The Wrath Of Ahab: Examining Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Jeffrey Kelley
Nov 4 · 14 min read

The deep blue sea, the flooded frontier. These are the oceanic voyages of the sea vessel Pequod. It’s lengthy mission, to seek out Sperm whales, to harpoon and kill them, to bring home many barrels of Sperm whale oil, to boldly sailwhere no whaler has sailed before.

All historical societies with renowned cultures identified such as the Greeks and the Romans have based their united cultural voice through the mythologies of their societies, and these mythologies were the bases, or foundations, for the cultural beliefs, rituals, and the identities of their cultures. In the nineteenth century, America was still in its cultural infancy and lacked a strong shared cultural mythology on which it could build, or inscribe its emerging national identity, or voice. This prompted writers like Herman Melville to create epic works literature, such as Moby Dick, upon which American mythology could be built and a national identity forged. Modern works in the field of American fiction continue to use the American mythology created by the epic works of the nineteenth century to define and re-define the American culture; one instance of the nineteenth century mythology created in epic works of American fiction being re-inscribed into the pop culture of modern-day America is through the appropriate on Melville’s Moby Dick by the feature-film Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

Settlers from Europe travelled to America to explore a new frontier in an effort to forge a new destiny and define themselves as something other than “that which is European”. When Mellville took pen in hand to write the tale of the White Whale, there was still an absence of identity in America, as well as an increasingly shrinking frontier upon which to create the foundation for a strong American ideology. The American culture was still a new frontier, and there existed a need within America to define their culture in a setting of newness, or at the very least through the setting of the unexplored. This need to explore American culture through the exploration of the unknown frontier manifests itself in Melville’s Ismael:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, whenever I find involuntarily pausing before the coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then I account it high time I get to sea as soon as I can.

(Melville, M.D., Oxford, P. 1)

Ismael, much like the American culture itself, is undergoing an identity crisis. Ismael could be described as brooding or out of place. Ismael is feeling old and worn out, as depicted by the imagery surrounding his introduction into the narrative, that of death and funerals. Ismael is a fish out of water at war with the shadows of a European influence still present in American society at the time. Because of his need to cast off his European shadow, Ismael becomes desperate to explore a new frontier, and in the process explore himself as well. These feelings of Ismael’s and the insinuations they cast upon the American culture are also present in the person of Admiral James T. Kirk at the beginning of The Wrath Of Khan.

Kirk becomes the symbolic embodiment of modern-day America as it attempts to find itself anew in the emerging global community of the late 1970s and early1980s. The industries in America, such as electronic and automotive, which were symbols of American pride, had been replaced by Japanese electronics and automobiles in the domestic American marketplace. A twentieth-century identity crisis emerges in Americ and the American culture once again needs to define itself in the traditions created in the American mythology of nineteenth-century American fiction; America needs to find a new frontier in an over-explored world and this time outer-space replaces the ocean as the setting, and Kirk replies Ishmael as the character that represents the cultural identity crisis of America.

Kirk, like Ismael, feels worn out and old, and he too can be described as brooding or depressed as he too emerges into his narrative surrounded by images of death and ageing: “Damnit Jim, other people have birthdays, why are we treating yours like a funeral?” (McCoy, The Wrath of Khan). The image of the funeral is inscribed both narratives and in both cases demonstrates a foreboding of death and ageing, and just as Ishmael feels a need to return to the sea in search of rejuvenation, Kirk must likewise return to space: “Get your command back, before you really do grow old” (McCoy, The Wrath Of Khan).

Melville does not define American culture through Ismael. Although Ishmael does become the American symbol of the “new man”, the American culture, like Ismael, is defined through Ahab. Ismael is identified as being “not Ahab” in the same way that American culture is identified as being “not Europe”; Melville, therefore, defines America against Ahab, who is, in fact, the manifestation of Shakespeare’s influence on Melville:

Melville declares that Shakespeare’s genius lives in those ‘deep far away characters’ those occasional flashing forth intuitive thoughts in them. It is ‘through the mouths of these dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, that he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things we feel to be terrifically true (Vagel, Dramatic, Pp. 239)

Melville uses the Shakespearean model of a great villain, something, or someone, to root against, as a means to identify his heroes through the virtue of “not being the villain”, and he does this with villains who are aware and actively choose to be villains, like Lear.

Ahab, blinded by his lust fro vengeance, closely resembles, and he shares the same tragic flaw, as Shakespeare’s King Lear: pride. Ahab’s pride, like with his Shakespearean counterpart, works as a foil against his charisma and intellect, and ultimately define him, though his obsession, as “the villain” of the narrative.

Ahab very much resembles Shakespeare’s tragic hero, Lear; neither man is ever cast in a good light, nor does either character ever show remorse or understanding at the end of his life for his wicked deeds or tragic flaw. This embodiment of Shakespearean traits in Ahab creates a means of defining American literature and culture as being “not European”. Ahab is a distasteful character that readers would likely not cast as the model fo their culture. By rejecting Ahab, readers must now accept Ismael, and unlike his foil in Moby Dick, Ishmael himself less resembles the traditional Shakespearean hero and through this mechanism the American reader can reject the notion of inscribing themselves in the mould of the European hero and instead assert themselves in the mould of the “new man”.

Ahab can also be read as Milton’s satanic hero. He is a man obsessed with his own ends who commits acts God and nature deifying himself: “The gallows, ye men — I am immortal on land and on sea” (Melville, M.D., Oxford, Pp. 442). This is the act of ultimate villainy, as it defines Ahab against the ultimate good, God. To further the cause of Ahab as a villainous character or a symbol against which American culture can be defined, one need only look at his obsessive patterns of behaviour:

To Ahab, Moby Dick is not just any whale, or the king of whales, but the cursed whale that took Ahab’s leg. To Ahab, therefore, Moby Dick becomes the embodiment of ‘that intangible malignity which has been from the beginning all the subtle demonisms of life and though’, and for this the reason, Ahab dedicates himself to hunting and killing Moby Dick, and wills the crew to share his quest.

(Lane, M.D., Airmont, Pp. 5)

Ahab’s lashing out against the whale is symbolic os his lashing out against God, painting him as Milton’s Lucifer. By defining American culture against Ahab, Melville has inscribed American culture with all things Godly.

The Wrath Of Khan uses similar techniques to re-inscribe American culture in the ideals upheld by nineteenth-century America. This is done subtly and obviously all at once. When Khan’s crashed spaceship is discovered there is a close-up camera shot of his bookshelf where there are only three books to be found, each one twice, Mody Dick, Paradise Lost, and King Lear. The mise-en-scene of the film immediately displays a deliberate correlation between the characters of Khan and that of Ahab: they are characters built out of the same traditions. Khan resembles Lear for exactly the same reasons as Ahab: they mimic the development of the Shakespearean character in the development of their own characters. Khan also resembles Milton’s Lucifer because he can be read as being falsy deified. The backstory of Khan’s history tells the filmgoer that he was genetically created in the late twentieth century and three hundred years later Khan is still alive. Likewise, Khan resembles Ahab through Ahab’s claim to immortality; “I am immortal” (Melville, M.D., Oxford, Pp. 442). The implication of immortality is an implication of inhumanity, which could cause the two characters to be read as being in opposition for God, and this tradition, in turn, imbeds both Khan and Ahab in the tradition of Milton’s satanic hero.

Ahab and Khan are both obsessed with quests of vengeance and have assigned blame for the actions of the natural world to tangible adversaries. Ahab loses his leg to Moby Dick, one of nature’s creatures, and Khan loses his wife when a natural disaster almost destroys the planet. Ahab blames the whale for his lost leg and will stop at nothing to achieve his vengeance by killing Moby Dick, he even goes so far as to refuse to help the Rachel seek for two lost crewmen, one of which is the captain’s son. It does not even deter to Ahab from his quest that the captain of the Rachel is a friend of his:

Captain Garnier, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers: than brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.

(Melville, M.D., Oxford, Pp. 470)

Ahab puts his obsession above morality, and invokes his own name as the entity that has the power to forgive him, not the name of a deity, nor does he ask Captain Garnier for forgiveness, but rather he gives chase to the white whale, a slave to his obsession as well as to his pride: his tragic flaw.

Ahab chases after Moby Dick as if there is no greater purpose to his existence than to destroy his rival, regardless of how it affects the crew of the Pequod or his partners in Nantucket. This obsessive character trait is also a prominent trait in Khan, who proclaims about Kirk: “I’ll chase him around the moons of Nibia, and around the Antares maelstrom, and around Perdition’s flames before I give him up” (Khan, The Wrath Of Khan). Khan’s drive to kill Kirk is as Ahab’s desire to kill the “White Whale”, but this is not the only trait the two characters share.

Both Ahab and Khan exploit their crews to achieve their ends, and neither one cares about the dangers or deaths their crews face. the two men even resemble each other in their manner of the pursuit of their prey, and in their manner death. Ahab drives the Pequod into a hurricane while pursuing Moby Dick and Khan navigates his ship, the Reliant, into a nebula that visually resembles a hurricane on screen, and it is a phenomenon that creates the same problems for a spaceship that hurricane creates for a sea-faring vessel.

Both Ahab and Khan chase their “White Whales” relentlessly and make fatal final assaults which lead them to their graves, still unsatisfied int heir quests for vengeance. The connection between the charters is further developed in their final hateful words to their prey: “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee” (Melville, M.D., Oxford, pp. 507). Ahab cements his legacy with these words as Moby Dick takes more than his leg; this time the whale takes Ahab to a watery grave. Khan speaks these same final words in reference to Kirk when his death is brought about by the trap Khan himself laid for his adversary through the Genesis Project: “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee” (Khan, The Wrath Of Khan).

The significance of the deaths begins with the understanding that neither man gave up his evil hatred of his prey, and the similarities between the Genesis Project, a scientific terraforming experiment, and Moby Dick, and now, in the aftermath of the explosion caused by the Genesis Project, this, in turn, means the Genesis Project created the new blank slate previously symbolized by Moby Dick and became the canvas upon which a new mythology can be written.

Whereas Moby Dick is the “White Whale”, the blank slate for Melville’s mythology to be inscribed on, Kirk himself is the embodiment of the idealized American male created the American Mythology born of the traditions of Moby Dick: Kirk becomes the modern Ishmael and the symbol of a new American mythology. By surviving Khan’s attack, Kirk demonstrates that the American culture can survive the identity crisis of the early 1980s, but more importantly, is the meaning Kirk’s survival takes on with his final words in the film: “I feel… young” (Kirk, The Wrath Of Khan). After beginning his journey in the film with a sense of having grown old, past his prime and resigned to the legacy he had already inscribed for himself, Kirk now feels young. This signifies hope for the American culture during their global identity crisis, it is a message that claims that the future is not dependent on the past and a new American mythology is created. In essence, the whale is again “white”; Kirk becomes a rejuvenated blank slate upon which the new New American ideology can be inscribed. This is similar to the tradition created when Ishmael survived the Pequod’s assault on Moby Dick.

Ishmael’s survival in Moby Dick, and subsequently the emergence of Ishmael as the new “American man”, could not have happened without Queequeg. Queequeg can be seen as a Christ-like figure whose harpoon is symbolic of the cross Christ bore. Christ bore his cross on a long walk before he was crucified on it; Queequeg bore his harpoon through town before he boarded the Pequod, where he met his death. Both Queequeg and Christ bore their crosses publically; Christ bore his cross on his journey to Calvary and Queequeg bore his harpoon walking through the streets of Nantucket. Queequeg is surrounded by both religious imageries through his religious observations and death imagery with his coffin:

As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards the night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and I could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshiping a toadstool.

(Melville, M.D., Oxford, Pp. 73)

Melville goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Queequeg is different from most nineteenth-century Americans in his religious beliefs. Queequeg is signalled out by Melville as a representation of “other”; he becomes a symbol for cultural diversity on which the American mythology Mellville creates is built. It is ultimately through the sacrifice of “other”, Queequeg, that the American culture is able to survive and inscribe itself in history; this is because it is Queequeg’s coffin that saves the new “American man”, Ishmael from the jaws of grim death: “The coffin, moreover, is a life buoy… It becomes part of the unbiblical imagery so persistent in the novel” (Leiter, Coffin, Pp. 252). This same imagery is present in The Wrath of Khan through the plight of Spock.

In The Wrath Of Khan, Spock is identified as “other”, and like Queequeg, Spock is seen partaking in his own religious meditation, during which he displays a stoic or sombre demeanour. Spoke later goes on to become a Christ-like figure by sacrificing his life so that the crew of the Enterprise can live, effectively saving Kirk, the embodiment of the new American man, and creating the foundation for the new American mythology. The final relation between the two characters is the notion of the coffin. Both characters have coffins in their respective narratives and both narratives alter the imagery generally associated with coffins: “Traditionally the coffin represents death, but we cannot take that as the only meaning” (Leiter, Coffin, Pp. 253). The coffins become the vehicles through which the new ideologies are created: Queequeg’s coffin acts as a lifeboat for Ishmael and Spock’s coffin is sent into the heart of the Genesis Planet, symbolizing a re-birth. the meaning is clear: “How we deal with death is at last as important with how we deal with life” (Kirk, The Wrath Of Khan). Both coffins represent the “death” of the old mythology and the “birth” of the new.

Both narratives rely heavily on the implications of Genesis imagery from the Bible. Whales are recorded in the book of Genesis and are ascribed a spiritual meaning. The whale in Moby Dick can take on an eternal meaning where all things can be ascribed a new beginning against the blank canvas of the “White Whale”. Another connection between Moby Dick and the Book of Genesis is the name Ishmael: “Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named the son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael” (Genesis, 17:15–16). This embeds the idea of a new cultural beginning in the American mythology being created in Melville’s text. Ishmael is the last of his line before Abram is re-named Abraham; the two Ishmael’s are closely related through the concepts of being catalysts for a transition period in history. The Genesis connection to The Wrath Of Khan is more obvious; it is the scientific project code-named “The Genesis Project”.

“The Genesis Project” was designed to use scientific advancements to turn a lifeless planet into an inhabitable one. The problem with the project is that it destroys any existing life in favour of its new matrix: “It is a cosmic fact of life that it has always been easier to destroy than to create” (Spock, The Wrath Of Khan). At the end of the film, The Genesis Project is turned on by Khan in an attempt to destroy Kirk, to harpoon the whale. In the area in which the project is implemented the new genetic matrix overrides the existing one and creates a new planet. This symbolizes the way in which the twentieth-century interpretation of Moby Dick, The Wrath Of Khan, overrides its predecessor and creates a new American mythology.

Both Moby Dick and The Wrath Of Khan work on the concept of creating a new society that could, in both cases, be argued as an attempt to create a new Jerusalem. Both of the mythologies rely on defining themselves as something other than European. The “new” American mythology created by The Wrath Of Khan is rooted in the “old” American mythology created by Moby Dick. Through the use of Genesis references in The Wrath Of Khan, the film is attempting to override the existing Melvillian mythology, symbolic seen on screen when the Genesis Project overrides an existing area of space and creates the Genesis Planet; the new mythology evolves out of the remains of the outgoing mythology and seeks to solve a contemporary identity crisis for a twentieth-century global community; instead of creating a national identity on a new frontier the goal of the film is preserve a different and distinct cultural identity in a shrinking global community in the twentieth century where assimilation and conformity are powerful forces. Kirk becomes the canvas, or the Adam, for this “new” mythology. Through Kirk’s re-birth, or re-genesis, he re-inscribes the mythology of Moby Dick as a platform for a new American identity. Kirk also succeeds Ishmael as the “ideal new man” to lead American culture into the future through the unity of an ideal.

Everyone living in the United States of America today is familiar with both Moby Dick and Star Trek, even if they have had no direct exposure to either: they have become icons and pillars of American culture. they are the mythological roots of a relatively new society rooted in and defined against the cultural constructs of creativity forged in older societies. Both mythologies are the definition of the America ideal, not the reality.

WORK CITED

Leiter, Louis. “Queequeg’s Coffin”. Nineteenth-Century Fiction Vol #13. Ed. Bradford A. Booth. AMS Reprint Company. New York, NY: 1963

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Airmont Classics Series. Ed. Lauriat Lane. Airmont Publishing Company Inc. New York, NY. Toronto, Ontario: 1964

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford World’s Classics. Ed Tony Tanner. Oxford University Press. Oxford: 1988, 1998

Vogel, Don. “The Dramatic Chapters In Moby Dick”. Nineteenth-Century Fiction Vol #13. Ed. Bradford A. Booth. AMS Reprint Company. New York, NY: 1963

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