Feb 15 2010
Power vs. Sanity
Throughout Moby Dick, Melville obsesses over the concept of sanity, and the delicate balance inside each of us that can be tipped fairly easily. In Moby Dick, power is most frequently what is hanging in balance. Too much power, exemplified by Ahab, causes insanity. We find Ahab consumed by his absolute rule over his boat. This is the reason why he doesn’t emerge from the boat until they are well out to sea, and the reason why he dislikes gams. Ahab is so entangled in the societal microcosm of the Pequod that he shies away from contact with outsiders for fear of disrupting the bubble in which he is the master.
On the other end of the spectrum is Pip, whose utter lack of control eventually drives him to insanity. Already a slave, Pip’s sanity is broken when Stubb leaves him behind after he jumps overboard for fear of a whale:
Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably…The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body, but drowned the infinite of his soul (401)
Here Melville explores Ahab’s counterpart. Pip’s control over his own existence was so completely lost, that he resigned himself to a passive form of insanity as opposed to Ahab’s active.
But what of narration? These accounts of insanity give the reader a clue into the mental state of the narrator himself, be he Ishmael of Melville. Ahab hunts Moby Dick, because Moby Dick is the only thing that Ahab does not feel he has control over. The narrator, much like Ahab, is obsessed with his own sanity and mental processes because it is the only thing a person is sure they are in control of. Pip’s fall from sanity fascinates and terrifies both Melville and Ishmael.
Man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. (402)
The narrator here explores the fine line that we all tread between sanity and insanity, admitting at this point that he himself is unsure of which side he falls.
It will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself (402)
What does this reveal about the novel in its entirety? If the narrator himself is insane, then how can one rely on his judgments of other characters? Perhaps these are questions that Melville wanted the reader to ask in order to make the reader question their own sanity, and perhaps realize that sanity is fragile and relative.
One Response to “Power vs. Sanity”
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I think you make a very interesting point here. The fact that characters at both ends of the power spectrum are the most obviously insane does make you wonder if Melville was trying to hint at something. I think that it could very well suggest that we are all a little bit insane, and perhaps power, or the lack of it, makes it more visible to others. I think your question of whether or not we can trust the account of someone who is insane is a good one, but perhaps he is even suggesting that we cannot trust anyone’s personal account, because we are all have some insanity within us.