Abstract
This essay focuses on the character of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. This essay attempts to humanize Ahab by exposing the motivation behind his behavior, and placing him in his environment as a reactor to natural events. The paper looks at Ahab as a mirror reflection of the ugliest parts of humanity. By suggesting that Captain Ahab is in some ways a reflection of humanity, this essay attempts to humanize his monomaniacal characteristics. Ahab is the captain of the Pequod, but this essay also suggests that he is the captain of the novel, steering the fiction from beginning to end.

From the Paper
"Captain Ahab appears to be a communion of man and man's perception of alterity. Man naturally detests and abhors all adverse characteristics to which he cannot deny he is akin. Captain Ahab seems to be the imperfect reflection that most would rather not acknowledge as their own. He is the modern "Everyman"-molded to encompass the raw nature that makes him human and intrinsically aligned with the industrial, religious, and economic paradigms characteristic of the nineteenth century. Captain Ahab is as mysterious and complex as all humanity, and one can no more hate him than he can hate himself. He is composed of "a thousand bold dashes of character" (Herman Melville's Moby-Dick MD 67) which makes him a virtual collage of human experience. He is a captain, an ever-branching tree of morals and virtues, and a deep mystic ocean many fathoms deep."

Tags:bildad, ishmael, literature, monomaniacal, peleg, pequod, queequeg

Abstract
In this article, the writer discusses that one of the most attractive, yet mad aspects of the character of Ahab in Herman Melville's Moby Dick is the way that Ahab seems to attribute morality and intelligent design to the natural world, as embodied in the persona of the white whale Moby Dick. The writer explains that Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick long ago, and he is determined the whale will pay for this transgression. Ahab is so bent upon his quest in avenging himself against nature that even when he admits that the whale may not have intended to take his leg it does not matter. The writer notes that Ahab says human beings must act as though life has meaning, even though life may be arbitrary and meaningless.

From the Paper
"In other words, there may be a moral intelligence behind animals like the whale, in Ahab's view, and God or some intelligent force is acting behind the manipulation of the objects or pasteboard creations. After all, God gave the whale many human-like characteristics, like the need to be warm and the need to breathe above water, even though God also gave the whale the ability to do these things naturally, without recourse to culture like blankets and breathing apparatus. And Ahab believes that because Moby Dick deprived him of his leg, he must act as if there is moral, intelligent design and reason to the universe, and take vengeance upon either the whale itself or upon the forces or being that gave the whale the power to act against his leg."

Tags:vengeance, human, leg, narrator

Abstract
In "Moby Dick", Herman Melville uses Captain Ahab to describe and critique the romantic hero. It shows how Melville establishes Ahab's superiority in several ways and shows how Captain Ahab is the perfect example of a romantic hero.

From the Paper
"Captain Ahab is the perfect example of a romantic hero. He pursues the whale that in a previous voyage had caused him to lose a leg, with a murderous obsession. He wants only information about the whereabouts of Moby Dick. All civilities and pleasures are dispensed with, as Ahab gives his razor away and even throws his pipe overboard. The quadrant is smashed; and compass and chart are jettisoned, as Ahab, with the instinct of a maddened hunter, makes his own magnet, log, and line and pursues Moby Dick across the Pacific by dead reckoning. As the weeks and months pass, Ahab becomes ever more obsessive."

Tags:pacific

Abstract
This paper examines the character of Captain Ahab as a tragic hero in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." The author discusses the criteria for a tragic hero and how Ahab fits each criterion. The paper looks at how Captain Ahab's weakness turned him away from success, and how he recognized his personal suffering.

From the Paper
"Captain Ahab is a man of substance, or outstanding in a positive way. He is also turned aside from success due to his own weakness of character. This weakness of character causes him to suffer which in turn this suffering causes Ahab to find recognition of himself and discover what is happening to him. He also causes the sensitive and intelligent reader to feel a sense of waste. Ahab causes a disruption in a system of order as well. He is classified as a paradoxical figure and shows sign of humanity. With two proofs or more for each of the eight criteria of a tragic hero Captain Ahab proves himself to be a more than adequate tragic hero in Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick. "

Tags:dick, herman, hero, melville, moby, tragic, whale

Abstract
The paper discusses Herman Melville's masterpiece, "Moby Dick", which is a profound, philosophical meditation on life centered on the symbolic hunt for the white whale in which the divine connotations of the whale are evident. The paper notes that Melville specifically emphasizes the struggle of man who is left to drift alone in a world which surpasses his comprehension powers, with the nature around him. The whale is pursued by the mad Ahab in a desperate attempt to find its "talismanic truth", its metaphysical secret. The paper further notes that Ishmael, in his turn, observes that the ocean is a symbol for life itself and that the white whale inspires metaphysical awe, while the sea in its endlessness intimates infinity and predisposes men to melancholic dreaming. The paper continues that in " Moby Dick" man is seen as caught between the awful metaphysical realities and that both Ahab and Ishmael symbolize the human condition: They stand alone in front of the overwhelming and saturated world.

From the Paper
"On the other hand, the half savage pagan, Queequeg, with whom Ishmael can be easily paired as a character, is utterly detached from his surroundings, living in absolute content and serenity. He can also be called a philosopher, but he is obviously much more human than the lofty Ishmael: "Yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy..."(Melville, 51) Queequeg, although a endowed with a profound mind himself, does not share in the absolute high perception that Ishmael is tortured by.
The other set of characters, formed by Ahab and Starbuck, have a very different perception of reality. In a different way, but to the same degree as Ishmael, Ahab is the slave of a transcendental perception of the universe. Without contenting himself with the mere contemplation of the hidden reality, Ahab madly chases Moby Dick, seeking a monomaniac revenge on the dumb brute for having dismembered him. To him the mad quest is an imperative and not a question. Constantly and arduously, Ahab pursues his obsession, struggling with the transcendental and not merely recognizing its existence. "

Tags:high, perception, talismanic, truth, metaphysical, realities

Abstract
This literary essay details Herman Melville's use of blasphemy and blasphemous images in the novel "Moby Dick". The paper further discusses how it leads to Ahab's eventual downfall.

From the Paper
"Many struggle to ever find religion in their life or understand its meaning and purpose on a personal level. In a time of crisis for those spiritual ones that do find religion, faith in a higher power can be questioned, leaving a person lost in existential deliberations or possibly cursing the heavens in anger. This topic of religious abandonment and the consequential sacrilegious actions that may follow has been explored in several works of literature. In Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, Captain Ahab's blasphemies, which include his extreme vengeance for Moby Dick, his relationship with the dark Fedallah, and his numerous impious actions toward God, result in his ultimate downfall."

Tags:moby, dick, blasphemy, herman, melville, ahab, evil, sacrilegious, novel

Abstract
This paper explains that one of the ways that Melville's establishes Ahab's superiority is by naming his protagonist after a biblical king, Ahab. The author points out that Captain Ahab is the perfect example of a romantic hero because he pursues the whale that in a previous voyage had caused him to lose a leg with a murderous obsession, but he wants only information about the whereabouts of Moby Dick. The paper states that, in Ahab, the reader can see exceptional courage, endurance, strength of purpose, and admirable heroic willpower; but at the same time, he is a destructive madman who has substituted egotism and self-love for the humility and self-abnegation of a true believer.

From the Paper
"Ahab is preeminently fearless, a deep diver, a water-gazer, and a philosophical man given, to symbolic hermeneutics. The shearing off of his leg has brought home to him the problem of evil in the world, has in fact deranged him. For him Moby Dick could be merely a beast, but the creature seems to be much more than that; he may indeed be an agent of a malign power in the universe, the principle of evil itself. Captain Ahab is the dark brooding captain of the Pequod. He is portrayed as a brilliant, creative, sensitive as well as competent captain, yet the dark side of Ahab emerges in his obsession of the white whale, Moby Dick. In his mad pursuit, he does not consider anything or anybody (including his crewmembers) else important."

Tags:name, whale, obsession, courage, egotism

From the Paper
" In 1881, a small British merchant ship, the Palestine, set out to carry a cargo of coal to Bangkok. Driven back repeatedly by storms, and then needing repairs for leaks, the ship did not make its final departure from British waters for a full year after she first set out. Moreover, the Palestine never did reach its destination. In the Indian Ocean its cargo of coal, too frequently handled and thus broken into combustable smaller chunks, caught fire. The crew had to abandon ship, finally reaching Borneo in the vessel's boats (Allen 153ff).


The second mate on this harrowing voyage was a young man named Joseph Conrad, and his recollection of the events formed the basis of his short story, "Youth." In one sense, then, "Youth" occupies a curious debatable ground between fiction and autobiography. Some features of the story which we might take to..."

Abstract
"As Richard B. Seawall states, the tragic vision expressed in art and literature "calls up out of the depths the first (and last) of all questions, the question of existence: what does it mean to be?" Different figures in literature and history have answered this question in different ways, but an examination of different literary works shows that this is a prime subject in literature and that writers in different historical periods are trying to answer the same basic question.

From the Paper
"As Richard B. Seawall states, the tragic vision expressed in art and literature "calls up out of the depths the first (and last) of all questions, the question of existence: what does it mean to be?" Different figures in literature and history have answered this question in different ways, but an examination of different literary works shows that this is a prime subject in literature and that writers in different historical periods are trying to answer the same basic question.

William Shakespeare in Hamlet has the main character not merely asking what it means to be but whether it is worthwhile to be at all. Hamlet considers self-destruction as he also contemplates the meaning of his own existence: "As a liberally educated Christian humanist, Hamlet approaches his problems by thinking about them, by attempting to reason them out, before ..."

Abstract
This paper analyzes the evil component in the personalities of Captain Ahab from "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville, Roger Chillingworth from "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Pap Finn from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. The author believes that Captain Ahab is one of the most evil characters in fiction because Ahab's evil is all encompassing because he is so obsessed with finding and killing the whale that took his leg. The paper concludes that Hawthorne and Melville's views were concerned with the danger of carrying revenge too far; while Twain was concerned with illustrating the evils of petty larceny and drunkenness, but with a tongue planted firmly in his cheek.

From the Paper
"Unlike the other characters, Pap's evil is self-directed, and only really takes in Huck when he beats him and gets drunk around him. Pap does not influence others the way Chillingworth and Ahab do, and his evil is not based in vengeance or hatred. Pap is pitiable and comical because of Huck's amusing descriptions, while the other characters are anything but pitiable. Thus, Pap is the least evil of all three characters, and he is more sympathetic than the others are, because his evil is based on a disease of the body, rather than a disease of the soul. Alcoholism is not funny, but Pap is about as funny as a child beater can get, while there is nothing funny about Ahab and Chillingworth, who are far too serious about their goals of revenge and hatred."

Tags:comedy, revenge, ahab, obsessed, drunkenness