Captain Ahab is a character is Moby Dick, he is the captain of Pequod. Captain Ahab is a Byronic hero. A character who is both stubburn and proud. He tried his best to revenge on Moby Dick, but failed, with no one surviving. There is a description in the History of European Literature: "Byronic heroes" who scorn the "civilized" society and have strong individualistic and anarchist rebellious enthusiasm The heroes often struggle for personal freedom and love happiness. They are arrogant, independent, secretive, divorced from the society and the masses. There is no clear prospect for their struggle, and they finally suffer failure or death.
This self-respect can be captured from Captain Ahab's words. He said the famous "If the sun humiliates me, I will fight back." This resistance is not simply arrogant and ignorant, but a prelude to enlightenment, confidence and understanding of the universe, and also a prelude to tragedy. Ahab's concept is a "sad flaw" in his heroic character. The gloomy prophecy in Melville's works is not the failure of human beings in the face of a vicious or indifferent cosmic power, but the failure of human beings in their hearts. Captain Ahab showed a "crazy morbid symbol", which made him "not only bring his physical pain, but also all his intellectual and spiritual indignation" with the beluga whale. There is an "invisible malice" of self destruction that has been lurking in the human heart since the beginning of the world, and "some people with profound thoughts" are particularly vulnerable to this invisible malice.
Moby Dick has become a clear sign of all the evil things in Captain Ahab's mind. According to the novel, it is "some profound people feel that all those evil forces and paranoia incarnate that are corrupting their internal organs. These evil forces are corrupting their internal organs until they have only half of their heart and half of their lungs left to maintain their survival." The captain was determined to destroy the avatar. He wanted to fight against the invisible evil of the universe, but instead he let fate destroy and defeat him, and finally became its captive. So the beluga whale symbolized the prison wall, which is "the unreasonable mask of fate". Although sometimes the captain felt that there was nothing on the other side of the mask, he had an overwhelming and irresistible impulse to break through the mask. The invisible malice mentioned above destroyed the captain's mind. He "mentally transferred the idea to the hateful beluga whale, and then he rushed over with his disabled body to fight with it." Thus, the story became the story of a noble person who had evil thoughts and led to the tragic end.
Moby Dick is a complex novel in which no character has only one characteristic. A label on Captain Ahab may be "stubborn" or even "insane", but his character is not limited to that. There are all kinds of people on the whaling ship: there are barbarians like Queequeg; There are also civilized people like Ishmael, including black people; There are also white people. These people belong to different races and come from different cultures. Captain Ahab can control all the crew members obediently, which is not what a madman can do.
Ahab, this character, has been discussed by man y literary critics and ordinary readers from many different perspectives, and new discoveries are made at any time. The performance of this character can help us to explore more mysteries through the surface. Which can show the greatness of this book Moby Dick. The writer described out each characters deeply, it is extremely powerful for him to write out all these characteristic with profile description.
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