Psyche in Historical Context: Identity and Existence in Captain Ahab and King Lear

Abstract

Introduction

What ties Ahab, the notorious captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, to King Lear, the desperate old regent from William Shakespeare's eponymous play published in 1608, is not only their overabundant quest for meaning, or their obsession with pursuing their targets, but their idiosyncratic experiencing of themselves in their personal realities.

Aims

Captain Ahab is put in relation with King Lear, in order to show in what way issues of identity and of existence emerge in the course of their fictional lives. Lear is considered to have had deep influence on Melville the author in creating the character of Ahab. Since, in terms of present-day psychopathology, both fictional characters present with symptoms, their issues when put in historical context can untangle their personal realities.

Methods

Through a close reading of the characters’ behaviour and experiencing in historical context, issues of identity and of existence are elaborated on in order to advance to the psychodramatic substrate.

Results

Whereas at the beginning of the seventeenth century conflicts are newly transposed to characters’ minds instead of surroundings, the nineteenth century still sees Ahab's monomania on the outside. Identity and existence have increasingly been placed in individual psyche, though.

Conclusions

A paradigmatic change in personality concept at the turn of the modern epoch enables psychiatry and psychopathology to conceptualize the individual and to derive identity and existence from. Collective identity gives way to personal identity. With that, choice, interpretation, and failing are individualized.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.