Students can learn a great deal about how leaders negotiate competing interests and expectations of their communities by studying how Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation) performs the quarterdeck scene in the TV version of Moby Dick. This version shows a consciousness of the factions that operate on the ship. Ahab's leadership emerges through the ways he unites these groups behind a common cause, forging close bonds between himself and his men. Often, Ahab has been portrayed as an aloof and distant leader who intimidates and dominates, whereas Stewart's version of Ahab emphasizes his desire for closeness with his crew, even as he wants to bond them to his personal pursuit of Moby Dick. 
 
If you want to work through the sequence with your students, we recommend playing it through through once first and then coming back through a second time, stopping and starting to single out specific moments. Indeed, our notes below suggest a way to break the scene into smaller chunks for the purpose of discussion. You will find a particular value in working through the scene this way because it may help your students better understand how you can do close reading with a media text. Before you play the scene the second time, you might consider asking your students: 

• What are Ahab's goals here?
• What differences in race, class, and rank are depicted?
• Which members of the crew feel closer to each other? Which feel more distance?  
• Who embraces Ahab's goals? Who remains resistant to them?  
• What rituals does Ahab perform to bond his men together? 
• Does he treat each member of his crew the same, or does he handle different groups differently?  

Such questions may prime them to watch the scene more closely the second time and may help them to identify specific tactics of cultural negotiation Ahab deploys. Having talked it through on a global level, you can now focus on specific gestures, turns of phrase, or inflections and the responses they provoke. You might also have the students examine Melville's description of these same actions in "The Quarter-Deck" and ask them how some of the staging of this scene reflects or differs from the actions described in the novel.

Here are items to watch for as you examine the sequence:  

• The scene opens with the introduction of Fedallah and his men who remain outside the Pequod community. Note the initial expression of discomfort from Flask and Stubb. Periodically throughout the scene, the camera shows Fedallah and his men standing apart, showing little emotional response to what is unfolding, even as the other divisions of the crew are being broken down.  
• Ahab asks Flask, Stubb, and Starbuck to call the rest of the crew. Why doesn't he call them himself?
• First they call together the men who are already on deck and, only later, call the men down from the masts. What are the implications of this distinction? What is involved in pulling the men down from the masts? What are the potential costs of this action? 
• We hear Stubb and Flask whispering about Ahab. What do they say? What has Ahab done that provokes this response? 
• Pay attention to the expressions on Ahab's face, especially his eyes, scar, and the ways he wobbles on his one leg throughout the scene. Are there moments in the performance where you are more aware of his wounds than others?
• Ahab reviews with his men some basic procedures that will already be understood by everyone serving on the ship, yet the men seem proud to be repeating these answers to him. What is the purpose of this exchange? 
• While Ahab begins the scene standing above his men, looking down, he quickly moves down the steps so that he is standing on the same level with them. What is the significance of this gesture?
  
• Throughout this scene, Ahab periodically refers to individual members of the crew by name even as he is addressing the group as a whole. Pay attention to when he singles out particular characters and how they respond when he does. 
• Ahab walks through the group, holding the gold coin up close to each man's face. As he does, he's also drawing them closer together. We can understand him as simultaneously creating competition, encouraging each to perform his best in hopes of getting the reward, and creating a sense of unity which may help contain the rivalry being unleashed through this competition. 
• Ahab solicits a hammer and nail from the ship's carpenter. How does he signal his respect for the carpenter's knowledge and skills?
• Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg stand side by side, a position that stresses their commonality with each other as well as their distance from other crew members. How does Ahab win their respect? 
• By the end of this speech, the men are shouting their approval for his plans. What has he done to solicit this response?
• Ahab orders a "measure of grog" for his sailors, another action designed to produce solidarity and mark these exchanges as a particularly memorable event. 
• Ahab now turns to confront Starbuck, who has seemed increasingly discontented throughout the scene. Ahab pulls him aside to speak privately, first challenging his courage, then pounding on his own chest, then putting his arm around him, praising him and asking directly for his help ("surely you of all this crew will not hold back"). This is a key moment  since Ahab must decide whether he can pull Starbuck into the community or whether he needs to isolate and diminish him in the eyes of the men. As the scene continues, watch the steps Ahab takes to manage Starbuck. 
• Ahab drinks with his crew, while he has difficulty getting Starbuck to do so, signaling who belongs in the newly forged community and who doesn't. 
• Ahab performs rituals with the harpooners designed to create powerful bonds, first between the mates, then between the harpooners, and finally between the two groups. What explanations does he offer for these rituals, which he traces back to his "fisherman fathers before me"?
• Shedding and drinking of human blood is a primal act. Why might Ahab see this particular act as meaningful to his "three pagan kinsmen," and why does it seem repulsive to Starbuck?
  

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