WHALE OF A TALE
First mate Starbuck and crew on the high seas
by Mead Schaeffer, 1923
„In every age, there will be a threat to the principle
of "divine equality," and his name is Ahab. In Melville’s view, it
doesn’t take much to become a demagogue as long as you learn a few simple
tricks. Dictators such as Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qaddafi are not
geniuses; they are paranoid despots and expert manipulators of men. If you want
to understand how these and other megalomaniacs pull it off, read the last
third of Moby-Dick and watch as Ahab tightens his stranglehold on the Pequod's
crew in his increasingly horrifying quest for the White Whale.
In the midst of a disorienting crisis, what is needed more than anything else, he suggests, is a calm, steadying dose of clarity, the kind of omniscient, all-seeing perspective symbolized by an eagle on the wing....This is the anti-Ahab, who instead of anger and pain relies on equanimity and judgment, who does his best to remain above the fray and who even in the darkest of possible moments resists the "woe that is madness.”
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