ABSTRACT
Ahab is the great tragic hero of Moby-Dick and his pursuit of the White Whale gives shape to Herman Melville's story. The world of Captain Ahab and his crew is the landless world of 'The Lee Shore', but in Ahab's case the metaphysical voyaging costs him his humanity as well as his life. In Melville's third book, Mardi, the voyage became a symbolical rather than a real voyage, for his impatience with the actualities of seafaring in his fictions led Melville to plume his powers for flight and let the romance and poetry of the thing grow continually. Quite early in the voyage, in 'The Spirit-Spout', when the mysterious silvery jet of the whale seems to tempt the crew of the Pequod to pursue the hunt, Ishmael has intimations of divinity of majestic creature. Ishmael's survival can be partly explained in terms of his loving relationship with savage Queequeg, since it is Queequeg's coffin that provides him with his life-buoy.
