“Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville (post 4): Ishmael and Ahab give their opinions on Ahab’s mental disturbance ever since the whale bit his leg off

Ishmael’s Opinion

Ishmael says Ahab has “monomania” (1, Chapter 41, p. 262). According to Wikipedia, “In 19th-century psychiatry, monomania (from Greek monos, one, and mania, meaning "madness" or "frenzy") was a form of partial insanity conceived as single pathological preoccupation in an otherwise sound mind” (2).

He says that although Ahab could appear completely normal, “even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form” (1, p. 263).

Ishmael thus implies that Ahab, like Jekyll/Hyde, has two personalities, and whenever you see the one which appears to be completely normal, he has an another personality, a “hidden self,” which is monomaniacal.

Ahab’s Opinion

Ahab’s soliloquy in Chapter 37 is notable for his declaring himself a “demoniac”: “They think me mad — Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened!…I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer” (1, p. 243).

If I may assume that Ahab uses the word “demoniac” in the way it is used in The New Testament (e.g., Mark 5:1-20, regarding the Gerasene demoniac named Legion) (search “demoniac”), Ahab is saying that he is not mad, but possessed (by a vengeful spirit). Psychiatry now sees spirit possession as a form of multiple personality.

1. Herman Melville. Moby-Dick [1851]. London, Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2016.

2. Wikipedia. “Monomania.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomania