The Promethean myth could be defined by a character's heroic break from the conventional social traditions and/or natural order of the universe. In accepting that break, the hero accepts a self sacrifice in order to benefit the humankind; as Promethean defiance to the divine is punished by eternal torment. In Moby Dick, Melville offers a twisted case of the Promethean hero through Captain Ahab. His hunt for the famed white whale seems at the surface to be merely a monomaniacal aspiration. However, when Ahab's true motive is realized, his promethean intent becomes understandable.
Before Ahab makes his appearance, he is first mentioned in Peleg's description to Ishmael in The Ship. Peleg refers to Ahab as, "a grand, ungodly god-like man" (78). The paradoxical description begins the contradictory divinity that shrouds the character of Ahab. Peleg speaks of Ahab as if he were of divine origins, first recalling the biblical King Ahab, to illustrate the prophetic purpose he envisioned through the captain. In response to Ishmael's recollection of King Ahab as a vile and wicked man, Peleg responds, "Captain Ahab did not name himself. Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig; at Gay-head said that name would somehow prove prophetic" (16.78).
The significance of the prophecy is that it is far from flattering. The biblical king meets his fate after being injured on the battlefield after ignoring the words of the prophet Elijah. His legacy is one associated with destruction, murder and thirst for power, ending in a bloody defeat. Although the correlations between the King and Captain are without a doubt relatable, Ishmael feels drawn to him; despite being retold of Ahab's doomed fate by an old man name Elijah. More of Peleg's valiant description of Ahab included his vast education and life experiences Ahab has earned over time, as well as his "humanities," his wife and child. Ishmael admits upon leaving the ship to possess "a certain vagueness of painfulness concerning him[Ahab]" (79) and comments that Ahab is "imperfectly known" to him. It seems that the prophecy of Ahab has persisted with him since birth, and link him into a legendary status among sea-farers, and those that work under him, accept that his legend is foretold with failure. The unseen likeability of Ahab's inhuman capabilities intrigues those like Peleg, who in return empower him with an almighty representation. "Ahab's above the common, been used to deeper wonders than the waves"(78).
An analysis by Temira Pachmuss recognizes Melville as one who viewed "man as floundering, in an indifferent even inimical universe, impossible to comprehend and accept…deprived of the old deities and betrayed by faith in reason, at the mercy of elemental forces that were as often evil as good" (Pachmuss, 25). Ahab represents a powerful yet thwarted outlook on contemporary consciousness, representing the "ambiguous confluence of good and evil, pride and humility, and the other contrasting qualities of the human soul" (Pachmuss, 25). Melville has constructed Ahab as a very human person, however empowered by an underlying agent of divine madness. There is no doubt that Ahab serves as a contemporary incarnation of legends of the past. Ishmael's initial physical description of Ahab is as equally powerful as Peleg's stating, "He looked like a man cut away from the stake…His whole high, broad form seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould" (109). Ishmael is in awe as his description continues with heroic vagueness, comparing the allure of Captain Ahab to bronze statues yet tainted by a "overbearing grimness" (109). He compared his facial scar to the "perpendicular seam…made in the straight lofty, trunk of a great tree… still greenly alive, but branded"(109). Ishmael spends an entire chapter discussing the mysteriousness that shrouds the character of Ahab.
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