Moby Dick

Trying to catch sight of Ishmael’s narration is like to trying to catch sight of Moby-Dick:  it’s elusive, volatile and unpredictable, emerging and submerging beneath the surface.

From the beginning one can imagine Ishmael disappearing into the narrative as he weaves in and out of the nautical streets of Nantucket.  Yet, now, after his long absence, like the poor wife of Starbuck, we must ask, where has he gone?

Ishmael clearly has some explaining to do.  Appropriately, in the chapter titled Moby Dick, he offers us an explanation for his behavior:

How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire–by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be–what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,–all this to explain would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffle sound of his pick? (180, Signet)

One gets the feeling that Ishmael doesn’t know where his narration is going, akin to an episode of Lost. His admission here complicates the view of him as an omniscient narrator.  He has limits.  There are some thoughts and occurrences that he cannot fully understand or explain. Like the miner he speaks of, he gets lost in the tunnel and begins feeling his way around.

In Ch. 45 he even admits that he’s not much of a narrator, “So far what there may be of a narrative in this book…” (195). Nevertheless, he feels compelled to take on the task; in the chapter The Whiteness of the Whale, he lets the reader for a moment into his subconscious: “…how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught” (181). This is both a confession of weakness and strength by the narrator.

Ishmael is of course neither omnipresent nor omniscient.  The question is whether his narration is; I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that Ishmael ever quits being narrator, so I assume that he is narrating even during the omniscient parts.  His narration is certainly not omnipresent, as we all know too well.

In Chapter 46, humorously titled Surmises, which are thoughts or ideas based on scanty evidence (Merriam-Webster), Ishmael surmises on the thoughts swimming through Ahab’s head: his need for tools (Starbuck being one of them), the reason why he enjoyed going after other whales (it reminded him of Moby Dick), and how anxious he must have been to protect himself (his men would want to be paid after emerging from their euphoric state).

Just a few chapters earlier, in Ch. 44 The Chart, Ishmael appears to shift into an omniscient form of narration, as James mentions in his post.  I think Surmising stands in stark contrast with this chapter, almost like a foil, illustrating Ishmael’s limits as a narrator.

Here, he is not surmising on Ahab’s thought, but describing the scene. This chapter does not attempt to explain Ahab’s psychological motives, which he can only guess at, but his mechanical scheming to catch Moby-Dick, which does have a certain logic to it, as evidenced by the footnote (191).  The ending of the chapter and its emotional depth are based on explosive observations: Ahab rushing out of his cabin and shouting exclamations into the night.

Perhaps, Ishmael, too, cannot explain what is behind the unreasoning mask.

“surmises.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010.

Merriam-Webster Online. 11 February 2010

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/surmises>

This post not quite fit under Characters and Characterization, but more under general morality.  I will post it in Characters and Characterization, however, because I feel like it connects to my previous post about Melville’s anthropomorphization of the whale.

In Chapter 61, the mate Stubb kills a whale, as evident by the title.  Ishmael seems to sympathize with this doomed creature.

lazily undulating in the trough of the sea , and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon.  But that pipe, poor whale, was they last. (p. 275)

This whale seems somewhat human to Ishmael, lounging in the sun and smoking a pipe.  In fact, the pipe is important, as Stubb, the avid smoker, deals the death blow to this creature.  In fact, his final act in this chapter is to scatter “the dead ashes” of his own pipe over the water, looking at the whale’s corpse (p. 279).  This act is vastly symbolic.  The whale and Stubb are linked by the human affectation of the pipe, yet one kills the other, with seemingly little remorse.

Several chapters later, in Chapter 66, Ishmael describes the whale as a dish.  This is prompted by Stubbs’ consumption of a steak from the fellow smoker he slaughtered earlier.  Ishmael ponders

who is not a cannibal?  I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provided Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest  on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-fois-gras (p. 292).

Ishmael seems to see eating an animal as a cannibalistic act, the same as eating a human.  However, this seems to be partially based on the civilized, enlightened nature of the gourmand, implying that he should know better.  If that is Ishmael’s stance, it would undoubtedly apply to Stubb, who is relatively educated and from America, a man of some standing on this ship.  Furthermore, he kills and consumes and animal with remarkable similarities to himself, both physically and in actions (the suggestion of smoking).  Is Stubb a cannibal?  It seems that Ishmael may, indirectly, be implying that.  But the bigger issue seems to be one of sympathy for the animals, perhaps even more than sympathy for the “lean missionary.”  Animals, from whales to geese, are seen as human-like by Ishmael, or at least worthy of concern.  One wonders, then, why this man has enlisted on a whaling voyage, or even how he can manage to eat meat.  Perhaps, like many other issues, Ishmael is merely pondering and reflecting, not claiming to develop an answer.

(New York: Signet Classic, 1998)

While Moby Dick’s narrative is characterized for the most part by Ishmael’s inner monologue and musings, there are several distinct, extreme shifts in narrative that Melville employs. One of the most obvious, and important switches in narrative is when Melville adopts an omniscient narrator, and Ishmael seems to vanish altogether. This omniscient narrator doesn’t emerge until the Pequod is out to sea, as it is used to develop the other characters on the boat, namely Ahab. Because Ishmael’s ability to be everywhere at once is obviously implausible, Melville uses this style of narration because characters such as Ahab, and Starbuck are equally important to the novel.

Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin…you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom…Where thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head, continually rocked with the momentum of the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow (190)

Here we find a vivid description of Ahab in the most inaccessible part of the boat to Ishmael: his cabin. Because of this, it is certain that Ishmael is detached from the narrative altogether. This is employed to diminish Ishmael’s role in the story, thus giving the reader a sense that Ishmael is not in control of the narrative, the boat, or his destiny. Melville uses shifting narrative to establish and emphasize the power hierarchy on the ship. Ahab is quite often the object of omniscient narrative, however Melville also devotes a similar style chapter to the thoughts of Starbuck. In both cases, Melville provides inner monologues, as well as intimate glimpses into the characters’ lives.

It is also important to note how Melville frames these chapters with stage directions, akin to a Shakespearean tragedy. I think that this was done on purpose to present the novel as such, establish fatal flaws, and foreshadow the catastrophe that is to come.

In chapter 44, The Chart, Ishmael describes the intriguing migratory patterns of the sperm whale, which he claims, were they studied and displayed in a chart, “would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows (191).”  He says that attempts have been made at composing such charts, likely disappointed that documented proof doesn’t exist yet.

However, he includes a footnote on that page, in which he mentions that such a chart was near completion, parts of which had been included in “an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory, Washington, April 16, 1851,” apparently published after Ishmael’s telling of the Moby-Dick epic.  This narrative situation is rather confusing, given that the actual book was published in 1851 and that Melville was synthesizing all of these components.  It does make it much more dimensional written this way; Melville could have simply had Ishmael state that sperm whales travel in interesting patterns, but he chose to be circuitous, complicating things by having Ishmael claim something, then pretending that that Ishmael later found scientific evidence of that claim.

Points like this in the text, I think, spark the epic tale and protect it from being dull.  It is also funny how Melville – although he did have some experience whaling – was no scientist himself, but cited natural phenomenon, like whale migrations, as if he was one.  I would not be surprised if, like Ishmael seems to do here, Melville himself obsessively read scientific literature in effort to sound authoritative.

…any man unaccustomed to such sights…would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.

The sharks which accompany the whalers on their hunts and in the butchering of their whales embody the mystical, savage energy Melville ascribes to the sea.  The image of sharks in the sea as maggots in cheese is a particularly revealing metaphor.  When Melville was writing, many people believed that maggots and other small vermin arose to life spontaneously from inanimate matter.  “Spontaneous generation” was conclusively disproved later in the century, but in the beginning of the 19th century it didn’t seem so obvious.  Life was thought to arise in all sorts of places as a more animated form of the matter from which it came.  In this sense, the sharks that infest the waters around the Pequod are literally the physical incarnation of the sea’s uncontrollable, irrational force.  The water teems with its deadly progeny, both incredible and terrifying to behold.

They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound…A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed.  Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharkss almost took poor Queequeg’s hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.

The sharks do not possess any sense of self-preservation beyond their all-consuming desire to eat, which drives them even to eat themselves when wounded by the whaling spades.  In this respect, their manic drive mirrors that of Ahab.  To the sharks, the whaling spades might as well be a force of nature, unfathomable and unassailable.  Ahab was also wounded by a force of nature, but unlike the sharks, he has the ability to envision the being which “demasted” him.  His thirst for revenge is not unlike the sharks’ thirst for blood which causes them to gorge on their own entrails, and in his quest he eventually consumes himself.  Taking the Ahab-as-shark metaphor to the next level, Ahab might be interpreted as already dead.  Without any reason or understanding, he, like the dead shark, can only snap out compulsively at whatever draws near him.  Unfortunately for the crew of the Pequod, their fates are inextricably linked to that of their mad captain.

The topic that was randomly assigned to me was Environment and nature, which for the sake of this blog and a few others I will assume to be vague. Let’s just say I’m examining the social environment in Ahab’s mind, and his thirst for destroying a whale, which is a part of nature.  When reading Moby Dick, and Ahab’s insane reason for hunting a whale, i couldn’t help but think of a masculinity issue being at play. The descriptions of past Ahab’s character as a good captain would’ve endeared me to him before he was shown if I hadn’t already heard how crazy he was in pop culture. However eventually  we come to see him as a man devoid of really any other characteristics besides his vengeance for a beast without reason. In class and in other circles, Ahab’s injury is seen as one that robbed him masculinity. He was essentially “de-masted”. Reading this book, I couldn’t help but agree. Not only did the accident rob him of really any functioning position beside captain, but in is thirst for vengeance their seems to be a lack of passion for anything else in the whaling ship that does not discern Moby. As the crew hunts down a non-Moby whale in the graphically memorable “Stubbs kills a whale” chapter, Ahab is completely separate from this, mostly disappointed. This is seen in clear contrast to the rest of the crew when the omnipresent narrator takes over and we get to see his actions as coldly calculating. I could talk in length about his death in this subject; him jumping off with spear in hand in a final effort to take down Moby, but I really feel anyone could tell where I would go with this… My point is really that Ahab’s first fateful encounter of the whale robbed him most of all any other base emotion beside an obsessive vengeance. In hunting down Moby I think, and I know I’m reaching, that Ahab was either trying to take it back or express the only form of masculinity he had left. “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!”

The religious themes in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, appear quite often. Captain Ahab appears to be the religious analogue of the bringer of chaos and doom. Ishmael slowly manages to see the true nature of Captain Ahab. Ahab begins to spend less time in the cabin, feeling that he is not getting any work done. Captain Ahab is rarely seen and Elijah appears often to help Ishmael and Queequeg manage their goals for the day. Strangely enough though, Ishmael talks about how he values the whaling profession as a profitable career and how it satisfies kings and queens, due to the value of whale oil.

Interestingly enough, Ishmael delves into cetology, as he converses about the various types of leviathans that exist. The leviathan exists in the Bible as a monstrous sea creature that is nigh invulnerable to all forms of physical attacks. The leviathan is also described as bringing chaos and doom to whoever sails on the sea. The White Whale in Moby Dick is delineated as being legendary, omnipresent, eternal and immortal. On another note, Ahab can be seen as the devil here, as he offers to give the crew a Spanish ounce of gold if they successfully locate the White Whale. I can see Ahab as the devil here because he represents the snake that entices Adam and Eve with the apple, that should bring them happiness and glee, but instead gives them only lots of trouble. Just like the devil dooms both Adam and Eve, Captain Ahab dooms his own crewmen and harpooners. In a similar manner, the crew of the ship will eventually have to deal with the monolithic White Whale. Furthermore, Gabriel thinks that Moby Dick is the incarnation of the Shaker God and one of the seamen hears a peculiar sound, which might in fact be God.

Chapter thirty-two in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick deals exclusively with Ishmael’s own categorization system for whales.  Throughout this chapter, Ishmael tells the reader everything he has experienced or has heard of that would be useful in distinguishing whales from one another.  Yet, the most common piece of knowledge is that whales are largely a mystery.  Ishmael begins the chapter with quotations regarding this mysteriousness, this “ impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea” (126).  Despite this grounding in mystery, Ishmael goes on to provide the reader with his own set of classifications for the whale.  These are based largely on size and then appearance.  Within these divisions, whales are discussed regarding their value to whalers, primarily the value of their oil.  However, he also comments on whales’ sociability:

The Fin-Back is not gregarious.  He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters.  Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this Leviathan seems to be the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back.

From there I drew a similarity from the way Ishmael discusses whale to the way in which he discusses men.  He also feels the need to categorize men based on their birthplace.  The three mates on the Pequod are all introduced with their origins as one of their chief characteristics.  Just as Ishmael judges whales based on the value of their oil, he seems to judge men based on their affinity with water.  The Lakeman, while being born far from the ocean, is still respected because the Great Lakes have given him similar experiences.  The Canallers are predisposed to betrayal due to their upbringing along the Erie Canal.

And yet in reality, this sort of stereotyping comes about because so much is unknown about individuals.  Ishmael is able to classify people based on his limited experience and on what he has heard from others, just as he classifies whales.  I found this to be yet another example of the science of whales being intertwined with Ishmael’s views on humanity.

There are three chapters in a row – “The Chapel,” “The Pulpit,” and “The Sermon” – all dedicated to religion and Ishmael’s interaction with faith and church.  We may learn more about Ishmael’s beliefs, however, from his reaction to Queequeg’s religious rituals.  Queequeg is certainly what the white Christian American of the 1850’s would call a savage – his most frequent religious act is to worship a wooden Congo Idol baby.  Ishmael tempers his unexpected affinity for Queequeg by persistently referencing his otherness – he is a “comely looking cannibal” (43), “just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner” (47), and so on.

But instead of using religion as a trope to highlight a savage vs. civilized, pagan vs. Christian paradox that relegates “others” to sub-human status, Ishmael uses his religion to do the opposite.  “I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects” (102).  Not only does he equalize the “savage” Queequeg as a fellow-mortal, he says this is the good Presbyterian thing to do.  This short passage was likely unsettling to readers who considered themselves good Christians and who looked down upon “savages” like Queequeg for their strange, exotic, violent, uncivilized behavior, along with their pagan rituals.  Based on his relationship with a savage that started as his bed-mate, Ishmael rejects any hierarchical view of religion: “Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending” (102).

Even before his story has moved to the ship, Melville is making the argument that men of different backgrounds and religions can live as equals, and that “savages” are often not very different at all.

The narrator is at the helm of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. While Captain Ahab may be in charge of the ship, Ishmael is our crazed captain, sailing us through the story. It seems that Melville wrote in 20th century parlance what would have been termed “a romance” through the style of a travel narrative, which was the form that was most familiar to him. Melville has created such a chaotic world, both on land and on “the watery part,” that a narrator just as complex is needed to steer the ship. Melville is not giving us a docked story, but a ship, which must be steered to reach its destination.

Ishmael is the frothy film between the murky depths and us.  We are not given the undiluted ocean, the whole truth, the whole, watery body of knowledge.  We are told everything through Ishmael’s perspective.  There is an arduous attempt to recreate reality through great observational detail, but all we are left with are the lines left in the sand after the waves have receded back into the ocean.  Ishmael, as a prophet, is left with a great burden.  He must convince us of the reality of the story, despite the fact that the water tastes less salty when it has not touched our lips.

In many ways, we have to take Ishmael on faith.  We can call him Ishmael, and we can believe his story—or we can choose not to.  In Chapter 18, Captain Peleg of the Pequod tells Ishmael, “Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon… why Father Mapple himself couldn’t beat it, and he’s reckoned something” (86, Signet ed.).

What is Ishmael’s purpose as a narrator? Is it actually to tell us a story or to tell us a sermon?  It is pretty evident from the beginning that he is back-narrating the story, so he could not have remembered much detail, yet he retells such colorful conversations and striking sermons word-for-word.  Though I don’t see an omniscient form of narrative emerging yet, I do see a narrator with a God-like memory, or imagination.

In fact, if Ishmael is better at telling sermons than Father Mapple, how do we know that he did not author the sermon in Chapter 9 himself?  I think it is likely.  It is so rife with whaling references that it would make the sub-sub-librarian blush.  I think it also has too many parallels to the unfolding plot of the story, and that Melville, the writer, would not miss a chance like this to make some of the themes of the book explicit.

For instance, when Jonah boards the ship, the priest comments:

“In their gamesome but still serious way one [sailor] whispers to the other—‘Jack, he’s robbed  a widow;’ or, ‘Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;’ or, “Harry lad, I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom” (41).

When Ishmael boards the Pequod, Captain Peleg asks him:

“What makes thee want to go a-whaling, eh?—it looks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh?—Hast not been a pirate, hast thou?—Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?—Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea” (68)?

God (Yahweh in Hebrew) chooses Jonah; “The lot is [his]” (44). Queequeg’s idol, Yojo, selects Ishmael (65).

And another:

“The hard hand of God is upon [Jonah]” (44). Ishmael remembers finding a “supernatural hand” placed in his as a child after waking from a nightmare (25-26).

In class, we heard Melville’s style compared to jazz music, but I’d like to compare it to the music of someone one wouldn’t typically associate it with. Charlie Chaplin once recalled having this discussion with the great Romantic composer Rachmaninoff:

I remember [Vladimir] Horowitz, the pianist… Just before the war [World War II] I dined at his house with his wife, the daughter of Toscanini. Rachmaninoff and Barbirolli were there… It was an intimate dinner, just five of us.

It seems that each time art is discussed I have a different explanation of it. Why not? That evening I said that art was an additional emotion applied to skillful technique. Someone brought the topic round to religion and I confessed I was not a believer. Rachmaninoff quickly interposed: “But how can you have art without religion?”

I was stumped for a moment. “I don’t think we are talking about the same thing,” I said. “My concept of religion is a belief in a dogma–that art is a feeling more than a belief.”

“So is religion,” he answered. After that I shut up.

Rachmaninoff meant religion as a feeling, as an obsession which pervades one’s work.  Could religion or obsession also be guiding this narrative?  Could Melville be trying to show that aspect of religion, i.e., its very essence?  Ishmael is obsessed with the waves, the sea, and ocean life.  Are “his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean”(46)?

Throughout the story, it may be Ishmael’s invisible hand that is guiding us.