Feb 11 2010
Who is not a cannibal?
This post not quite fit under Characters and Characterization, but more under general morality. I will post it in Characters and Characterization, however, because I feel like it connects to my previous post about Melville’s anthropomorphization of the whale.
In Chapter 61, the mate Stubb kills a whale, as evident by the title. Ishmael seems to sympathize with this doomed creature.
lazily undulating in the trough of the sea , and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was they last. (p. 275)
This whale seems somewhat human to Ishmael, lounging in the sun and smoking a pipe. In fact, the pipe is important, as Stubb, the avid smoker, deals the death blow to this creature. In fact, his final act in this chapter is to scatter “the dead ashes” of his own pipe over the water, looking at the whale’s corpse (p. 279). This act is vastly symbolic. The whale and Stubb are linked by the human affectation of the pipe, yet one kills the other, with seemingly little remorse.
Several chapters later, in Chapter 66, Ishmael describes the whale as a dish. This is prompted by Stubbs’ consumption of a steak from the fellow smoker he slaughtered earlier. Ishmael ponders
who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provided Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-fois-gras (p. 292).
Ishmael seems to see eating an animal as a cannibalistic act, the same as eating a human. However, this seems to be partially based on the civilized, enlightened nature of the gourmand, implying that he should know better. If that is Ishmael’s stance, it would undoubtedly apply to Stubb, who is relatively educated and from America, a man of some standing on this ship. Furthermore, he kills and consumes and animal with remarkable similarities to himself, both physically and in actions (the suggestion of smoking). Is Stubb a cannibal? It seems that Ishmael may, indirectly, be implying that. But the bigger issue seems to be one of sympathy for the animals, perhaps even more than sympathy for the “lean missionary.” Animals, from whales to geese, are seen as human-like by Ishmael, or at least worthy of concern. One wonders, then, why this man has enlisted on a whaling voyage, or even how he can manage to eat meat. Perhaps, like many other issues, Ishmael is merely pondering and reflecting, not claiming to develop an answer.
(New York: Signet Classic, 1998)
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Cannibalism is one of the facets of the recurring trope, eating, which helps characterize the seamen and their attitudes toward what they consume. Our first encounter is with Queequeg, an unabashed cannibal, who fits the stereotypical ‘dark savage’ of the island cannibal. We can discern characters’ principles based on their eating habits.
Ishmael writes, “It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light” (270). This shared notion is contrasted by Stubb, who enjoys whale and even demands it rare, comparing himself to the sharks, who prefer the whale “tough and rare” (265). His association with the shark, and demanding the same quality of whale meat, creates a strange collapse of the boundaries separating the human and the animals. Ishmael does not miss these cannibalistic undertones, but as stated in the post above, he refrains, as he often does in the novel, from really taking a stand one way or the other.