Eight of Swords

Meaning: Restriction - inability to see beyond your immediate situation.

Depiction: For a final time, Starbuck tries to reason with Ahab to give up the hunt. Ahab is seated in his quarters, his ivory leg reduced to a fragment. Starbuck is standing behind him, his hands in a remonstrating position, Ahab's head is turned away from him, his  arms  stubbornly wrapped around himself like the rope of the figure on the RWS card. Eight lances are piled against the wall in the background.

Text: Chapter 134- The Chase- Second Day

“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; “never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus’ name no more of this, that’s worse than devil’s madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:—what more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!”

“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw—thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand—a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders."

Walter Crane- The Roll of Fate (1882). This totally reminds me of Ahab and Starbuck in Ch. 134!

Comments:  One of the major themes of Moby Dick is fate and the individual's power to alter it. Paradoxically, Ahab seems to be resigned to his fate and at the same time, is sure he is in complete control of it.