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Captain Ahab is a fictional character in Herman Melville's ''Moby-Dick'' (1851), the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod''. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, leaving him with a prosthesis made out of whalebone. Instead of leading the ''Pequod'' on a whaling voyage for profit, Ahab seeks revenge on the whale and casts his spell over the crew-members to enlist them in his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted and hunted down, Ahab's hate robs him of all caution and denies him revenge. Moby Dick drags Ahab to his death. Melville biographer Andrew Delbanco calls Ahab "a brilliant personification of the very essence of fanaticism".〔Delbanco (2005), 166〕 F. O. Matthiessen calls attention to the fact that Ahab is called an "ungodly god-like man". Ahab's "tragedy is that of an unregenerate will" whose "burning mind is barred out from the exuberance of love" and argues that he "remains damned".〔Matthiessen (1941), 457 n.5〕 D. H. Lawrence felt little sympathy for Ahab and found that the whale should have "torn off both his legs, and a bit more besides".〔Lawrence (1923), 157〕 The character of Ahab was created under the influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's lecture on ''Hamlet'' and figures in biblical and classical literature such as Shakespeare and Milton. His prosthesis, for instance, has been taken for an allusion to the Oedipus myth.〔Sweeney (1975), 73-4.〕 Ahab is firmly established in popular culture by cartoons, comic books, films and plays. Most famously, he provided J. M. Barrie with the model for his Captain Hook character, who is obsessed not with a whale but a crocodile.〔("Moby-Dick – a modern tragedy." ''The Telegraph'', 27 October 2008. )〕〔David Park Williams (1965).("Hook and Ahab: Barrie's Strange Satire on Melville." PMLA, December 1965. ) Retrieved 25 March 2014.〕〔Barbour (1986), 16〕 == Biography == Ahab was named by his insane, widowed mother, who died when he was twelve months old. At 18 years old, Ahab first took to sea as a boy-harpooner. Less than three voyages ago, Ahab married a sweet, resigned girl, with whom he has a young son. He has been in colleges and among the cannibals, and has seen deeper wonders than the waves. He has fixed his lance, the keenest and surest on the isle of Nantucket, in stranger foes than whales. Years ago, Peleg, now the co-owner of the ''Pequod'', sailed as mate under Ahab. During that voyage, a typhoon near Japan swung her three masts overboard. Every moment the crew thought the ship would sink, the sea breaking over the slip. Yet instead of thinking of death, Captain Ahab and Peleg thought of how to save all hands, and how to rig jury-masts in order to get into the nearest port. According to Elijah's mysterious words, Ahab long ago lay for dead for three days and three nights off Cape Horn, was involved in a deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa, and spat into the silver calabash. Last voyage, a whale, the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat, bit off Ahab's leg, and the pains in his stump made him, never jolly, desperate moody. Adding insult to injury, Ahab is dependent upon a whalebone for a prosthesis. Neither sick nor well, Ahab keeps close inside the house. Ahab is 58 years old at the time of the ''Pequod''s last voyage. Peleg and Bildad pilot the ship out of the harbor, and Ahab first appears on deck when the ship is already at sea. Instead of embarking on a regular whaling voyage, Ahab declares he is out for revenge and attaches a doubloon on the mast by way of reward for the crewmember who first sights Moby Dick, the white whale. When Moby Dick is eventually sighted, a disastrous three-day chase begins. Entangled by the line of his own harpoon, Ahab falls overboard and drowns as the whale dives and takes him along. Peleg refers to Ahab respectfully as a "grand, ungodly, god-like man" but he is also nicknamed "Old Thunder". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Captain Ahab」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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