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In Moby-Dick, Ahab is hell-bent on getting vengeance upon the eponymous whale, and he goes as far as to uproot his life entirely to go chasing the Whale. Before his mad quest, Ahab was married with a kid, he went to college, he lived amongst the savages and saw some serious shit. He was regarded as a hero after saving the lives of his crew after he was stuck in a typhoon off the coast of Japan. Instead of being focused on his own impending doom, he got his act together and focused on saving his saving his men. That version of Ahab is a far cry from the Ahab that Ishmael meets in “Ahab” and “Enter Ahab; To Him, Stubb”. The present-day incarnation of Ahab is medio totao which is Dominican for “he’s fucking crazy”. The man had a whole life and identity as a family man and hero and threw it away to hunt down a whale. Ahab feels so salty he eschews his fully functional persona just to become a whale hunting machine. He becomes monotonous, only fueled by his desire for revenge. He’s probably what Bruce Wayne would’ve been if his parents had used common sense and not walked down Crime Alley, and not just walk down Crime Alley, but do it conspicuously wearing expensive-ass pearls. A boring, regular, degular, schmegular guy. Actually, he more like Android 16 from Dragon Ball Z, ignoring all of life just to destroy his singular target. Except instead of an alien super martial artist, it’s a goddamned whale. A whale who only attacked, because it was attacked first. It’s not like Moby woke up and schemed to fuck up Ahab’s life, if anything Ahab should be narrow-minded about finding Moby and apologizing to him. Ahab is so obsessed he smells the air and is like “The whale is here”. What kind of Wolverine shit is that? That is a man obsessed. It’s not only that he blames Moby for just attacking his ship, he also blames Moby for losing his leg. And to make matters worse, and an excellent display of karma, the prosthetic he’s forced to wear is made out of whale bone. He should take solace in an eye for an eye kind of way, “You took my crew, I took your cousin and made him my leg.”  But nah, now he’s dead, his crew is dead, and Ishmael is left floating at sea on Queequeg’s coffin.

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In Young Goodman Brown, Brown’s sense of identity is shattered. Brown was a pious, optimistic young fellow, and by the end, he was cynical, jaded and mistrustful. It sounds like he went to college, but instead he discovered his loved ones in the woods, praising the 666God, Satan. Community is an intrinsic part of Brown’s identity, everyone was a kind and pious stranger, and by adopting those qualities Brown fit in perfectly, and lived life with nary a problem. But curiosity killed the cat, and also killed the Puritan Formerly Known as Goodman Brown, whose name was too on the nose. After everything, he is unsure if he had witnessed was real life or was it just fantasy, but he’s stuck in a landslide, no escape from reality being changed for the rest of his days. The destruction of Brown’s identity is akin to growing up and discovering your parents are not as infallible as they appear, they are regular mortals like you with the same flaws and potential for goodness you also possess, this brought to light when the Old Man/ Satan says that he knew Brown’s pops and grandpops, of course Brown’s innocent identity rejects the notion that someone of his lineage could ever meet Satan. One can only wonder how the new Brown lived the rest of his days, did he accept the new way of life and attended the monthly Satanic ritual, or did he fruitlessly attempt to recover his fractured identity?

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Ishmael’s problem is that he doesn’t have an identity, it’s that it bends and shapes depending on the dominant personality nearby. At first, he is intimidated by Queequeg but is kind of seduced by his ruggedness. They lay together and soon he falls lovingly into his rugged9 arms, it’s all out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. The next night, they discuss the philosophies of their different path of life and Ishmael, he of Christian faith is surprised that Queequeg, a cannibal, raises such good points. This time however, they smoke out of Queequeg’s Tomahawk Pipe and Queequeg states that if they were back at Rokovoko, they’d be married. Ishmael deludes himself by stating that he’s only being kind to Queequeg because he’s following the Christian “Golden Rule” so that Queequeg would join him at Christian Church the following morning for sermon.  But that’s lies. Throughout all the interactions we just constantly keep learning new things about Queequeg, but never about Ishmael himself. Queequeg  permeates every aspect of Ishmael’s thought and narration but he’s exiled rapidly once Ahab enters the picture. Once Ahab comes onto the scene, the contrast between both men are presented as clearly as night and day. Ishmael takes a laid-back approach to life, whereas Ahab has a singular, maniacal focus on his mission to get Moby.  The overwhelming presence of Ahab in Ishmael’s thought and narration can be forgiven as many of the crew members on-board are impressed by the man who moonlights as a monomaniacal force of nature. Peleg says that he’s a, “grand, ungodly, god-like man” and everyone is enthralled by le fou unijambiste , French for “the one-legged madman.” There’s also how Ishmael introduces himself, “Call me Ishmael”, that is suss. We’re not even sure Ishmael is who he says he is. He’s like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, an unreliable, ass-backwards narrator. The entire novel is told via flashback, ala How I Met Your Mother, which also plays with unreliable narration when Bob Saget misremembers some stuff. As Ishmael spends more and more time with Captain Psychopath, further and further he strays away from Queequeg’s loving embrace, to the point where we never find out if Queequeg survived the Pequod’s destruction. Ishmael’s whole thing seems to be, “Outta mind, Outta sight” which is the kind of lifestyle that leads to you floating out at sea, holding onto a coffin for survival.

P.S: Enjoy some of that Paul Simon humor in the second image, because who does’t love Rhymin’ Simon.

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Behind a Mask; Or a Woman’s Power is the perfect 19th century text to discuss identity crises, because the protagonist is stuck between two identities. Not in a Bruce Banner and Hulk kind of way, where the shift is uncontrollable, unwanted, and separate identities, but in a Peter Parker and Spider-Man kind of way, where the second persona is merely an extension of the other with some tweaks for anonymity and the situation they find themselves in. Both characters choose to adopt the second persona out of selfish reasons but end up having a greater impact than both set out to accomplish. Parker became Spider-Man to atone for the sin of letting his uncle get shot, whereas Jean became Governess Jean in an attempt to get more money. Spider-Man’s impact is infinitely more positive than Jean’s, Spidey’s saved New York and the world a billion times over, but Jean destroyed the Coventry family without giving anything that even resembles a fuck. Jean Muir pretends to be a young governess to Bella Coventry, but throughout her entire journey to be the mistress of the Coventry home Jean never loses control of the situation. She knows exactly who to manipulate in order to get one step further in her goal for affluence. Jean Muir feels she needs a second identity because of patriarchal standards of Victorian England, where a single woman that’s thirty years old is treated like unwanted goods. Jean’s disguise is a wig and couple of fake teeth, it’s not even a full-face mask. If that’s enough to convince the Coventry she’s a completely different person, they would do swimmingly in Metropolis. Jean’s tale could be seen as a bit autobiographical since even the author of this story had to adopt a second identity. Louisa May Alcott had to become someone else to get this story to print, she had to become A.M Barnard, due to the stigma against women novelist and the lack of validation she would receive compared to her male counterparts. Jean’s tactics are akin to one of the wisest philosophers of our time, and a fellow Bronx person (Shoutout to Fordham Rd! De lo mio personal! ), Cardi B. In “No Limits” she says, “Fuck him then I get some money.” And that’s what Jean did to John Coventry, the head of the Coventry estate. Who says Cardi B ain’t high brow?

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BONUS ROUND: Because who doesn’t love Bowie?

David Bowie is obviously a genius, a god and the 🐐. Throughout his illustrious career, he used different characters to represent the phase he was at in it. The most famous of his alter egos being Ziggy Stardust, “an omnisexual alien rock star, sent to Earth as a messenger.” But there is a connection between another of Bowie’s alters and a Shakespeare. A modern version of the self-inflicted tragedy that befell Prospero, the protagonist of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is that of the Thin White Duke, one of the many alter egos David Bowie adopted through his illustrious career. Both men are consumed by what the seek the most and as a result are warped and twisted on the inside. In “The Tempest” Prospero seeks magic, just so he can gain vengeance on his brother Antonio for banishing him to the island with his daughter Miranda. In “Station to Station”, an album released in his Thin White Duke era, Bowie speaks about his quest for fame and glamour in the appropriately named track, “Fame” and how it’s created a darker version of himself and now that fame,“ makes a man take things over” as to say it’s now made him possessive and paranoid a trait he did not possess before. It’s long been debated if The Thin White Duke is the darkest in Bowie’s pantheon of characters and this along with the suggestion that America needed a whole right wing party to come and get us on the right track and the fact that he compared Hitler to Mick Jagger as a Rockstar, certainly lends Creedence to this theory. Prospero’s thirst for vengeance keeps him blind to the fact that he’s ignoring his daughter and the emotional scars he’s inflicting upon her. Eventually, Prospero sees the errors of his way and forgives Antonio for the sake of Miranda’s happiness. And as for The Thin White Duke, Bowie moved away from LA and stopped living off Cocaine, Milk and Peppers. He joined with Iggy Pop in Berlin to work in a different style and it’s quite obvious in “Heroes”, one of Bowie’s most iconic tracks, an optimistic jam. But whereas Ziggy Stardust got an iconic ending and final performance, The Thin White Duke simply faded away into darkness, but every once in a while, his influence could be heard through the rest of Bowie’s career. Bowie himself referred to this time being the darkest of his life.  “Who Can I Be Now?” was written in 1974, a year after Bowie retired the Ziggy Stardust persona. A smooth jazzy song, here Bowie lays all his insecurities to bare about what’s expected of him, he vacillates between continuing as plain David Bowie, or creating a new persona, but, as mentioned above, the choice was made. And thus, was born The Thin White Duke.