Quote 7
Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine. (134.43)
In the previous passage, the question "Is Ahab, Ahab?" implied that the presence of a divinely ordained destiny or fate would mean that Ahab isn’t Ahab—that he’s just an extension of God’s will. But in this passage, a complete reliance on Fate goes hand-in-hand with the assertion that "Ahab is for ever Ahab." So the real question is, are we more ourselves when we behave the way we’ve been programmed to by fate, or when we defy destiny and act in unusual ways?
Quote 8
What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad – Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and – Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. (37.4)
Ahab’s ability to do his own psychoanalysis shows us the limits of his insanity. Even though his object is crazy, he’s able to find sane ways of evaluating and reaching it. So, if you know you’re crazy, are you crazy?
Quote 9
The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. [. . .] All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. (41.19)
Here we’re introduced to Ahab’s monomania, his single-minded fixation on the White Whale. Basically, what’s driven Ahab crazy is that he’s not very good at symbolism. As a clever Shmoop reader, you know that things don’t just symbolize whatever you decide to make them mean; the limits of their symbolic potential are determined by context. But Ahab takes the White Whale out of context and projects onto it everything that’s enraged any human being ever.
Nothing can really hold all that symbolic weight. Not even an inscrutable white whale.