“He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like, man” (78). When are first introduced to the Moby Dick’s most enigmatic character, the monomaniacal Captain Ahab, he is portrayed as an over-confident, immune-to-nature, charismatic figure who would not stop at anything in his conquest for Moby Dick: the embodiment of evil. Yet, by the conclusion of the novel it seems as our once fearless, god-like Ahab has seemingly succumbed to the hands of Fate. How did we get here? For the most part of the novel, the former assessment seems to be correct. For one, we see Ahab’s vendetta and confidence against the forces of nature in Chapter 36 after Starbuck accuses him of blasphemy. While Starbuck contends that Ahab shouldn’t focus his time on a dumb brute, Ahab responds with conviction that he would “strike the sun if it insults me”(140). Additionally, we are introduced to Ahab’s irresistible charisma as he galvanizes the troops to join …show more content…
Like Ahab, the ship’s captain has donated a limb to Moby-Dick’s mass, but unlike the Pequod’s leader, the Englishman would just as soon keep away from the White Whale, arguing, “ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm?…he’s best left alone” (339,340). The one-armed captain describes his encounter as a physical battle lost rather than the spiritual battle sees in his own relationship with the whale. Further, the ship’s surgeon maintains this non-anthropomorphic view of the whale maintaining, “So what you take for the White whale’s malice is only his awkwardness” (339). Melville uses the encounter with the Samuel Enderby to show Moby Dick in a non-Godlike, animalistic way, yet this conception of Moby Dick is lost on Ahab as he allows his pure excitement about news of the whale overshadow the English ship’s logical take on Moby