Mar 16, 2003 

Oh, my Captain! My Captain! Noble heart!....Why should anyone give chase to that hated fish!...Away! Let us away!—this instant let me alter the course! [Starbuck] 

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural loving and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time, recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I? By heaven, man, we are turned round in this world, like yonder windlass, and fate is the handspike. [Ahab]

Heart of wrought steel! [Starbuck]

 Aye, it has come to this—a nation driven by obsession. Saddam is but a dumb brute rendered powerless unlike the white whale. Why bother? Yet the lion roars and must have its prey while its den is wanting. Bush’s “conservative compassion” has devolve into vengeance on Iraq and indifference to the deteriorating state of America’s common good. Had Gore behaved in this manner the country would be in rebellion.