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Age and build

Aged, robust frame despite mutilation

“He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness” (Moby Dick, part 29)

Solid, bronze-like physique

“His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus” (Moby Dick, part 29)

Missing one leg, fitted with ivory replacement

“It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw” (Moby Dick, part 29)

Face and hair

Grey hair with livid scar down one side of face

“Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish” (Moby Dick, part 29)

Scar resembles lightning strike on tree bark

“It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom” (Moby Dick, part 29)

Eyes glowing like coals in ashes

“his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin” (Moby Dick, part 142)

Wrinkled brow, gnarled and knotted appearance

“Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding” (Moby Dick, part 142)

Dress

Stone-carved coat and hat, worn day and night

“his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times” (Moby Dick, part 140)

Coat and hat accumulate rain and dew

“the unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the next day’s sunshine dried upon him” (Moby Dick, part 140)

Voice and speech

Old lion voice, commanding and forceful

“turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—“Up helm! Keep her off round the world” (Moby Dick, part 62)

Speaks with terrific, loud, animal sob

“he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Often speaks in passionate, intense monologues

“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” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Signature words

Repeated invocation of his own name

“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man” (Moby Dick, part 144)

Exclamations of 'Death' and 'devils'

“Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen—Moby Dick—Moby Dick” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Invokes 'God' in anguish and defiance

“God! God! God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery” (Moby Dick, part 142)

Repetition for emphasis and obsession

“The same!—the same!—the same to Noah as to me” (Moby Dick, part 145)

Gait and mannerisms

Paces quarter-deck in regular turns between fixed points

“Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast” (Moby Dick, part 110)

Ivory leg makes distinctive hollow sound on deck

“While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap” (Moby Dick, part 61)

Stands fixed in pivot-hole with leg braced

“So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward” (Moby Dick, part 61)

Pauses at binnacle and mainmast while pacing, staring intently

“When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose” (Moby Dick, part 110)

Strengths

Indomitable will and determination

“There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance” (Moby Dick, part 29)

Magnetic power over crew and officers

“Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Great natural intellect and cunning

“not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument” (Moby Dick, part 51)

Physical endurance despite mutilation

“such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast” (Moby Dick, part 51)

Flaws

Consumed by monomania and obsession with vengeance

“It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment” (Moby Dick, part 51)

Madness that deepens rather than subsides

“Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge” (Moby Dick, part 51)

Irritable and exasperated by any reminder of his loss

“every little untoward circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab” (Moby Dick, part 111)

Willing to sacrifice crew and ship for vengeance

“But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him” (Moby Dick, part 133)

Tormented by nightmares and inner demons

“Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies” (Moby Dick, part 54)

Traits

Solitary and isolated from human connection

“Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors” (Moby Dick, part 143)

Moody and melancholic

“I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell” (Moby Dick, part 17)

Capable of moments of human tenderness

“Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck” (Moby Dick, part 30)

Philosophical and contemplative despite rage

“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” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Capable of deep regret about his life choices

“what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase” (Moby Dick, part 142)

Lines in their own words

Declaration of obsessive purpose

“Aye, aye! and 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” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Philosophical assertion of will over fate

“I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations” (Moby Dick, part 46)

Assertion of absolute control

“Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me” (Moby Dick, part 145)

Moment of vulnerability and regret

“I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!—lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick” (Moby Dick, part 142)

Final defiant cry

“I’ll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I’ll slay him yet” (Moby Dick, part 144)