One of the main questions concerning Moby Dick is the exact identity of the white whale: is Moby Dick symbolic of God himself, or just symbolic of nature, or just an extremely powerful whale? The identity of Moby Dick, though, does have a certain effect on how one sees Captain Ahab.
As we will see when we analyze the identity of Moby Dick, we will realize that this mysterious whale carries with him much the same ambiguity as Jonah’s “great fish.” The “great fish” in Jonah is a complex configuration of simply a big fish, the leviathan of Ancient Near Eastern mythology, and Satan himself—yet still, nevertheless, under the control and serving the purposes of God.
Moby Dick is portrayed in a similar way. We see that ultimately it is God Himself who is behind Moby Dick, and thus Ahab’s quest is not only that of a mad captain eaten up with pride and vengeance, but also that of an evil man driven to fight against God Himself. And since he is shaking his fist at God, refusing to obey Him or to heed the warnings, Ahab is in effect setting himself up in the place of Satan, as an anti-Christ.
Just consider the following examples:
- Ahab is called “ungodly, but god-like” (82)
- Firstmate Starbuck calls Ahab’s quest “a heaven-insulting purpose” (161)
- Stubb recalls he has never seen Ahab kneel (217)
- Ahab calls himself, “I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened!” (160)
- When looking at engraved mountains and towers on a gold doubloon, Ahab says, “There’s something ever so egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here, three peaks as proud as Lucifier. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano; that is Ahab; the courageous, undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab” (397)
- When Ahab fashions the harpoon that he hopes will kill Moby Dick, he uses the blood of the pagans on board to temper it, and says, “I do not baptize you in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil!” (448)
- When the typhoon (very similar to Jonah’s storm) hits, Ahab fights against the typhoon, and worships the lightning: “Thou art my fiery father! Leap up and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!” (462)
- Earlier in his life Ahab was struck by lightning (120), and that he “still feels the fiery pains of hell with his lost leg (433)
- Also earlier in his life Ahab had lied dead off the Cape Horn for three days and nights (94), and that when he stood before his men, “Ahab stood with a crucifixion in his face” (120)
- At Ahab’s death, when a bird is seen caught in Ahab’s flag as the ship sinks, it is described in the following way: “the flag of Ahab went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till he had dragged a living part of heaven along with her….” (520)
- Ahab, called “a great lord of leviathans” (124) attempts to do what God told Job (in Job 42) man could not do: “hook leviathan’s nose” (129)
Yet Melville’s portrayal of Ahab as ultimately satanic is shocking in that Melville also paints Ahab is a very human figure as well. Ahab is no demon, but rather a man who refuses to bow down to anybody, and who blames God for the loss of his leg, and for all human ills. It is his refusal to submit to the authority and discipline of God that twists his heart, thus making him all too human and all too satanic at the same time. Consider this extensive passage from the novel:
“Small reason there was to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter [of Ahab losing his leg to Moby Dick], Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down” (175)
What we see here is precisely the angst found not only in the book of Job, but also throughout the history of mankind: Why does evil and pain and death exist? How can a good God allow bad things to happen to his children? The answer God gives Job in chapters 38-41 (and for our purposes, specifically chapter 41, when God talks about leviathan), is “Until you can reel in the great leviathan, the very mythological incarnation of evil and death, you have no right to ask.”
In short, God uses even evil and death toward his purposes, and humans must humbly accept that fact, though we will never fully understand. Job repented in dust and ashes, and God restored his fortunes; Jonah repented in the belly of the “great fish,” and God gave him a second chance at life; yet Ahab was hell bent on hooking leviathan, and in his vengeful, prideful, and ultimately satanic pursuit of the incarnation of God’s judgment, of evil, and death, found those very things.
