Moby Dick

In Chapter 32, “Cetology,” Ishmael both questions and confirms the human need to classify, bending the rules of science and making up his own classification system. Interestingly, Ishmael’s uses words for different sizes of books to organize his classification:

“First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend thema ll, both small and large. I. The FOLIO WHALE, II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III, the DUODECIMO WHALE” (Melville 129).

Books used to be made by printing a certain number of pages on a sheet of paper, and then folding the paper. Books made by printing two pages on each side of a sheet of paper are called Folios. Octavos are made by printing eight pages of text on one sheet of paper, and folding eight times, and the duodecimo format has twelve pages per sheet (Ishmael left out quarto, four pages of text per sheet.) When the size of the paper used is constant, folios come out the largest, and then octavo, and then duodecimo, and similarly, Ishmael uses Folio for the larger whales, Octavo for medium ones, and duodecimo for smaller ones. I thought it was an interesting way of putting art and science together.

Ishmael’s classification is not scientific at all, and in fact he critisizes Linnaeas’ for “fain have banish[ing] the whales from the waters” (128). Linnaeas’ findings about how whales differ from fish are summarized as “lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded” (128). This description of the whale is favorable; “cold blooded” is not usually taken as a compliment. However, Ishmael still considers whales to be fish, because they live in the water.

This chapter might be another way that Ishmael suggests that whales aren’t so different from us (and that we are not so different from whales).

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Signet Classic, 1998.

Information about book sizes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_size

Even early in the book, the relationships between the men on the boat are very important to the story and the dynamics emerging in the relationships have a lot symbolism and metaphorical messages within them. We see at the end of chapter 10, the relationship and dynamic beginning to form between Ishmael and Queequeg…

“How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg- a cozy loving pair.”

I found this whole chapter very interesting, following Ishmael’s internal battle over sharing a bed with the harpooner he has yet to meet- a situation that most would probably find awkward and be wary of.  Though in the end, Ishmael decides to go ahead with it and Queequeg and he stay up most of the night smoking and chatting.  Be see the early stages of a profound bond being formed between these two men.  Once on the ship, the men will be heavily dependent on each other, and trust will most definitely be an important factor.  During this part of the book, Ishmael mentions that he is impressed by Queequeg’s dignity and kindness; two characteristics that are good to have in someone on whom you will be depending.  It struck me at this point that it is qualities like these that will determine status in the world upon the Pequod, not wealth or race.  It is also clear from the way that Ishmael describes himself and Queequeg as “a cozy loving pair” in their “hearts’ honeymoon” that Ishmael feels a connection with Queequeg and is open to new experiences with his new friend and in general about the whaling ship.

In class we were reminded not to view “gender” as solely “female” and I think it is particularly important in this novel, given how there are simply no women on board this three year journey, to try and pull out the subtle and complex composition of gender aboard the Pequod. We have already explored in part the interesting interplay of feminine and masculine characteristics that exist within individual characters, such as Queequeg, but this presence of both genders co-existing within a crew of all men only seems to grow as the story progresses. It seems that the crew, who left their wives at home and ventured out, brave and daring into a task made only for the strongest of men, are now forced to shift over in time into a balance that requires the effeminate, the nurturing and even the homoerotic to come into view. A Squeeze of the Hand is one of the best and most entertaining examples of this, however as we discussed the chapter extensively I don’t feel the need to go into detail. I would just add to our discussion the somewhat obvious idea that while the chapter is clearly homoerotic, it seems a clear expression not of repressed homosexuality but of the pure sense of desire and sexual need that exists in humanity which here is coming forth despite the absence of women (the acceptable outlet for such desires of these men), and is directed without question or hindrance towards other men. In this way, though Melville for the most part appears to blend gender not into a neutral state but rather by incorporating pure elements of each into a constant tug-of-war, here appears to allow gender to be removed almost and human nature to be simply human nature.

There are many ways to read a novel and I have found myself in reading moments that appear to be primarily a commentary on race as suggesting something equally bold as gender roles or perhaps simply masculinity. Take, for instance, the moment in The First Lowering when Daggoo hoists Flask up upon his shoulders:

“…the gigantic negro, presented his flat palm to Flask’s foot, and…landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders…[T]he noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow flake” (p. 214)

This description, and others, seem to place Daggoo, Queequeg and the other non-white crew members on a level of higher masculinity in their physical forms and intense strength and skill; Flask is clearly both weaker and more effeminate here, described as “flaxen-haired” and resembling a snowflake. Of course this assignment of masculinity is not purely flattering – Daggoo is almost animalistic here, being ridden by the white man, but the measly quality of Flask’s size and manly presence is hardly flattering either and is clearly evident.

This idea of a hierarchy that creates elements of masculinity and effeminacy is not only present in the distinction between the races aboard, of course, but exists as well in the assertion of power and control in the established ranks on the ship. We can see this actually in the story of the Town-Ho when Radney tries to assert his authority by demanding Steelkilt sweep the deck – a job that is “the prescriptive province of the boys” (p. 240), and which is a “trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties”. Sweeping in a very stereotypical manner is seen classically as a woman’s chore and here on the deck is considered similarly a sort of “tidying of the house” kind of job. This, coupled with the idea that it is removed from the true duties of the ship and of whaling (which we already know are the duties of men) suggests a real blow to ones masculinity; this is clear also in the fact that while I won’t argue boys are seen as a feminine presence, they certainly are less masculine given they have not passed through puberty. In this way, gender and masculinity is a constant push and pull within the hierarchies both racially and through authoritative position.

As we read on and Ahab’s mission of vengeance gets closer to its climax, we see more and more stirrings of insurrection on the Pequod, caused most principally by the crew’s fear of Ahab’s insanity.  Starbuck explicitly defies Ahab concerning the issue of whether or not to stop an oil leak (Chapter 109), and then later contemplates killing Ahab for the good of the remaining souls on the vessel (Chapter 123).  The crew has come to fear Ahab more than fate itself (538).  Interestingly enough, our narrator Ishmael has for the most part avoided revealing or acting upon any feelings of desperation.  He witnesses just about everything that happens on the Pequod, and is not ignorant of Ahab’s destructive course, but is hardly as desperate in his actions as, for example, Starbuck.

This should not be much of a surprise to us.  In the very first chapter of the book, Ishmael disclosed his general indifference about being completely subservient to a captain, even likening himself to a slave:

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about – however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way – either in a physical or metaphysical point of view that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. (24)

Ishmael is seeing the manifestation of his views play out – that “old hunks of a sea-captain” is driving his ship and crew to disaster.  Does Ishmael still rest comfortably, content with his work on the Pequod and the knowledge that the “universal thump” will be passed around eventually?  If he thinks that thump will be passed around to Captain Ahab, doesn’t he fear that it will come from Moby Dick, and that he will be victimized by it as well?  These are obviously the thoughts running through Starbuck’s head.  We talked in class about how Starbuck may be seen as an advocate of slave revolt and rebellion.  Ishmael, then, would be wholly indifferent to rebellion, someone satisfied with the system as is.  Are we meant as readers to comply with Ishmael’s indifference to rebellion, or even to notice it (it’s easy to forget that he is not only the narrator, but an acting member of the crew)?  When we reach the climactic meeting between Ahab and Moby Dick, Ishmael’s actions will reveal whether he is still the philosophical yet submissive man from that first chapter, or if he has a little revolt in him.

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

Almost all the characters on the Pequod absolve themselves of responsibility and allay their melancholia by attributing actions and events to Providence or fated destiny. Melville’s Calvinistic pre-determinism is at work here, but I argue that he ultimately rejects it in the case of Ahab. In the chapters leading up to the final chase of Moby Dick, Starbuck’s dire warnings against continuation of the voyage are a counter to Ahab’s claims of lack of agency.

Here are some phrases and sentences that show the overwhelming obsession with fate in the last quarter of the novel.

‘Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of “Ho! The fair wind! Oh-he-yo, cheerly, men!” the crew singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.’ 492

‘…the fated Pequod’ 498

‘…they were not grieved at this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfillment of an evil already presaged. ‘ 502

‘But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight.’ 516

‘Ha! Yonder! Look yonder, men!’ cried a foreboding voice in the wake.’ 518

‘By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder, windlass, and Fate is the handspike.’ 522

As Ahab’s monomania degenerates into raving incoherence, he increasingly blames his state on Fate. In a sense, this voyage was meant to occur in the scheme of things. Starbuck desperately cautions against Ahab’s proposals, but  to no avail. Perhaps it was an attempt to get through Ahab’s madness to the reasoning part of his mind, with the lesson that Ahab had indeed chosen this path and could depart from it if he so wanted.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Signet Classic. 1998

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality.  He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin.  In Noah’s flood, he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

In this passage, Melville expresses the belief, common at the time, that there was no way humans could really affect the earth in a substantial way.  In the fledgling United States, the European colonizers were just beginning to scratch the surface of the land’s enormous natural resources.  To white “settlers,” the frontier seemed like it would stretch forever to the West.  Even in the East, which had been colonized for two hundred years, there remained large areas still populated by indigenous peoples with the intrusion of only a few white homesteaders.  The late-20th century anxieties about habitat destruction, environmental contamination, and and eventually global warming were far away.  “The whale” metaphorically stands in for all of nature, and Melville places him above both human religion and government.  He swam over the various seats of human power and was impervious to God’s flood, so the whale as a species could never be brought low by human whalers.  In the face of such permanence, humans are compared to the rats of the Netherlands, powerless to stop their destruction at the hands of an angry God or Nature.  While this sentiment seems quaint in our own time of real environmental devastation by human hands, it is very much a product of a moment when earth’s bounty seemed limitless.

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.

The final sentence of the book similarly comments on nature’s indifference to mankind, although this time in a much more reflexive, existential fashion.   All the sound and fury of the chase and climactic battle between Ahab and Moby Dick has subsided.  The Pequod and its crew are quickly sinking to the bottom of the ocean, but from the surface of the sea all seems calm.  Ahab left a huge vortex in his wake that sucked down all the crew but one, but after they are gone the “shroud of the sea” covers them all, never to be seen again.  As before, Melville speaks to his belief in the essentially untouchable character of nature.  “The sea rolls on as it rolled five thousand years ago,” and Melville believes it will roll on, unaltered, for five thousand more.  In comparison to such a powerful, faceless, inevitability, the challenges and triumphs of humanity seem very small and inconsequential.  In the face of a conflated God and Nature, the drama of Ahab, the Pequod, and Moby Dick are dismissed as minor irrelevancies.

“…the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed his [Ahab’s eyes]; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber…”

Much can be made of the above quotation for it has much thought inspiring substance packed into a short space. To begin, the first line lays bare the odd relationship between Ahab and his secret harpooner. A relationship where the power structure is not what it ought. No matter the imagined strength of the Fedallah’s magic, Ahab is still the captain of the Pequod, but by all accounts seems himself captained by the Parsi’s convulsions and murmured prophecies. Further, Ahab is a New England Quaker who by tradition has no business consorting with the likes of a Parsi. But Ahab is no ordinary man, and needless to say, by practice at least, no longer a Quaker.

That first line, nay the second word, makes clear that Fedallah is no simple figure. ““Inscrutable”” to the crew, but also to the reader. This post is indeed a testament to the debate that surrounds the character’s character; and by character I of course mean moral fiber. Decades gone by and still no one is sure whether he was penned as good or evil. (My take is that he was penned as ambiguous; there to spark and keep the interest of the masses-and provide fodder for discussions such as this.)

Finally, the last line. At first glance, this seems a indication of some spiritual possession or sorcery. Indeed in may be so. However, there could well be other explanations. In previous posts I have attempted to rationalize some of the characters’ primary attributes. Fedallah does not sleep. This can certainly be interpreted in a mystical manner, and if one is reading the novel in that light, so be it. But if one reads the novel as a comenntary on the whaling industry/culture (Stubb and Flask: Alcoholic and pothead), Fedallah’s lack of sleep could well be read as stress induced insomnia; brought on by prolonged separation from his native culture/immersion into an alien one. Or possible still, brought on by the constant paranoia born of his perceived (prophesied) impending meeting with/death by the white whale. That explanation also serves to rationalize the prophesies as the delusions of a man stressed to the breaking point by a career of danger in a foreign culture, topped by a clandestine voyage of revenge.

In Chapter 126, “The Life-Buoy,” Starbuck and the rest of the gang are confronted with the idea of making Queequeg’s former coffin into a substitution life-buoy for the one previously lost from the Pequod. In Starbuck’s practical yet nervous fashion, he instructs the ship’s carpenter to carry out this oddly morbid task, giving him step-by-step instructions on how to do the job until the carpenter shoos him away. After Starbuck takes his leave, the carpenter goes on to complain about his new assignment:

Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he wont put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I don’t like this cobbling sort of business—I don’t like it at all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something regularly begins at the beginning and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end…

I realize this above passage is a lot to deal with at once, but the carpenter’s main complaint is that the work he is told to complete, i.e. turning his previously made coffin into a life-buoy, is an “undignified” sort of work, the kind meant for someone of a lower station than his. The carpenter seems to think this because he is not given a new job in constructing this life-buoy, but is rather “tinkering” with something already made, even though it was done so by him. Thus, what mostly disturbs the carpenter is the idea of a never-ending job. (I’ll return to this point shortly.) His grumblings about such work lowering his station serve as a mere distraction for the deeper bother that pervades the situation of turning a vehicle of death into a vehicle of life, a bother that Starbuck transfers onto him with his nervous fussing about how the carpenter is to complete this task. We can see by their dialogue that Starbuck clearly annoys the carpenter with this fussing, and this annoyance prompts the carpenter’s soliloquy more than the lowly stigma of the job does. The situation is akin to when your mother makes you do the dishes against your will, and you mumble about how the dish soap smells bad when you really find the scent quite appealing but cannot simply acquiesce to the disagreeable task.
However, the carpenter does seem particularly caught up in the idea of the “never-ending job,” to which I previously alluded. He makes something that goes unused, and now he must make it to serve an entirely opposite purpose. The idea of this would frustrate anyone, but one would think the carpenter an exception to this rule in a circumstance in which he has the power to, essentially, convert death into life. Yet the carpenter exhibits complete indifference to such concepts, nonchalantly stating that Queequeg, the ungrateful man, would not even “put his head into” the coffin the carpenter had crafted for him! Instead, the carpenter favors the importance of a set of opposites different from that of life and death; he focuses on the idea of new versus worked-over, and “mathematical” versus muddled. As for the former in regards to labor, the carpenter’s favoring of the new alludes to a preference for trade work over labor in the fields and other types of maintenance work. If you work in a craft, you renew your work every day, creating a new table, for instance, each time one is commissioned. If you toil in the fields or mend people’s dysfunctional items, performing labor akin to those of slaves and the lower classes, your work is never fresh- you are always toiling from the same, old cloth, so to speak. This exposes the way society, in Melville’s time, prompted people to view different types of work as more or less “dignified.”
On the topic of the carpenter favoring the “mathematical” over the muddled, this could relate to the idea of skilled versus unskilled labor. However, I think this has something to say about fate, destiny- people’s lives. Though the carpenter refers directly to his job of converting the coffin, he may also be saying that people go about changing their minds in regards to their destinies. Queequeg cannot just commission a coffin one day and suggest it be turned into a life-buoy the next! He has no respect for fate, in behaving so. The carpenter thinks things (humans, in particular) should have finite lives (of which they are not completely in control), consisting of clear beginnings and expiration dates. This, too, relates back to his preference for trade work over cyclical labor in the fields or the mending of broken goods. Fixing the broken or changing an object’s use is going against the idea of destiny. In turning the coffin into a life-buoy, the carpenter is wary of messing with fate.

Throughout Moby Dick, Melville obsesses over the concept of sanity, and the delicate balance inside each of us that can be tipped fairly easily. In Moby Dick, power is most frequently what is hanging in balance. Too much power, exemplified by Ahab, causes insanity. We find Ahab consumed by his absolute rule over his boat. This is the reason why he doesn’t emerge from the boat until they are well out to sea, and the reason why he dislikes gams. Ahab is so entangled in the societal microcosm of the Pequod that he shies away from contact with outsiders for fear of disrupting the bubble in which he is the master.

On the other end of the spectrum is Pip, whose utter lack of control eventually drives him to insanity. Already a slave, Pip’s sanity is broken when Stubb leaves him behind after he jumps overboard for fear of a whale:

Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably…The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body, but drowned the infinite of his soul (401)

Here Melville explores Ahab’s counterpart. Pip’s control over his own existence was so completely lost, that he resigned himself to a passive form of insanity as opposed to Ahab’s active.

But what of narration? These accounts of insanity give the reader a clue into the mental state of the narrator himself, be he Ishmael of Melville. Ahab hunts Moby Dick, because Moby Dick is the only thing that Ahab does not feel he has control over. The narrator, much like Ahab, is obsessed with his own sanity and mental processes because it is the only thing a person is sure they are in control of. Pip’s fall from sanity fascinates and terrifies both Melville and Ishmael.

Man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. (402)

The narrator here explores the fine line that we all tread between sanity and insanity, admitting at this point that he himself is unsure of which side he falls.

It will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself (402)

What does this reveal about the novel in its entirety? If the narrator himself is insane, then how can one rely on his judgments of other characters? Perhaps these are questions that Melville wanted the reader to ask in order to make the reader question their own sanity, and perhaps realize that sanity is fragile and relative.

Having gotten to know Ahab thus far as the irreligious, vengeance-driven captain of the Pequod, it is interesting how quickly God comes up when Ahab’s pious first mate, Starbuck, directly questions the captain’s actions.  When an oil leak forms on the ship, a problem normally corrected by “upping the Burtons,” Ahab indifferently refuses to follow the regulatory procedures.  He says the only important goal of the trip is the capture of Moby Dick, and that the oil means nothing to him regardless of the owners’ expectations.

Ahab is infuriated with Starbuck’s dissension: “‘Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me? – On deck!’” And later, “‘There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod’” (494).

Ahab does not often mention Devils or God in any context.  Of course, in this situation, he uses religious rhetoric to paint himself as God, verbally smiting Starbuck for even thinking critically of his methods.  Not exactly a revelation of Ahab’s oft-hidden piety.  But what does this say about Ahab’s perception of God?  If he is serious about his belief that the almighty is not to be questioned, he is treading on thin ice in his quest to kill Moby Dick.  We have seen throughout the text ways in which God could be represented in the traditional sense, by the whale Moby Dick itself, or by the vast power and mysteriousness of nature and the ocean.  In any of these cases, Ahab is doing much more than just “thinking critically” about or against God’s will with his journey.  He is directly challenging the almighty.

Interestingly enough, Ahab eventually relents to Starbuck’s courageous request and orders the upping of the Burtons.  Ishmael wonders if it may have been a “flash of honesty” that caused Ahab’s uncharacteristically rational action.  Does this passage show a sense of deference to a higher being by Ahab?  A shred of a conscience, or honesty, or morality?  Does Ahab reference God to appeal to Starbuck, or is his mind often consumed by religion?  It appears as if all these questions, along with the resolution to a growing rivalry between Starbuck and Ahab, will be further hashed out as the novel continues.

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