Moby Dick

I would like to analyze the chapter The Spirit-Spout through style and narration, the structure which houses “the spirit.” This is one of my favorite chapters of the novel, and I think this chapter shows how great of a lyricist and poet Melville can be. Because of its natural fluidity as opposed to Ishmael’s usual choppiness of style, I think this was one of the easiest chapters for Melville to write and therefore more revealing.

You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book — and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul.

http://www.melville.org/letter7.htm

Melville wrote these words in a famous letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne on November 15, 1851, parts of which we discussed during our Gender and Madness lecture. What is the soul, the spirit of Moby-Dick? Could it be the same depicted in the Spirit-Spout, the chapter that Hawthorne’s wife admired so much?

There are many elements of style that Melville uses in this chapter to achieve his effect. In the title and the first few paragraphs he uses an usual form of alliteration known as sibilance, or repetition with the letter ‘s.’

…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. (224)

This form has a very classical feel. Today, it almost seems archaic or dream-like. Though the term “sibilance” originated in 1823, the term sibilant, meaning “having, containing, or producing the sound of or a sound resembling that of the s or the sh in sash,” came into English in 1669 from the Latin sibilare, to hiss, whistle, of imaginative origin (Merriam-Webster). Whether classic or pseudo-classic, by using repetition, and this unusual manifestation of it, Melville creates a deliberately unreal atmosphere with a spark of the sublime. Such metaphors as “the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver” makes one think of Biblical scrolls or ancient knowledge, also adding to the classical and mystical feel.

There is also something strange about the way the silvery jet is introduced. The first time, the action of the jet “rising” is not given until two clauses afterwards, and then only in an indirect way, through metaphor.

…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. (224)

By placing the verb later on Melville gives the impression that the spout is static, that it has always been there, almost like the  men of the Pequod have come across a fixed glistening rod jutting out of the sea. It doesn’t disappear until the end of the next paragraph, and even then he doesn’t describe it descending. He just says “yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night.” By leaving out action, Melville gives the illusion of apparition. Most of Melville’s symbolism lies in his style.

…some days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it had never been. (225)

By appearing and disappearing, it is both eternal and ephemeral. By repetition, coming every night at the same hour, Melville gives the impression of a consciousness, a purposeful intelligence, an order.

Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be. (225)

Here, Melville gives the action right away: it is jetted; but even so, it is done mysteriously, as if there was no cause or originator of the action.

Another trick Melville likes to use is sharp, strong contrasts of which these are just some:

“…his [Fedallah’s] turban and the moon, companions in one sky.” (225)

“…she [the Pequod] rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her–one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal.” (225)

“While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked.” (225)

“Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he [Ahab] would not seek that respose in his hammock.” (227)

These contrasts make us more aware of our reality and the constant alternative. By putting Fedallah’s turban in the same frame as the moon, Melville simply, but powerfully conjures up humanity and eternity, or as Mary Warnock puts it in her book of the same title, imagination and time. By stripping the scene down to its bare essentials, it makes us more aware, even while it seems less real. It also makes us feel more alone with our humanity, like the men at sea.

(In the blog post Phantom Ship, Josana takes a look at the symbolism of the sea-ravens in which she also notices that “second sentence seems to suggest that the Pequod hangs on the balance of life and death.”)

Who or what is the Spirit-Spout supposed to be? I think that is exactly what Melville wants us to wonder. While this may seem like a dream or loll in the text compared to the storm developing in the reader’s mind–Melville, “still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.”

And sometimes one can recognize the spirit through the form. In a book perhaps mangled and imperfect, while the birds weigh down on Ahab’s ship, Melville’s thoughts take flight.

The disembodied and elusive spirit-spout might be seen as a metaphor for the elusive Moby Dick. It may also be viewed as the spirit of Moby Dick keeping tabs on the Pequod or trying to lead, misguide, or test the crew.

The spirit-spout may be seen as a malevolent, superstitious sign of the disappointment to come, and can be seen as especially mysterious or mystical because it is the mysterious, devilish Fedallah who first descried this jet.

As Ishmael describes the feelings and emotions with which the men behold this spirit-spout, we get an image of Ahab’s face one night, in which, “two different things were warring.” And there proceeds my favorite lines of the chapter when Ahab walks about the deck: “While his one live made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked” (249). Ahab is depicted to be an already half-dead man on a half-doomed mission. Like most mysterious observations, “Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.”

Do you know what the spirit-spout is? It is a tease. It is a false lead. It is that thing that keeps you going in your irrational direction. It is Moby Dick leading you to your doom. It is the reason you make up in your head to keep going. It keeps your mind off of the ridiculousness of what your doing, of where you’re going and what your are pursuing. It is what keeps you awake at night and makes you sick to your stomach when you look out across the sea to the horizon. It is captain Ahab’s insanity. It is Ishmael’s melancholy. It is Queequeg’s idol—his tiny black God. It is whatever drives your monomania and your manic depression. It is whatever guides your harpoon, your lance, your feet, your bow, your pen.

That is what the Spirit-Spout is, a figment of the imagination, though at relevant and real as the Pequod itself. That is why Ahab and his men follow it but will never find it. You see it once and never again. But once is enough to keep you on your compass course towards your unfortunate, untimely, death—your fate, as they so call it.

Thrusting his head halfway into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger.  Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.

But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it!  It has happened before.  Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses – that’s all.  Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”

“Aye, but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate, gloomily.

The storm that set upon the Pequod was a terrifying, quasi-supernatural event in the eyes of the crew.  The lightning which struck the masthead was a very bad omen, as was the burning harpoon and the stove boat.  Just in case the readers weren’t getting the symbolism, Fedallah even prays to the lightning which holds the ship in its grip.  To find the ship’s compasses turned in the opposite direction the next morning, against the natural and obvious dictates of the sun, serves as yet another warning that the Pequod is sailing straight into the jaws of doom.

The connection between magnetism and electricity was discovered in Europe several decades before Moby Dick was written, but it seems unlikely that many whalers (beyond the educated Ishmael) would have been well-informed of these developments.  For most people at the time, magnetism was a mysterious force which probably seemed supernatural.  The compass, in particular, was heavy with allegories which made it particularly well-adapted to superstition.  On the open ocean, with only the sun, stars, and compass to guide the ship, the calculations and instruments of navigation took on a mystical aura.  The steering of a ship can be easily seen akin to the steering of a soul, and the methods of steering therefore take on divine significance.  When Ahab first smashes his sextant and is then confronted with the turned compasses, it seems that the ship has been doomed to go both ethically and literally adrift.  Ahab’s solution, demonstrates his mastery of theater and a special sort of mad confidence in his ability to forge his own fate.

“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point a true a way as any.”

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow.  But Starbuck looked away.

Ahab recognizes all of the potential for despair that the turned needles might provoke among the crew, and by magnetizing a new needle he also takes control of the men.  He symbolically rejects the judgement of fate placed upon the Pequod during the storm, and chooses his own path.  Starbuck is not convinced, however, and sees Ahab’s actions as a blasphemous attempt to challenge what should not be questioned.  In the final sentence of the chapter, Ishmael seems to agree:

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.

Let me start by saying I don’t get Bartleby. At all – similar to the narrator. But what I do know is that trying to figure him out, an almost un-human human in any social sense, with the emotions more normal people experience will fail to hit the mark. The few glimpses we get of Bartleby’s interactions are intepreted by the narrator and in them he ascribes his own his own ideas of what he would intend in a given situation to what Bartleby did in the given situation. This is most apparent when the narrator attempts to analyze Bartleby’s actions. Reacting to Bartleby staying in the office after he was fired,

Turning the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me, – this too I could not think of.

The last part of the sentence is most important. If Bartleby really is cadaverous, it is hard for me to believe that he enjoys some perverse pleasure in subverting his boss’s authority. Even if there is a lurking desire and motive under his show of indifference, it seems to be self-interested. Bartleby did not come to the office, I think, a different person, and takes up the agenda of not doing anything there; he would have always been who he is – quiet, strange, and keeping everything to himself.

What seems to happen, then, is a projection by the narrator of what his motive would be if he were to say something like that to him. What this tells us, then, is that the narrator would be looking to subvert his authority if he were working for himself (I am trying to have this example without trippy self-subversion symbolic possibilities), revealing his own psyche. And I suppose now that I am just unpacking what a projection does.

This reminds me of one of my favorite parts of Paradise Lost. When Satan first sees the unthinkably beautiful Garden of Eden, while he marvels at its wondrousness, the scene is also described with a sadness. Trees, though gorgeous, cry. It would be an incorrect reading, I believe, for the reader to just assume that the Garden of Eden has this sadness in it. I don’t think it does. Adam and Eve have not fallen yet, and, excepting Satan’s presence, the world is perfect. It is Satan that projects the sadness onto the landscape. And because the reader identifies with Satan, we too can project this same sadness. After all, we are the descendants of fallen people, we are a fallen race. Similarly, the narrator of Bartleby projects onto Bartleby, and we can do the same. We share a more normal psyche and interpretation of events and words. And, moreover, while trying to ascertain what Bartleby means, and who he is drives a significant amount of interest in the book, this element of projection encourages readers to look into the narrator to understand the work more completely.

The title of our last lecture, “The Beginning of the End,” got me thinking of The Doors’ epic song “The End,” which lays the chilling soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which – lo and behold – is about the mission of a ship and crew, and one man’s path to insanity.  Coppola’s interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) is one of my favorite films, and his portrayal of insanity one of the most intriguing I have seen on screen.  So I got to thinking about just how good the 2010 movie Moby Dick could be with the strikingly similar Apocalypse Now serving as inspiration.

It would undoubtedly star Daniel Day Lewis as Captain Ahab.  Lewis’s performance in There Will Be Blood (2007) as the monomaniacal oil tycoon Daniel Plainview seemed almost like a tryout for this historic role.  His character even sported a limp after a leg injury early in the movie (sound familiar?), rejected religion while likening himself to God, and severed his ties to his family (see the video below).

As for the rest of the crew, Coppola’s 1979 cast starring Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, and Dennis Hopper among others would be hard to beat.  But with Edward Norton (Fight Club, The Illusionist) playing the philosophical Ishmael and Djimon Hounsou (Gladiator, Blood Diamond) as Queequeg, this cast would find its sea legs soon enough.

The object of the mission in Apocalypse Now is to kill Walter Kurtz, a former U.S. Green Beret who has been driven insane and is in the middle of the Vietnam jungle, the heart of darkness.  In what you might call the “beginning of the end” of the film, Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) says:

I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends.

In Moby Dick, similarly just before the end, Ahab spouts:

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? (564)

In both Apocalypse Now and Moby Dick, the insane character is killed at the end.  In the former, Kurtz’s death represents a mission accomplished by the crew, while in the latter, Ahab takes everyone but Ishmael down with him.  After seeing some clips from prior film versions of Moby Dick and knowing how performative Melville’s text can be (as displayed by Ahab’s dramatic monologue above), I can only imagine what Francis Ford Coppola and Daniel Day Lewis could do with it.

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

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/

“Faith, sir, I’ve –”

“Faith?  What’s that?”

“Why faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like–that’s all, sir.”

(Melville, 467)

In chapter 127, “The Deck,” the carpenter is working on caulking the new life buoy.  While he and Ahab are talking, the carpenter starts answering Ahab’s question with “faith,” and Ahab reacts by picking apart the carpenter’s words.   Then the carpenter tries to backpedal by saying that it was simply a meaningless expression.  I feel that Melville didn’t include this passage just to have an amusing joke about language.  All of the characters, especially Ahab, have had crises of faith, and this moment briefly highlights their struggles.

For many of the sailors, Starbuck in particular, Christian faith is a simple, natural thing.  Even the non-Christian sailors had faith:  the most prominent is Queequeg with his little black god.  And if they had not had any kind of faith before seeing Moby Dick, by the second day of the chase they have faith in “Ahab, their one lord” (492) — “the hand of Fate had snatched all their souls” and they faithfully follow orders.  (491)

For Ahab, his faith has been redirected several times.  He probably started out as a devout Christian, but then he changed focus to Moby Dick and to fate.  By the second day he proclaims, “I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.” (497)  He relinquishes all authority and control of his actions, simply bowing to what he calls “the Fates.”

The only character who does not consistently have faith in something is Ishmael.  He starts on land as a Christian, but after his meeting with Queequeg and his experiences on the Pequod, he beings to question his beliefs about religion, race, and gender.  By the end of the novel, I think Ishmael is as confused about “the truth” as the reader is.

The only character who has no faith is the character who survives.  I think that besides needing a plausible way for Ishmael to be able to tell this story, Melville wants to show that blind faith is a bad guide.  Ahab has blind faith in fate, and that ends up killing almost everyone on the ship.  But the crew also has blind faith in (or at least are blind followers of) Ahab.  A mutiny would have saved their lives, even if it had meant committing murder; but the crew just follows orders.  Ishmael is able to save himself because he does not have faith in anyone but himself.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1988, reissued 2008. Print.

As we discussed in class, The Symphony chapter is very Shakespearen and Ahab’s long confession to Starbuck is reminiscent of King Lear. In addition to this Shakespearen reference, this chapter reminds me quite a bit of Greek tragedy, in particular Homer’s Iliad. Although they are not identical, the Trojan hero Hector and Captain Ahab share the characteristic of having a wife and young child at home. Hector is also fated to be killed by Achilles and even runs three laps around the city of Troy to stay away from the Greek soldier. In the same way that Hector knows that he eventually must confront Achilles (i.e. death), Ahab knows that he must fight Moby Dick. After Ahab reveals to Starbuck how much of his life he has regretted and Starbuck is hopeful that they might return to Nantucket, Ahab acquiesces and gives in to his death; he asks

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?… Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness. (Melville 592)

In the same way that Hector is reluctant to accept his fate, Ahab admits that there is nothing in his “natural heart” that would make him want to continue on this quest for Moby Dick. There is some “hidden lord” or “remorseless emperor” who controls Ahab’s decisions that he cannot fight much like Hector who is coerced into battle by the gods. This scene also has another reference to Greek mythology when Ahab concludes that he will “sleep at last on the field.” After their deaths, Greek heroes would rest in the fields of Elysium. Like a tragic Greek hero, Ahab believes that he will soon die and lay in the Elysian Fields rather than heaven.

This post does not really fit under “Characters and Characterization,” yet it relates to an earlier post I made in that section.  However, I think it relates more to the narrator, so I will classify it as such.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Ishmael is somewhat invisible as a character.  However, throughout the book, especially in later chapters, the reader gets glimpses of him.  One thing I’ve noted is his opinions on the work he has undertaken; this novel.  He seems to think rather highly of it, and see it as some sort of noble work. In chapter 104, The Fossil Whale, Ishmael states

For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outstretching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs.  Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme!  We expand to its bulk.  To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

In saying this, Ishmael connects this work to large themes of the universe.  He seems to be claiming that this book is mighty, as it deals with such a mighty theme.  More than that, it is so important as to weaken him, as he struggles with the meaning of the universe.  This fits in with what we discussed in the first class, how some people hate this book, but some think it holds all the answers to life.  Ishmael appears to be in the latter camp.

Of course, this begs the ever present question:  how separate are Ishmael and Melville?  Does Melville see his work this way?  I would argue yes, as he constantly inserts massive life morals and questions into the work.  To him, it is not just a book about a whale.  Did this make him more upset when  the critics slammed this work, or shelved it under “cetology?”  Or did he laugh at their folly, knowing the deep truths were there, and they just couldn’t see?

Chapter 88, Schools and Schoolmasters is another good example of a chapter where Melville uses whales to comment on humanity.  At first what struck me about this chapter was that it is one of the only instances where Melville mentions love.  Of course, this is whale love, not human love, but his language frames this whale love in human terms: “As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love” (380).

However, as the chapter continues, it appears to focus more on ideas of learning and growing up.  The male whale will cavort with a harem of female whales while he is young.  But as he matures, he will instead choose solitude and leave the harem and “he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets” (381).  For men in this book, the sea is also a source of “moody secrets.”  They often contemplate her vastness and her beauty.  Yet, for men, land is more likely to be the place where they settle down.  Melville settled down to a life on land with a wife and children after he spent years traveling the world in ships.

Though we as readers will not get to follow Ishmael past his time on the Pequod, it would be interesting to see how much longer he spends quieting his restlessness by going out to sea.  He obviously sees the sea as a “school” of sorts, as he relates chapters and chapters worth of scientific and philosophical information that he has learned while whaling.  But most likely eventually he, and men like him, will feel they have learned enough, and will return to land permanently.

For this post I figured I’d tackle the most subtle, perplexing aspect of Ishmael’s narration: the foot note. What is the purpose of the footnote in Moby Dick? What are these pesky, little creatures that pop up at the bottom of the sea?

Since nobody else has the time and patience, I did an exhaustive search of the book and counted a total of 17 footnotes (if anyone wants to challenge me on this matter please go ahead).*

Footnotes typically belong to the phylum of non-fiction, in which case they are added by the author, or in an antiquated or translated work of fiction, in which they are added by an editor or translator, like in my Norton ed. of The Brothers Karamazov.

So does Meville revolutionize the footnote by employing it in Moby Dick?

At first glance, they seem to be nothing out of the ordinary, often giving the appearance of explaining dry, technical details. In fact, this could have added to the early mis-categorization of the book as a novel about cetology. In the chapters Cetology and The Right Whale’s Head, they are used to give further insight on the categorization and anatomy of whales, backing up the perception that the book is primarily about whales. However, as often with Melville, this soon proves not to be the case. In the chapter The Whiteness of the Whale, the footnote recalls personal observations and memories, giving the appearance of a travel narrative.  Others explain the meaning of mariner terms and other aspects of whaling life to land-locked, tight-lipped readers, in which case they could also be a satire for the travel narrative he felt he had outgrown. Melville certainly takes as much creative license with footnotes as he does with other narrative and stylistic forms in Moby Dick.

There are many other types of footnotes in Moby Dick:

Humorous footnotes that give color to the text:

The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement upon original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooner the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder. (Signet, 311)

Feminist-footnotes:

When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the mother’s pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolor the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries. (376)

Elitist footnotes:

But as these pig-fish are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology. (128)

Abuse of footnotes:

(See The Whiteness of the Whale)

Whatever you may make of them, or even if you skip over them, these footnotes leave us a footprint of Melville’s thought.

So, next time you stumble upon a footnote in the text, stop and take note. You may find something interesting.

*Compiled list of footnotes (by no means authoritative):

Signet Edition

Pg. 106,128,133,182,183,199,200,228,234,276,277,293,311,325,376,406,456,527

** I can’t count, there are actually 18