Ahab Day, geek out part two

Other than Christmas, Thanksgiving, and my birthday, Ahab Day is my favorite day of the year.  Ahab Day occurs twice a year, actually, on the exact day that my American Literature and, later in the year, my AP Literature classes reach chapter 36 of Moby-Dick. 

It was always a good day--you would scarcely believe just how much fun I have working through this particular material with you--but it became a great day at about 7:55 one morning, ten minutes before first period walked in the door.  I was putting the room in order and reviewing the passage when it dawned on me.  I should be Ahab today--Ahab from chapter 36.  The quick write prompt will remain the same, but I'll be different.  I'll limp and pace around the room, look out the window, be all pensive.

And not say a word.

The quick write prompt was, is, and ever shall be "How does Ahab persuade the crew to join him on his quest?"

I had reservations.  I was, and still am, uncertain as to if this will work.  If I'm merely silent and pensive, will the class not just spiral out of control?  Well.  It doesn't.  If I'm not myself, the vibe changes, and, like the crew of the Pequod, the class tenses up.  Students work slowly and with great trepidation, but work they do and they DO find some methods that Ahab uses to get the crew to join his quest.

After I can no longer limp and be quiet, I do what Ahab did.  I ask a student to get everyone to line up.  (I am always amazed when they do.)  Then, as Ahab, I ask startlingly simple questions and get way, way too excited when they answer them.  Then, I break character and we get to work.

How does Ahab get the crew on his side?

1. He uses his position.  The crew will always obey the captain.  This is a start.  He wants much more than obedience.
2. He creates an air of mystery about himself.  He does this by remaining in his cabin for the first many days of the voyage and then, as I did in class, stomping around silently, creating even more fear.
3. He exploits the disposition of the sailors.  These sailors are not highly educated and, largely because of that, largely because they are the type of men who would seek a position which requires all but blind obedience, they are childlike.  They WANT to please the captain.  When he gives them approval, they are overjoyed.
4. Even before that, he has created what can be called "ritual space."  By commanding them to assemble, he takes them out of the ordinary into a memorable, ritual time.  As Joseph Campbell, author of The Power of Myth and Hero With a Thousand Faces says, "only in ritual do we find meaning."
5. He bribes them.
6. He makes his fight their fight by sharing his story.
7. He has them swear an oath.

All of these things take advantage of their childlike nature, really, especially the oath, which, to a child, is even more binding than it is to an adult.

But Starbuck, our first mate, is not a child.  In their brief interchange, Ahab goes far further than he may wish in revealing the true nature of his quest.

First, seeing Starbuck balking at the prospect of chasing this one white whale, Ahab asks if Starbuck is chicken.  Starbuck is no chicken, and his response reveals HIS OWN motivation--money.  "How many barrels will this vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?" 

Ahab replies that there's more than one way to get paid and Starbuck accuses Ahab, as a Quaker can, of blasphemy, as he is putting himself in the position of God by seeking revenge.

Now.

If you are ever on Jeopardy! or any other quiz show and asked what Moby-Dick is about, you have my permission to give the answer that everyone wants.  Revenge.  It's true--it's just incomplete.  The revenge motive is where it starts, not where it ends.  What Ahab really wants is knowledge.  He wants an answer to the question which eats at every thinking person.  Why?  Why do bad things happen?  He expresses this question quite poetically.

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. 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, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

 He lost his leg.  This makes him angry.  He was attached to it.  Obviously, one would want to punish the entity which took the leg.  But we already know Ahab to be a man of superior natural force: globular brain and ponderous heart.  He is not a man who washes his car, sees a bird crap on the clean hood, and then pick up a rock to throw at the bird.  No.  What caused this bird to do this?  If there is an all powerful being who controls everything, why are birds always crapping on cars, specifically MY car?  He wants to find the whale and find out why.  He seeks a sublime encounter with God, like Job had in chapter 42 of that book--only Ahab won't back down like Job did for, you see, Ahab has slain whales. 

We see the crew swear with great ceremony and, in a chapter in which we continue shifting the narrative stance, Ahab gives a soliloquy which concludes like this:

I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way! 

This is a scene from The Dark Knight.  You are free to watch all five minutes, but the last half, particularly the last two minutes, will lead to an understanding of this passage.  See The Joker as Ahab.  See Batman as God.

And it just keeps getting better.