In the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Captain Ahab is driven by his own madness to gain revenge on Moby Dick. A common definition for madness is a "mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it." Emily Dickenson embellishes this definition with her belief that "much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye." When Ahab's madness is looked at with good judgment, it seems reasonable for man who has encountered such a traumatizing event with the whale. He feels that the whale must be punished for taking a piece of him. Ahab believes that nature should be inferior to man, and that man should control it. By taking Ahab's leg, Moby Dick proves Ahab's belief of man's superiority over the whale wrong. Ahab cannot handle this reality, it causes him to become mentally unstable and eventually mad.
             Ahab believes that the whale is a manifestation of all that is malignant in the world and that his destiny is to destroy this evil. Melville demonstrates that because of Ahab's madness, he can only understand that the universe and nature are out to deceive mankind. When looked at from a distance, the whale can be misleading because it looks so peaceful, but in reality, it is an evil being that kills people, and this is what Ahab's finds deceiving along with other things in nature, such as the typhoon. Ahab brainwashes the crew of the Pequod to share his same belief that Moby Dick and nature want to destroy them. He nails the doubloon to the mast as an attempt to motivate the crew to share his mad goal as well as to dedicate them to Moby Dick's destruction. By luring them into his world, he feels he will have more force to kill the whale and a better chance of preventing nature from rising up against them.
             Ahab believes that when the whale took his leg, he took away his dignity and his human rights. By chasing the whale, he is fighting to take these rights ba...