalism of all the different ships proves that we as humans are all connected by the idea that sometimes we will have to rely on people we would never expect.
“…Melville’s novel becomes a conglomeration of thoughts on evil verse good, the role of fate, the tension between Christianity and paganism, in addition to a multitude of other subjects”[9]. The crew of the Pequod is by far the most obvious counterpane in Moby Dick. Each crewmember is different in his own way and brings some diverse culture and background to the ship. The three non-white
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harpooners, the three mates, who are white, but each holds their own different beliefs about life, and the other members of the crew, such as Fedallah, Pip, Ahab, and Ishmael, all make up one big counterpane of cultures. “Swimming against the racist tide of most popular fiction, Melville invested the Pequod’s three non-white harpooners with the dignity of priests, kings, and princes, and relegated the hierarchy of privilege that puts whites in command of color”[10]. It is interesting to see once again, how the white people on the ship, who most likely never dream of putting their lives in the hands of colored people, are so completely dependent on the colored members of the crew. Without the harpooners, the Pequod would have been destroyed long before they spot Moby Dick. The relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is the prime example of the interdependency within the crew. Ishmael, the stereotypical white Christian, is one of the few to accept others’ beliefs. His friendship with Queequeg proves that man can be happy and acceptable with his peers:
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we precede any further, it must be said that the monkey rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my [Ishmael’s] narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead the cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake…Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother…while earnestly watching his motion, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake and misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death…still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only inmost cases, he, one way or other, has this
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《白鲸》的象征意义
