Captain Ahab’s Gift

Why “Moby Dick” is a novel about chronic pain

Image by UlaFish.

Ahab is a man in pain. Had he abandoned the three-year vengeful whaling voyage detailed in Moby Dick to instead visit his local pain clinic, Ahab would have learned that the source of his “topmost grief” could be reduced to a classic case of phantom limb pain. He could demand a pathophysiological explanation in exchange for him answering questions about the pain including its texture, continuity, and magnitude on a ten-point scale — but Ahab would only be told that the underlying reason for the “sharp shooting pains” from his Leviathan-induced amputation was largely unknowable. Anyone who has read Moby Dick knows that this encounter, guided by the biomedical model of the body, would do very little to inhibit the passionate, whale-hungry machinations of Melville’s seafaring anti-hero.

The death drive of Ahab’s story, and arguably of all great tragedies both epic or everyday, is the search for meaning beyond the scientific and medical readings of pain. Professor David Morris, author of The Culture in Pain, views this pressure to find and conquer the “completely illegible” aspects of pain as a necessary step towards understanding the “most basic human experiences” that constitute personal identity. Under this reasoning, from a writer as opposed to a physician, what seems to dog Ahab’s hellish intellect is less a “matter of nerves and neurotransmitters” and more a midlife crisis. That is not to say that Ahab’s pain is not “real pain,” but that it is a pain interpreted, a pain that straddles the worlds of body and of imagination, a pain that changes and is contingent on circumstance, culture, and history. Most of all, it is a silent pain. Ahab must sacrifice his life, his wife and son, and the lives of his crew, to excavate the truths migrating below the waters of his subconscious. It is not difficult to see, as Morris does, why pain is an apt subject for a complex novel.

What is the meaning that Ahab pursues in his accursed white whale? In his description of Ahab to Ishmael, ship-owner Peleg says “ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody — desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off.” Going beyond his underestimation of Ahab’s dark passion, it is clear that Peleg sees a profound duality in Ahab’s character. He is both moody, suggesting an almost intellectual melancholy or brooding about the pain, as well as savage, hinting at the power of pain to debase people’s reason to the level of wild animals. Melville also captures this dichotomy by making Ahab the only college-educated character in the novel, crafting him to be the person most capable of thoughtful deliberation and imagination but also the most willing to sacrifice his life; in this way, Ahab as captain is akin to a samurai warrior.

Professor Elaine Scarry, author of The Body in Pain, analyzes this duality on a spectrum. In one extreme, which she describes through a study of torture, pain is “world-destroying,” in that it dismantles and deconstructs the associations between feelings, ideas, objects, and attachments that constitute everyday reality. At the other extreme, pain is a creative force that utilizes human labor and imagination to add meaning to identity. Either way, for Ahab, the onset of intense chronic pain is transformative. It limits his function on the Pequod, and his disability is a potential source of embarrassment. The fact of change in his world is enough.

The first question moody Ahab is likely to ask is, why is this pain happening to me? In the exceedingly philosophical chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” (MD, XLII) Melville stakes out two significant possible answers. One attributes an intelligence and intentionality to Moby Dick, suggesting that Ahab was targeted “with the thought of annihilation.” If this was true, then Ahab can justify his pain as a marker of defeat, and he can imagine himself at the center of a mythological battle in which a demon smites a hero. As Ahab chooses to set sail, he elevates the journey and the whale’s whiteness to the level of the “depths of the milky way” and the “immensities of the universe.” Unfortunately for Ahab, what bears out in final chapters of the book about the three days of “The Chase” where he has three encounters with Moby Dick, is not this transcendentally meaningful first answer. Instead, it is the second answer where the whiteness of the whale, and consequently the significance of Ahab’s pain, is a “dumb blankness.” Moby Dick is not a deity of Nature; nor is he a ruler of the sea. Most importantly, Moby Dick gives no signs that he even recognizes Ahab. This lack of care, and the realization that his pain has no greater meaning and that his injury is a product of chance, is a major turning point for Ahab’s character. As disillusioning as it is, Moby Dick turns out to be a big freakish loner who, much like Ahab, wanders the ocean in solitude. The destruction of the Pequod was not the act of a violent agent of God, but an act of self-defence driven by a wish to be left alone.

Emily Dickinson wrote a poem that also reflected this “Element of Blank” in pain. She realized that any subjective meaning of pain, despite its “infinite realms,” is dependent on human imagination. As a result, human endeavours to overcome pain can be overtly based on imagination as well, rather than tackling the web, as Morris puts it, of “personal and social implications.” Ahab tried to medicate his pain through revenge. He fuelled this revenge by creating a mythos of Ahab, which not only explains why he constantly talks about himself in the third person, but also manipulates the hearts of his shipmates into agreeing with Ahab’s suicidal hunt. This adherence to a grand narrative correlates with a modernist sensibility to elevate the dignity and heroic potential of everyday people. This is ultimately a defense mechanism, or what Scarry might refer to as a “recovery of the body” through the individualistic voice, a language-driven attempt to transform an older man whose career and self-esteem are threatened by his disability. As Dickinson writes, pain “has no future but itself.” For Ahab, the impulse to quell his suffering by taking arms against pain will never restore him to his past self.

In Ahab’s final speech, he comes to the realization that immense suffering is a natural part of human life, that his “topmost greatness lies in [his] topmost grief.” Although a little late, he models a healthier approach towards a new future, “gives up the spear,” and begins to live with pain, rather than in pain. Moby Dick is “all-destroying,” but he is also “unconquering.” Ahab’s life, he realizes, is meaningful independent of whether his pain is meaningful. It is after that epiphanic moment that Ahab’s neck becomes entangled in fishing line, and his doomed body shoots into the sea along with the stricken Moby Dick.

In her novel Paradise, author Toni Morrison writes: “How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.” Indeed, the tragedy of chronic pain and suffering can often be the claustrophobia of a reduced reality and the narrowing ways of treating it. It is the mandate of writers and physicians to see that very human tragedy through the eyes of the individual patients who need their guidance. Pain narratives, such as Moby Dick, are expansive but intensely penetrating resources for this kind of radical compassion. In this respect, Ahab’s death was not just a great story — it was a gift.