Moby Dick

What drives a man to give up a normal life on land to pursue a whale at sea? Is it revenge? A power struggle? An insane madness that does not cease? Or perhaps it is something else entirely different, something divine. For Captain Ahab, the desire to destroy the white whale does not seem to come solely from revenge; it also comes from God. In Chapter 132 “The Symphony,” Ahab reveals what he believes is the real source of his quest to kill the whale:

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, or God, that lifts this arm? If the great sun moves not of himself, but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I (521).

In what seems to be a radical departure from the confident Captain of previous chapters, Ahab shows a side of him that seems uncertain of his own free will. Is Ahab fighting God because God makes Ahab do it, or is this God fighting Himself? Ahab paints God as a sort of puppet master, a being that plays an active role in the lives of its creations and makes them do what it wants. This type of Christian God seems to derive from Calvinism, a branch of Christianity that did not believe that people could have a personal relationship with the divine. Calvinists also believed in predestination — God controlled their lives and ordained before a person’s birth whether or not he or she was to be saved or damned. It is interesting that throughout the novel, Ahab seems to be fighting against God by forging his own destiny, but now he questions whether it was Ahab or God who controlled his fate.

This depiction of God as a puppet master is not entirely surprising, however. Given the time period and Melville’s own religious beliefs, this image of God is almost to be expected. The fact that it appears so late in the novel is, however, of interest. Perhaps Melville does this to show that we can never truly escape God no matter how hard we may try. We are all simply puppets on God’s strings. Still, there is something to be said about Ahab’s humbling speech; the idea of a God that literally controls every aspect of one’s life (from breathing to thinking) is a disturbing yet comforting thought. On the one hand, to imagine a being that directs your life, that “lifts your arm,” suggests that one literally has no control whatsoever over one’s life. On the other hand, it also means that one is not accountable for one’s actions, which could be an excuse for otherwise inexcusable or unexplainable behavior.

Ahab’s statement also raises a thought: if Ahab is pursuing the white whale (which could be viewed as God or a symbol of God) and he is doing this because God wills it, does this mean that God is fighting Himself? And if this is so, then why? To be honest I don’t have answers to these questions; I can only speculate that Melville is challenging his readers to consider all possibilities. One thing is certain: Ahab commits completely to his cause to destroy Moby Dick, no matter how foolish he believes it to be in the end. Whether this is an act of God or out of Ahab’s free remains a mystery.

A more detailed discussion of Jonah is in order.  We first hear of him in Father Mapple’s sermon.  Jonah is the prophet in the apocryphal Bible story who refuses his calling and escapes to sea.  He brings trouble to the ship, is tossed overboard, and then God sends a whale to swallow him.  He begs God to save his life, and he is returned to dry land to fulfill his duties as a prophet.  Jonah is usually a model for repentance.  Father Mapple says: “Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you as a model for repentance.  Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah” (41).

The story of Jonah ends strangely.  Jonah returns to land to tell the city of Nineveh of the punishment its people will receive from God for being wicked.  The people repent and refuse food and water, hoping to appeal to God’s compassionate nature.  This convinces God to have mercy on the city.

After this, Jonah becomes angry.  He tells God: “was not this my saying, when I was yet in mine own country? Therefore I fled beforehand unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious G-d, and compassionate, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil.”  I take him to mean: “I knew you were compassionate and you would spare Nineveh.  Why did you need me?”  After this, Jonah begs for death.  God simply asks him how angry he is.  Jonah escapes to the desert and again begs for his death.

I think this story is much more mysterious than traditional interpretations allow.  While Father Mapple’s vision of repentance is beautiful in its way, I cannot read it like that.  Jonah is angry with God for the life he was given, and he asks him to take it away.  Ahab, then—and I think the rest of the Pequod crew by extension—is another Jonah, but he does not share the prophet’s passivity.  He is a rewrite of Jonah with an intense drive for rebellion.

The death-wish is worth mentioning again.  Ishmael confesses his suicidal nature at the beginning of the book, calling his trips to the ocean a “substitute for pistol and ball.” All of the whalers of the Pequod, in the carelessness in the face of death, seem to have these feelings.  All of them are rebelling against the place that has been given to them.  This becomes particularly relevant to the non-white harpooneers.

In the end, Ahab is struck down by the whale.  God was willing to tolerate passive Jonah, but not a man such as Ahab.

The Hebrew Bible Online, Book of Jonah Chapter 4: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Jonah4.html

“The Forge” makes for an intriguing chapter regardless of the critical lens being used to analyze the text. When thinking about the narration in the story it is important to pay very careful attention to Melville’s choice of words as this gives us insight into how the given narrative voice feels about the scene. Through this, if the reader takes the description of the scene in “The Forge” seriously and analyzes specific word choices there can be seen indicators of where Melville intends to take the plot of the story and how he feels about the characters involved.

It is interesting to note the adjectives Ahab uses to describe the intended quality of this harpoon. Ahab wants to “…make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the icy sea”, which conjures up interesting images. Though the scene of the forge is fiery and dark, the weapon itself is to be forged to be as powerful as the cold. I feel that in this word choice Melville is hinting at many possible conclusions to be drawn about the text. In Dante’s “Inferno” Satan himself sits in the lowest circle of hell encased not in flames like the rest of hell, but instead in ice. It is possible that Melville is hinting at the fact that Moby Dick is Satan himself because he resides in the icy sea, and Ahab’s madness has caused him to sell his soul and is using the power of evil in an attempt to fight another evil. Equally likely, and just as ominous, is that Ahab is actually intended to be the personification of Satan, and through the use of his cold weaponry he intends to do battle with God, Moby Dick.

When the reader takes into consideration that there is a quote from Paradise Lost inserted into the novel by Melville it makes the possibility of Ahab being linked to Satan even more likely. But then what can the reader make of the harpooners’ involvement in the scene? We have no reason to think that Queequeg is satanic, and even though he clearly does not follow the church Melville goes out of his way to present Queequeg in such a positive way throughout the whole novel that one should certainly be more inclined to associate him with the holy than the satanic. In light of this I would like to make a claim that I understand will be rather controversial. I believe that Melville inserted the harpooners into the scene to show that their association with Paganism did not make them unholy, but instead to show that a faith other than Christian Protestantism lends itself to having a greater chance of unintentional corruption. Notice that Ahab offers a benediction over the baptized harpoon in Latin, a language associated with Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism. This action seems to “other” the people involved in the scene by showing that while those involved may be similar to the others on the ship, gathered in this room are the people that reject determinism. Dagoo, Tashtego, Queequeg, Ahab, and Pip. While these characters all fall on different ends of the “good and evil” spectrum it is undeniable that there is something not Protestant about all of them for their own unique reasons.

I am fascinated by the possibility of this being Melville’s intent in writing this section of “The Forge”. What could this possibly mean for the rest of the novel? I frankly can not sort out in my mind what Melville is trying to say about determinism when we see both good and evil characters coming together sharing in this aspect of non-protestant faith. Perhaps this is what Melville wants the reaction of the reader to be. After all, is determinism a good thing or a bad thing? Free will is kind of a burden isn’t it? Would a loving God place the weight of free will on the shoulders of believers? That is definitely something I can’t answer in two pages!

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/

In the fifty-first chapter of Moby Dick, Melville presents “The Spirit Spout”, a whale spout that is spotted once every few nights for a period of time while the men are aboard The Pequod.  It becomes clear that the Spout represents some sort of deity: at one point, the Spout is described as “some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea”.  When the watchman announces the Spout for the first time, “every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging”.  Yet, despite their efforts, this whale proves impossible to catch, and disappears quite mysteriously.  Thus, the Spout represents a fleeting and intangible spiritual presence.

When examining Ahab’s reaction to the first announcement of the Spirit Spout’s presence, the reader catches a glimpse into Ahab’s own complicated relationship with spirituality:

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread.  The best man in the ship must take the helm…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 limb sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked.

The point most clearly evidenced in this passage is Ahab’s struggle with the fact that a potentially higher power controls his life and death.  This duality is quite present in Ahab, represented by his two different legs and the different sounds they make as he walks, Ishmael’s statement of “on life and death this old man walked”.  As this passage shows, Ahab is clearly not in a happy state while he walks.  This walking, and this clear portrayal of this duality within him, is brought about by the sighting of this spiritual presence.  Ahab desperately wants to capture this presence, yet he cannot.

Ahab makes it clear that he is keenly interested in capturing this whale, which is particularly noteworthy because as I noted above, the chapter makes it clear that the Spout represents some kind of deity.  Ahab is desperate to catch the Spout, as shown by his command that the “best man must take the helm”.  Furthermore, Ahab shows a great sense of urgency, “walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides”.  Yet, despite his most intense efforts and the efforts of the crew, the whale proves unattainable.  The Spout taunts them night after night, yet is never located and caught.  This shows the unattainability of the deity, which frustrates Ahab to no end, who cannot accept the fact that he is not in control of his own mortality.

The final interesting point brought about by this passage, and a point which is made frequently by Melville in this book, is Melville’s willingness to include and thus question the existence of other religions.  Ishmael describes the Spout not as, “God, plumed and glittering” but as “some plumed and glittering god” which suggests that it is possible that more than one god exists.  Furthermore, when the preparations of the sailors to lower the ships are being described, Ishmael says it was as if “some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging”.  Ishmael does not say “a Godly presence” lighted in the rigging, but “some..spirit”.  This suggests that Melville is willing to acknowledge the existence of spiritual presences besides God.

Regardless of whether the Spout represents God or an incompletely formed concept of some deity, it is made clear that Ahab feels as though he wants to catch whatever is in control of his own mortality, yet, because he is indeed a mortal, he cannot.

In my first post I noted that Captain Ahab shared his name with the notorious King Ahab from the Book of Kings (1 Kings 16). Though it seemed apparent that Captain Ahab had the flaw of hubris, it was still not clear if he would follow the path of King Ahab. While overseeing the production of the harpoon that will be used to kill Moby Dick, Ahab seems to transform into someone entirely different. He uses the blood of the pagan “savages” in the making of the harpoon and exclaims:

Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli! (471)

Translated from Latin, Ahab’s cry becomes clear: “I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil!” With these words, Ahab seems to revoke his faith in God and monotheism by invoking the name of the devil and using pagan blood in the making of the harpoon. Ahab’s faith in God to help him succeed in his mission has been lost; he appears to have turned against God. This parallels nicely with King Ahab, who gave up monotheism to worship the pagan god Baal.

Now that Captain Ahab has begun to fulfill his destiny that came with his name, what is Melville trying to say? There is, no doubt, something unsettling about the unholy baptism that Ahab performs. It is no longer just about Moby Dick anymore. I can’t help but think of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which (from what I know about it) details Satan’s attempt to wage war in Heaven and his ultimate banishment to Hell. Captain Ahab, too, seems to be a “hell-raiser,” an individual who is not afraid to stir up a little trouble. Ahab is saying, “No!” to God by purposefully corrupting the Sacrament of Baptism and continuing on his pursuit to destroy the whale. If Ahab sees Moby Dick as God, or at least an agent of God, then it appears that he is in fact trying to overcome and metaphorically kill God. Thus he is no longer only Captain Ahab and “King Ahab,” but also Satan himself.

This side of Ahab, the part of him that relentlessly seeks the whale and willingly “blasphemes” against God, is only one part of him. To complicate matters further, Melville gives the reader a glimpse into who could be the “real” Captain Ahab in Chapter 132 “The Symphony.” I will discuss this chapter in my next blog post and how it gives some clues as to what exactly drives Ahab in his crazed pursuit of the whale (beyond simple revenge).

Sources:

1. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Kings+16&version=NIV (1 Kings 16:29-34)

Not until yesterday’s class had I put any thought to the idea that the chapter named “The Spirit-Spout” might indeed by a premonition of the future of the Pequod.  But as I reread the chapter, I found that I had underlined the following passage in my first reading,

“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 limb sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked.  But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.” (225)

The second sentence of the passage especially struck me because of the image of Ahab as man who is at the same time alive and dead, “his one live leg…every stroke of his dead limb…”(225)  Although Ahab often times seems to hide in his cabin, the Pequod is his tool of accomplishing his goal of killing the white whale; thus the every lives of the Pequod and her crew hang on his decisions and mood.  Thus second sentence seems to suggest that the Pequod hangs on the balance of life and death and Ahab’s ivory leg is a reminder of the possible ensuing death.  Furthermore, is Ishmael suggesting that the voyage could possibly go either way; success or failure?

I believe that that question is answered with the phantom spout or “Spirit-Spout”.  It is as though nature is teasing Ahab and his crew.  The spout is a reminder that the Pequod had a choice to break from Ahab’s devious plan to kill the white whale but chose not to.  Thus every night the phantom spout reminds them of their doomed journey.  It is as though a ghost lurks in the background, haunting every member of the crew.  The warning of doom did not end with the phantom spout, Ishmael also comments on the unusual birds that also haunt the deck.  He states, “And every morning, perched on our stays, row of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation…” (226) He suggests that perhaps nature, through the actions of the birds, has deemed the boat and its crew dead.  Perhaps the ship and the crew have become ghosts at sea just like the “Spirit-Spout”?

As we reread and reflected on “The Spirit Spout” (Ch. 51) in class today, I approached it from a spiritual perspective, perhaps due to the name of the chapter.  What I found within, however, is a sort of summation of Captain Ahab’s hubris, how it spreads to the crew and yet another foreshadowing of the consequences, but this time in a more spiritual sense than solely a religious one (I believe that there is a difference, anyway). 

In the very start of the chapter, Ishmael makes a direct connection between the spout and a higher power: “Lit up by the moon, [the spout] looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea” (Melville 253).  Perhaps some extension or appendage of god or gods (a pagan reference?), the spout is representing the whale as something beyond man’s reach.  This idea is only deepened by the failed chases that continue into the chapter, giving an image of forever chasing something that will yield nothing if it doesn’t want to. 

Once the image of the spout as a celestial extension is produced, the spread of hubris around the ship is easy to see.  Despite the fact that all of these spouts occur at night, the men desperately and continually (at least for a time) chase after these mysterious occurrences in the dark.   Ahab’s personal harpooner, Fedallah, seems to be sort of responsible for the fervor that has risen among the men:

“‘There she blows!’ Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure.  For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.” (254)

With Fedallah prevoking the crew with his war cry, almost every man aboard would lower in the dark if they approached the creature that produced the spout, an action which Ahab would most certainly support if the spout proved to belong to Moby Dick, as he and the crew seem to believe: “It seemed… that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick” (254).  As we discussed in class, the crew seems very willing to give Moby Dick a malevolent intention which he does not naturally posess, believing that the whale was “treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas” (255). 

By giving the whale this dark power, they are arming it with the very weapons needed for their downfall, an occurrence that is heavily foreshadowed.  As soon as the spout is first spotted, Ahab begins to roam the deck, and his very pacing was indicative of a death rattle: “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” (254).  Only Ishmael seems to be aware that now that the Captain has the crew on his side, their doom is almost certainly sealed.

After spending today’s class talking about Melville’s ecocentricism (or lack thereof), I would like to point out some religious connections with his love of nature. I personally believe that Melville did “worship” all living things under the sun. It is for this reason that Ishmael spends so much time analyzing the ferocity and grandeur of the whale by describing the shape of it’s head and other anatomically symbolic attributes. This love for all nature, to me, is part of Ishmael’s religious perspective because he believes all creatures were created by God and we are as menacing to nature as nature is to us.

In chapter 66, The Shark Massacre, this sentiment is evident. In the first few lines, Ishmael describes such violent and ferocious creatures as “wondrous” and “vigorous” (271). When Queequeg and Stubb begin killing the sharks with whaling spades, Ishmael refers to it as a murder. He slightly humanizes the sharks even though they are menacing, violent, and eating the whale attached to the ship. The language Ishmael uses is also very unsure. When he describes the sharks being stabbed in the skulls, he calls the brains the “seemingly only vital part,” “entrails seemed swallowed,” and “a generic vitality seemed to lurk in what might be called the individual life” (272). Ishmael’s uncertainty proves that he, or Melville, believes nature should not be tampered with, and humans do not know as much as we think about other species. This connects to our discussion on global warming as well: since we are the “dominant and most developed” species on the planet, we think we can conquer and understand everything that is foreign to us.

From this passage I infer that Melville believes men should stick to what they know and leave alone what is out of their hands. God created all creatures to peacefully coexist, and he did not intend for men to disrupt the system as Queequeg and Stubb did. Ishmael has faith that God made all of nature with equal intent, and Ishmael trusts God’s decision. Queequeg, on the other hand, does not. At the end of the chapter he acknowledges this sentiment: “Queequeg no care what god made him shark, wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one damn Ingin” (272).

In class we also brought up the common sentiment, especially present in Ahab, that nature is malevolent to humans. Ishmael/Melville clearly do not believe this if Ishmael is personifying sharks. In this regard the narrator thinks that it is selfish for men to claim such a high status in a world of things created equally. God made the sharks just as he made us, therefore the sharks find us just as malevolent toward them as we think they are toward us. This view of creation is very philosophical and very optimistic, but it is not surprising considering Ishmael’s tendency to philosophize everything. For once, his religious perspectives are happy and trustworthy.

Though he wrote Moby Dick before the wave of “science versus religion” debates that came when Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, it appears that Herman Melville was more than familiar with the tension between science and religion. In Chapter 58, Ishmael makes a powerful remark regarding the sea, noting that, “Man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it” (267). Ishmael suggests that man has become too powerful, that humans no longer have any sense of wonder and awe in regards to the sea. Similarly, Melville could be suggesting that by attempting to conquer nature (and the world) through science, humans have abandoned feelings of “awfulness” and “awe-fulness” when considering God.

If the sea can be taken as a metaphor for the power of God, or even an extension of said power, then it does appear that Melville is commenting upon his society’s growing apathy toward the “divine being.” Why is this important to Melville? Perhaps he felt that the conflict between religion and science could be reconciled; science can only answer so much, and while there is nothing wrong in attempting to understand our world, it is beyond human capacity to conquer it. We must accept that there are some things that we will never be able to do or understand.

This quote could also serve as a warning to the crew aboard the Pequod; since they seek to overcome fate and destroy Moby Dick, they are accepting that they have indeed lost their fear of the sea — and God. As hinted throughout the entire book, things will more than likely not end favorably for the crew aboard the Pequod, suggesting that the awfulness of God and sea will return to mankind (if the Pequod is to serve as a example).

Looking at Ishmael’s quotation from a modern perspective, it almost seems strange to think that the people of the mid-19th century believed they had control over the world when, over a hundred years later, humans have extended further control over nature and are still attempting to conquer it. I wonder what Melville would have thought of our modern world if he could have seen it; would he stay firm in his assertion that we have lost our sense of “awfulness of the sea” and God? Or perhaps he would say that we have lost the sense, but are aware of that loss. It is striking to see how easily Ishmael’s quote can relate to modern day debates between faith and science; we are still struggling, it seems.