Moby Dick

A more detailed discussion of Jonah is in order.  We first hear of him in Father Mapple’s sermon.  Jonah is the prophet in the apocryphal Bible story who refuses his calling and escapes to sea.  He brings trouble to the ship, is tossed overboard, and then God sends a whale to swallow him.  He begs God to save his life, and he is returned to dry land to fulfill his duties as a prophet.  Jonah is usually a model for repentance.  Father Mapple says: “Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you as a model for repentance.  Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah” (41).

The story of Jonah ends strangely.  Jonah returns to land to tell the city of Nineveh of the punishment its people will receive from God for being wicked.  The people repent and refuse food and water, hoping to appeal to God’s compassionate nature.  This convinces God to have mercy on the city.

After this, Jonah becomes angry.  He tells God: “was not this my saying, when I was yet in mine own country? Therefore I fled beforehand unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious G-d, and compassionate, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil.”  I take him to mean: “I knew you were compassionate and you would spare Nineveh.  Why did you need me?”  After this, Jonah begs for death.  God simply asks him how angry he is.  Jonah escapes to the desert and again begs for his death.

I think this story is much more mysterious than traditional interpretations allow.  While Father Mapple’s vision of repentance is beautiful in its way, I cannot read it like that.  Jonah is angry with God for the life he was given, and he asks him to take it away.  Ahab, then—and I think the rest of the Pequod crew by extension—is another Jonah, but he does not share the prophet’s passivity.  He is a rewrite of Jonah with an intense drive for rebellion.

The death-wish is worth mentioning again.  Ishmael confesses his suicidal nature at the beginning of the book, calling his trips to the ocean a “substitute for pistol and ball.” All of the whalers of the Pequod, in the carelessness in the face of death, seem to have these feelings.  All of them are rebelling against the place that has been given to them.  This becomes particularly relevant to the non-white harpooneers.

In the end, Ahab is struck down by the whale.  God was willing to tolerate passive Jonah, but not a man such as Ahab.

The Hebrew Bible Online, Book of Jonah Chapter 4: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Jonah4.html

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