Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines chapter 108, ‘Ahab and the Carpenter’, from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick to explore how the making of Ahab’s prosthesis highlights the problems of trauma, embodiment, and phantom limb pain. Turning the decks of the Pequod into a Shakespearean stage, Melville puts the temporal expanse of Ahab’s vengeance on display as the ivory leg encompasses the natural leg of the past, the cavity of the present, and the prosthesis the captain will wear into the future. The article discusses Ahab’s whalebone leg alongside Captain Boomer’s whalebone arm in arguing that the prosthesis defines not just the avenger’s body, but his relation to other bodies as well.
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