In Melville's Moby Dick, to all Moby
Dick is a formidable force, but Starbuck, the Quaker, feels that it wrong for Ahab to
seek vengeance upon a dumb brute: "to be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems
blasphemous." But Ahab responds Ahab feels justified in wreaking evil upon a being that
is evil:
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; and be the White Whale
agent of be the White Whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon
him.
While Ahab seeks revenge
for the loss of his leg; he also wants to strike though the exterior of Moby Dick--the
"pasteboard" and "unreasoning mask"--in order to understand what secrets and evil Nature
disguises. Ahab and Starbuck are foils of each other; whereas Starbuck advocates
moderation, Captain Ahab incites the entire crew in his search for vengeance. For, after
their pagan ceremony in which they pass the flagon and drink from it, the men are united
in their search for Moby Dick. But, theirs is a hunt for a mystical monster, a grand
trophy for whom the first to sight him will be given a Spanish dragoon. "God keep
me!--keep us all!" murmurs Starbuck lowly as the others partake of the pagan
ceremony.
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