The supremacy of evil

Abstract

Throughout his adulthood, man weighs the amount and quality of his masculinity in his attempts to accomplish, on his own, what he regards as worthwhile in life. His deeply-rooted ideal is to prove that his capabilities and strength are sufficient in the pursuit of desired satisfactions. His worst fear is that he is incapable in the face of the challenges of the world; that he would become castrated by life when trusting in his own activity. In the beginning of life, the psyche, in its early absoluteness, regards as evil everything that destroys good, or everything that makes it impossible to reach the desired pleasure. The more dominant the derivatives of this ultimate interpretation are in man's life project, the more he is inclined to see the realities of life as a camouflage of the hidden evil, and the more it is thus necessary for him to mobilize his compensatory phallicism as a weapon and fortress for the sake of the security of his self. When the phallicism thus increases, the black side of it, fear of castration, also grows in force, and a vicious circle is created. In this paper, the psychodynamics of captain Ahab and his crew in Herman Melville's Moby Dick are explored in order to illustrate and analyze these phallic-narcissistic layers of masculinity.