Ahab's Leg Dilemma: Part 2

; or, can we figure out which leg Ahab was missing?

Everyone knows that Ahab lost his leg — was “dismasted” — while trying to kill Moby Dick off the coast of Japan. But as I mentioned last week, not once in the book’s 135 chapters does Melville tell us, or even hint at, which of his legs was severed. What I discovered is that across 100 haphazardly-selected examples of Ahab in drawings, paintings, sculpture, puppets, and film is that the Left Ahabs and Right Ahabs were split almost exactly half and half. It was as if the universe was saying that the lack of consensus was itself the truth, just as Melville intended.

Perhaps like the white whale itself, Ahab’s leg was always meant to be an undecipherable enigma about which readers must come to their own conclusions (the white leg and the white whale were, of course, made from that same leviathanic stuff). The challenge was always laid bare: Melville may have given us “the bare words and facts," but it’s up to us "to supply the thoughts.”

Well here I am to supply the thoughts. As I mentioned, I wasn’t convinced that there really aren’t enough clues in the book, or satisfied that prior attempts had gone nearly far enough in their analysis of those bare words and facts. Sure, Melville never outright states whether it’s the left or right, but in book with so much detail — one which even provides stage directions in several places — there had to be an answer hiding in plain sight.

The Clumsy Cleat

I wanted to start by reviewing those prior attempts at answering the question, and as far as I can tell the first person who tried to figure out which leg was “chewed up” was Tyrus Hillway, who was one of the co-founders of the Melville Society in 1945. It was Hillway who director John Huston turned to while preparing to film his adaptation of Moby-Dick, seeking him out as the foremost expert on the book and its relevant background, or at least as someone who would know who to ask.

As Hillway recalled in a 1957 article for Colorado Quarterly, Huston and his assistant peppered him with questions leading up to filming, apparently “anxious that this production should be as authentic as possible in every detail.” Hillway was delighted to hear that this version would try to capture the true spirit of the book. Up to that point, the only film adaptations had been the two John Barrymore films several decades earlier: the 1926 silent film The Sea Beast, and the 1930 talkie Moby-Dick. Although both were successful for their times, they took extreme liberties with the story, for example eliminating Ishmael, giving Ahab a step-brother named Derek, and, worst of all, giving the films happy endings in which Ahab triumphantly defeats Moby-Dick. In contrast, Huston’s interest in hewing closely to the book, Hillway wrote, “was pure music to my ears.”

Huston’s questions drew from Hillway’s expertise not only on the content of the book but on whales, whaling, whaling songs, 19th century history, and various critical interpretations of the book. His dutiful responses undoubtedly steered the project in the right direction, though that’s not to say Huston took every suggestion to heart. After the premiere in 1956, Hillway was disappointed at the handling of Father Mapple’s “sadly abbreviated” sermon, for example, but forgave certain inaccuracies such as the Pequod leaving from New Bedford rather than Nantucket, and cutting out Fedallah, changes which were deemed necessary to simplify the plot and keep it moving.

Hillway’s most quarrelsome comment, however, concerned Ahab’s leg, which he wrote “should not, of course, be the left leg, but the right one,” conjecturing that Huston and his lead, Gregory Peck, followed Rockwell Kent’s illustrations which showed Ahab missing his left leg. Kent, he wrote, “obviously knew nothing about whaling.”

To those astute observers who may have wondered why Gregory Peck stalks through this motion picture on the wrong false leg (it should not, of course, be the left leg, but the right one), the explanation probably is quite simple. Huston undoubtedly adopted the widely known Rockwell Kent illustrations in one of the more popular editions of Moby Dick as his guide for Captain Ahab’s general appearance. Because this artist obviously knew nothing about whaling when he made his drawings, he took off Ahab’s left leg.

Hillway cites as evidence a feature of whaleboats known as the clumsy cleat, “the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale” as Melville describes it. Basically, it’s a short wooden plank at the front of the boat into which is carved a semi-circle for the harpooner to steady himself when he launched the harpoon at a whale. A right-handed harpooner would thus insert his left leg into the clumsy cleat to brace himself as he threw with his right arm.

If Ahab was missing his left leg, Hillway argues, it would be impossible for him to have thrown the harpoon at Moby-Dick, as he does in the last chapter. (“Thus, I give up the spear!”). Ahab therefore must have his whole left leg, and be missing his right leg.

Actually it would be impossible for a right-handed man (as Peck is in the film) to throw a harpoon from the bow of a whaleboat if his left leg were an artificial one. The harpooner standing in the bow or front of a whaleboat, which is pitching and rocking precariously beneath him, has difficulty maintaining his position even on two sound legs. Careful balance is necessary not only to remain erect in the boat but also to cast the harpoon accurately into the whale’s body. For this reason the old whalemen used a specially constructed clumsy-cleat, which is a thwart in the bow of a boat with a rounded notch cut into the edge on the left side of it, as a brace. With his left knee braced in this notch, the harpooner was aided to stand erect while he plunged his weapon into the plunging whale. Now try to imagine how this could be done with a false left leg.

It hardly needs pointing out that this argument is based on several fundamental assumptions. Hillway, himself, actually laid out these assumptions even more clearly in a short article a few years earlier in the Melville Society Newsletter, making the same argument about the clumsy cleat (emphasis mine).

A left-handed man, of course, would need to brace his right knee, but the indentation on the thigh thwart seems ordinarily to have been cut a little left of the center and was obviously intended for right-handed harpooners. […]

Assuming that Ahab was normally right-handed then, it must have been his right leg rather than his left which Moby Dick devoured.

These statements in bold might be fair enough assumptions on the whole, but I’d argue there’s no good reason to take them as fact in the particular case of Ahab. For example, below is a picture of the clumsy cleat in a replica whaleboat built according to its original plans, made in conjunction with the restoration of the Charles W. Morgan whaler. Note the half-circle notch at the left.

Now, recall that Ahab’s leg was actually only severed below the knee. Flask mentions that “he has one knee, and good part of the other left,” and when the carpenter is working on a replacement leg in Chapter 108, he’s thankful that “there’s no knee-joint to make… but a mere shinbone.” I know far less about whaling than Rockwell Kent, but surely there’s a reason it was also called a thigh board. Looking at the clumsy cleat in the replica boat, it certainly looks high enough for the determined Ahab to have used the thigh of his missing leg to brace himself while throwing the harpoon, no?

Nor, if Ahab was indeed left-handed, is it difficult to imagine the carpenter simply cutting a second notch into the wood toward the right. In some cases, the clumsy cleat was actually cut in the middle of the plank rather to one side.

In fact, it’s stated in Chapter 50 that Ahab borrows the carpenter’s chisel to give special attention to the shape of the clumsy cleat in his boat:

… the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat…. and with the carpenter’s chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there;

One might even argue that the extra attention that Ahab gives to it suggests that this was no ordinary clumsy cleat in the first place.

Ahab might just as simply made do with the tools at hand. It’s not ideal to brace yourself with the leg on the same side of your body as your throwing arm, but Ahab’s will to harpoon Moby Dick and his specially-sharpened (and Devil-baptized) harpoon are also well outside normal circumstances.

For what it’s worth, it turns out Hillway was wrong about Huston copying Kent’s illustrations when deciding which leg Gregory Peck would be missing. The question was resolved much more simply: he asked Peck which he preferred. In an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal in September 1996, Peck recalled that he had recently injured his left ankle while shooting a film and “it was better to have that one off.”

It was an easy decision for me, because the director of the movie, John Huston, asked me which leg I would like to have off, and I said, ‘Oh, definitely the left.’ I had broken my left leg in a Western picture, ‘Yellow Sky.’ I took a tumble and landed underneath a horse, and my left leg snapped around the ankle. I told him I was a little gimpy in that leg anyway, so it was better to have that one off.

Captain Boomer

Another attempt at finding an answer was made in 1971 by Francis V. Lloyd Jr. in the quarterly literary journal The Explicator. Lloyd opens his article by admitting that the question of which leg was missing had never crossed his mind until he read something about it in the New York Times. That piece, of all things, was a profile of Jane Alpert, a far-left radical involved in bombing eight government and office buildings in 1969. In short, Alpert is described as a “marvelous” student who became intrigued by Moby-Dick in a high school English class — not so much with the language or symbolism but by the mystery of Ahab’s leg.

“What I particularly remember about Jane is in a course in which we were really caught up in the symbolism of ‘Moby Dick,’” a high-school classmate and friend recalled. “Jane was really excited about that. We all got excited about whether it was Ahab’s right leg or left [that was missing], because that would be crucial. Jane and I went through the entire book and never found it.”

In a strange coincidence, Alpert later became romantically involved with a man named Samuel Grossman, who by that point had already legally changed his name to Samuel Melville out of his own admiration for Moby-Dick. (More on that next week.)

Lloyd was inspired by Alpert’s question, if not her politics, and took it upon himself to do the work. Like Hillway, Lloyd also concluded that Ahab’s right leg must have been missing based on the clumsy cleat, focusing on Melville’s particular use of the word “solitary” in the phrase “solitary knee.”

A right-handed-harpooner—and there is no reason to believe Ahab was left-handed—must have his left leg braced and his right leg back. How do we know the left leg was whole? “… it was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat.” Solitary here means “only, sole.” Melville uses the word again when Ahab slid his “solitary thigh into the curve of the hook” that hauled him aboard the “Samuel Enderby.”

Again, Lloyd has to assume that Ahab is right-handed in order to make this theory work, and might be over-interpreting a somewhat unusual use of the word “solitary.” As above, I don’t find this argument particularly convincing, especially since Lloyd seems to have missed that Ahab has two knees, or at least the better part of one of them.

Lloyd finds further evidence that Ahab is missing his right leg in his meeting with Captain Boomer, who lost his own right arm while battling Moby Dick. Boomer greets Ahab with “his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome,” which Ahab then crosses with his (unspecified) ivory leg. In one of Ahab’s rare moments of humanity, they “shake bones together.” Lloyd reasons that “Right arm to right leg would be the only way for the two to greet each other.”

But given the unusual circumstances for the handshake, crossing prosthetic limbs “like two sword-fish blades,” it hardly seems impossible to imagine Ahab lifting his left leg to meet Boomer’s right arm. Clearly, the significance of the gesture is acknowledging their shared calamity, not performing a “proper” gentlemanly handshake. Your mileage may vary, but once again I find that there’s too much ambiguity and latitude for alternate interpretations to take this argument as proof.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

Finally, a third argument was made by David Ketterer in the same May 1983 article in the Melville Society “Extracts” newsletter that inspired last week’s post about how Ahab’s leg in illustration. Ketterer speculates that Melville might have intentionally left it a mystery so that readers would be forced to create their own mental image of Ahab. With that stated, however, he quickly sets Melville’s intentions aside and gets to work.

Like Lloyd, Ketterer is interested in Ahab’s handshake with Captain Boomer, which he calls “perhaps the clearest evidence” that Ahab is right handed.

On the principle that two people can only shake hands properly with two left or, more usually, two right hands, can we assume here that Boomer’s missing arm and Ahab’s missing leg are on the same sides of their bodies?

Even he is quick to admit that this is shaky grounds at best, sheepishly answering his own question: “Not necessarily, of course, but… it is at least something go on.”

Ketterer also looks for semantic clues that Melville might have left for readers. For instance, perhaps there’s meaning in the repetition of the word “right” when Ahab kicks Stubb in a dream?

After being kicked by Ahab, Stubb tries to kick back, first with the effect of kicking “my leg right off” and then only to find himself kicking Ahab metamorphosed into a pyramid. Suddenly a hump-backed, “badger-haired old merman” appears and remonstrates with Stubb.

“Look ye here,” says he; “let’s argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?” “Yes he did,” says I—right here it was.” “Very good,” says he—“he used his ivory leg, didn’t he?” Yes, he did,” says I. “Well then,” says he, “wise Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didn’t he kick with right good will? It wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it?

One is at least free to hypothesize, on the basis of the verbal repetition play here, that Ahab’s right leg was made of ivory.

Ketterer admits that this, too, is “scanty evidence” and that anyone offering it as proof “would not have a leg to stand on.” Nevertheless, he finds the mere consistency of the evidence all pointing toward the right leg to be in some degree convincing in itself. And to be fair, so far all of the arguments from Hillway, Lloyd, and Ketterer do all point to a right leg.

But with all due respect, none of these rationales seem particularly robust, and in fact barely even refer to the actual text of the book. People usually shake with their right hands; harpooners usually brace themselves with their opposite leg; Melville uses the word “right” a few times in one particular paragraph — none of this requires a particularly close read. Perhaps the degree of their effort is in proportion to how important this question is (read: not very). But as I think I’ve already established on this blog, that’s never given me any pause.

The Ahab-Fedallah Entanglement Theory

My own theory of Ahab’s leg is admittedly not bulletproof, but I think it’s nevertheless far more grounded in the text. It’s true that Melville never plainly states which leg Ahab is missing in a single place in the book, but if you pay attention to the positioning of certain characters, objects, and phenomena throughout the book, I think there is a single moment which brings it all together.

As Ketterer notes in his article, Melville comes tantalizingly close to giving away the leg in Chapter 119: The Candles. Just after Ahab has asked for the metal links comprising the lightning rod, we’re told that Ahab has the links in his left hand, his right hand up in the air, and a foot on Fedallah, who kneels before him.

“Hand me those mainmast links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood against fire! So.”

Then turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.

Despite all of this information, Ketterer laments: “We might also think that we know one leg from the other here. But we in fact do not.” And it’s true — there’s still no final nail in the coffin. But what if we pause on this scene for a moment and add to it everything else we know about the Pequod up to this point and set the stage. Relying on direct quotes from the book and with as few assumptions as possible, I present the Ahab-Fedallah Entanglement Theory:

1. The Pequod is facing north

Ahab’s whaleboat is starboard. In Chapter 48, we’re told that the Ahab’s whaleboat normally hangs off the starboard (right-hand) side of the quarter-deck. (“This boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain’s, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter.”)

The wind is blowing from the east. In Chapter 119, during the typhoon, Starbuck points out to Stubb that “the gale comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby Dick.” (Starbuck even wishes Ahab would take the cosmic hint and let it blow them back home, westward to Nantucket).

Ahab’s boat is windward. Also in Chapter 119, we’re told that Ahab’s whaleboat is “windward.”

CONCLUSION 1: If Ahab’s boat is on the right-hand side of the ship, the wind is blowing from west to east, and Ahab’s boat is “windward,” then the ship must be facing north.

2. Ahab also faces north, Fedallah faces south

The doubloon is on the side of the mast. In Chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck, Ahab begins his speech about hunting Moby Dick while standing at the quarter-deck bulwarks (railing), at the edge of the ship — whether port or starboard. He then walks to the center of the ship to nail the doubloon to the mast. This positions the coin on one of the sides of the mast as opposed to either facing the back of the ship (where it would only be visible to the Ahab but not the crew) or the front (which would have required Ahab to step down from the quarter-deck and around the mast to nail it). But Chapter 99: The Doubloon clearly indicates that the crew is able to see the coin from the main deck, and that Ahab can see it while pacing the quarter-deck. Therefore, the coin must face one of the sides of the ship.

Ahab and Fedallah stand/kneel below the doubloon. During the typhoon, Ahab and Fedallah are positioned “At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame.” Fedallah is “kneeling in Ahab’s front,” either at the very edge of the quarterdeck or more likely just off its short ledge. Knowing that the doubloon is on the side of the mast, we can begin to fill in the picture as to exactly where the two characters are during this scene — at the base of the mainmast either to its left or its right.

Ahab faces the crew. Ahab and Fedallah are facing each other but we don’t know exactly in what position — “beneath” the doubloon could imply several variations. But Ahab is also speaking to the crew, asking someone to give him the lightning rod links which he receives an instant later. (“Hand me those mainmast links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood against fire! So.”). This would indicate that Ahab is facing the main deck.

CONCLUSION 2: If Ahab is looking outward to the main deck, then he too is facing north. This means that Fedallah, who is kneeling before Ahab, faces the quarter-deck, due south.

3. Ahab stands on one leg.

Ahab is unbalanced (literally). Ahab only recently lost his leg, having rounded Cape Horn in “mid winter” the previous year, and leaving again on Christmas Day. This left little time to become accustomed to walking with a prosthesis and, accordingly, Ahab’s movements are frequently described as being impaired and unsteady:

• In Chapter 106, we learn that just before Pequod’s voyage, Ahab actually falls while on shore, somehow landing on his ivory leg and injuring himself. (“… his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin.”)

• While walking the deck, he’s said frequently said to be hanging onto railings and ropes for balance (“Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud…”)

• In Chapter 100, when Ahab boards the Samuel Enderby to talk to Captain Boomer, a large part of the chapter is devoted to the awkward maneuvering required to get him from ship to ship.

• In Chapter 119, when Ahab comes to the deck during the typhoon, he is described as “groping his way along the bulwarks to his pivot-hole.”

In other words, it’s not for nothing that Ahab is mad at Moby Dick for the whole leg thing.

Ahab’s “ivory” foot. When Ahab “put a foot upon the Parsee” in Chapter 119, it’s not stated exactly which foot he uses. We might assume Melville meant his intact foot, but this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s true that Melville twice refers to the end of Ahab’s fake leg as his “ivory heel,” but in Chapter 129: The Cabin, Ahab indeed calls it his “ivory foot” while talking to Pip. I think this allows us to presume that his “foot” at least could be either his real foot or his ivory foot.

Ahab stands freely in the typhoon. Despite having poor balance on two legs, Ahab “stands erect” when he puts a foot on Fedallah and neither of his hands are hanging on to any ropes. His left hand holds the lightning rod links, and right arm is “high-flung” in the air. Given how much trouble Ahab has with his balance in normal circumstances, it seems all but impossible to imagine that he’s stable enough to rest his entire body weight on the “whittled” point of his ivory leg with nothing to assist his balance. At one point, he even “closes his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them” in that position — a feat hard enough without a recently-amputated leg.

CONCLUSION 3: Ahab is standing on his “real” leg; his ivory leg is on Fedallah [Note: this is Assumption #1. It’s not impossible to imagine that he’s balanced on his ivory leg, but it does seem exceedingly unlikely and impractical.]

4. Fedallah turns away from the wind

Fedallah turns his head away from Ahab. During the typhoon, Fedallah kneels in front of Ahab “with his head bowed away from” him. Just to drive this point home, the book doesn’t say he bowed his head down, nor that he’s looking up at Ahab. Fedallah is turned “away from” him, meaning either left or right.

Fedallah turns his head away from the wind. Again, this scene takes place during a typhoon, and in fact the wind is so strong that it creates a wave that destroys Ahab’s whaleboat (“A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the reeling ship’s high teetering side, stove in the boat’s bottom at the stern…”). Considering the strength of the wind, it would only make sense for Fedallah, who is facing south, to turn his head away from the wind — i.e., to his right, looking westward. [Note: This is Assumption #2, but I’d argue it makes little sense to imagine him turning his face into the wind as opposed to away from it]

Fedallah’s head blocks his right shoulder. If Fedallah turns his head to the right, then his right shoulder would be obstructed by his own head. Only his left shoulder is vacant for Ahab to put his leg on.

FINAL CONCLUSION: Ahab puts his ivory leg on Fedallah’s left shoulder. And which of Ahab’s legs would be directly in front of Fedallah’s left shoulder?

His right leg.

A few final pieces of corroborating evidence: Right as Ahab puts his leg on Fedallah, he turns his body toward toward the three masts to address them directly (“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire… etc.). This places Ahab and Fedallah on the starboard side of the mainmast, allowing him to easily pivot to the left while maintaining his right leg on Fedallah’s shoulder — another reason to believe that he’s standing on his real foot, given the circumstances of being unbalanced and in a raging storm.

Being on the starboard side of the ship also jives with Ahab’s whaleboat being close at hand. When Starbuck points at Ahab’s demonic harpoon, which is by then also on fire, Ahab quickly grabs the harpoon from the whaleboat and uses it to threaten any of the crew who stands in his way. (Though it is true that it wouldn’t be that much farther if he were standing on the port side of the mast).

And of course, it also agrees with the (slightly less intense) theories offered by Hillway, Lloyd, and Ketterer.

The Key to It All

Previous attempts at solving this puzzle seemed to have been discouraged by the fact that whaling ships are frustratingly symmetrical. Any clues that led you to imagine Ahab on one side of the ship could just as easily be imagined on the other. The clumsy cleat arguments tried to get around this fact by using an asymmetrical element on the whaleboats, but even then it was still unclear how you get beyond assuming hand preference, whether the board could be reversed or adapted, and so on.

The key here was the wind, the one element in this scene which is unequivocally described as traveling in one direction: from west to east. Having fixed all of the other elements in space, the wind reveals which way Fedallah turns his head. Without this small detail, everything else would be for naught.

Again, this theory hinges on two fundamental assumptions: that Ahab wouldn’t try to fully balance himself on his ivory leg; and that Fedallah turns away from the wind instead looking directly into it. Or maybe the scene can be imagined in a completely different arrangement and this is yet another attempt that can’t see outside of its limitations. But then, it’s not as if there’s any more textual evidence forthcoming to answer Ahab’s riddle. As Ishmael wrote, “The copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.” Thus, in the absence of any positive evidence supporting Ahab missing his left leg, I think we can finally conclude that the white whale swam away with the right.