Moby Dick

As I was reading, a section of the text that stood out to me was chapter 115, “The Pequod meets the Bachelor”, and the two preceding ones, “The Forge” and “The Gilder.” Together, these chapters present the paradoxes in the crew’s relationship with the sea and with Ahab, demonstrating the depths of Ahab’s madness and the particular nature of the community on board. In “The Forge”, Ahab baptizes the three harpooners in the name of the devil, using the harpoon reserved for Moby Dick. Once again Melville clarifies the obsession and the crew’s entanglement with Ahab. After this brief but intense scene, chapter 114, “The Gilder”, is quiet and meditative, focused on the sea. As the Pequod settles into a rhythm, even though they are unsuccessful Ishmael notes that these are the times that whalers relax and enjoy the majesty of the ocean.

… These are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brillancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang. These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie…”

This introspective chapter focuses on the idea that to the whalers, the sea becomes like land to most people. It feels like home, a natural environment full of beauty. The danger that is often so close can seem so distant, and the mystical feeling that it inspires in the crew helps to partially explain why they were drawn to whaling. Starbuck and Stubb both also comment on the sea, Starbuck exclaiming, “Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!- Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.” Stubb, for his part, claims that “I am stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that he has always been jolly!” For Stubb and even the rational Starbuck, the sea is a powerful influence that they cannot hate regardless of the danger, for on some level being out at sea fulfills them.

At this point, the Pequod meets the Bachelor. The Bachelor, essentially a foil to the Pequod, has had remarkable luck resulting in a ridiculous amount of sperm on board, which translates directly into money and success at home.  Nantucket is also home for the Bachelor, and the crew and ship were exuberantly heading directly there. After the intensity of “The Forge” and the melencholy of “The Gilder”,

This glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge try-pots… On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured aloft between the fore-mast and main-mast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig.

During this brief chapter, Melville tears down the massive edifice of the Pequod’s internal dynamics by offering such a stark contrast. There are even girls on the ship, opening up the omnipresent theme of masculinity on the Pequod. Ahab, of course, asks the captain about the White Whale. “‘No; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,’ said the other good-humoredly. ‘Come aboard.'” Melville presents Ahab and his crew with a very clear alternative: forget about Moby Dick, embrace life, do your job, and go home. Ahab refuses, and Melville describes the “grave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor” of the crew, which stands against the proclaimed love for the sea by those in the previous chapter. Even Ahab is revealed to still have a connection to Nantucket, for he carries a vial of sand with him. However, it appears that for Ahab at least that vial is enough to sustain his need for land and home. For the crew, these are moments of extreme conflict, as they are confronted by Ahab’s obsession, their draw to the sea, and their draw towards home. The Bachelor, as a chance encounter in the open sea, demonstrates that things are not necessarily fated towards disaster, but that men ultimately determine their own fate.

At first glance, chapter 57 (“Of Whales in Paint […]”) appears to be mainly about pictures and carvings of whales. However, Melville is actually making a much larger comment about nature and man’s role (and whale’s role) in it. Although there are many sections in the text in which Melville seems to address environmental concerns, this chapter makes several interesting connections between man and whales/nature. Melville describes how whales (in various forms) are found “cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea warwood,” and “[a]t some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the tail for knockers to the roadside door” (245). These whale portrayals have also been seen in “bony, ribby regions of the earth” and “in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights” (245). Melville seems to be pointing out how whales are a vital part of nature and the world, and their influence can be felt everywhere (even in landlocked mountainous regions). In this way, whales are not of vital concern only to the whalers or sailors, but rather to humanity. Clearly this text can be viewed as a struggle of humanity to overcome nature (Ahab comes to mind), yet Melville might be suggesting that humans should (and sometimes do) have a closer relationship to nature instead of merely attempting to conquer it. Melville even goes on to say that whales can be found in the stars:

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish (246).

This passage is fascinating to me because it appears to provide a complicated account of whales and man’s relation to them. By seeing whales among the stars, Ishmael adds a mystical and mythical association to whales and places them in relation to ancient Greek myths about gods and battles in the skies. However, it is also implied that Ishmael sees these whales among the stars because he is so preoccupied with whaling and the search for Moby Dick. There is also an implication that Ishmael (and perhaps Melville) views whaling as a battle that has been waged for as long as man has set to sea. This makes it appear that whaling could be viewed as part of the natural cycle of the Earth and the heavens (a great circle and cycle that provides balance in nature). Could Melville be providing this passage as a way of showing that whaling has begun to spiral out of control, that this great natural balance is beginning to be lost? If whales can be found and seen almost everywhere on Earth (either alive or artfully represented), what does it mean for man to hunt them (perhaps to the brink of extinction)? Is Melville commenting on how humans have gone from being a part of nature to attempting to conquer and destroy it?

Chapter 51, The Spirit-Spout, provides an interesting event in this novel. This phantom-like eruption of water serves to tempt and taunt Ahab, as it appears to be unattached and unaccompanied by a whale. Ishmael recounts its appearance,

“…on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea…But when, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his [Fedallah] unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.”(224-5)

Its enigmatic, teasing presence suggests that a whale is close by, but just out of reach.  Alluding to the depth of the ocean, the spirit spout in larger ways represents the innumerable ways in which the sea’s  infinite volume can hold and hide the mysteries and creatures of the deep.  The spout in a way acts as a symbol or metaphor for the somewhat unattainable goals and objects they desire of each of the sailors of the Pequod.  For Ahab, it further intensifies the chase of Moby-Dick, frustrating the captain in his pursuit to gain revenge for the loss of his leg and sense of his masculinity.  For Ishmael, the introspective narrator, the sea represents his desire for freedom.  He believes escape is possible on the ocean, and that it can provide a place to remove himself from the confines of society and alleviate his mind from the grasp of depression and melancholy. What he finds on board the Pequod, however, is a highly organized and stratified system of a hierarchy and dictatorship ruled by Ahab. Starbuck’s only wish is to return home safely to his wife and children as quickly as possible. However, his goal is thwarted by the obsessive demands of the captain. In a way, the spirit-spout symbolizes the unfulfilled goals and dissatisfaction of the Pequod sailors, as a limitation of each ones’ perceived destiny or fate.

Similar to rymosser, I noticed quite clearly the strange power of the sea in the Spirit Spout chapter but in a different place;  while they remarked early in their post on the incredible danger and uncontrollable power of nature and of the sea rendering the men silent, for me, I found it fascinating that the absence of activity and the silence in this chapter create both extreme calm and extreme apprehension:

“These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which…there lurked a devilish charm…all space seemed vacating itself of life before our…prow. But, at last…the Cape winds began howling around us…then all this vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.” (p. 226)

This passage in my mind mirrors the narrators thought from earlier: “…there reigned…a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treachorously beckoning us on…in order that the monster might turn round upon us.” In both of these, there is such a bizarre relationship with nature and the peace of the sea. With the spirit spout, the crew feels perpetually led on, teased; they appear to WANT to reach this spout which they beleive must belong to Moby Dick. Yet the prospect of being suddenly right by the whale’s side and its aggression is not only frightening, it collapses time and space so that one minute the spout is blowing by the horizon, the next we have the image of a fierce attacking whale right at the ship’s side. In a way this upholds the idea of something inhuman and divine about the spirit spout which even at a distance seems to play with space and time. This fear of the whale suddenly bearing down upon the Peqoud is the darker element of the whale’s godly power. But at a distance or within reach- which is worse? This is the same question with the weather. The calm, serene emptiness, the vacuity of sea stretching before them is a torment, it seems almost unbearable, yet when the storm comes and we beleive it will be a releif, that it mimght fill the crushing void for these men, the narrator/Ishmael suggests it is only more “dismal than before”. In this way, our sense of balance and even of reality is shifted: rather than ‘good’ and ‘bad’ existing in contrast to each other, the levels of despair and misfortune only extend downward. And this, again, in my opinion, can be interpreted back in the spatial relationship of ship and whale: with Moby Dick at a distance and the expanse of calm sea in between, the men are caught in a perpetual, terrifying and frustrating purgatory, yet the alternative appears perhaps far worse.

Ah, the Spirit Spout. The chapter that supposes the great whale is following the Peaquod. Rife with foreshadowing and ominous imagery, this chapter can also be read as a testimony to the serenity and solitude of the sea–and the tricks such solitude can play in the minds of men. Alone for an eternity without so much as a humpback to show for it, the crew of the Peaquod have become accustomed to an empty ocean; a monotonous, pristine blue-grey sheet that plods along til disappearing beneath the fog of the horizon. Once broken by a spout–real or imagined–the shattered serenity evokes nightmarish thoughts of monsters and fiendish leviathans. Indeed the sea has been for some time their peaceful feminine companion, but as becomes clear in “The Symphony,” it had begun to turn on them in their minds. No longer peaceful, serene, and feminine, the once calm sea now the portent of their impending downfall.

Sailors of a whaling vessel had little to go by in the way of guarantees. The industry of Melville’s era did not benefit from the technologies of today’s world. Fishing then was a crapshoot of epic proportions. For the men of Ahab’s craft, the prospects of a payday were ever-dwindling and the horror of their doom-bound journey was creeping ever steadily into their consciousness. These were men primed for a conjured sign–a affirmation of their terrible destiny. Form the standpoint of a psychologist, the Peaquod was a case study for the breeding grounds of group-effect driven hysteria. One man’s diluted vision yielded the panic (or beginnings thereof) of an entire crew.

As has been made clear throughout the novel, the sea is all-powerful.  It can at once be a force of daunting deaths, and in another moment promoting a sense of serenity among the crewmembers on the Pequod.  Ishmael has many reflections and thoughts on the ocean, and also the way in which he understands the world, through being a shipmate on a whaling boat, by way of the ocean.  The power of it is most often overwhelming, and the intense insight it can offer a man is too much for many to handle (i.e. Pip).  But in Chapter 111, Ishmael has a more peaceful moment while experiencing the dreaminess of the Pacific’s “tide-beating heart of the earth” (Melville 465).

…for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling ways but made so by their restlessness” (465).

In this most serene moment, Ishmael understands the ocean as a sort of heaven for him.  But he then remarks that someone such as Ahab won’t ever have these feelings of calmness towards the sea.  Captain Ahab will never be “lifted by those eternal swells” of the sea, as he has accepted his fate, and is only able to focus on the task he feels has been set for him, to kill Moby Dick.  Ishmael also finds it somewhat difficult to imagine that “the hated white whale must even then be swimming” in this sea he himself feels so at peace with.  We are often reminded of all that the sea keeps in hiding, and while Moby Dick is one evil among many that lurk below, Melville also uses this chapter to remind us those hidden aspects contain the “soul” of the sea.  And in relating the soul of the sea to the soul of man, it is clear that both hide certain “gently awful stirrings” (465).

In chapters such as this one, Melville is contrasting the concentrated drama of the novel’s looming end with scenes of tranquility and thoughtfulness.  Pitting the two against each other can be seen as a reflection on the act of whaling itself, as it’s made up of moments of high intensity, interspersed with many lulls of waiting and watching.  Also, in showing that Ahab has no experience of these lulls, the reader is alerted to the drama he himself is constructing.  In not ever feeling a sense of calm, he is allowing Moby Dick to consume him, and thus forcing his fate to become a reality.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York, NY: Signet Classic, 1998.

In chapter 124, Ahab asserts his navigational skill:

…He hurried towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading. “East-sou’east, Sir,” said the frightened steersman. “Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?” Upon this every soul was confounded… the old man [Ahab] with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses- that’s all.”

Here we see one more element of the danger in whaling: not only can the physical power of the sea capsize a boat or wash a man overboard, but the navigational system is vulnerable. Without the astute senses of Ahab, the Pequod could have taken a wrong course for days or weeks, following a broken compass instead of their planned route. This is again an example of man vs. nature, where the natural world has the ability to interfere with that of man, or the ship. The crew relies on technology, and loses its ability to observe one of nature’s most basic facts: the sun rises in the East, and sets in the West. In the continuing struggle between man and nature throughout the novel, it is moments such as these that demonstrate what the crew misses by campaigning in opposition to nature, instead of working cooperatively with it or with respect to it. Ahab is able to discern the problem and the cause, but steadfastly refuses to recognize the solution.

“Men,” said he [Ahab], steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any.”

Ahab chooses again to forgo the warnings of nature and impose his will on his surroundings. It appears to be a minor issue: a ship has to have a working compass. However, as one of many examples of Ahab’s determination and relentless aggression, it serves to show the extent to which Ahab will go in order to assert his dominance. For this reason, Ishmael notes that “In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.”

As we reread and reflected on “The Spirit Spout” (Ch. 51) in class today, I approached it from a spiritual perspective, perhaps due to the name of the chapter.  What I found within, however, is a sort of summation of Captain Ahab’s hubris, how it spreads to the crew and yet another foreshadowing of the consequences, but this time in a more spiritual sense than solely a religious one (I believe that there is a difference, anyway). 

In the very start of the chapter, Ishmael makes a direct connection between the spout and a higher power: “Lit up by the moon, [the spout] looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea” (Melville 253).  Perhaps some extension or appendage of god or gods (a pagan reference?), the spout is representing the whale as something beyond man’s reach.  This idea is only deepened by the failed chases that continue into the chapter, giving an image of forever chasing something that will yield nothing if it doesn’t want to. 

Once the image of the spout as a celestial extension is produced, the spread of hubris around the ship is easy to see.  Despite the fact that all of these spouts occur at night, the men desperately and continually (at least for a time) chase after these mysterious occurrences in the dark.   Ahab’s personal harpooner, Fedallah, seems to be sort of responsible for the fervor that has risen among the men:

“‘There she blows!’ Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure.  For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.” (254)

With Fedallah prevoking the crew with his war cry, almost every man aboard would lower in the dark if they approached the creature that produced the spout, an action which Ahab would most certainly support if the spout proved to belong to Moby Dick, as he and the crew seem to believe: “It seemed… that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick” (254).  As we discussed in class, the crew seems very willing to give Moby Dick a malevolent intention which he does not naturally posess, believing that the whale was “treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas” (255). 

By giving the whale this dark power, they are arming it with the very weapons needed for their downfall, an occurrence that is heavily foreshadowed.  As soon as the spout is first spotted, Ahab begins to roam the deck, and his very pacing was indicative of a death rattle: “While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked” (254).  Only Ishmael seems to be aware that now that the Captain has the crew on his side, their doom is almost certainly sealed.

After spending today’s class talking about Melville’s ecocentricism (or lack thereof), I would like to point out some religious connections with his love of nature. I personally believe that Melville did “worship” all living things under the sun. It is for this reason that Ishmael spends so much time analyzing the ferocity and grandeur of the whale by describing the shape of it’s head and other anatomically symbolic attributes. This love for all nature, to me, is part of Ishmael’s religious perspective because he believes all creatures were created by God and we are as menacing to nature as nature is to us.

In chapter 66, The Shark Massacre, this sentiment is evident. In the first few lines, Ishmael describes such violent and ferocious creatures as “wondrous” and “vigorous” (271). When Queequeg and Stubb begin killing the sharks with whaling spades, Ishmael refers to it as a murder. He slightly humanizes the sharks even though they are menacing, violent, and eating the whale attached to the ship. The language Ishmael uses is also very unsure. When he describes the sharks being stabbed in the skulls, he calls the brains the “seemingly only vital part,” “entrails seemed swallowed,” and “a generic vitality seemed to lurk in what might be called the individual life” (272). Ishmael’s uncertainty proves that he, or Melville, believes nature should not be tampered with, and humans do not know as much as we think about other species. This connects to our discussion on global warming as well: since we are the “dominant and most developed” species on the planet, we think we can conquer and understand everything that is foreign to us.

From this passage I infer that Melville believes men should stick to what they know and leave alone what is out of their hands. God created all creatures to peacefully coexist, and he did not intend for men to disrupt the system as Queequeg and Stubb did. Ishmael has faith that God made all of nature with equal intent, and Ishmael trusts God’s decision. Queequeg, on the other hand, does not. At the end of the chapter he acknowledges this sentiment: “Queequeg no care what god made him shark, wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one damn Ingin” (272).

In class we also brought up the common sentiment, especially present in Ahab, that nature is malevolent to humans. Ishmael/Melville clearly do not believe this if Ishmael is personifying sharks. In this regard the narrator thinks that it is selfish for men to claim such a high status in a world of things created equally. God made the sharks just as he made us, therefore the sharks find us just as malevolent toward them as we think they are toward us. This view of creation is very philosophical and very optimistic, but it is not surprising considering Ishmael’s tendency to philosophize everything. For once, his religious perspectives are happy and trustworthy.

In chapter 51, “The Spirit-Spout”, the Pequod runs into a massive storm. For the whalers, nothing clarifies their predicament like the times when the sea is most dangerous.

In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await the issue of the gale. Then captain and crew become practical fatalists… Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted soldiers in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast.

The overwhelming power of the sea renders the men silent and fatalistic, as the possibility of death and the helplessness of man in the face of nature dominate the minds of the crew. Melville also links the sea to madness, demonstrating that it requires a certain degree to cope with such a devastating and common event while whaling. Ahab is portrayed as resolute, even sleeping while exposed to the storm because of his relentless defiance of the sea. Yet he clearly possesses no agency or ability to influence the sea or the storm, regardless of his declarations of being God and master of the Pequod. This  reminder of forces greater than Ahab and the wider world only occurs when nature intervenes on the ship. The single-mindedness of the Pequod’s and Ahab’s goal requires such a larger force in order to provide the perspective of madness that Melville cultivates in the crew. When the sea turns hostile, there is no possibility for Ahab to influence events either on the ship or in the sea. His manic obsession with the white whale does not diminish, but the reader and, one hopes, the crew, can see through the extreme example of the storm to the broader fact that the sea is ultimately in control of the Pequod’s fate, not the captain.