When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hatred robs him of all caution, and the whale drags him to his death beneath the sea and sinks the Pequod.

[3] 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.

Yet, instead of thinking of death, Ahab and Peleg thought of how to save all hands, and how to rig temporary masts in order to get into the nearest port and make repairs.

Before the ship sails from Nantucket, Ishmael encounters a man named Elijah, who tells him about some of Ahab's past deeds.

According to Elijah, Ahab once lay near death for three days and nights near Cape Horn, took part in a deadly battle against Spanish forces before an altar in Santa, and spat into its silver chalice.

Ahab lost his leg during his most recent whaling voyage, leaving him with a grim disposition and a strong desire for revenge against Moby Dick.

The deck planks of Pequod have been bored with shallow holes, the same diameter as the lower end, to allow him to steady himself against the motion of the ship.

Instead of embarking on a regular whaling voyage, Ahab declares he is out for revenge and nails a doubloon to the mast, as a reward for the crewmember who first sights Moby Dick.

As the voyage proceeds, Ahab gradually abandons the physical comforts of his life, symbolized by such actions as throwing his pipe overboard and giving his shaving razors to the ship's blacksmith for use in forging a special harpoon he intends to use against Moby Dick.

Ahab throws his harpoon and hits Moby Dick, but its line wraps around his neck and drags him off his boat when the whale dives, drowning him.

"[9] The creation of Ahab, who apparently does not derive from any captain Melville sailed under, was heavily influenced by the observation in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's lecture on Hamlet that "one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself ... thus mutilated or diseased, under given circumstances.

"[10] Whenever Moby-Dick's narrator comments on Captain Ahab as an artistic creation, the language of Coleridge's lecture appears: "at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems a half-wilful over-ruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature."

Aboard were two sailors from the ship Nantucket, who could have told him that they had seen their second mate "taken out of a whaleboat by a foul line and drowned, as is Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick.

"[13] Ahab's character is shaped by mythic and literary patterns that overlap and reinforce each other in such a complementary way that "the apparent irony of one allusion is frequently the truth of another.

This association prompts Ishmael to ask, after first hearing Ahab's name: "When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?"

"[20] The ship's last voyage, however, is not entirely commercial: from the moment Ahab attaches the golden doubloon on the mast, it becomes a pursuit of a perceived enemy, under a captain unable to compromise.

Milton's scene set in Hell includes the lines "Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit/Chew'd bitter ashes, which the offended taste/With spattering noise rejected" (X, 565–567),[30] and Moby-Dick chapter 132, "The Symphony," has "like a blighted fruit-tree he [Ahab] shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.

Ahab's story, caused by Moby Dick biting off his leg, follows the same psychological pattern of being spiritually and physically impaired.

[35] Ahab waving the fiery harpoon is Melville's "modified equivalent of Prometheus's smuggling from heaven the fire-laden fennel stalk.

"The Pip who dances and shakes his tambourine before Queequeg's coffin," Sweeney compares, "is clearly a maniac, completely detached from his former personality."

[40] The opening chapter contains an extended allusion to "that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned" (Ch.

According to George Ripley in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for December 1851, Ahab "becomes the victim of a deep, cunning monomania; believes himself predestined to take a bloody revenge on his fearful enemy; pursues him with fierce demoniac energy of purpose.

[48] During the 1950s and 1960s literary scholars shifted their attention to narrative technique and point of view, which for Melville studies meant that the spotlight switched from Ahab to Ishmael.

Ahab is "shrieking in pain" as the ship's (called Mary-Ann) blacksmith holds a fiery, hot-bladed tool against his stump.

"[58][60] In the later film Star Trek: First Contact after Captain Picard's vengeful campaign against the Borg, actor Patrick Stewart paraphrases Ahab as he laments his own preoccupation with revenge.

An acclaimed version of Moby Dick and Ahab was made by the trio of Argentine artists consisting of Enrique Breccia, Leopoldo Durañona and Guillermo Saccomanno, which was released in a completed and collected graphic novel format in 1979.

[citation needed] The song "Beneath These Waves" (in the 2005 album Touched by the Crimson King from the metal band Demons & Wizards) is about Ahab's will of revenge.

Singer Tom Waits also references the character in his song "Shiver Me Timbers" on his 1974 album The Heart of Saturday Night.

Elton John and Leon Russell’s 2010 album The Union contains a song called “Hey Ahab” based on the character.

The songs lyrics are loosely based on Moby-Dick and the animated video features popular scenes following Captain Ahab.