Moby Dick

I noticed in Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand” that there are numerous religious allusions.  It is evident that Herman Melville intentionally writes in a sexual manner and refers directly to the pleasure and joy of squeezing sperm with his hands.  However, the religious undertones are quite implicit.  Melville, I feel, draws an obvious connection between religion and sexuality.

First of all, for Ishmael, sperm represents a religious deliverance for it dissipates anger, bad temper, ill-willed thought, and all forms of malice.  Ishmael describes the joy of bathing his hands in the sperm.  “… while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever” (page 601).  The fact that Melville uses the word “divinely” connects sexuality to religion.

Ishmael’s feelings of affection and comraderie with his fellow-whalemen while holding and squeezing their hands together in the globules of sperm, reminds me of the part of the Church service when we turn to each other in the pews and greet one another saying, “Peace be with you.”

Another reference that Ishmael makes connecting religion and sex is his longing to squeeze sperm “eternally.”  “I am ready to squeeze case eternally” (page 602).  His reference to eternity can be seen as a religious connotation.  Furthermore, he goes on to say that he dreams and has “… visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti” (page 602).  How odd it is to imagine Heaven inhabited by angels delighting themselves in jars of semen!!  It is incredibly that in this one chapter, Melville meshes both eroticism and religion.

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