#CAPTAIN AHAB HOW TO#

Yet instead of thinking of death, Captain Ahab and Peleg thought of how to save all hands, and how to rig temporary masts in order to get into the nearest port and make repairs.īefore the ship sails from Nantucket, Ishmael encounters a man named Elijah who tells him about some of Ahab's past deeds. Every moment the crew thought the ship would sink, the sea breaking over the ship. During that voyage, a typhoon near Japan swung her three masts overboard. Years ago, Peleg, now the co-owner of Pequod, sailed as mate under Ahab. He has fixed his lance, the keenest and surest on the isle of Nantucket, in stranger foes than whales. He has been in colleges and among the cannibals, and has seen deeper wonders than the waves. Less than three voyages ago, Ahab married a sweet, resigned girl, with whom he has a young son. At age 18, Ahab first took to sea as a boy- harpooner. The etymology of the name Ahab derives from the Hebrew, meaning 'father's brother' as cited in Strong's Concordance no. Biography Īhab was named by his insane, widowed mother, who died when he was twelve months old. Barrie with the model for his Captain Hook character, who is obsessed with not a whale but a crocodile. Īhab is firmly established in popular culture by cartoons, comic books, films and plays. His prosthesis, for instance, has been taken for an allusion to the Oedipus myth. The character of Ahab was created under the influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's lecture on Hamlet and figures in biblical and classical literature such as Shakespeare and Milton. Lawrence felt little sympathy for Ahab and found that the whale should have 'torn off both his legs, and a bit more besides'. Ahab's 'tragedy is that of an unregenerate will' whose 'burning mind is barred out from the exuberance of love' and argues that he 'remains damned'. Matthiessen calls attention to the fact that Ahab is called an 'ungodly god-like man'. Melville biographer Andrew Delbanco calls Ahab 'a brilliant personification of the very essence of fanaticism'. When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hatred robs him of all caution, and the whale drags him to his death beneath the sea and sinks the Pequod.

The whaling voyage of the Pequod ends up as a hunt for revenge on the whale, as Ahab forces the crew members to support his fanatical mission.

On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, and he now wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone. He is the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod. TaberĬaptain Ahab is a fictional character and one of the protagonists in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Ahab in his final chase with Moby Dick, by I.

Captain ahab