The following quote stood out to me this week. It is describing the Pequod, as Ishmael sees it for the first time. “A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.” This quote stood out to me in particular because of it’s contrast, essentially using antonyms to describe the Pequod. It ultimately reflects one of the many themes reflected within the novel about human ambition.

Our ambition, or drive to do something noble, is completely inseparable from the melancholy. Striving for greatness always involves sacrifice, isolation, or the awareness of our own limits. For example, on a whaling ship sailors were stuck with the same group of men for months and months at a time – a great sacrifice for the adventure and supposed riches that awaited them upon their arrival back home. Glory and riches are “noble”. But doing the same thing, day after day, with the same people, only occasionally being interrupted is melancholy. In a way, the ship being both noble and melancholy represents what life looks like on it. Great in the eyes of society and the sailors themselves, but rather tedious most days.

Because ultimately to achieve greatness, we often must first make habits. Building a habit is melancholy and tedious, at times. But in order to achieve our goals, whether big or small, we must have them.Also, a lot of time, we, as humans, do not know our own limits. For instance, Ahab has worked so hard in this industry that he lost a leg, and potentially his sanity, as he constantly obsesses over killing the “white whale”.

Long story short, like the ship itself, the sailor’s within embody the paradox of human ambition: the idea that our pursuit of something grand and meaningful is always accompanied by struggle, weariness, loss, and a million other sacrifices.