Jan 31 2010
Self-Identity and Narcissus
At one point in Chapter One, Ishmael describes the mystical power water has always possessed to captivate the spirits of all humans. While “the Persians hold the sea holy”, the Greeks “give it a separate deity” and every “robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him” dreams of shipping off to sea (19).
The most interesting defense he provides for the deep bond between man and water comes in the form of a reconstrual of the tale of Narcissus originating from Greek mythology (Wikipedia: Narcissus). Ishmael states,
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged headfirst into it and was drowned. But that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all (20).
Narcissus drowns because he is enthralled by his own beauty as reflected in the water. Although Narcissus’ tale exists in a number of forms, the moral lesson drawn from each of them is generally the same: do not put so much stock in yourself, i.e., do not be vain. Ishmael strays away from more common understanding of the story’s meaning and re-interprets the story as illustrating the problem of self-identity. The object whose image each of us must confront in the water, “the ungraspable phantom of life”, which follows us through every single moment of our lives and yet fails to be wholly (or even remotely) understood, is in fact ourselves (20). It is a sad but nevertheless beautiful thought. I cannot help but feel that this thought may come up again later on in the book.
(Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Norton, 2002.)
2 Responses to “Self-Identity and Narcissus”
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Very good, Mike — this post looks closely at one literary moment in the text, the brief mention of Narcissus, but correctly assumes that the problem of self-identity and self-awareness (as well as the dangers therein) will be a recurrent theme in the book!
I completely agree that it is a tragic but beautiful thought. In chapter 82, Ishmael brings up another allusion to Greek mythology (the story of Perseus and Andromeda), and I think that this chapter is an extension of the identity crisis you are talking about with the Narcissus reference. In chapter 82, Ishmael describes all of the people who belong to the whaler “club”: “Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo!” (326). Here Ishmael seems to complicate matters by telling the reader so many different whaler identities, from mythologies from around the world, but he never actually gets to the true identity of the whaler. It’s almost distracting how many people a whaler can be. I may be reading too much into this, but I think that this chapter, with its diverse options, reiterates Ishmael’s point that people can never truly know who they are.