INSTITUTIONEN FÖR  
SPRÅK OCH LITTERATURER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEW OF 
CIVILIZATION IN MOBY DICK 
 
Anders Carlsson 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Essay/Degree Project: 15 hp 
Program or/and course: EN1311 
Level: First cycle 
Term/year: Ht/2024 
Supervisor: Maria Olaussen 
Examiner: Zlatan Filipovic 
Report nr:  
 
 
 
Title: A PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEW OF CIVILIZATION IN MOBY DICK 
Author: Anders Carlsson 
Supervisor: Maria Olaussen 
 
Abstract: The civilized and the uncivilized are sometimes viewed as being in a dichotomous 
relationship. This essay will explore the themes of civilization and nature in Moby Dick. This 
is achieved through the use of psychoanalysis and especially the theories of Sigmund Freud 
and Julia Kristeva. This essay will make the case that as the ship leaves Massachusetts for its 
whaling voyage, the boundary between civilization and nature becomes distorted. As this 
happens, the difference between what is considered the civilized Western crew and the 
uncivilized pagan crew becomes blurred. In this process of Captain Ahab becoming more like 
a pagan, he also becomes more unrestrained by the rules of civilization. Captain Ahab 
becomes more controlled by his id, and the typical sublimation which would normally happen 
in civilization ceases. This is instead replaced by the sublimation which occurs in some 
societies before civilization, where anger is directed at a totem. Moby Dick becomes the 
target of his anger from his trauma, which is displaced at the whale as a form of defense 
mechanism.  
 
 
 
Keywords:  Psychoanalysis, Moby Dick, Freud, Kristeva, Civilization. 
 
 
 
 
Table of Contents 
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................1 
2. Theory and Method.................................................................................................................5 
3. The crew and the ship.............................................................................................................7 
4. Captain Ahab.........................................................................................................................10 
5. The whale……………………………………………………………………………....…..15 
6. Conclusion............................................................................................................................20 
7. References.............................................................................................................................21 
 
 
 
 
1. Introduction 
The story of Moby Dick follows Ishmael, who joins the ship Pequod on a whaling expedition. 
The crew of the Pequod is very diverse with crewmembers from all over the world. The 
harpooners of the ship are all pagan and non-white while the rest of the crew members are 
mostly from Christian and Western nations which would be considered as civilized nations at 
the time. The captain of the ship, Ahab, is not seen by Ishmael until several days after the ship 
leaves port. Eventually, Captain Ahab reveals that his motive for the journey is to exact 
revenge on the whale which had taken his leg. Throughout the journey, the level of his 
obsession with the whale is slowly revealed. During the final confrontation between Captain 
Ahab and the whale, the ship is brought down with Ishmael being the sole survivor of the 
journey. 
 The story of Moby Dick has sometimes been interpreted as a part of man’s struggle to 
master and understand nature. Many chapters are spent on cetology with the protagonist, 
Ishmael, trying to understand the whale. Paglia writes that “the novel's nonfiction sections, 
surveying the whale and its species, have two purposes. Moby-Dick aspires to epistemology, 
organizing the known, if only to dramatize what cannot be known” (584). Ishmael’s attempts 
at understanding the whale are revealed in the end to be in vain as nothing could have 
possibly prepared him for his confrontation with Moby Dick. Here, the struggle between man 
and nature is revealed to be one of the main themes of the novel with the very last lines of the 
novel being “The sea rolls as it rolled 5000 years ago” (Melville 624). This line after the ship 
had been sunk by Moby Dick symbolizes the ultimate victor of the struggle being nature with 
the struggles of man being futile. The relationship between the pagan harpooners and the 
so-called civilized crew could be interpreted as part of the theme of civilization in Moby Dick. 
The whale itself can be analyzed in many different ways, it can be taken to symbolize god, 
nature, evil, death, obsession, the limits of knowledge among many things. The protagonist 
himself reflects on what the whale might symbolize, most prominently in the chapter called 
“The whiteness of the whale” where Ishmael speculates on what the meaning of the color 
could be. Chase writes that “Melville compares Moby-Dick with other animal deities. 
Moby-Dick is like Zeus, who made himself incarnate in a snowy-white bull“ (50). Chase even 
goes on to state that  “Moby-Dick is god incarnate in the whale” (51).  
The captain of the ship, Ahab, exhibits behavior which may be explained through the 
lens of psychoanalysis. This includes his repressed trauma manifesting itself into a complete 
1 
 
 
obsession with getting revenge on Moby Dick after losing his leg. The trauma seems to be the 
result of all of the experiences that Captain Ahab has had on the sea, yet he blames everything 
on Moby Dick. Through the loss of the leg, Captain Ahab becomes an abject figure and his 
new identity becomes inextricable from his drive to get revenge against the whale. It is also 
possible that Captain Ahab is demonstrating a death drive through his complete disregard for 
his own safety or the safety of his men. The drive towards death has been speculated by 
psychoanalysts to be one of the forces together with the libidinal instinct to drive humans. 
This will be further explained in the theory section. Abdelsalam and Baker make the case that 
the madness of Captain Ahab is caused by the environment. They argue that “expanse of 
water; it is a mirror to the human soul reflecting isolation, madness, and despair. This is 
epitomized by Ahab, whose obsession with the white whale drives him to the brink” (7).   
There are also signs of narcissism in the behavior of Captain Ahab, where he is unable 
to accept that he has any sort of weakness or that even nature itself could stand in his way. 
The captain even goes as far as to say that “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” (Melville 178) 
to show his determination that absolutely nothing can stop him. Cook makes the case that 
“indeed, his claim that he would strike the ‘sun’ conceals a potentially blasphemous pun on 
the word ‘Son’, a verbal assault on the second person of the Trinity proving Ahab’s dedication 
to retaliation against any injurious acts that ‘insulted’ him” (153). This might be a defense 
mechanism to protect himself from feelings of powerlessness when facing Moby Dick. This 
feeling of powerlessness as well as the trauma that was inflicted upon him could have been 
sublimated and manifested as a monomaniacal need for revenge against Moby Dick. All of 
the anger that Captain Ahab feels from his trauma could be redirected at the whale. It is 
possible that much of his trauma is not just the physical amputation received from Moby 
Dick, but also the trauma from spending the majority of his life on the sea and never seeing 
his family. According to this view, his anger and frustrations are displaced at the object of the 
whale which takes on a totemic significance for Captain Ahab who chooses to project all of 
his suppressed feelings at this object of significance for him. Freud believed that people in 
hunter-gatherer societies could deal with negative emotions by projecting them on a totem. 
This will be further explained in the theory section. 
Captain Ahab exists in a liminal state on the ship Pequod between civilization and 
nature where he undergoes a transformation and becomes less self-restrained as the story 
progresses. From the beginning of the story Captain Ahab goes from a state where the rules of 
modern civilization are present and where the unconscious drives of his id and his death drive 
are under control, to a state away from civilization where he is completely unrestrained. On 
2 
 
the ship there is no longer anyone who can restrain Captain Ahab and the boundaries between 
civilization and nature begin to become blurred.  
Psychoanalysis has a long history of being used to understand literature. Freud himself 
was very familiar with literature (Tambling 8) and famously wrote about the story of king 
Oedipus in his book “The Interpretation of Dreams”. Many parallels exist between the story 
of King Oedipus and other stories such as the story of Hamlet or of King David and Absalom. 
Likewise, the story of Moby Dick could be seen through this psychoanalytic lens of Ahab 
rebelling against authority. Leslie Fiedler in Love and Death in the American Novel interprets 
the story through the lens of psychoanalysis and views Moby Dick as a story about love. He 
viewed Captain Ahab's obsession with the whale as stemming from his own insecurities, and 
he both feared and desired what Fiedler called the “castrating power” (387) of the whale. The 
whale can be considered to have a sort of castrating power, as Ahab himself describes him 
losing his leg as him having been “dismasted” (Melville 89). Freud believed that the fear of 
castration was important to understanding human fear. Freud writes that “these considerations 
make it possible to regard the fear of death, like the fear of conscience, as a development of 
the fear of castration.” (The Ego and the Id 58) This fear of castration has its origin in 
childhood. The development of the fear of castration will be explained in the theory section. 
 This essay will examine how the novel explores the concepts of civilization and the 
blurring of boundaries between nature and civilization through the whale, the crew on the 
Pequod, and the character of Captain Ahab, who becomes a liminal character in his quest for 
revenge against Moby Dick. This will be achieved through psychoanalysis with the theories of 
Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva. 
The concept of civilization will be analyzed in multiple different ways through 
psychoanalysis in this essay. The first chapter of the essay will explore the ship and the crew 
of the ship which is very diverse and is composed of people from places which would be 
considered both civilized and uncivilized at the time of the writing of this novel. The 
boundaries between who is and is not a civilized person will be questioned and the hierarchy 
on the ship will be analyzed. The second chapter will explore the character of Captain Ahab 
and how his monomaniacal quest for revenge could be explained through how he becomes 
unrestrained by the ship being away from civilization. The lack of restraint shown in the 
character of Ahab will be explained with psychoanalytic ideas such as displacement, 
sublimation, abjection, and the id, ego and superego. The third and final chapter will explore 
the whale and what it symbolizes. 
3 
 
 
2. Theory and method 
Psychoanalysis is a theory developed by Sigmund Freud which describes how the 
unconscious mind influences behavior. Freud likened the discovery of psychoanalysis to the 
Copernican revolution (Tambling 5) in that it decentered the human consciousness as the 
center of the human mind, similarly to how Nicolaus Copernicus decentered the earth as the 
center of the solar system. Freud believed that trauma formed through repressing painful 
memories and experiences would continue to exist in the unconscious, and that it would 
change the behavior of the person. This understanding of how trauma operates could be used 
to understand the behavior of Captain Ahab who is suffering from trauma after his 
confrontation with the whale. 
 In psychoanalysis, the human psyche is composed of three parts. The id represents the 
entirely unconscious part of the mind which is driven by human desires. The superego is the 
part capable of moral reasoning and the ego plays the mediating and directing role of the 
mind. Psychoanalysis describes the mind as being composed of three parts, the ego, the id, 
and the superego. The id represents the entirely unconscious part of the mind which is driven 
by human desires. The superego is the part capable of moral reasoning and the ego is the 
mediator. Painful experiences and thoughts could be repressed and relegated to the 
unconscious mind where they could manifest itself as mental illnesses. This was understood 
by Freud to be a sort of defense mechanism and could be revealed through therapy with free 
associations where the repressed thoughts are revealed. 
 These repressed feelings and painful experiences can manifest themselves in the form 
of transference. This is a concept where old feelings find new targets. A similar concept is the 
concept of displacement where a negative feeling is misattributed towards something else. 
Barry describes displacement as “one person or event is represented by another which is in 
some way linked or associated with it, perhaps because of a similar sounding word, or by 
some form of symbolic substitution” (71). Displacement might occur because of a defense 
mechanism where the true cause of the negative feeling cannot be targeted because it is 
somehow taboo or feels less acceptable. 
Freud saw some aspects of individuality as something that needed to be controlled in 
order for civilization to function. Therefore, the baser instincts of the id such as anger need to 
be controlled and sublimated in ways more conducive to civilization. Freud argues that “the 
two urges, the one towards personal happiness and the other towards union with other human 
4 
 
beings must struggle with each other in every individual; and so, also, the two processes of 
individual and of cultural development must stand in hostile opposition to each other and 
mutually dispute the ground” (Civilization and its Discontents 141). It is only when the 
individual can be suppressed by authority in favor of the collective that civilization can be 
formed. Freud makes the case that “sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous 
feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, 
scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilized life”  (Civilization 
and its Discontents 97). 
  In modern industrial societies which are called civilized, pathological drives such as 
anger and competitiveness which normally could result in violence would be sublimated in 
more acceptable ways such as in sports or in creative pursuits, but in the type of mostly 
hunter-gatherer societies which are called uncivilized, they can instead be transferred at a 
totem, according to Freud. Freud writes that “The fact that a taboo is transmissible has surely 
given rise to the effort of removing it through expiatory ceremonies” (Totem and Taboo: 26). 
In these ceremonies through displacement negative feelings could be displaced towards a 
totem or another symbolic object such as a scapegoat which would then be ritually killed or 
destroyed. Freud makes the case that “ the contagiousness of the taboo is above all manifested 
in the transference to objects which thus themselves become carriers of the taboo” (Totem and 
Taboo 35-36). Thus the pathological drives that are considered taboo are transferred to the 
totem. 
Freud wrote about the transformative powers of the liminal state in Totem and Taboo 
where he describes the totem feast which celebrates a son overthrowing the authority of the 
father Freud (Totem and Taboo 209). This becomes a ritual where normal rules and limits of 
societies are temporarily lifted and thus changes and transformations become possible. The 
concept of liminality is explored through a psychoanalytic perspective by Julia Kristeva most 
notably in her book Powers of Horror. She writes that the abject is “what disturbs identity, 
system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the 
ambiguous, the composite. The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the 
shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a  savior. . . . Any crime, because it draws 
attention to the fragility of the law, is abject” (Kristeva 4). As the boundaries between 
civilization and barbarity are questioned by the protagonist, these concepts become relevant.  
 The id is driven by the pleasure principle which seeks to satisfy the desires of the 
human. However, Freud believed that there was another drive of humans which also needed to 
be kept in check for civilization to function, the death drive. Freud describes how all living 
5 
 
 
matters have a desire to return to the state they were in before it came into being (Beyond the 
Pleasure Principle 38). The death drive in most circumstances does not result in the desire to 
die but may instead be expressed through things like violence. 
The role of authority is often linked to the father figure within psychoanalysis. Freud 
believed that the fear of castration had its origins in childhood when boys noticed that girls 
lack penises. This creates a fear in boys that they will lose their penises also. This creates an 
awareness of the authority and rules of the father, and a fear that they might lose their penises 
if they are disobedient (Appignanesi and Forrester 406). 
Sigmund Freud’s work Totem and Taboo as well as his novel Civilization and its 
Discontents will be used to form the basis of understanding of the psychoanalytic perspective 
on civilization. The ideas of Julia Kristeva and the concept of the abject will be particularly 
relevant for understanding what the whale symbolizes and understanding the psychoanalytic 
view of what it means to go outside the rules and norms of society and how it is meaningful 
for our image of identity. 
 
  
  
  
 
 
6 
 
3. The crew and the ship 
Throughout the novel, the concepts of civilization and the boundaries between civilization and 
nature are explored. The journey starts at Manhattan, the very core of American civilization, 
and ends with a confrontation with nature in the form of the whale. The ship exists as a 
boundary between the duality of civilization and nature not just as a physical vessel but in the 
people in the ship. One of the things that symbolizes this idea of the distinction between 
civilization and what would be considered uncivilized at the time is the crew of the Pequod. 
Since it is the case that the crew of the Pequod is composed of people from all over the world, 
the ship turns into a microcosm of the world where the differences between different kinds of 
people can be observed. Most notable about the variety of people on the Pequod are the 
harpooners. The crew is divided between the white crew members from Western nations and 
the non-white harpooners from what at the time people called the primitive and uncivilized 
nations.  
 The topic of civilization is explored when Ishmael compares civilization to Fast-Fish 
(fish not yet caught belonging to ship) and loose fish (fish available to everyone). He 
compares loose fish to European explorers encountering previously unknown lands to them 
which they can claim for themselves and claims that America was nothing but a loose fish 
(Melville 435). Ishmael ponders that  
 
all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the 
whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and 
in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. 
If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the 
whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the 
threshold 
Melville (121) 
 
 In the mind of Ishmael the whaling ship represents civilization. Ishmael reflects on what he 
believes to be the role of the whaling ship in the following passage: 
 
It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish 
crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly 
shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, 
and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal 
democracy in those parts. That great America on the other side of the sphere, 
Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman   
Melville (120) 
7 
 
 
Thus, the whaling ship represents the spread of not only civilization, but also Western 
civilization, democracy, enlightenment, and Christendom which all become intertwined 
according to the point of view of Ishmael. This is very much similar to the concept of 
manifest destiny which is the belief that the United States was destined to expand westward in 
the name of spreading civilization. Delbanco has argued that the 30 crewmembers on board 
the Pequod were supposed to represent the 30 states that the United States had at that time 
(Delbanco 158). This and the fact that the novel Moby Dick was released in 1851 when 
manifest destiny was still ongoing makes it more likely that the comparison between manifest 
destiny and the whaling ships was intentional. 
This might make it seem like the idea of civilization is strictly dichotomous in the 
story of Moby Dick. However, the duality between the civilized and the uncivilized is a false 
one. Bonin writes that “Melville explores not the noble savagery of the harpooners but the 
duality of civility and savagery in humans writ large” (238-257).  This is further made evident 
when Queequeg is asked by Ishmael if he would ever return home he replies: “no, not yet; and 
added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the 
pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him” (Melville 62). Thus Queequeg is 
in a liminal state between the culture of the Western world and his homeland. Queequeg has 
become something like a half-Western person from spending so much time being on 
whaleships with the Christians. Therefore, the whaleship appears to be a place where the 
boundaries of what is considered civilized become blurred. Ishmael appears to affirm this 
view when he reflects that “Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores 
a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your true 
whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois” (Melville  295). Likewise, the liminal state 
of the Pequod becomes one in which Ahab becomes capable of transformation. Ahab spends 
several days of the beginning of the journey in isolation in his cabin, and when he emerges, he 
emerges as a changed man who is dead set on getting his revenge on Moby Dick. Not only 
does the whale ship have the effect of making the pagans more like the Christians, but also the 
Christians more like the pagans. In fact, while the whaling ship has been described by Ishmael 
as the spreader of civilization, it is also paradoxically described as a respite from civilization. 
Ishmael reflects that “you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks” 
(Melville 169). 
There are indications of Ishmael beginning to question the normal established rules of 
society on the Pequod. Atnip writes that “in the dinner scene in which officers descend to dine 
on the Pequod in order of rank and leave in reverse order so that the lowest Flask hardly has 
8 
 
time to get in a mouthful, Ishmael skewers contemporary maritime hierarchy” (102-110). 
Ishmael relays the story of Steelkilt who carried out a mutiny on the Town-ho. Steelkilt is put 
into the hold temporarily for his disobedience. Just as he is about to revolt again, Moby Dick 
appears and the revolt is put on hold. Afterwards, the Captain let Steelkilt leave with his 
sympathizers when they were dropped off on an island (Melville 265-285). This displays how 
hierarchy and the normal social order is capable of being questioned in ways which are not 
usual in a civilized society which typically has strict hierarchy and rules which are not in 
danger of being in flux as on a whaleship. Even for such different groups of people to 
fraternize as they do on a whaling ship is considered highly unusual in normal society. 
Ishmael describes how “As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much 
for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seeing him and me 
upon such confidential terms.”  (Melville 64). 
Since the crew of the ship exists outside the normal rules of society or in a sort of 
liminal state between the world of civilization and the world of nature, the concept of the 
abject might apply to the crew of a whaleship. Kristeva argues that “It is thus not lack of 
cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does 
not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (4). 
Queequeg is almost certainly an example of the abject with him being described as being 
half-civilized. Melville describes Queequeg's home country and says that “It is not down in 
any map; true places never are” (61). Queequeg’s home country is entirely elusive, and 
Queequeg himself in extension is elusive and defies any attempts at hard definitions. 
 People who are considered abject are also people who are disliked by society. They are 
shunned and marginalized for being outside what is considered to be the norm in society. 
Kristeva plainly states that “The abject has only one quality of the object—that of being 
opposed to I.” (1). The pagan harpooners could thus be considered to be abject and viewed as 
being in opposition to what is considered the subject, civilization. This is because they would 
be considered to be outside what would be considered the norms of Western society. There are 
many examples of how whalers, similarly to the pagan harpooners, are considered to be 
shunned by society. Ishmael himself asks in bewilderment “Why it is that all 
Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War’s men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish 
such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer.” 
(Melville 262). 
9 
 
 
4. Captain Ahab 
Throughout the story of Moby Dick, there are numerous signs that Captain Ahab is suffering 
from trauma, both physical and mental. Even before encountering Captain Ahab, Ishmael is 
told by Peleg that Captain Ahab lost his leg on his last journey and that he has been moody 
ever since (Melville 89). The captain would later speak on his injury and proclaim that “it was 
Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on 
now”. This comparison between a ship losing his mast which would render it useless with the 
loss of a leg shows how truly useless he feels without his leg and how incredibly profound the 
impact of the event was. This also seems to reflect a castration anxiety in Captain Ahab where 
he feels emasculated after having been maimed by the whale. After telling the crew about the 
loss of his leg, Captain Ahab talks about Moby Dick and proclaims that “I’ll chase him round 
Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway maelstrom, and round perdition’s 
flames before I give him up” (Melville 89). This conversation with the crew is the first time 
that Ahab reveals that the expedition is not just for the purpose of gathering whale oil but a 
quest for revenge. 
However, there are indications that his trauma is not just caused by Moby Dick. The 
trauma did not manifest when he first received his injury of the coast of Japan. The trauma 
started when he arrived home and began to feel his anger towards Moby Dick.  Peleg said to 
Ishmael about Ahab that “he was never very jolly” (Melville 89). It is revealed that Captain 
Ahab has a wife and kids at home and that he has spent 40 years at sea and has gone most of 
his life without seeing his family and presumably missed seeing his children grow up. When 
the Pequod encounters another ship, the Rachel, they report that they have seen Moby Dick. 
The captain of the Rachel, Captain Gardiner, asks Captain Ahab for help in order to locate his 
son which had been lost at sea. Captain Gardiner even brings up Captain Ahab’s own son in 
the hope of evoking sympathy, but Captain Ahab is unmoved and refuses to help in the search 
(Melville 578-579). This reveals just how alien the concept of family has become for Captain 
Ahab and how he only cares for revenge now and immediately departs upon hearing the news 
of Moby Dick being near. This is in stark contrast to how Captain Ahab behaved earlier in his 
life and reveals that a great change has taken place. When Captain Peleg was describing 
Captain Ahab to Ishmael before the ship had departed, he claimed that “he has a wife not 
three voyages wedded a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man has 
a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, 
10 
 
blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities! (Melville 89). It becomes apparent that Captain 
Ahab has developed a monomaniacal obsession with the whale when he states that “That 
inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale 
principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the 
sun if it insulted me.” (Melville 178). 
There are some passages that seem to indicate that Captain Ahab is aware that his 
quest for revenge will lead to his death. In preparation for the final confrontation with the 
whale, Stubb inspects the anchors. Stubb proclaims that “we are lashing down these anchors 
now as if they were never going to be used again. Tying these two anchors here, Flask, seems 
like tying a man’s hands behind him” (Melville 555). It becomes more and more apparent as 
the novel progresses that Captain Ahab never had any plans to return alive from his fight with 
the whale. Captain Ahab seems to be experiencing what is called the death drive. Freud writes 
that “The aim of all life is death” (Beyond the Pleasure Principle: 36). Freud speculates that 
because there are some self-destructive actions which cannot be explained through the drive 
to seek pleasure through the pleasure principle, there must be another force which drives these 
self-destructive behaviors called a death drive. This often arises as a response to trauma. 
Freud argues that the death drive often causes a desire to reenact traumatic events (Beyond the 
Pleasure Principle: 18). Therefore, Captain Ahab engaging in repetitive behavior by hunting 
the whale, which was the cause of the trauma in the first place, is a classic example of the 
death drive. 
Captain Ahab can be seen as an abject figure as he is physically disfigured and 
through his obsessive desire for revenge his sense of self becomes inseparable from his desire 
for revenge. He disrupts the natural order of the whaling ship as he abandons the mission to 
hunt for whales, even when the barrels start leaking oil and all the profit of the voyage is 
slipping away, he is still dead set on revenge. Kristeva writes that the abject is “what does not 
respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (4). The 
abject is thus an example of something which is liminal in that it is outside the norms of 
society. 
For the first few chapters when they are on the ship Captain Ahab is hardly seen at all, 
he spends all of his time in his cabin which is forbidden for the crew to enter. Eventually, he 
emerges on the quarterdeck and holds a speech and reveals that his true intention is a quest for 
revenge against Moby Dick and that nothing will stand in his way. His first mate Starbuck 
objects to this quest for revenge. Starbuck argues that Moby Dick “simply smote thee from 
blindest instinct” (Melville 78). All of the behavior that Ahab now displays seems to go 
11 
 
 
against what is considered normal and acceptable behavior, but that is irrelevant since the 
word of Captain Ahab is now the law on the ship. Captain Ahab is not the owner of the ship, 
that is Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg. Captain Ahab is simply hired to command the 
vessel.  
The rules of Western capitalism about ownership and who has a right to what are 
disregarded with Captain Ahab asserting himself as the autocrat of the ship. As Captain Ahab 
begins ruling the ship as a tyrant, Ishmael begins to refer to him as the Grand Turk (Melville 
161), revealing how his view of him has changed as he begins to view him as a sultan of old 
instead of a leader of a ship of modern 19th-century men from mostly democratic western 
societies. This is not the only time when Captain Ahab is compared to a pagan king, as this 
comparison is something which is made repeatedly; it appears to be something meaningful 
which says something about his character. When Captain Ahab constructs a bivouac of 
narwhal bones of the deck of the ship Stubb looks upon it. Stubb then thinks to himself that: 
“In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith 
tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod 
of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a 
king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab (Melville 141). Even Captain Ahab 
himself compared himself to a pagan king in his mind by imagining himself wearing a crown 
originally worn by pagan kings. When he looked out at the sunset he thought to himself that 
“Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with 
many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that 
dazzlingly confounds” (Melville 182). 
 Rogin makes the case that as the story goes on, Captain Ahab becomes increasingly 
more like a pagan as he seeks to conquer nature. Rogin writes that “The Indianization of the 
American Ahab corresponded to the paganization of the biblical Ahab” (150).  Rogin goes on 
to state that “Both the biblical Ahab and his American counterpart coveted native land. Their 
greed placed them at odds with the religion of their fathers; it turned them, in biblical exegesis 
and Whig propaganda, into the pagans they were out to replace” (150-151). However, nature 
and the uncivilized seem to be equated sometimes in Moby Dick. Ishmael reflects that 
“Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon 
each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to 
this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you 
not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? (Melville 299). Considering how often 
the pagan people are compared to cannibals a comparison between them and nature becomes 
12 
 
obvious in this passage. Captain Ahab too becomes linked with nature in the mind of Ishmael 
with his comparison between whales and the Captain in his mind. Ishmael contemplates that 
“Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these 
Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their 
unctuousness is small” (Melville 429). This is similar to how Ishmael had earlier referred to 
Captain Ahab as a “Grand Turk” in his head. The comparisons between humans and animals 
continue when Ishmael says that  
 
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers of 
seals, and some young seals that had lobst their dams, or some dams that had 
lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept company with her, 
crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail. But this only the more 
affected some of them, because most mariners cherish a very superstitious 
feeling about seals, arising not only from their peculiar tones when in distress, 
but also from the human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, 
seen peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain 
circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men. 
(Melville 569-570) 
 
Captain Ahab during the progression of the story becomes increasingly more and more 
like non-Western pagans of his crew. Some of the pagan crew conversely also turn more like 
Christian Westerners. As a result of this development with the sublimation of civilization no 
longer restraining Ahab and his id he starts to feel less restrained in his purpose of satisfying 
his pleasure principle which drives him to get revenge on the whale due to his trauma. This is 
because of his id not being controlled by being sublimated as it normally would in 
civilization. Instead all of the anger and the pain he feels is displaced on the whale. Freud 
makes the claim that “Primitive man is not inhibited, the thought is directly converted into the 
deed, the deed is for him so to speak rather a substitute for the thought” (Totem and Taboo 
265). This does not seem to be entirely correct. People in non-civilized societies can, even 
according to Freud himself, control the negative feelings associated with the taboo and 
undesirable by redirecting it to something else. What Freud calls a totemic object. 
Captain Ahab does not deal the trauma normally, he instead chooses to displace these 
feelings on the whale, which takes on a totemic quality for Captain Ahab. Melville does seem 
to reveal that the trauma that Captain Ahab feels does not in fact originate from his 
amputation but has another source which he is unable to deal with. This is when the Pequod 
meets Samuel Enderby during a meeting with another ship. The Captain of the Samuel 
Enderby, Captain Boomer, appears to be the mirror image of Captain Ahab. He has lost his 
13 
 
 
arm to Moby Dick but is instead in high spirits and jokes with the crew about the incident. 
When Ahab asks why he has not attempted to kill the whale when he encountered it again 
Captain Boomer replies: “Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do 
without this other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he swallows” 
(Melville 481). 
Freud wrote about how in what he called "savage” societies “the prohibited desire 
becomes displaced in the unconscious upon something else” (Civilization and its Discontents 
59). Typically this prohibited desire is dealt through displacing the desire upon an animal 
totem which is “killed” in a ritual. Thus Moby Dick takes on a totemic property for Captain 
Ahab who projects all of his trauma on the whale as he becomes more unrestrained in this 
setting absent of civilization. This control of the more negative impulses are necessary for the 
function of society according to Freud. Freud writes that “Sublimation of instinct is an 
especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher 
psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in 
civilized life” (Civilization and its Discontents 22). 
 
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5. The Whale 
Moby Dick is the eponymous whale of the novel and the one thing which seems the most ripe 
for interpretation with even the characters of the novel speculating what the symbolism of the 
whale could mean. What the reader chooses to interpret about the whale could tell the reader 
about what their beliefs and ways of interpreting the world are. Captain Ahab sees it as a 
calculating and malicious being which is out to destroy humans. Captain Ahab states that 
“there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from 
behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!” (Melville 178). 
However, his first mate, Starbuck, views it differently. Starbuck takes the opposite view and 
argues that the whale “simply smote thee from blindest instinct” (Melville 178). 
 The whale can be taken to represent nature itself. If the whale represents nature then 
the interpretation of Starbuck is more fitting than the explanation of Captain Ahab. Nature is 
simply indifferent towards humanity which treats it just like any other animal. This is similar 
to how Moby Dick attacks ships of the sea by ramming them, but without any malice as 
Starbuck claimed. Moby Dick is not out for any revenge but is simply obeying its survival 
instincts and is indifferent to the morality of humans. It appears that the novel takes the stance 
that in the conflict between humans and nature, nature will always win out in the end. The 
book ends with the statement that “The sea rolls as it rolled 5000 years ago” (Melville 624), 
which seems to give a clear final message on the subject. Civilization is typically 
characterized by things like writing and the production of language which requires a tongue. 
This seems to indicate that Moby Dick is in clear contrast to civilization. Ishmael states: 
 
Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great 
genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is 
moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that 
had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he 
would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the 
crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm 
Whale has no tongue 
Melville (380). 
 
 If Moby Dick can be taken to represent nature, then the attempts to subdue and kill the 
whale can be seen as a form of colonialism, symbolically. Edward Said has interpreted the 
story of Moby Dick as representing the United States in its quest to expand to conquer nature 
and to displace the native people from the lands which they live on. Said believes that 
15 
 
 
Melville viewed that quite negatively and was critical of that process (288-289). In that sense, 
the ocean can be seen as the next frontier to be conquered after manifest destiny has finished 
conquering the continental United States and displacing the native peoples there. But to 
understand why Moby Dick inspires such hate in particular from Captain Ahab and why he 
becomes a symbolic target it is important to understand the concept of the abject. 
Moby Dick is frequently described by Captain Ahab in incredibly acrimonious terms 
which can seem puzzling. This can be explained by how things that are considered abject 
often inspire strong emotions such as anger, and Moby Dick has many characteristics which 
could be described as being abject. Moby Dick is described as being elusive and impossible to 
define to a perhaps supernatural extent. Ishmael recalls that “One of the wild suggestions 
referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the 
superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had 
actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time” (Melville 
197). Even with all of Ishmael’s knowledge of cetology, he finds the whale impossible to 
understand, and in this respect, Moby Dick represents the abject. Since the abject is something 
that defies conventional attempts at categorizing and understanding something. Kristeva 
writes that “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs 
identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the 
ambiguous” (4). 
 The whiteness of the whale is also an indication of the abject. Ishmael describes the 
quality of whiteness as “the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.” What 
exactly is it that causes such strong feelings of revulsion from this color? Ishmael describes 
the whiteness of the whale as follows: 
 
It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead 
which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there; as if indeed 
that pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world, as 
of mortal trepidation here. And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the 
expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our 
superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms; 
all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog—Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us 
add, that even the king of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on 
his pallid horse. 
Melville (208)  
 
Here, Ishmael reflects on how the whiteness invokes both terror and thoughts of the dead. In 
invoking the whiteness of the whale to draw a comparison to the whiteness of a corpse a sense 
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of disgust might also be roused. Fletcher and Benjamin (1990: 91) write that “For Kristeva, 
the most horrifying example of waste is the corpse, which is almost universally surrounded by 
taboos and rituals to prevent 'contamination' of the living. The corpse is the most sickening of 
wastes”. Kristeva herself writes that “The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is 
the utmost of abjection” (4). The abject is often reacted to with disgust, fear, fascination, or 
anger. It makes for a natural thing for Captain Ahab to channel his hatred towards. Kristeva 
(1980: 1) even goes as far as to write that “The abject has only one quality of the object—that 
of being opposed to I.” 
Both Captain Ahab and the whale itself could be seen as an abject object. The whale in 
being an uncanny object and a monstrous other which defies categorization even after 
extensive efforts by Ishmael to understand the whale with the use of cetology. This is further 
reinforced by the fact that Captain Ahab himself is unable to spot the whale even when it is 
right beneath the water. Ahab also has many characteristics of an abject individual in his 
physical disability as well as being a person who does not respect what is established order 
and goes against nature to the point where his first mate Starbuck accuses him of being 
blasphemous.  
 
 
  
  
 
 
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6. Conclusion 
Moby Dick is a novel which explores the topic of civilization. This is made evident in the 
many reflections of Ishmael on the difference between civilization and nature and between the 
pagan and the so-called civilized crewmembers and how the limits between these things are 
often blurred. As the ship leaves Massachusetts and enters the open sea, the ship itself exists 
in a liminal state between the civilization on the ship and the nature of the open ocean. In this 
liminal state the false dichotomy between Christian and pagan, civilized and uncivilized, is 
revealed as Captain Ahab takes on many characteristics which would be considered pagan. 
Captain Ahab seeks to carry out the impossible task of conquering nature itself, this is similar 
to the attitude that Americans had during Manifest Destiny, and in the point of view of 
Ishmael, the whaling ship becomes a symbol for the spread of civilization. Captain Ahab 
understands, in the back of his mind, that victory against Moby Dick and nature is an 
impossibility and the whole quest to kill the whale is a suicide attempt caused by his death 
drive. Captain Ahab chose Moby Dick as his target because it symbolizes nature and the 
struggle of civilization against nature. The extreme hatred towards the whale is also explained 
by it being abject which causes strong feelings in Captain Ahab. 
Captain Ahab becomes much more controlled by his id and his death drive in his quest 
for revenge against Moby Dick. He becomes unrestrained and the typical sublimation of his id 
which occurs in civilized society ceases to occur. Instead, he deals with these feelings like an 
uncivilized society would and redirects his anger from all of his life problems at a totem. 
Moby Dick takes on this totemic quality and all of his anger becomes redirected at him. The 
trauma which Captain Ahab carries is unlikely to only have been caused just by the whale. 
This is shown with the parallel with Captain Boomer: however, he is unable to process his 
trauma in any other way. Further research into this topic would be possible with 
psychoanalytic theory which focuses on the studies of trauma to further understand the nature 
of Captain Ahab. 
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