Answer:
A belief that man is superior to nature.
Step-by-step explanation:
In Herman Melville's "Moby Di ck", the character of Ahab was obsessed with killing the great White whale. Even though he had unsuccessfully attempted to do the same, losing his leg in the process, he would not stop until he gets his revenge on the fish.
In Chapter 41, the narrator Ishmael exclaims that "ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations". He believes that he is superior and was made to defeat the very creature that other sailors deemed invincible.