Herman Melville: Similarities in Claggart and Captain Ahab
Uploaded by Britt4538 on Dec 15, 2003
Herman Melville was a struggling writer in the mid-1800s, who spent a few years of his life as a sailor and crew member of whaling ships in the south seas. These experiences greatly influenced his writing, causing there to be many similarities among his novels. In two of his works, Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd, Melville seems to have created two characters, Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick, and John Claggart from Billy Budd, who both share some very comparable qualities and experiences. The most prevalent characteristic that links them together is that in their stories, they both possess an unrelenting and somewhat foolish hatred for another character. This is the hatred that drives the climax of both novels, and ultimately leads to both of their ends.
The novel Moby-Dick is a tale of the voyage of the whaling ship the Pequod, where its captain, Ahab, begins his dangerous and relentless pursuit of the legendary whale, Moby-Dick. The reason for Ahab’s hatred for the white whale seems quite simple, in that the whale took his leg, but with the leg, it might have taken his peace of mind as well. The loss of Ahab’s leg, which ordinarily might have caused only minor resentment toward the creature, seems to have stirred up some of the most dreadful hatred and abhorrence in Ahab that a human could possess. His obsession with killing this whale even convinces one of his crew members, Starbuck, that he has gone insane. However, to fully understand Captain Ahab’s detestation of the whale, it is necessary to look deeper than the fact that it bit off his leg. Moby-Dick is described as a creature superior to all others, creating a reverence and mysterious beauty for it that Ahab wants to destroy. When describing this to his crew members he says, “He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate” (Melville 358). Ahab then uses this hatred to devote his life to killing Moby-Dick. “Death to Moby-Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby-Dick to his death!” (Melville 360). It is with these enthusiastic words that Ahab tries to stir up in his crew members the passion in which he feels to take down the whale. However, what they realize, that Ahab does not, is the danger of that mission.
The story...