Ahab begins as a character enshrouded in mystery, as Ishmael only receives tidbits of foreboding information. As Ahab comes into the spotlight, his obsession with the whale and revenge become apparent, and he remains stuck in the past. Chapter after chapter painstakingly highlights Ahab’s obsession, as he spends every waking hour dwelling on Moby Dick. Melville’s creation of Ahab calls into question what being human versus being alive means, and what it means when someone who is just alive is put in a position of power. 

Chapter forty-one, although titled “Moby Dick”, is not truly about the whale. The focus remains on Ahab, and his cold obsession toward the whale. It is this ever-consuming, fatal fixation that swallows Ahab wholly. His inability to let go of it takes away from all other aspects of his life; it is all he talks about and thinks about. Ahab becomes something less than human in this obsession. Melville writes “Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepening contracted… so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument… Ahab… did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object” (p. 201). Ahab’s obsession becomes something more; madness, insanity. He is unable to focus on anything but the whale. He becomes a zombie, alive but with only one goal in mind: to kill Moby Dick. 

Melville, interestingly, describes madness as “a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form” (p. 201). Although Melville’s metaphors are often complex and abstract, feline seems a rather out of place adjective in the description of madness. There are possible implications to this choice. Feline, as in feminine and female, a gender historically assumed to be the ones consumed by madness. Paired with cunning, this adjective carries a rather negative connotation around women–the missing piece in this book. Rarely is anyone feminine mentioned, and to bring this adjective in around madness reflects opinions of the time in which this was written. Feline, too, could simply mean like a cat. Perhaps Melville simply is nodding toward the unpredictability of cats, and their ability to become something more subtle. Melville creates a hint of danger with this metaphor, as something more subtle could be in wait. With this, Ahab would become less than human and closer to animals in his madness. Animals in this book are regarded as less than human, as sources of income and something to hunt.

With these words, Melville shapes a character who is no longer human, as he compares Ahab to an instrument: “…not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument” (p. 201). No longer an agent of free will, Ahab is controlled by his obsession. Yet, his obsession is his own, creating a paradox centered around his lack of free will. An instrument is usually used by another to execute a task, yet there is no one puppeteering Ahab. This is a key component of his madness. He is the instrument, yet also the musician. It is also important to note the previous sentence, about Ahab’s completely preserved intellect. With this, a lack of humanity is found in those who are intellectual, but cannot think freely for themselves, which is what Ahab has become. To be human is to think critically, independently, to be an agent of oneself. Melville challenges conceptions with this sentence which makes a clear comparison. 

This calls into question what it means to be human. Although Melville acknowledges Ahab is alive, the “living instrument”, his lack of consciousness and perspective makes him not human, animalistic, the whale, driven only by obsessive anger and desire.  Melville further separates Ahab from us with the words “Ahab… did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object” (p. 201). Instead of describing him as a potent human, Melville chooses to categorize him as an object. With this, Ahab slips further and further away from our grasp. He is superhuman, yet no longer human at all. In addition, Melville chooses powerful language for this description: “a thousand fold” and “more potency” are both descriptives that imply great power and strength. Ahab, the captain of the ship, is in a position of power, and although the ship is claimed to be a representation of democracy, Ahab remains the stoic leader. Melville also describes Ahab as “any one reasonable object”, showing the range of this power. His use of the word ‘reasonable’ also implies that Ahab once held a sane mind that was lost at sea after the incident. 

In a political landscape questioning citizenship and who is considered human, this representation of Ahab is important. In a position of power, Ahab is the captain, yet he does not consider any of those below him, and is only driven by his own desires.  An unelected, assigned leader, Ahab is superior to all of them yet not one of them. With Melville’s construction of an instrument, Ahab is solely a vessel, controlled by a rogue part of his mind. In the terrestrial parallel, who is considered human is being contested, and Ahab becomes a metaphor for both those in power and those not in power. He is the captain, making all of the decisions, thinking of only himself. Yet he is also considered less than human by Melville, only an instrument to be used.