And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow that were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding-grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities would become probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one technical phrase- the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.
Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Traders; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries- tallied him, and shall he escape? His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's are! And here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a weariness and faintness of pondering came over him! and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.
These six paragraphs go a long way to depict the depth of Ahab's obsession. Melville pretty much transforms him from an eating/breathing man into a vulture that feeds upon his frenzied heart. Ahab becomes the very symbol of madness and revenge. He will never surrender until one of two things happens: 1) Moby Dick is killed, or 2) Ahab dies while trying to kill Moby Dick. Neither option bodes well for the men on board the Pequod.
First, I apologize for my prolonged absence. I was taking care of end-of-semester matters--final exams, grading, e-mailing, calming the fears of panicked students. Nothing out of the ordinary for this time of the year. Yet, these obligations take their toll. Last night, I sat down to write a quick blog post. Picture me like Ahab, poring over his maps and logs. I struggled for close to an hour until I finally realized that my brain was oatmeal. So, unlike Ahab, I surrendered.
All that being said, I'm doing much better tonight. Rested. A little more relaxed. Not Ahab-like at all. However, I DO want to make a comparison here between the current President of the United States and Captain Ahab. This afternoon, Donald Trump announced that he was withdrawing the U. S. from the Iran nuclear deal, making good on another one of his campaign promises and plunging the entire world into yet another crisis.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has had one mission: to dismantle everything that President Barack Obama did during his eight years as President. In a little more than a year (although it seems like a much longer tenure, I know), Donald Trump has attempted to do away with the Affordable Care Act; ended DACA, which protected undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children; pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, despite all the scientific community urging him not to; and imposed a tax code reform that benefits only the incredibly wealthy while cutting healthcare benefits for children who live below the poverty line. If that's not monomaniacal, I don't know what is.
Personally, I think Mr. Trump is somehow trying to exact some kind of revenge against President Obama for some perceived slight. The problem is that EVERYTHING that Mr. Trump has done or attempted to do hurts the American people and citizens of the world. It doesn't affect President Obama personally at all. Mr. Obama's approval ratings are still through the roof, while Mr. Trump's are in the septic tank. I'm sure that irritates Mr. Trump, as well.
I think the Donald Trump White House is the Pequod on the search for the Moby Dick, and every last Starbuck and Ishmael is swept up in President Ahab's obsession with destroying the legacy of a really good man.
(By the way, Donald Trump can do nothing to harm Barack Obama's reputation. What Mr. Trump has succeeded in doing this last year is to replace Richard Nixon as the worst President of the United States ever. Mr. Trump won't be winning any popularity contests, and his presidential library, if it is ever built, will house all of the legal documents that will eventually cause his downfall. Just a little prediction.)
If you can't tell, I'm a little pissed this evening. I've been trying to avoid political posts. I tire of constant Trump talk. However, today is one of the lowest points of the current White House. I'm sure it can and will sink lower, but, sometimes, I just can't keep my mouth shut. The German people kept their mouths shut as Adolf Hitler came into power, and look what happened to them.
Saint Marty is thankful for people with common sense tonight. Good, decent people who worry about the environment and world peace and the fate of children and refugees. You know. People like the Obamas.
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