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A Brief Analysis of the Character Ahab in Moby Dick: Ahab may have been Melville’s portrait of an Emersonian self-reliant individual. Melville lost no opportunity in his criticism of New England Transcendentalism. Constantly under his attack he puts much emphasis on individualism and Oversoul advocated by Transcendentalism. That the whole Moby Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism is not an exaggeration. Take Emerson’s self-reliance for instance. Ahab is too much of a self-reliant individual to be a good human being. He stands alone on his own one leg among the millions of the peopled earth. For him the only law is his own will. To him the world exists for his sake. His selfhood must be asserted at the expense of all else: lives may be sacrificed, and nature may have to be vanquished in order that he may do what he wills. He never stops to think of asserting his private personality. Otherwise, he denies ruthlessly the humanity and individuality of his fellowmen. Ahab is no Odysseus, and his crew seem to be a ship of fools too much under the captain’s evil spell(咒语) to exercise their discretion (free decision). Richard doesn’t think the chase for Moby Dick is rational when he says that the idea Melville conveys in Moby Dick refers to the “spiritual, emotional, physical death,” which is the price of self-reliance when it is pushed to the point of solipsism (one who only thinks of himself). Ahab is, to be more exact, a victim of solipsism. And his tragedy stems mainly from extreme individualism and the selfish will, and from a spirit which is too much withdrawn to itself to warrant (guarantee) salvation. Moby-Dick thus reveals the basic pattern of nineteenth-century American life: loneliness and suicidal individualism in a self-styled democracy. The Symbolic Meaning of Moby-Dick: 1. The voyage itself is a metaphor for “search and dis