Moby Dick

Along with many other things throughout the novel, the depiction and sentiment towards the sea changes along with the shifting narrator, and is also an indicator of the narrators growth.

The omniscient narrator seems to be ambivalent towards the ocean. This is because the ocean is itself ambivalent. Terrible storms and death are carried by the same playful breezes that originate in the tropical air that first stirs Ahab from his seclusion. Melville has personified, and masculinized the sea as the heaving chest of Sampson.

It is also interesting to see the change in Ishmael’s attitude toward the sea from the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel. In the beginning, Ishmael regards the sea as a sanctuary from the perils of life on land.  A charming mistress ever enticing him towards the shore. He has many positive feelings towards the ocean, and as such considers it, to a certain degree, a partner of the human race:

If they but knew it, all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. 1

At the end of the novel, however, Ishmael regard the ocean as an unfeeling, ever present entity that allows us to feed off of its bounty simply because of lack of emotion. Ishmael recognizes the immense, impersonal nature of the ocean, and that it was here long before man and will be long after:

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago 551

Notice also the white imagery employed in these final lines. This perhaps hints towards the fact that Moby Dick will always be hunted to some degree in some form or another by someone, just as the ocean will roll on and on. Moby Dick represents the unattainable, and there will always be someone who thinks the unattainable attainable.

To me, the story of Bartleby the Scrivener mirrors that of Moby Dick in more than a few ways. In my last post (or comment, I can’t remember) I talked about how Moby Dick would have been a very different, and lass powerful allegory, had Starbuck followed his gut and killed Ahab. In the same vein, had Bartleby accomplished something (other than the interpretation that he achieved inner peace or something) with his increasingly frequent refusals, the story would have been significantly less thought provoking. Bartleby’s death, like that of the Peaquod’s crew, brings the story to an appropriate head, and serves as a catalyst for interpretive debate.

Another similarity between the two tales is the presence of three hyperbolized “mates.” In Moby Dick, the mates are true mates: Stubb, Flask, and Starbuck. In the short story they are Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby. In both yarns, the mates have distinctive characteristics that act as guides for the development of the story. Without the backdrop of the unique personalities of Stubb and Flask, the relationship between Starbuck and Ahab would not have been as recognizably deep as it was. Similarly, without the faults and blunderings of Turkey and Nippers to cast Bartleby’s early performance into stark contrast with theirs, the narrator would not have taken to him so. We can even interpret their names in a similar manner: Turkey is a bit of an old turkey, and Nippers is a young and ambitious busybody; Stubb tokes up and Flask gulps down. Bartleby and Starbuck have the normal names and are the more central to the story of their respective counterparts.

Finally, both works are clearly representative of higher issues. Bartleby can be read as a rant against the the mundanity of office work; a critique of America’s path to corporate mechanization; or even a Marxist manifesto. Moby, as we well know has a thousand possible readings…

The most distinctive part of Bartleby’s personality in this story is his peculiar refusal to carry out the most ordinary tasks. This got me thinking: what is he actually refusing? He is refusing more than simple orders to make a copy, phone call, or drop off some papers. There is no way Melville could stop there: this refusal must symbolize something greater than Bartleby, greater than the office, greater than Melville himself (it is also possible that I have grossly high expectations of Melville when it comes to embedded symbolism and allegory after reading Moby Dick). The way I interpreted his refusal was in relation to Mahatma Gandhi and his “passive resistance.”

The phrase “passive resistance” embodies Bartleby’s quirk: he does not argue, he does not complain about being ordered around, he does not offer an explanation even when asked directly. But out of context, the phrase “passive resistance” means much more. Gandhi advocated peaceful and nonviolent opposition as another option. The goal was the same: to achieve social and political accomplishments, but the methods were different. No war, no violence, and in Bartleby’s case, the less extreme: no arguing, no complaining. Gandhi was the spiritual and political figurehead for those fighting against oppression in India. Bartleby is fighting against the common, everyday mundanity and minor oppression in American office life.

I could possibly take this further and say that Bartleby’s use of passive resistance symbolizes either his or Melville’s general distaste with the economic control of the American bureaucracy. Bartleby himself is described as liking money, and his boss is no better, therefore the resistance to corporate America would be all the more powerful when coming from someone as money-focused as Bartleby. One could easily do a Marxist reading of this story and call Bartleby the representative of the entire proletariat: starting small by refusing insignificant office orders, and making his way to a full blown revolution. I am completely aware how ridiculous this sounds, however I think a lot of literary weight rests on the phrase “I prefer not to.”

“Ah Bartleby!  Ah humanity!”  (Melville, 27)

By putting the two exclamations together, Melville seems to equate the two.  Although I saw the narrator as the most “normal” character in the story, this last sentence makes him the least human because he is the opposite of Bartleby.  Bartleby possesses a humanity that all of the other characters not only lack, but fail to understand.

Throughout the story, as we discussed in class, Bartleby’s free will stands out as his defining personality trait in the sentence “I would prefer not to.”  We think of free will as one of the characteristics that distinguishes people from animals, whom we think of as more simple-minded.  The narrator assumes that his staff will do whatever he tells them too…that they will follow him like sheep.  By assuming this, he shows that he himself is trapped in this mindless system.  So Bartleby is actually more of a human than the other characters.

Although Bartleby does not eat, live, or act like an ordinary person, he dies; and mortality is a defining characteristic being human.  While the narrator will just continue in his law practice, Melville has Bartleby take the ultimate step in life: death.  In his unchanging life, the static narrator is less human than the strange man he employs.

In this last paragraph as well, Melville reveals that Bartleby was once a “normal” person, too, like the narrator, because he at did have a “normal” job — clerkship in the Dead Letter Office.  This was a perfect job for him: a lost man sorting lost mail.

The Dead Letter Office could also be a metaphor for the rest of humanity –people, like the narrator, who have no purpose because they do not think.  They are going nowhere in life because they simply follow whatever path is in front of them [in the narrator’s case, this is the “easiest way of life” (1)].  While people are trapped on this path, Bartleby is in turn trapped in this world of people who cannot think for themselves.  Even when he leaves the office, he escapes that one dead office for another.  For him, staring out of a window for hours on end was not entrapment, because he wanted to do this.  The moments of his exerting his free will were like finding the rings and checks lost in the undeliverable mail — they show that true humanity exists, but cannot survive in such a place.  Bartleby is eventually squashed out of existence by the animalistic populace.

Bartleby, in losing the work that made him “normal,” began to gain a personality that made him human.  Maybe Melville wants to say that there are more important things in life than the day to day business that the narrator, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut are caught up in.  The enigmatic, seemingly ghostly man, who does everything out of the ordinary, is actually the most human.

“Dead Letter Office.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2009. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_letter_office>.

Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.” eNotes.com. 2010. eNotes.com, Inc., Web. 3 Mar 2010. <http://www.enotes.com/bartleby-scrivener-text/bartleby-scrivener-1>.

Lashed round and round to the fish’s back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab. [from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick]

This passage drives home a couple of themes that have been central to this entire novel since the beginning: the question of what to make of religions other than Christianity, and the concept of fate.

I’ll start with addressing the first of these two topics: what are you supposed to make of non-Christian religions, if you are Herman Melville in the 1850’s, or if you’re Ishmael around that same time, or if you’re someone reading this book when it was released?  Throughout the book, Melville routinely includes references to alternative religions, seeming to play with the idea that perhaps they are valid.  Here, however, it seems that Melville makes some sort of statement about Fedallah, the “Persian fire-worshipper”.  This particular character’s demise is comprised of being dragged to death through the water by Moby-Dick, his body mangled and torn.  One can argue that this is a comment about the character’s religion, as he is referred to as a “Parsee” in this passage, a direct reference to his “Persian fire-worshipper” identity. His body did not meet a respectful end upon his death, and perhaps this is a comment on the end his soul met as well.  Or, perhaps, Melville is making a comment on how religions other than Christianity were treated at that time in the States — not well.  Perhaps Melville is using Fedallah’s mangled body as a symbol for the mangling that mainstream America did to other religions.  And the passage certainly makes us feel for Fedallah — who deserves to die in that way?  Was Melville trying to make his readers feel for worshipers of religions besides the Christian norm?

A concept also thoroughly addressed by this passage that is very closely tied to religion is the concept of fate.  Firstly, Melville makes a foreshadowing reference to the fate of the ship: Fedallah is lashed round and round the whale, much as the Pequod will become thrashed round and round in the vortex of water that destroys it.  Is it a coincidence that these two things, Fedallah and the rest of the Pequod, met the same fate?  Is Melville saying that perhaps there is no escaping our own fate, so even though Fedallah does not die with the rest of the crew, he is still lashed round and round as the ship will be later?  (But then why does Ishmael escape this fate?  Perhaps Melville is both showing us the power of fate, but asking us to question it at the same time.)  Furthermore, Melville makes clear to mention that the distended eyes of Fedallah focus on Ahab.   Perhaps this is a reference to the role that Ahab played in the fate of Fedallah (and the rest of the Pequod).  Ahab was the one who decided to lead the crazy mission to kill Moby-Dick, and so perhaps he is responsible for the fate of Fedallah, and Fedallah is blaming him even after his death by staring at Ahab with his distended, dead eyes.  Or, perhaps, Melville is forcing the reader to question the validity of the dead Fedallah’s sentiment, rather than presenting such sentiment as true.  Is it possible for one man to control another man’s fate, or is every man’s fate controlled by some higher power?  If Moby-Dick represents God (as often he is said to), and he is what caused Ahab to lead this crazy mission, is the case simply that Moby-Dick (and thus God) caused the fate of Ahab and the crew that followed him?  Is this to say that God controls the fate of all of us?

Both of these subjects make one point clear: the way in which Melville structured his themes and symbolism does not lead the reader to one definite conclusion.  It allows for a variety of interpretations, a variety of ideas.  It causes the reader to question, rather than follow.  And perhaps this is just what Melville wanted.

Why does the Epilogue seem so strange and out of place? In class, we discussed Ishmael possibly distancing himself emotionally from the tragedy that took the lives of his only companions as an explanation for his dead pan description of how he alone survived. Void of the rich, nearly superfluous amount of detail and intellectual insight we have grown so accustomed to in Melville’s narration, the epilogue seems barren and impersonal in comparison.

On the first day of class we discussed how Moby Dick can be compared to a symphony, or a jazz piece. The Novel contains several movements, and following that line of thought, the Epilogue can be likened to calm music that frequently follows the climax of a musical piece. Frequently this final movement evokes the very beginning of the piece, except with a slightly different spin. In terms of narration, I believe that the epilogue is quite like the opening chapters of the book in the sense that these are the only two parts of the book where Ishmael is truly alone. Melville’s mutable narrator is heavily influenced by the cast of characters he is surrounded with. Ahab, Starbuck, and Queequeg are all examples of this, and as such, it is always difficult to discern whats true and what isn’t.

One could read the ever changing narrator as an omniscient presence, shifting from one conscious to the other. For the sake of my argument, however, it helps to look at these shifts instead as Ishmael’s speculations and insights into the characters he is surrounded by. The Epilogue reminds us that Ishmael is writing this account retrospectively, and as such, the means must justify the ends. Perhaps this is why Ahab’s sanity is clearly questioned since the beginning. Perhaps the fact that Queequeg’s coffin saved Ishmael in the end colored his entire perception of the man. Because of this, Ishmael’s narrative embodies the presumed thoughts and feelings of these characters, which have become perverted and polarized in his mind.

With this in mind, the only times that we really know Ishmael the narrator are the very beginning, and the very end of the novel. Because Ishmael so frequently drifts away from his own thoughts and consciousness, it hints that Ishmael himself is not, or does not consider himself to be, the most important figure in the novel. This explains the brief, and lack luster nature of the epilogue. It also explains the unreliability of Ishmael, as his presence imposes little consequence on the sequence of events, or the messages means to relay to the reader.  This again brings me back to the first day of discussion as we considered the opening lines of the book: “Call me Ishmael”. Perhaps what Melville meant by that was that it doesn’t matter who the narrator is, or what he is called. Ishmael merely reflects and analyzes those around him, he was merely burdened with the tale to tell. The tale itself being far more important than the man who chanced to survive it:

And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. -Job

Shown here is the image found on the cover of the 1998 Signet Classic version of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.  The image is entitled “Pursuit of the Great White Whale” and was done by Claus Hoie in 1988.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find an image any larger than this one, so I would like to point out some aspects of the image before going any further.  In the mid to upper left, one can see a harpooner in a boat with the harpoon raised and ready to be thrown at the whale.  The line connecting the harpoon to the whalers is visible.  In the lower right, the title of the painting is written in white.

As for actually making any sense out of this image … Well, isn’t part of the beginnings of the analysis of any book an analysis of its author?

Claus Hoie was born in Norway in 1911.  He moved to Brooklyn, NY at the age of 13 and studied the arts at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York. Both his father and his grandfather were ship captains, and Hoie himself spent two years at sea.  Hoie was a sergeant in the Army during WWII in a Norwegian-American battalion.  Following WWII, Hoie studied art in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  Hoie’s work is mainly in the form of watercolors and graphics, although he has done some commercial work.  He has received multiple honors for his art, including awards from the National Academy of Design and the American Watercolor Society.  Hoie even wrote and illustrated his own book, entitled Whaler Helena of Sag Harbor in the South Pacific, 1843-1845.  His work is on display in multiple museums in the United States and in Norway (information courtesy of http://finearts.luther.edu/artists/hoieclaus.html).

It thus makes sense that such a man would be behind an image that graces the cover of such an epic novel.  He has had experience with the sea through both his heritage and his own life, as well as undoubtedly experience with intense conflict and hardship in WWII.  What is more intrinsic to Moby-Dick than the sea and conflict?  Furthermore, Hoie shows an interest in whaling, evidenced by his publication of Whaler Helena of Sag Harbor in the South Pacific, 1843-1845.  The fact that this man, too, experienced with the sea and hardship as Melville was, put considerable effort into the creation of a book about whaling around one hundred years after the publication of Moby-Dick is evidence of how humanity continues to be enchanted with the concept of whaling.  It is also particularly interesting to note that the time the book is set in is right around the time that Moby-Dick was published (1851).  Furthermore, the fact that the painting on Moby-Dick‘s cover is entitled “The Pursuit of the Great White Whale” shows quite clearly that Hoie created the painting with Moby-Dick in mind, and furthermore, is a tribute to the captivating power that Moby-Dick has had over many different individuals.

Of course, it is possible that Hoie created this piece as a part of his commercially done work, and was requested by someone at Signet to create this painting.  However, at the time Hoie created the painting (1988) his career was well-established — he’d been winning awards for his art since 1955.  Even if Hoie was asked to create this, it is interesting that he chose to accept this commission.  Between Hoie’s interest in the sea and whaling, and his experience with intense great conflict and suffering, he must have been intrigued by creating a cover for Moby-Dick. Furthermore, the image itself shows that the artist has great knowledge of the themes and content of Moby-Dick.  The great white whale’s tail is shown, stark and powerful over the depths of the ocean, showing Moby-Dick’s power, but also his beauty.  The harpooner, tiny  and perched perilously at the top of a wave, shows man’s contrasting powerlessness when compared to the whale.  The face etched in the right side of the image can be tied to multiple characters in the novel — is it Ahab, who oversees and controls the fate of The Pequod? Or is it some form of God, who controls fate even more so than Ahab?  Either way, this image makes it clear that its artist has a deep understanding of the novel.

The fact that this man’s life is so closely intertwined with concepts found in Moby-Dick, and that he made the effort to create an image that represents the novel so well, over one hundred years after its publication, is just another instantiation of the universality of this novel.  People can connect to it, see their own lives in it, reflect back about it… The image on the cover is not some random picture of a whale some Signet editor dug up somewhere — some man whose life is unarguably connected to the book itself chose to put forth the time and effort to create an image that so clearly represents the essence of Moby-Dick.

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”

Ahab speaks these words- his last, after Moby Dick destroys The Pequod in the last chapter before the epiloque.  During this chapter the pace of the plot has significantly picked up and the sense of the looming tragedy is very heightened.  Like many other words from Ahab, these again show how devoted he is to the chase and killing of Moby Dick.  As even in his last words, he does not show any signs that his plan may have not been such a good idea.  Even with his last breaths he is damning and cursing Moby Dick, solidifying his hate of the whale.  It is also interesting that he says “sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool” because shortly after this, The Pequod goes down into a vortex, which in a sense, is a common pool where most of the crew drowns and dies.  Ahab also cries that “from hell’s heart I stab at thee” and this made me wonder if the thought that he was going to hell, and was vowing that even in the afterlife he would chase Moby Dick.  Though Ahab admits that the whale has one since it is “all destroying” he also says that it is “unconquering” and in this way, in his last words Ahab is refusing to let the whale defeat his spirit and as a final act of defiance curses the whale with his last breaths.

“And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead leg sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked.”

I chose to post about this passage specifically as well as the chapter “The Spirit-Spout” because of the way it use contrasting concepts to talk about some things while hinting at several general themes in the book.  The description of Ahab’s two feet can be read as a play on life and death, and there are a lot of things in this chapter signaling death and doom as well.  The whale also seems to represent death in this chapter as it does commonly throughout the novel.  Also, I found it very interesting that Ishmael described Abab’s dead leg as sounding like a coffin-tap.  As well as another hint towards death this foreshadows not only the building of Queequeg’s coffin, but also that this coffin ends up saving Ishmael in the end.  Ishmael knows what a coffin-tap sounds like because of Queequeg’s coffin.  In this chapter, the seas is also described in a dark way- Ishmael often refers to is as the black sea.  Interestingly enough, many of the crew will die at the hands of this “black sea” by drowning.

“…we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without an haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon.  But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing it’s fountain of feathers to the sky; the solitary jet would at times be descried.”

I found this particular passage of interest for a number of reasons.  For one, Ishmael describes the crew as being “launched into this tormented sea”  where things are “condemned to swim on everlastingly,” one cannot help but see this as a foreshadowing of eventual fate of The Pequod.  Also, Ahab had previously described the sea as black whereas here he uses black to talk about the air. However, he uses “snow-white” here and previously used “silvery” to tell us about the spirit spout and this passage led me to notice that in this chapter most things are described as dark or black besides the spout.  This again leads me to think that this is another hint towards life and death and also good and evil, the sea and other things being death and evil but the white spout representing good or life.

We have discussed at length, both in class and online, Ahab’s insanity, manifested in his relentless, vengeful, suicidal mission to slay Moby Dick.  When he finally gives insight into his mind, Ahab admits that his mission is foolhardy, but he says that he feels drawn by some other power to perform it:

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?  Is Ahab, Ahab?  Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? (Melville 592)

While his insanity was a force to be reckoned with on board, and indeed the men must bow to it, it is the strange structure of power aboard the Pequod that allows him to carry out his mission.  With the feudal system, partially ordered by strength and skill levels, Ahab’s “reign”, as one might call it, remains unquestioned by the men aboard, no matter how crazy he is.  Only Starbuck seems to question it, but Ahab is able to refuse him by explaining that he is powered by the divine.  Because all men aboard a whaling ship have given themselves over to one form of madness or another (as I/we have discussed), this reason allows Ahab sustain order aboard the ship with the few who dissent.

In Melville’s Bartleby, however, this same power is not held by the nameless narrator.  Like Ahab, he begins to feel compelled by the divine (as he confides to the reader):

Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. (Melville 10)

But although he feels this way, the sane (or perhaps merely pragmatically secular) reality of life on land forces him to abandon this feeling:

At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much… I resolved to gather all my faculties together, and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus. (10)

The need to sustain a good image among his peers forces the narrator to take the action he otherwise wouldn’t have, which would be the equivalent of Ahab returning home, and giving up Moby Dick.  But that is the main point: the narrator has peers.  Although he is the “captain” of his office so to speak, he is not separated from other “captains” by a large ocean, upon which each leader has absolute power.  He is confined to land, and therefore his ideas that verge on madness are reined in by societal constraints, whereas Ahab remains sure in his convictions, leading his crew onward, towards doom.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Northwestern University Press, 1988. Reissued 2003. Print.

Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener, A Tale of Wall Street. Enotes, 2010. <http://www.enotes.com/bartleby-scrivener-text>