Moby Dick

I noticed in Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand” that there are numerous religious allusions.  It is evident that Herman Melville intentionally writes in a sexual manner and refers directly to the pleasure and joy of squeezing sperm with his hands.  However, the religious undertones are quite implicit.  Melville, I feel, draws an obvious connection between religion and sexuality.

First of all, for Ishmael, sperm represents a religious deliverance for it dissipates anger, bad temper, ill-willed thought, and all forms of malice.  Ishmael describes the joy of bathing his hands in the sperm.  “… while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever” (page 601).  The fact that Melville uses the word “divinely” connects sexuality to religion.

Ishmael’s feelings of affection and comraderie with his fellow-whalemen while holding and squeezing their hands together in the globules of sperm, reminds me of the part of the Church service when we turn to each other in the pews and greet one another saying, “Peace be with you.”

Another reference that Ishmael makes connecting religion and sex is his longing to squeeze sperm “eternally.”  “I am ready to squeeze case eternally” (page 602).  His reference to eternity can be seen as a religious connotation.  Furthermore, he goes on to say that he dreams and has “… visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti” (page 602).  How odd it is to imagine Heaven inhabited by angels delighting themselves in jars of semen!!  It is incredibly that in this one chapter, Melville meshes both eroticism and religion.

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.

There’s something to be said about a narrator who finds not just religious significance—but religion itself—in a whale penis. In brief chapter ninety-five, “The Cassock,” Ishmael equates whale member with paganism and Christianity alike, and in doing so describes an inherently gruesome piece of cetological anatomy as a transformative and powerful icon.

After a quick physical description of the “wondrous cone,” Ishmael launches into a mystic tangent inspired by the member, which he describes thusly:

…as jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea, and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did despose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook of Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15^th chapter of the first book of Kings.

Here, Ishmael likens the penis to Yojo, without whose influence Ishmael would have never found the Pequod, and to the pole of Asherah, a Semitic fertility goddess, for which the biblical Queen Maachah was defrocked of her widowed Queen status. In doing so, he ascribes to a squalid hunk of dead animal flesh a power capable of wisdom, fertility, and temptation. Needless to say, this is an unreasonable amount of significance for even the most dedicated whaler to derive from severed genitalia—unless, of course, Melville was trying to make a point.

[I’d like for a second to break form and make note of two things—one, that here again we see Melville toying with male sexuality (be it human or otherwise), and two, that this passage marks yet another reference to the book of Kings, this time explicitly.]

Melville’s “point,” if he has one, becomes clear in the remainder of the chapter. Ishmael takes the subsequent paragraph to describe in meticulous detail the calculated method behind the task of a “mincer,” which is to remove the pelt of the member, hang the pelt to dry, and out of it to create a protective coat. Melville describes the man after he dons the coat: “The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.” Melville’s choice of the word “canonicals,” with its obvious religious denotation, paints the mincer as a cleric or clergyman, whose duty is a religious one. The curious use of second person pronouns and imperative commands (i.e., “ Look at the sailor…”) in this paragraph suggests a invitation to the reader by Ishmael to bear witness to the religious event. Ishmael continues: “Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.” With this sentence, Ishmael suggests that not only does the whale-penis coat signify the performance of a religious act, but also that it is a unique and necessary component of the act itself.

The third paragraph makes a religious implication even more obvious: “Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishoprick, what a lad for Pope were this mincer!” The penis has lived up to its promise of power by this point, having taken a normal whaling man and transformed him into (Ishmael would say so, anyway) a Papal candidate. In describing it thusly, Ishmael elevates what he admits in the first paragraph to be an oft-overlooked piece of a whale’s anatomy to a mystical, transformative icon. Melville’s aforementioned “point” might be, then, that the whale, even taken in piecemeal, is an extraordinarily powerful beast and symbol. Or maybe he’s talking about God. Or maybe Ishmael’s just sexually attracted to whales. Whatever Melville’s really trying to say, he makes a strong case for it by convincingly relating Pope and whale penis.

While reading chapter 93, The Castaway, a striking resemblance was drawn between Pip’s enlightenment and the foundation of Buddhism. Although I concede that Melville was–quite obviously–Christian and the entire book is dripping with biblical allusions, I find this sequence of events to be Melville’s way of giving other religions a “cameo,” so to speak.

Before Pip goes overboard, he is nervous and emotional. In Buddhism, the goal of enlightenment is to achieve nirvana and escape from the endless cycle of suffering that plagues human existence. In the most basic Buddhist scriptures, a normal, seemingly happy person undergoes suffering. This person could be Pip: he has his troubles but never bothers to rid himself of them. The only possible escape is salvation or heaven, which can be achieved if he lives a moral, proper, Christian life. Buddhism rejects the existence of a superior being and salvation. The ultimate goal is enlightenment and understanding, and sins are accepted as normal human behavior.

The reason I think Pip goes through a Buddhist-like enlightenment is because he has an incredible and frightening encounter with nature at its purest: he is left in the middle of the ocean. The first buddha–with the intention of gaining enlightenment (this is the primary difference between the two stories)–sits under a bodhi tree and opens his mind to nature and nothing else; eventually gaining perfect understanding of the universe. The buddha “comes at last to celestial thought” (Melville 372), just as Pip does.

The ship mates call Pip mad when he tries to describe his experience because they are not used to such philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Buddhism–or any Eastern spirituality–had not yet been introduced to places outside its native India and surrounding countries, and Americans were very set in their religious ways. Melville acknowledges this by calling this foreign religious experience “absurd and frantic” (372).

Furthermore, Pip’s concrete belief in Christianity, God, heaven, etc. would make such an enlightenment very unsettling and damaging to his mind. Christianity leaves little room for the awareness and understanding present in Buddhism, because Christians are instructed to place all their hope and trust in God. For Pip, the disenchantment with the beliefs he’s carried for his entire life would make him, as the ship mates call him, “mad.” This would explain Melville’s remark “So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense,” (372) meaning that if not prepares, men can lose their sense of self if they undergo such a traumatic enlightenment. Pip’s experience was traumatic and unexpected. This is the key difference between Pip and the Buddha: the Buddha was seeking such an experience, and all the pain and suffering he went through in the process was self-inflicted. Pip’s path to enlightenment was abrupt and unwanted, therefore causing his “insanity.”

Pervasive throughout Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick are references to religion, particularly Catholicism.   As the concepts of Heaven and Hell are central to this religion, it only makes sense for references of them to be prolific in this novel.

An epitomizing example of Heaven-on-Earth occurs in the chapter “A Squeeze of the Hand”.  In it, the protagonist Ishmael describes the experience of tempering and preparing the spermaceti while aboard the whaling ship the Pequod:

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,–literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that expressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it…while bathing in that bath, I felt free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

It is impossible to say that this is an inaccurate description of what the bliss of Heaven must feel like.  Ishmael’s mind is at ease and wholly content.  His physical sensations are pleasant and easy.  Even the surrounding sea, which is so often described as tumultuous, is calm and serene.  Ishmael even goes so far as to say that he feels “divinely free” from any malevolent sentiment whatsoever.  Melville makes it clear that Ishmael’s experience is perhaps next to Godly it is so positive.

Contrastingly, Ishmael is undoubtedly describing a secular Hell when he describes the try-works of the ship, which are used to boil the oil out of whales’ blubber:

Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.  Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time.  It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funeral pyres.  It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

This passage is absolutely steeped in Hellish references.  The description of the fiery burning of the whale can be very easily equated to Hell-fire.  Not only is it fire, but even its smoke is absolutely unbearable to inhale, but when around it “inhale it you must”, as one in Hell is forcibly subjected to Hell’s miseries.  Furthermore, Melville makes clear the nearness of death in this passage, mentioning that the smoke smells like the smoke one would smell from a funeral pyre.  This is an unbearably graphic image, the smell of human bodies burning, and once again, an image very reminiscent of Hell.  Furthermore, Melville assigns a Hindoo-like quality to the smell, suggesting its sacreligious (to Catholicism, anyway) and thus Hell-like nature.  Finally, Melville makes a very direct reference to Catholicism, mentioning that the try-works have a smell similar to the smell one would encounter on Judgment Day, and undoubtedly such an unpleasant smell would not be issued for anyone traveling to Heaven.

This presentation of dualities by Melville, particularly in chapters so close to another (there is only one very short chapter between them), reminds the reader that Heaven and Hell are not so far apart.  Both are experienced by Ishmael on the Pequod within a very short time span in the novel.  Perhaps this is echoing Melville’s ideas of a Calvinist fate, and is his way of showing to his audience that Heaven and Hell are both possible for any of us, and not only that, but that our mortality is inevitable and the afterlife is not far away.

Indeed, Ahab does see himself as a David based character since he seeks revenge against the White Whale.  In the Bible, David sought revenge against Goliath, who “was over nine feet tall” (1 Samuel 17:1-58, New International Version).  In a similar fashion, Goliath is as monolithic compared to David, as the White Whale is to Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab sees himself as the David character facing a Goliath, or Moby Dick.  Interestingly enough, the Post-Classical Jewish traditions emphasized Goliath as the one who represents paganism, as opposed to David, who is seen as the champion of the God of Israel. Knowing that David defeated Goliath in his youth, and later became a King, exactly shows that as one falls, another rises.  Clearly, David seized Goliath’s power and became a very important and influential figure in society.  David, from the Bible, even appears to have almost the same character and personality as Captain Ahab does.  “This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.  Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves;  for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands” (1 Samuel 17:1-58).  David here is aggressive  and seeks to exact revenge.  Captain Ahab also has the same fire  and obsessive passion to exact revenge and achieve his goals, as does David.   The manner in which David prepares for war and battle against the Goliath, parallels with the way in which Captain Ahab intends to finally bring down and kill Moby Dick.  The irony of it all is that Captain Ahab does not become victorious as he does not manage to survive.  However, much of David’s personality and character resonates with Captain Ahab.

In Chapter 123, “The Musket,”  Starbuck struggles with himself over shooting Ahab.  If he did, he would have the chance to return home safely, protecting the rest of the crew from a suicidal mission.  But he would be committing murder.  He asks, “Is heaven a murderer when its lighting strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together?”  (Melville, 456)  Can God murder?  Can God still be holy if God does kill someone, even if that person is a potential murderer?  And can a sin be nullified if it is for the protection of someone else?  Whose life is more sacred?  I have no answers to these questions, and I cannot dream of passing judgement on Starbuck.  Maybe Melville includes this chapter so that the readers will reflect on themselves and determine what is most valuable in their lives.

This idea of self-reflection is elaborated upon when Melville says that “Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel.”  (456)  This description alludes to the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Genesis 32:22-31.  The angel appears to Jacob after he has already spent several days preparing to meet with his brother Esau, whom he is afraid will attack.  (Biblegateway)  I see the confrontation with the angel as a physical representation of Jacob wrestling with his fears and his relationship to his brother.  And although Jacob does not win the fight, he receives a blessing.

Genesis 32:30 says that “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.'” (Biblegateway)  Since Starbuck’s opponent is another part of himself, isn’t part of him God?   This relates back to the idea that we discussed about Narcissus and never knowing oneself.  God, after all, is unknowable.  Maybe Melville says that God is the part of a person that he or she can never understand.  During Starbuck’s internal struggle, he sees his true self and what he is capable of — “he [sees] God face to face.”  He survives this encounter, making him stronger.  Just like Jacob, Starbuck has “struggled with God and with men and [has] overcome.” (Genesis 32:28, Biblegateway)  Jacob had to realize what he was capable of and how special he was before he could face his brother; Starbuck has to realize how strong he is by confronting both Ahab and his own desires before he can confront his future.  If Starbuck fought God, then by not killing Ahab, he, like Jacob, lost that first battle.  But maybe he will be rewarded with a happy future, just as Jacob received a blessing?  Or that’s just wishful thinking on my part.  If nothing else, he now knows who he is.

“Genesis 32” Biblegateway. New International Version, Web. 14 Feb 2010. <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%2032&version=NIV>

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

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.

For all its florid prose and general lack of literary discipline, Melville’s writing often resembles some of the most affecting religious rhetoric I’ve ever heard. In the last paragraph of chapter forty-two, when Ishmael seemingly relates whale, God, heathen, color, nature, and philosophy with the unifying principle of whiteness—he preaches. He is sermonizing. One characteristic particular to the sermon (other than religious content) is the invocation of the congregation; the most effective sermons have some kind of central theme on which the speaker will indirectly entreat an audience to meditate, by way of imagery, metaphors, parallels, related scripture, etc. By creating several powerful, beautiful images into which he weaves themes of religion and colorlessness, Melville makes a sermonic plea to his audience through Ishmael to entertain a particular interpretation of the whiteness of the whale.

One of the most overtly religious suggestions in the passage comes in the form of a question addressed by Ishmael to the reader:

Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? (175)

The question itself makes an obvious request of the reader, if not for an answer, for at least a consideration. However, therein lies the problem; Melville here presents the reader with an impossible paradox to digest. The idea of simultaneous color and colorlessness is not something empirically observable in the natural world, and as a result, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the concept extended visually to an infinite blanket of snow. Thus, the reader’s immediate reaction might be to “shrink” away from such an inherently contradictory image, before the question is even asked. Given the effect of the image, then, the reader is more likely to accept the implication of Ishmael’s rhetorical question: “we” avoid at all costs anything impossibly paradoxical. The mention of atheism after the em-dash seems almost a logical leap, or at least an unqualified parallel. However, it comes across in analysis as an attempt by Ishmael (and, by extension, Melville) to, now that the reader has already been given something he or she can accept, get him or her to agree to something that might indeed be unrelated. Many an effective sermon will follow this same practice: incite fear or confusion by presenting an audience with some grave improbability, win them back with some easily digested and relatable conclusion, and—when their guard is down—slip in something vaguely controversial. Melville sets his audience up for confusion, comforts them for “shrinking” from it, and somehow implies their adversity to atheism.

This passage (paragraph, even) would take me volumes to explore, but my space here is limited, so I’ll stick briefly to one more quotation. Ishmael begins to close his lengthy dissertation on whiteness with something that sounds oddly like a myth or parable:

[L]ike wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.

Instead of invoking the reader, Ishmael fills out this second snow-related image with several anonymous characters in a bleakly exotic landscape. With this situation-as-metaphor, instead of seeking the reader’s acceptance, Ishmael seems to assume the reader’s total investment in his words. By this point, he makes the religious aspect of his argument clear by casting the “protagonists” of his metaphor as no different from infidels. Ishmael seems to have become more comfortable, by this sentence in the paragraph, with the religious implications of his musings, and so incorporates religion far more liberally into his language.  The image he paints and situation he describes have a clear pro-religious agenda, like that of a Christian parable: simply put, whiteness, like religious infidelity, is something beautifully tempting, but with dire consequences. Why dress up such a simple message? The only answer seems to be form; like any Christian sermon, Ishmael’s words mustn’t say anything about whiteness. Via ornamented metaphors, they have to show it.

In “The Jeroboam’s Story”, the Pequod encounters the ship the Jeroboam, aboard which is a sailor claiming himself to be the archangel prophet Gabriel.  In the past, Gabriel declared that Moby Dick was “no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated” (306).  After Gabriel warns that the ship should not hunt Moby-Dick, the crew spots Moby-Dick and one of the ship’s mates, Macey, attempts to harpoon him, at which point Macey, and only Macey, is tossed into the sea “for ever sank” (307).

This mere claim of Gabriel, that Moby-Dick is the Shaker God, supports the theory that Moby-Dick is an instantiation of God.  Not only does Gabriel predict that misfortune will fall on anyone who attempts to kill Moby-Dick/God, this misfortune is actualized, lending credence to Gabriel’s claim.  Furthermore, in the Bible, Gabriel was a prophet who predicted the birth of two prominent figures, John the Baptist and Jesus.  Thus, Gabriel’s prophetic name further upholds the validity his conviction that Moby-Dick is God – if the Gabriel in the Bible was able to predict the birth of such a Biblically important figure as Jesus, then shouldn’t Gabriel of the Jeroboam be able to predict whether or not Moby-Dick is God?

In response to the account of Macey’s death, Ishmael points out that accidents of the kind that befell Macey are “almost as frequent as any” (307).  This causes reader doubt whether or not Moby-Dick should be thought of as God.  Perhaps this sort of accident is typical of whaling, of all whales, and nothing to note as particularly significant.  However, immediately after providing this doubt-inspiring comment, Ishmael then contradicts it, saying that in these types of accidents,

Strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the man being stark dead (307).

This suggestion of mystery involved in these accidents once again brings in the concept of divine intervention.  Perhaps the divinity of all whales, or the divinity of the sea, is what causes these men to be retrieved from the sea seemingly unharmed (except for, of course, the fact that they’re dead).  One would think that upon being hurtled into such a tumultuous environment as the struggle between a whale and a whaling ship, a man would be marred.  The fact that many of these men are not once again supports the idea that divinity is at work.

The contending points brought out in this chapter show that Melville/Ishmael are wrestling with the idea of the divinity of Moby-Dick.  It seems as though neither is willing to commit to the idea that Moby-Dick either represents, or does not represent, God.  Or perhaps the contradictory flavor of this chapter does not dictate that Melville/Ishmael are unsure of their sentiment on this subject, but rather that they are simply unwilling to show this sentiment to the reader.