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How did Captain Ahab lose his leg in Moby-Dick?
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Herman Melville
American writer Herman Melville.
In the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Captain Ahab loses his leg after it is bitten off by the titular white whale, Moby Dick, during a previous encounter. This traumatic event serves as the catalyst for Ahab's monomaniacal obsession, driving him to pursue the whale across the sea on the whaling vessel Pequod in a quest for vengeance that ultimately leads to his own destruction and the loss of his crew.12