Ahab (Moby-Dick)

Ahab
Moby-Dick character
Ahab in his final chase with Moby Dick
Created by	Herman Melville
Information
Nickname(s)	Old Thunder
Gender	Male
Occupation	Sea captain
Significant other(s)	Unnamed wife
Children	Unnamed son
Religion	Quaker
Nationality	American

Captain Ahab is a fictional character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, leaving him with a prosthesis made out of whalebone. The whaling voyage of the Pequod ends up as a hunt for revenge on the whale, as Ahab impels the crew-members to support his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hate robs him of all caution, and the whale drags Ahab to the bottom of the sea.

Melville biographer Andrew Delbanco calls Ahab "a brilliant personification of the very essence of fanaticism". Scholar F. O. Matthiessen calls attention to the fact that Ahab is called an "ungodly god-like man". 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". Writer D. H. Lawrence felt little sympathy for Ahab and found that the whale should have "torn off both his legs, and a bit more besides".

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. His prosthesis, for instance, has been taken for an allusion to the Oedipus myth.

Ahab is firmly established in popular culture by cartoons, comic books, films and plays. Most famously, he provided J. M. Barrie with the model for his Captain Hook character, who is obsessed not with a whale but a crocodile.

Born April 7th, Ahab was named by his insane, widowed mother, who died when he was twelve months old. At 18 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, in stranger foes than whales.