"What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demonic, I am madness maddened!" The Study: The line above is spoken by Ahab. But, I feel, it could just as easily have been spoken by our pres. Evil. It seems as if the quote is partly true - our pres has dared to do what he wants and some of us write him off as crazy, but it seems more and more like a diabolical plan is being set in place. Leaders, Melville shows us, are c

"Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought." The Study: I have always found this passage mesmerizing. Melville is describing Ahab as a lead

From Ahab: "Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye." Study: I've seen t