Moby Dick

Bartleby, the Scrivener is definitely one of Melville’s funny short stories, though far from benevolent it has a pretty dark ending. In class it was mentioned that Bartleby is not the typical worker: he is not industrious, he has no ambition, and he may be crazy. However, I would say that the narrator is not the typical boss either: though he talks about money at the beginning, just as Bartleby shows ambition at the beginning, his dealings with Bartleby and the fact that he has a half-effectual staff show that he does not really care about making money. I think Melville thought this would be a funny situation, to take Wall Street and what is at the heart of American values and invert it.

Bartleby’s “preferences” gradually decline until he seems to prefer not to do anything. This could be a commentary on the American system, especially since Bartleby used to work at the government bureau of dead-end letters which the narrator supposes is partially responsible for his apathy. However, I think Melville as a satirist had more in mind. Perhaps, he saw at the heart of the American system is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” that the pursuit of life and happiness is what runs the country. Anyone can succeed in America so long as they have a great work ethic and ambition. What happens when someone has no ambition? What happens when one would prefer not to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as Bartleby seems to do, when he chooses to do nothing, get arrested, and die? In other words, what place does madness have in American life, that part of us “that would prefer not to?” Bartleby is almost like that part of our consciousness, or perhaps the narrators, that is stubborn and unsatisfied.

The motto of a free, industrious country is “I would prefer to…”, a positive pursuit of values. Though that also comes with the freedom “to prefer not to,” Bartleby is just concerned with the negative. He never really says what he would prefer to do, thus going into a state of self-resignation and shock. The narrator, who represents the American system, does not know how to respond to this Bartleby and can not accommodate him; no one can. Thus people like Bartleby do not have a place in American life or society. Melville could just be playing around, satirizing readers who did not have the stomach for Moby-Dick (Bartleby does not even want to read over his own proofs), or trying to get us to be more acceptable of our our reluctant consciences by satirizing and dramatizing the conflict, i.e. it’s never as bad as Bartleby. What makes Bartleby funny, endearing, and relatable is that there’s a part of him in all of us, whether we’d prefer this or not.

I read once that Melville wrote “Bartleby the Scrivener” in response to the disappointing success of “Moby Dick.”  While I cannot confirm whether or not this is true, it is certainly interesting to compare the two with this in mind.  The world of “Bartleby” seems to be exactly the kind many of the crewmembers on the Pequod were trying to escape. Ishmael expresses outright contempt for city life or any “honorable, respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever.”  He argues that people are drawn in part to the city because of its proximity to water, which represents freedom from the monotony of their everyday lives.  Without Ishmael’s willingness to live apart from the norms of society, the events of Moby Dick would never have occurred.
In “Bartleby,” then, Melville explores the other side of this surprisingly modern dilemma: people who, unlike Ishmael, cannot escape from the tedium that is office life.  If he felt “Moby Dick” had somehow failed in its mission to get this message across, he had to go about addressing the issue in a different way.  By placing “Bartleby” in a setting that must have been infinitely more relatable for his readers than a whaling ship, Melville might have hoped to more directly challenge the complacency present in everyday life.
In some ways I saw this story as a precursor to absurdist fiction.  Bartleby, after all, is a highly unusual character who defies easy categorization.  He has fallen into the culture of passivity that modern life fosters through the repetition of boring, daily tasks.  However, his similarly passive refusal to take part in this culture is absurd: “I would prefer not to.”  It is no coincidence that this is the line people most remember from the story.  It would simply not be the same story if Bartleby took radical action to liberate himself from the daily grind of modern life – it is far more disturbing to follow this man as he passively resists participation in the life society has laid out for him, ultimately dying because of it.  By creating this absurd character Melville questions the validity of a society that could create such a person.

In attempting to come up with alternative lenses through which to read chapter fifty-one, I immediately latched on to that of determinism. Personally, I’m obsessed with the idea of determinism in this book, especially as it might relate to Melville’s Calvinist background.

As far as Calvinist determinism goes, Augustine emphasized the notion that man was created with free will, but for some reason lost significant aspects of it over time, particularly the ability to permanently change oneself and to accept what he called the “offer of salvation.” These things, according to Calvinist theology, have been for some time either total accidents, or effected by some agent or third party.

Who could such an agent be?…

Ah. The massive white whale who took off Ahab’s leg, thereby permanently altering his physical self. That one.

Taking Moby Dick as an agent of divinity (and, ultimately, fate) offers an interesting perspective on the chapter. There’s a sense of destiny, or at least of divinity, to the spout:

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude: on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.

The spout continues to lead the men for days, and it is this fact which I think is important. The spout is not a singular spectacle; Melville makes absolutely sure that it leads the ship somewhere. Calls to the men like a siren. Melville describes the men’s compulsion to follow: “And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it.” There is a sense that the men can no more comprehend the nature or purpose of the spout because an understanding is simply not possible. The spout (and, by extension, Moby Dick) leads the men on and they, not even knowing what the sign could portend, follow. Moby Dick is controlling the ship and, just like he broke Ahab, is now by the same token offering a kind of beautiful, terrifying grace—or at least a final solution:

For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.

Calvinist determinism not only offers new explanations and interpretations of this chapter, but also opens much of the book to discussion. It also begs the question of whether Moby Dick is good or evil… or neither. Also a lens through which to read this chapter.

This from Douglas Harper, who operates the Online Etymology Dictionary and, as it happens, lives rather near me:

Symphony

late 13c., the name of various musical instruments, from O.Fr. symphonie “harmony” (12c.), from L. symphonia “a unison of sounds, harmony,” from Gk. symphonia “harmony, concert,” from symphonos “harmonious,” from syn- “together” + phone “voice, sound”[.]

Thus, at their most basic, the elements of the word “symphony” can be used to describe sounds together. In this sense, many things in chapter 132 make symphony. When Melville describes the weather by writing, “The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure,” he creates a sense of fluidity between elements of nature, and in going on to provide each with masculine or feminine characteristics, creates a harmony of both the natural world and gender. He explores this idea further by associating “gentle… feminine” birds with the air and “murderous… masculine” beasts (leviathans, sharks, etc.) with the sea, and by illustrating the natural balance created by the two groups.

Immediately after Ahab enters the scene, however, Ishmael’s tone changes dramatically:

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven.

By combining all these thoughts with semicolons, Melville links them through a sort of simultaneity; Ahab’s disruption of the symphonic beauty of nature is emphasized by having all the details of his entry be read at once. Were this chapter a musical symphony, this paragraph would be pure dissonance. However, the trend of classical music is to resolve dissonance, and despite Ahab’s best efforts, he cannot stay such a resolution… and what a beautiful resolution it is:

But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, that cantankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him… Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

If Melville is a composer, this is his Romantic testament to the power of nature. Nowhere in the book—and this is saying something—is there a clearer or more powerful example of the triumph of nature over the will of man. Until the end, maybe.

I was struck by the similarity in thought that emerges between “Ahab’s Leg” of Moby Dick and a chapter entitled “Rebellion” in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

“Rebellion” is essentially concerned with how the unjust nature of life comes into conflict with the belief in a God that is good. How can one justify the goodness of God, no, how would God himself, justify the suffering of the innocent? What is just about about a world in which the murderer of a child may escape punishment and live his life with a clear consciousness? If God’s divine plan involves ruthless unpunished killings and the suffering of countless people then can we really say that god is good and just?

“Ahab’s Leg” discusses the grief and pain Ahab feels due to the loss of his leg. Although he is often reckless and careless with his leg, he “at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood” (354).

The pleasures of life are not shared equally among men. Some may live their entire lives and face one moment of terror after another. Even a good deed may be met with evil. Melville writes:

“…Some natural enjoyments have no children born to them for the world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by joy- childlessness of all hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing.” (355)

Ahab, who has been driven insane by his obsession for revenge seems to attribute his bloodlust not to himself but to the divine plan by God of some othe force, which he has no choice but to abide by. In “The Symphony”, Ahab, as he laments to Starbuck of his his inability to change course and avoid annihilation, states:

“…What cozening hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me…? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven…how then  can this one small heart bear; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that  living and not I?” (407)

There is something unjust and cruel for Ahab about his life- a life which he does not  believe he has chosen to live but  has already been determined for him. It just does not seem fair that he must live a life of sorrow according to the plan of being greater than himself, for a reason which he himself does not know.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Brothers Karamazov. New York: W W Norton, 1976. Print.

Melville, Herman, Hershel Parker, and Harrison Hayford. Moby-Dick. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.

I can’t make heads or tails of Bartleby. But I thought it would be interesting to reflect on his character anyway.
He lives  frugal life and does not seem to care about material. After learning that Bartleby had been living in his office, the narrator recalls, “Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese…” (6).
As the story progresses, he refuses to do more and more things. He does not wish to work, he does not wish to move, and then he even refuses to eat. He gradually refuses to participate in more and more facets of what most people consider to be a “normal” part of life.  I find his refusal to eat at the very end to be the most intriguing of his actions. Not only has he come to reject that which is asked of him by others, but he has even gone as far as to deny his own body sustenance. His  seems to want to detach himself- by himself I mean his mind, his spirit, whatever you would like to call it – from the sensible world. By the end of the story it’s as if his spirit, is dangling onto his body, i.e., the physical,  by a thread. His connections with the physical world have diminished to a point where the next logical step would be death. But why gradually? Why not just jump off a bridge? Who knows?

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, “the Great American Novel,” has been compared to Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables , which may be “the great French novel, “ for its similar number of meditative digressions.  (Porter vii).  His digressions also function similarly to those in Moby-Dick, alluding to what “narratologists” call “events” (acts of God) rather than to “acts” (purposeful human actions) (28).

However, I think it would be more interesting to compare Moby-Dick to Hugo’s not much later novel Toilers of the Sea, a once obscure novel to an even more obscure novel.

Just as The Pequod crosses pathes with the French ship The Rosebud (Bouton-de-Rose), these two great novels cross paths.

Toilers of the Sea has been viewed as a regional novel (77) but that is like saying Moby-Dick is a book about cetology!  It takes place on the island of Guernsey where the people live off of and toil with the sea.  Though perhaps the more correct word is ‘battle’: they are constantly exposed to the elements, the storms and the unbridled sea.  The crew of the Pequod, as well as many sailors of the 19^th century, Melville included, would not have been unfamiliar with the island.  The first mate of The Rosebud, who humorously translates Stubb’s words to his captain, also happens to be a Guernsey-man.

Both books have prophetic beginnings: Moby-Dick opens with Ishmael saying “Call me Ishmael.”  Toilers of the Sea opens up with a mysterious girl Deruchette writing “Gilliat,” the main character’s name, in the snow.

Deruchette’s father, Lethierry, has established the first steamboat service in the region, the La Durande.  His captain, Sieur Clubin (Ahab), who has long prided himself on his honesty, awaits an opportunity to defraud his boss and run off with the money.  After a fortune is stolen from Lethierry, he tracks down the money only to trick his alcoholic helmsman (Flask) into crashing the ship on a treacherous reef.

Hiding in the rocks he plans to swim to shore, where he will arrange a secret voyage overseas.  But, like Ahab, he is struck down by fate.  A monstrous octopus seizes and drowns him, leaving his rotting carcass to attract the crabs, which it feeds upon.

Lethierry promises his daughter’s hand in marriage to any man who can salvage the ship’s engine.  Only Gilliat takes up the challenge, though secretly.

He struggles for weeks on the isolated reef where he constructs his own tools, battles fierce storms, and defeats the murderous octopus.  Finding the engine, the fortune and Sieur Clubin’s body, he returns to Lethierry who, ecstatic and devoutly thankful, wants Gilliat to be the captain of his new ship and have his Deruchette’s hand in marriage.

Tragically, in Gilliat’s absence, Deruchette has fallen in love with a new handsome minister who Gilliat saved earlier from drowning.  He fell asleep, contemplating the sea in “the Devil’s chair,” a stony armchair naturally carved out of the cliffs that is subsumed underwater during high tide.

Finding this out, Gilliat offers to selflessly arrange their marriage secretly, and they accept his generosity, unaware of his suffering.  As the couple sails away towards France, Gilliat sits in the stone armchair, watching them sail away until he drowns.

As you can tell there are many themes in common, including environment, nature, fate, labor, industrialization,  science and superstition, religion, race, politics, isolation, depression, and melancholy, or what psychoanalysts would call a “melancholic” attitude: turning anger at the other against the self (79).

Also, Moby-Dick is a metaphor for America in the nineteenth century, while Graham Robb has called this novel “a metaphor for the nineteenth century—technical progress, creative genius and hard work overcoming the immanent evil of the material world” (78).

And isn’t a giant octopus just as awesome as a whale? Kraken vs. Leviathan. I would like to see Moby-Dick and the octopus duke it out any day.

Porter, Laurence M.. Victor Hugo. Michigan State University. Twayne Publishers: New York, 1999.

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank in his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity.  But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul.  The glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother wold, so long cruel – forbidding – now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless.  From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such a wealth as that one wee drop.

This incredibly sensitive, tender moment is unexpected for its sweetness.  Leading up to “The Symphony,” a gloom had gathered around the Pequod.  The storm, Queequeg’s coffin, and the meeting with the Rachel set a morbid tone, and lead the reader to believe that a terrible fate was about to befall the ship and its crew.  But as Ahab rose one morning, intent with the knowledge that he was drawing close to Moby Dick, a strange thing happened.  The sky and sea which he had been immersed in for decades sparked a sign of humanity in him.  Instead of trying to “pierce the profundity,” he at last resigned himself to allow his guard down against nature.  Interestingly, nature is as a “step-mother” to him.  Here, Melville may be insinuating that Ahab is simply not of this world.  His mother, if he has one, must be fundamentally different than the earth which humanity has long viewed as its mother.

The image of nature Melville shows here – comforting, gentle, and kind – is a nature that doesn’t show up very much in other parts of the book.  He wrote of nature as mysterious, dangerous, murderous even, but not often in the traditional “mother” format which has defined humanity’s conception of nature for so long.  His return to that theme, on the eve of the great battle with Moby Dick, seems puzzling.  It aligns with the strange sense of beauty and magnificence that Ishmael feels upon first seeing Moby Dick up close for the first time.  As Ahab and his men draw closer and closer to the “true” embodiment of the natural world, the more and more obvious is their total ignorance of its essence.  Instead of finding hate or malice as he stares into the ocean’s depths as he probably expects, Ahab finds compassion and solace.  Rather than come to terms with this difference, however, he shuts himself off to what he does not understand, and gives up his own agency to his delusional conceptions of his fate.

While reading this strange chapter I couldn’t decide whether this was some kind of ghost-whale, small and skittish whale, or if this was all in their heads. And afterwards, I couldn’t really imagine the point of this chapter, I mean it consisted of a strange occurence at sea of the ship constantly hearing a spout for a few days, with no sign of a whale, getting completely unsettled after a while, then it just stopped happening. I can understand how this can be seen as maybe this added layer of mysticism to the ocean, or a question of men’s sanity, or both, but it was the unresolved issue that left me if anything slightly upset. But to analyze…

The ocean has always been a mystical thing in human history. In any ancient culture large bodies of waters are attributed with Gods, monsters, and sometimes given both destructive and nurturive qualities. The spirit spout reminded me a little bit about that. Even though it was the 18th centurey, this scene reminded me of the odyssey somewhat, of Jason and the Argonauts, any old sea story really of sailors on a quest encountering mythical things in the ocean. I’m still not convinced that the Pequod didn’t just encounter a whale or something they never were able to spot though. When we discussed in class about this event being caused by mass delusion I’m not sure I bought it. I could understand if it was just Ishmael just hearing it or another member of the crew but the fact that they all heard it I think shows that it was a real event, whether not it was natural or supernatural was left probably ambigiously by Melville in my opinion. Though he did make it a point to make it sound as mysterious as possible.

Having finally made it through this whole novel, I notice a number of connections between the epilogue and that first page and chapter when we meet Ishmael.  These are two of the only times when the reader is, in a sense, alone with him, and the story is about nothing else but his reflections.  Melville is a master at coming full circle and tying up loose ends, and he does plenty of it in the Epilogue.

First, we get Ishmael’s characteristic understated, brief start of the section – “Call me Ishmael” (21), or, “The drama’s done” (593).  There is also a great focus on death in both texts.  In the opening page, Ishmael states that he goes to see whenever he feels suicidal, or, as a “substitute for pistol and ball.”  A symptom of this psychological state, he says, is when he finds himself “involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses.”  In the story he recounts in the epilogue, of course, Ishmael is closer to death than he has ever been, spinning slowly “like another Ixion” around the vortex of water that recently swallowed up the great Pequod.  He also has another encounter with a coffin, only this time, instead of serving as a symbol of his desire to die, a coffin springs up from the water and serves as his buoy, his survival device, until he is saved by the Rachel.

To further the connections made in the Epilogue, this coffin was made by Queequeg, the friend Ishmael meets in the opening chapters and forms an unlikely bond with.  Though this friendship is sparsely covered throughout the meat of the novel, Melville brings it up once again at the end.  Even though he is dead, Queequeg saves his best friend’s life.  And so, as if he just sat down, introduced himself as Ishmael and jotted down the entirety of the novel Moby Dick, our narrator finishes as he started, alone, philosophizing on the nature of death and the magnetic power of the sea.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1991.