Tag Archives: The Doubloon

Essay 2 – The Doubloon and the Limit of Ahab

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In chapter 99, we watch as the doubloon transforms before our very eyes; from a piece of gold worth sixteen dollars as means of motivating the crew to more of a legend, similar to the painting in chapter 3. This painting is one that is muddled and soot-covered from years of smoking and lack of care, but the painting allows the audience to play with meaning and figure out how to read the novel. It is the same with the doubloon, however, less so with the novel itself and more with the characters’ morality and current mental state.Ahab in particular is fascinating, allowing the audience to peer into his beliefs, lining up with the descriptions Ishmael had heard about before ever having met the wayward captain. Ahab walks the deck, the same path daily, and yet it is here, it is now, in which he has a religious experience—one in which he is at its centre. “There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops… and all other grand and lofty things…”, Ahab states, “The firm tower, that is Ahab… the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab…” (Melville ???). In these declarations, the audience sees a man who would fight the sun, the man who is god-like, the man who is Ahab. At what point does perception become reality? In not only the minds of the crew, but also in the captain’s mind, Ahab is omnipotent—how far reaching is this power when the whale takes from the Ahab?

Ch 133: The Chase, but first the doubloon

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In Chapter 133: The Chase–First Day, Ahab sights Moby Dick at the same time as all three lookouts, and yet claims the doubloon for himself, robbing Tashtego of a victory that all aboard the pequad were motivated to claim from the start of the voyage: 

“‘I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I cried out,’ said Tashtego. ‘Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first(p.595).” 

This comes as no surprise, as at this time Ishmael has gone over the concept of Fast-Fish loose fish and the seedy legal territory of ownership. Ahab has weaponized the promise of the doubloon as treasure, as a promise of wealth and accomplishment, and after having taken advantage of the labor and loyalty of the men on board, shown again that no one matters aboard the pequad, no one own the right to ownership, but him.

At the same time, this moment in which Ahab made a pact with the men on board, which he himself dishonored, is a call to the way the United States has a history of using agreements as a way to take advantage of Indigenous American tribes, and disregard treaties in favor of capitalism and industry. This isn’t a new occurance, a man in power taking advantage of the people he has made promise too, and Melville is reminding his readers of our nation founded on lies and land grants.

Besides Ahab has no need for the promise of wealth, when what he means is to become legend, and the men on the ship are not men, but a means to an end in killing Moby Dick, and attaining his glory. He reminds them once again of their place as he pursues the whale, and with it death, threatening his men: the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.— Where’s the whale? gone down again.”

Following this vein of thought, Melville using the Pequod as a means to talk about the nation state discusses the foundations of American history, and our legacy, one frought with the bodies of sacrificial lambs, or of those deemed expendable or standing in the way of the government and manifest destiny.