fire in order to contravene the will of the god; Ahab, thinking his mind can penetrate the mystery of evil, is convinced that killing Moby Dick will "expel evil from the cosmos." In a tragedy a hero has a mad counterpart: Prometheus has Io, Moby-Dick has Pip. The madness of Io and Pip is caused by their unintentional contact with the primal elements or with the deity. "The Pip who dances and shakes his tambourine before Queequeg's coffin," Sweeney compares, "is clearly a maniac, completely detached from his former personality." Likewise, Io, tortured by the gadfly, "bursts upon the stage in a wild dance...While on the stage, Io speaks with a disjointed frenzy much the same as Pip's." Oedipus (Sophocles) In "The Candles," Ahab is temporarily stricken by blindness, an allusion to the Oedipus myth. In the chapter "The Sphynx," Ahab stands before a sperm whale's head hanging from the side of his ship: "it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert." Ahab orders the head to "tell us the secret thing that is in thee." Here Ahab resembles Oedipus and the monster of Thebes, the more for his using a spade alternatively as both a crutch and as a tool with which to dissect the whale. Oedipus' staff, Sweeney notes, is both "a walking tool and the murder weapon with which he killed his father." The Promethean and Oedipean sides of Ahab connect in this chapter by way of the crutch. In addition to this, blindness is alluded to. Oedipus and Ahab are intelligent and ignorant at the same time, excessively proud, and both face a riddle (the mystery of evil). Narcissus (Ovid) The opening chapter contains an extended allusion to "that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned" (Ch. 1, "Loomings"). Ahab does not realize that the malice he sees in the White Whale is his own, "wildly projected." His Narcissistic self-delusion (he is unaware that he sees himself in the whale) complements "his Oedipean self-ignorance" (he does not know who he really is). The Narcissus myth also explains why Ahab, unlike Oedipus, remains self-ignorant. While two messengers enlight Oedipus and separate him from his obsession, Narcissus and Ahab are never interrupted from theirs. The contrast between Narcissus and Ahab is that the first contemplates a beautiful image which he loves, while