STARBUCK
AS SEEN IN:
"Moby Dick"
AS PLAYED BY:
Ethan Hawke
TV DIMENSION:
Land of Remakes
STATUS:
Recastaway
CREATED BY:
Herman Melville
From Wikipedia:
Starbuck, the young chief mate of the Pequod, is a thoughtful and
intellectual Quaker from Nantucket.
Little is said about Starbuck's early life, except that he is married with a son. Unlike Ahab's wife, who remains nameless, Starbuck gives his wife's name as Mary. Such is his desire to return to them, that when nearly reaching the last leg of their quest for Moby Dick, he considers arresting or even killing Ahab with a loaded musket, one of several kept by Ahab (in a previous chapter Ahab threatens Starbuck with one when Starbuck disobeys him, despite Starbuck's being in the right), and turning the ship back, straight for home.
Little is said about Starbuck's early life, except that he is married with a son. Unlike Ahab's wife, who remains nameless, Starbuck gives his wife's name as Mary. Such is his desire to return to them, that when nearly reaching the last leg of their quest for Moby Dick, he considers arresting or even killing Ahab with a loaded musket, one of several kept by Ahab (in a previous chapter Ahab threatens Starbuck with one when Starbuck disobeys him, despite Starbuck's being in the right), and turning the ship back, straight for home.
Starbuck is alone among the crew in objecting to Ahab's quest, declaring it
madness to want revenge on an animal, which lacks reason. Starbuck advocates
continuing the more mundane pursuit of whales for their oil. But he lacks the
support of the crew in his opposition to Ahab, and is unable to persuade them to
turn back. Despite his misgivings, he feels himself bound by his obligations to
obey the captain.
Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural
reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline
him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some
organization seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from
ignorance... [H]is far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child,
tend[ed] to bend him ... from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open
him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men,
restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more
perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said
Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only
that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair
estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far
more dangerous comrade than a coward.
—Moby-Dick, Ch. 26
—Moby-Dick, Ch. 26
BCnU!
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