Suddenly, Melville is Ahab

When I imagined Melville, I always thought of him as Ishmael: The wandering, philosophical, sensitive lover of mankind whose only hope is to float in quiet contemplation on the sea of life, and draw analogous views from it regarding his own interiority.

But suddenly, after reading Renker, I have discovered his intolerable affinity to Ahab. 

This is a gut reaction, which I consider fitting as the text strives to affect us personally, and not as objective literary critics. One may even go so far as to say that it is "gossip" (though this strikes most cruelly at its core, considering that gossip is traditionally a disdained "feminine" form of speech, and that its author is a woman attempting to draw attention to the physical, emotional, and social suffering of women when confronted with Herman's violence). 

But despite the recognition that my reaction to the text is largely emotional, it rings true, especially when considering his wife Elizabeth's letter to cousin Kate: "If ever this dreadful incubus of a book (I call it so because it has undermined all our happiness) gets off Herman's shoulders I do believe he may be in better mental health - but at present I have reason to feel the gravest concern and anxiety about it."

This may as well have been Ahab's wife discussing the white whale he must kill. 

But Melville's genius lies in his ultimate recognition that the whale cane never be killed, it must be pursued until its pursuer perishes in the chase, and finally goes down with it into the depths of the deepest ocean, where at last we may hope he finds peace. With him he drags down everyone else involved in his ill-fated endeavor - in Ahab's case the merry sailors aboard the Pequod, in Melville's case his entire family, those few of whom survived carried the battle scars to their deaths.

It is interesting to note, also, that this is the main difference between Renker's Ahab (or Melville) and Naslund's Ahab, who embraces domesticity. For the latter, killing the whale seems possible because he has a loving family to return to. Moby Dick consumes that half (or more) of him obsessed with revenge, but that which is left over loves Una and Justice. For the former, going down with the whale is the only acceptable end. All else is abhorrent.

But if Melville is Ahab, who is Ishmael, through whose mouth Melville speaks throughout the novel? My guess is that he is Melville's hope, what he wishes he could become: The peaceful sea-goer who is unbound by society, by rules, by matrimony and the toils of domestic life. If he could only be free of those mortal chains, he could survive the great battle with the white whale (or the white page, in his case), and live to contemplate another day.