“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed— there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."
From Moby Dick
Ahab is Melville's Satan, but he differs from Milton's Satan in that he doesn't rebel against God, but rather is determined to find out whether there is a God against whom to rebel. He is pursuing the final, ultimate truth about the way things are--and hates that the universe may very well be inscrutable to the last.
He puts forth a worldview in which the universe is a set of deep meanings we can strike through to with the strength of our autonomous will.
Kin Home Vantage Anova