Mindset and Its Effects on Accomplishing Goals

The biggest fear you can experience is completing a goal only then to realize nothing was gained. There are two types of regret: the first is regretting you did not do something, the second, and the worst type, is regretting you putting time into something that did not produce any output in the slightest. In the modern day era, this regret is seen by people spending years in school to then work at a job that does not bring them any fulfillment. In Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab experiences the second type of regret. Through Melville’s portrayal of the whaling industry in the 1850’s the reader experiences, through the eyes of Ishmaell, how the madness of Captain Ahab drags the rest of his crew to the depths of Davy Jones’s locker. The madness Captain Ahab experiences is rooted in his chase for the white whale, Moby Dick. Is Ahab looking for fulfillment in his life through his fixation with the death of Moby Dick? Or does his madness from this journey show that fulfillment in a singular aspect of life can make one more empty?  Mindset is what determines if madness hinders or helps when working towards accomplishing a goal.

In this first scene, with Ahab’s disruption of sleep, we see how his mindset affects him accomplishing his goals. Ishmael notes how Ahab is always pacing the deck at night after he has had sudden outbursts in his sleep. Thinking that it might have to do with Ahab’s fixation on Moby Dick he explains, “But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own'' (161). Ishmael describes how Ahab has spontaneous bursts of his true self when he goes to bed. These outbreaks he believes are due to his resolve being weakened. He calls him the “steadfast hunter of the white whale” and yet he is not completely steadfast at this moment (161). Ahab’s mind being temporarily disconnected with his soul is what causes these occurrences. The madness we see in Ahab is a reflection of his mind. His mind is so dialed with every fantasy and thought being about Moby Dick that in this extreme focus it manipulates him to turn his back on his soul. Due to this, the only time his soul has full control over him is when he is asleep. Here it reminds him that he has given up all his sanity and thoughts for Moby Dick, scaring himself. It scares him enough to wake him and remind him that he does not fully want what his mind thinks he truly desires. This fear shows that when your desires do not align with your soul you will lose your sanity along the way trying to achieve it. 

Ahab’s case shows that an extreme purpose or desire will eat away at him from the inside and we see this perspective from Ishmael. Ishmael connects Ahab to the story of Prometheus: “thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates” (162). The story of Prometheus surrounds how a titan stole fire from heaven to give to man. He was punished by Zeus, having his liver eaten and regenerated everyday while he was chained to a rock. In Ahab's case it is his heart that is eaten everyday. The monster that he created is his desire to kill Moby Dick, which is devouring his soul. Through Ahab, we see that while you can be intensely focused, which can be a benefit in attaining goals, the downside of everything being that one thought takes away one’s humanity. If you are in a sort of tunnel vision you will lose out on everything surrounding you and if that happens you will lose a sense of being a human because of a lack of interaction with your environment. Ishmael describes the scene of Ahab's reflection of the calm before the storm and it begins with Ahab taking in the scenery.

As the journey continues Ahab's madness continues to build, so much so that he acknowledges its presence. Ahab is with the blacksmith as his harpoon is being forged and their conversation sheds light on Ahab's perspective on his own madness and the blacksmith: "Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad?” (335). Ahab’s conversation with the blacksmith goes into depth about the woes both of them have experienced. Ahab uses the word sanely to describe the blacksmith’s voice, which differs from Ahab’s insanity. Due to this difference, Ahab then asks him why he is not as mad as him, if he has been through so much. Ahab looks to him for the answer of how you can go through that much suffering and still come out with your sanity. He even questions how the blacksmith can endure the pain without going mad. This discussion shows that the easiest way to cope with woes is to go mad, so by not taking the easy way out and instead living in sadness, sanity can be retained. How does this apply to the idea of gaining from madness? Is it more important to not let madness get the best of you even if it means living with sadness? What is even more interestingAhab’s thought: “Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou canst not go mad?” (355). By not allowing himself to go mad the blacksmith has to live with this torture, while Ahab is constantly living through another dimension in his madness, only focusing on the white whale. He is consistently living in the future and not experiencing the journey to his end goal. By living in the future, you cannot regain your sanity because the present is the only state of mind when you are truly sane. If you are always thinking about the future you will never be able to learn about the present that will, undoubtedly, affect your future. Ahab does not think that he can overcome his madness due to his pride. He feels that the only way he can fix his condition is by the help of another. He does not see the need to look inward to find the answer. 

For a moment his increasing madness is halted and he has a glimmer of sanity and self awareness. The scenery of the Pacific Ocean affects Ahab: “From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop” (388). Ishmael emphasizes the tear because of Ahab’s angry nature up to this point. Only when he sleeps is when his resolve is weakened enough to be shown. Ishmael witnesses the point where it is fully broken. Ahab is fearful of being killed by Moby Dick and not being able to enjoy his life in this scenery. He even describes how this reminds him of how he harpooned his first whale on a similar day, that he misses the times and his younger self when Moby Dick was not in the picture. He then talks about how he has been forsaken by land by spending time only on the sea, “for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore” (389). Ahab regrets his past and forsaking his humanity by going to the isolation of the sea. The sea is a good symbol of this because of how open it is and how isolated you feel when you are out there. In that isolation, it is as similar to chasing a goal or desire that consumes your life. It makes you feel lonely and when you are reaching the end, like Ahab, you might be faced with the shock of years of your life being wasted. How can you prevent that without making that journey to the final mile? When do you know it is well worth it when 40 years have passed in the ocean hunting the monsters you face on your journey? 

Though Ahab’s madness disappeared for a moment it quickly returned stronger than before. When Ahab realizes his 40 years were a waste, his madness could have ended by turning back, but instead he continues on his journey. With Ahab’s madness increasing we see his pride and the blame he places on God. Ahab begins talking to Starbuck by saying, “let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye” (389). Ahab wants to look into the eyes of Starbuck and not the horizon or the sky because they are creations of God. Due to his pride he feels like God is wasting his 40 years. If God did not put the monsters in the world, symbolized by Moby Dick, then he would have both legs and be happy and healthy with his family in Nantucket. The interesting thing is that Starbuck is made by God and by looking into someone’s eyes they say you can see the soul, and the soul is a part of God. Ahab looks into Starbuck’s eyes and sees his family, and his family is what makes him remember that he gave his 40 years for nothing. That is why trusting your soul and the part of God that is within you helps you fully know if your journey is a just cause. Even then, how can you listen to your soul and make that decision? In Ahab's case, due to how fixated he is, he does not take the time to reflect on the best course of action by listening to his soul because his mind is always active. By being able to silence the mind and listen to your soul, that is when you can make a decision that is not influenced by your imagination. 

When we think of Ahab’s madness we see how innocent Pip is and how he, due to his race and age, did not choose madness. Pip jumped ship the first time they struck a whale in Stubb's boat and the second time he did it he was left for dead. In this isolation, Pip gained inspiration from God that we see here: “He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God” (308). Pip’s cowardliness steers him towards finding a sense of madness that is a “heaven’s sense”. He lost humanity because of this but gained the ability to see the future. Melville talks about how Pip sees the loom that God uses to create the destiny of people, and he speaks of it. While his crewmates believe he is mad he is speaking the destiny of the Pequod through his insanity. Ishmael describes how by wandering alone and being in isolation a man will find a celestial thought. This then is seen as absurd by reason. It then describes how “woe feels uncompromised, indifferent as his God”, meaning how the woe is inflexible and there is no way of getting around it. God is compared to this by not having sympathy for the woe by being called indifferent and Ahab is angry with this fact. This idea describes how Pip lost his sanity and the woe he experienced. Now, he is constantly living with it because it is inflexible and madness is an escape from it. Pip gains this transcendental knowledge due to being isolated, but by not accepting the journey to it and all the pains from it he loses his sanity. Due to this loss he does not even believe he is Pip anymore.

In Chapter 99, Ahab's madness makes us realize that Pip's self preservation has also been shattered, but he is still able to accurately predict the future. Here, we see Ahab's interpretation of the doubloon. In this interpretation we can see Ahab’s personality feed into his monomania: “all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself” (318). Ahab sees in the doubloon everything as himself. The doubloon is a symbol of Moby Dick, which is his goal and all he sees in this channel is his power and victory to achieve this feat due to his pride. With this fixation though it does not let him see anything else in the symbolism or in his journey. Melville then discusses how each man looks into the world and it reflects their  “mysterious self”. Ahab only sees Ahab and the victory he will gain. He then describes how by just asking the world to help them you will go through lots of pain for a small amount of change. This idea shows how he believes you have to take action and be in control and not let God or fate be in control of your life because of the lack of sympathy he believes God has for humanity.

Contrastingly to Ahab’s self-centered view of the doubloon, Pip offers a different perspective. Pip then has an interpretation of the doubloon, questioning, “How did it get there? And so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green miser'll hoard ye soon!” (321). Pip foresees how one day people will find the Pequod and the doubloon will still be nailed on the mast at the bottom of the sea. He sees the shipwreck and the symbolism of the doubloon shows how looking for Moby Dick is the cause of the demise of the ship. The reference to “green miser”, or Davy Jones, describes how the death of the sailors is due to the hoarding of the sea's graveyard. This thought is similar to Ahab because the reason why the ship's crew is lost to the sea is because of the desire and fixation Ahab has for Moby Dick. The foreseeing directly aligns with how Pip lost his sanity but gained the ability to see God’s threads on the world. Pip does not see himself like Ahab, so it shows how their madness differs. It differs regarding their predictions. Pip saw the “heaven’s sense” where Ahab's pride led him astray, showing how Pipe has a madness that allows him to predict the future at the cost of his life, and Ahab gains extreme fixation at the cost of the ability to see everything around him.

The two types of regret are based on the mindset. Through madness, seen in both Ahab and Pip, we see that their mindset controlled their outcomes. Ahab saw his fulfillment in the death of Moby Dick and was not able to break out of this madness because of his mindset. Pip could have been vengeful when he stepped on the ship with his madness, but he is not because he is stronger than Ahab. In both cases, they lose themselves to madness, Ahab physically loses years of his life based on his self interest and Pip loses his soul due to a lack of self interest.  From madness, there are two paths: destruction and enlightenment, the only difference is a mindset. Your mindset is what enables you to achieve a goal. Without it you will either fall short or never have a chance at it. Mindset determines your success and it changes your perspective on situations. If you were to have the same mindset on everything, it would lead you down a fixated path and prevent you from achieving anything else or learning anything about what you are achieving. Just like regret, there are two types of mindsets: one that is solid, unchanging, and one that is fluid, always changing. Both, if used in balance, can help make achieving a goal worthwhile and productive. If you are always learning but not applying it to a solid mindset, centered around a goal, knowledge is pointless.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. Edited by Hershel Parker, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.