Strike through your mask!

"Hark ye yet again, - a little layer lower.  All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.  But in each event-in the living act, the undoubted deed-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!" 

    Ahab transcends all this pain and hatred of the world into the embodiment of the white whale that so cruelly delivered him upon such a horrible injustice.  His motives becomes promethean as we find the fabled ubiquity of Moby Dick in chapter 41.  It seems that Ahab's concerns about Moby Dick are shared by many others in the whaling ring.  the whale is recognized as a god-like force, "devouring amputations, fatal to the last degree of fatality…repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick" (41.153).  Through the stories, Moby Dick is indoctrinated with "new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly appears" (41.153).  It is not just Ahab who has suffered on account of his spiteful transcendence upon the white whale's hump, but all whalers that pushed beyond the limits of their capabilities and pursued the whale that was aforementioned, not for mortal man.  Within the chapter of Cetology, mention is made to various species of whale that were attainable by contemporary whaling methods.  Why couldn't the sperm whale have been avoided? 

    Within Ahab's determination for his immortality, Moby Dick is the being of which strikes horrible jealousy within him.  We hear of the ubiquity of Moby Dick through stories of sailors; Ahab's quest to conquer the unconquerable.  The sperm whale not being for mortal man is just as to Ahab.   An correlation of Ahab to Moby Dick could also be applied to Ishmael and Ahab, as not only to preserve both victim and victimizer but, more crucially, to constitute one as the potential of the other.  The legends of Moby Dick's mythical proportions precede Ahab's abilities, which feed into his lust with the unreal concept of conquering the unconquerable.  Much alike Ishmael's fascination to the ungraspable mysteriousness of Ahab, as he mentions, "What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid" (42.159).  The legends of Ahab's prophetic purpose drew Ishmael to the Pequod, like Ahab's drive to the white whale; and Ishmael's desire to challenge the successful is like Ahab's mission to foil Moby Dick's ubiquity.  As far as Ishmael seems distanced from Ahab in relation good vs. evil, the distinction seems to be only based on their levels of sanity; being that Ahab has lost his grasp on reality entirely and has becomes consumed by his transcendence into the white whale.  As aforementioned, Ahab is shrouded by legend; seemingly immortalized by his minions' perceptions based on his rigid exterior and their postulation on his experiences, based on stories that seem exaggerated to legend.  Ahab is empowered by their respect, and rather then being a successful, productive, and wealthy sea captain, he becomes disillusioned by the limits of his own capabilities.  He is a legend, seeking true immortality, ubiquity in time, through the conquering of another legend, that threatens mankind. 

    Like Ishmael, he finds little worth in the material world, and rather seeks purpose of the events he encounters.  Rather then regarding defeat as lessons to his limitations, the anger of the defeat fuel his madness and turned it into a monomania.