Feb 21 2010
The Dead Whale
One does not often think that a creature still has the power to influence the living after it is already dead. What I have noticed a number of times throughout Moby Dick, is that there are a couple of occasions where creatures, usually the whale, can continue to influence the living after it is already dead. Set aside the fact that many parts of the whale are used by humans (oil, blubber, bones) after it had been killed, the dead whale still has the ability to instil fear in the living. In the chapter The Funeral, Ishmael explains how once released back into the sea, the body of the whale still has an impact on those who sail the ocean, when he says:
“Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war, or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fouls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks and breakers hereabouts: beware!” (Melville 300)
While this is a more perceived danger that instils fear in sailors, the dead whale can also pose a real danger to those that kill it. In the chapter The Shark Massacre we see that numerous sharks surround the whale attached to the ship and attempt to devour the carcass. In an attempt to protect the whale carcass, the crew pokes at the swarming sharks with spades. During this process, Ishmael remarks that “It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures.” (Melville 293) Right after he thinks this, Queequeg brings the corpse of a dead shark on board (to be used for its skin) and almost looses his hand on the shark’s sharp teeth. Like the whale, the shark has the power to hurt and to harm the living even after his death.
I find this power and influence over the living world even after death to be an interesting concept and one that seems to be possessed by the whale throughout the novel. As Ishmael says on page 300, “Thus while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to the world.” (Melville)
One Response to “The Dead Whale”
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This is a really interesting thought. What I immediately thought of as I read this post was Tashtego’s unfortunate encounter with the head of Stubb’s whale (“Cistern and Buckets”, chapt. 78), or as Ishmael adeptly calls it, “the Sperm Whale’s great Heidelburgh Tun” (Melville 372). The incalculable dangers that a whale corpse poses for the crew become terrifyingly clear in this chapter, as the head of Stubb’s whale comes perilously close to claiming Tashtego’s life.
Melville even plays with thoughts of reincarnation in this chapter, saying “[The men] saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea” (374). As if the very manifestation of the ghost discussed above, the head seems to take on new life with Tashtego inside, perhaps stealing his life in order to reanimate itself. While in fact Ishmael points out that the thrashing “was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk,” (374), it is still an interesting idea that perhaps these struggles are fueled by the “vengeful ghost” discussed in the above post.
This contrasts interestingly with Queequeg’s curious delivery of Tashtego. Ishmael uses the term “obstetrics” when discussing what he calls “the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego” (376), and then continues to discuss midwifery, so the connection between birth and death, here, is quite intentional. The fact that his rebirth is so closely paired with his scrape with death may well be in correlation with the happiness and madness in whaling that I discussed last week: the phrase “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” comes to mind here, as if Ishmael is perhaps saying that the hardship, death, and fear of whaling must be contrasted with the joy, found either in things like the crows nest, the spermaceti, or deliverance, in order for this happiness to be real. He does discuss the dangers of these joys, however, in the last line of the chapter, calling these forays into philosophy (which, as I previously discussed, is closely linked to happiness in whaling, especially in Ishamel’s case), “Plato’s honey head”, yet another place where one could sweetly perish, along with embalmment in the whale’s forsaken head.