Melville, friend of Hawthorne and transcendentalist philosopher on
his own account, sees nature as greater and more terrible than
man. He sees the will of man trying to control the universe, but
failing; crushed if uncowed by the unmeasured power of an evil
nature, which his little spirit, once it loses touch with the will
of God, vainly encounters. Give man eyes only in the top of his
head, looking heavenward, says Ahab, urging the blacksmith, who
makes him a new leg buckle, to forge a new creature complete. He
writes of man at the beginning of the age of science, aware of the
vast powers of material nature, fretting that his own body is part
of them, desirous to control them by mere will, fighting his own
moral nature as did Ahab in his insensate pursuit of Moby Dick,
and destroyed by his own ambitions, even as Ahab, the
_Pequod_, and all her crew went down before the lashings and
charges of the white whale.
"Oh, Life," says Ahab, "here I am, proud as a Greek god, and yet
standing debtor to this blockhead [the carpenter] for a bone to
stand on!... I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with." And
yet as they approach the final waters "the old man's purpose
intensified itself.
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