Moby Dick

Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind.  A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.  No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed – “Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”

The Pequod’s encounter with the giant squid is an ambiguous event, fraught with amazement and fear.  Ishmael feels a sense of wonder to behold the strange creature, which seems to be without any sort of analogy with which to understand it in relation to other life-forms.  Although the whalers are as knowledgeable as any other humans of the time about the denizens of the sea, there are still a huge number of creatures which they do not understand or have never even seen.  To superstitious sailors like Starbuck, the appearance of such an unearthly creature is a portent of bad luck.  To the modern reader, his dismay seems slightly ridiculous; what possible connection could a wandering squid have to the success or failure of the voyage?  His attitude, however, belies the difference between the understandings of nature that dominated in the early 19th century and today.

For many modern-day Americans, understanding of nature is largely shaped by the high-school biology textbook.  Cell theory, evolution, and a well-ordered taxonomy construct a nature that is orderly, scientific, and predictable.  All creatures (viruses controversially excepted) share the basic building block of the cell, and are therefore reducible to a common denominator.  Evolution holds that nature developed as a highly rational response to given conditions, and as these conditions change nature adapts to them.  The system of taxonomy, although constantly adjusting to new discoveries, provides a broad general framework which incorporates all life-forms into comforting categories.  There is little mystery or superstition in our modern conception of nature, but only a well-ordered understanding that subordinates the living world to our brainpower and categorizing skill.

Starbuck’s reaction to the squid comes from a much different place.  As a whaler, Starbuck knows quite a bit about the ocean and its inhabitants.  He has spent a large portion of his life at sea, and his trade brings him into intimate contact with many sea creatures.  Despite his experience, a different cultural world-view of nature colors his vision.  A modern sailor might see creatures that he or she had never heard of, but such a sailor could rest assured in the knowledge that rational science is close at hand to categorize and explain away all mystery.  While the scientific world-view is knocking on the door, and Melville spends much of the book writing about it, the cultural hegemony of rationality remains a province of the future.  As such, Starbuck is left to his own devices and the devices of religion to interpret the appearance of the ghostly squid.  Rather than resorting to unfamiliar science to explain the occurrence, Starbuck sees the apparition as an omen of bad news, which in the context of the book is not an inaccurate assessment.

Interestingly, Queequeg is not alarmed by the squid.  He knows that sperm whales eat squid, and therefore can relate the strange creature to something more concrete and knowable.  This process of rationalization, undertaken by one of the “savages,” would develop into a world-view which came to dominate our understanding of the natural world.

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