g God consists (Melville 58).
Clearly, Melville is making the argument here which informs his book in moral terms. Melville must believe that on some level Ahab is morally and psychologically able to make a choice of which he is conscious---the choice to pursue the whale or to break off the vengeful hunt, for his own sake and for the sake of the men he will take to their death as well. But the novel seems to show no such awareness on the part of Ahab. This would mean that despite Father Mapple's warning, Ahab is a man who is so obsessed with pain and rage that he has made himself immune to these moral considerations. He sees his own vengeance as the most compelling impulse in life---far more important than any commands from God to give up the hunt in obedient humility.
On the surface, it would seem that the political zealots in Dostoyevsky's novel are quite different from Aha
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