Moby Dick Reflection

Biography[ edit ] Ahab was named by his insane, widowed mother, who died when he was twelve months old. At Moby Dick Reflection years old, Ahab first took to sea as a boy- harpooner. Less than three voyages ago, Ahab married a sweet, resigned girl, with whom he has a young son. He has been in colleges and among the cannibals, and has seen deeper wonders than the waves. He has fixed his lance, the keenest and surest on the isle of Nantucket Moby Dick Reflection, in stranger foes than whales. Years ago, Peleg, now the co-owner of Pequod, sailed as mate under Ahab. During that voyage, a typhoon near Japan swung her three masts overboard. Every moment the crew thought the ship would sink, the sea breaking over the ship.

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 Moby Dick Reflection into the nearest port and make repairs. Before the ship sails from Nantucket, Ishmael encounters a man named Elijah who tells him about some of Ahab's past deeds. According to Elijah, Ahab once lay near death for three days and Moby Dick Reflection near Cape Horntook part in a deadly battle against Spanish forces before an altar in Santa, and spat into its silver chalice. Ahab lost his leg during his most recent whaling voyage, leaving him with a grim disposition and a strong desire for revenge against Moby Dick.

In addition Moby Dick Reflection the prosthetic leg, Ahab bears a pale white mark that runs from his hairline and down one side of his face and neck, disappearing under his clothing. The mark and its origins — whether a birthmark, the scar from a wound, or otherwise — are rarely mentioned or discussed.

Ahab's leg includes a small flat patch Moby Dick Reflection he uses as a slate for making navigational calculations. The deck planks of Pequod have been bored with shallow holes, the same diameter as the lower end, to allow him to steady himself against the motion of the ship. While at sea, he turns to the ship's carpenter and blacksmith to fashion a replacement leg and fittings after damaging the one he wears. Ahab is 58 years old at the time of Pequod's last voyage. Peleg read more Bildad pilot the ship out of the harbor, and Ahab first appears on deck when the ship is already at sea. Instead of embarking on a regular whaling voyage, Ahab declares he is out Moby Dick Reflection revenge and nails a doubloon on the mast by way of reward for the crewmember who first sights Moby Dick, the white whale.

When Moby Dick is eventually sighted, a disastrous three-day chase begins. Entangled by the line of his own harpoon, Ahab falls overboard and drowns as the whale dives and takes him along.

Peleg refers to Ahab respectfully as a "grand, ungodly, god-like man" but he is also nicknamed "Old Thunder". Concept and creation[ edit ] According to Melville biographer Leon Howard"Ahab is a Shakespearean tragic hero, created according to the Coleridgean formula.

Aboard were two sailors from the ship Nantucket who could have told him that they had seen their second mate "taken out of a whaleboat by a foul line and drowned, as is Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick. This association prompts Ishmael to ask, after Moby Dick Reflection hearing Ahab's name: "When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?]