Moby Dick

For my final post directly related to “Moby Dick,” I wanted to go back to one of my favorite chapters in the novel.  I found one moment in “Grand Armada” to be one of the most touching in the text.  While before Starbuck had bemoaned the fact the Pequod’s crew had so little of their human mothers in them, Ishmael’s brief encounter with mother whales and their own children invites the reader to see similar social constructs in the animals which have been portrayed so antagonistically up to this point.  In this one moment of serenity, we sense that Ishmael may see the whale as not so different from men after all.

It is no coincidence that Queequeg and Starbuck are the men who share this quiet insight with Ishmael.  Both men have been previously “feminized” in the text, at least within the context of the violent, hyper-masculine crew.  As Queequeg is a celebrated killer of whales and a purported savage, it is ironic that he seems the most alarmed by any harm coming to this “nursery.”  His horrified reaction seems based more on instinct than any calculated assessment of the situation, as if he knows it is somehow inherently wrong to bring violence upon this peaceful herd.  As I think we discussed in class, this incident is one example of how Melville may have been asking his readers to feel sympathy for the hunted animals.  For by disrupting this calm natural balance the crew brings disaster down onto themselves.  It has already been suggested that without a maternal influence, the men of the Pequod are destined to commit acts of violence and inhumanity.  One could argue then, that the destruction of the maternal element in the ocean by the crew foreshadows the violence that will be done unto them by the same principle.

Interestingly, the next chapter delves further into this gendered description of whales in that female whales are depicted as creatures that exist as part of a peaceful and cohesive community.  In contrast with this, he also develops more parallels between man and whale by indirectly associating Ahab with the aged male whales that go off on their own belligerent paths.  In this sense Ahab and the crew of the Pequod are again disrupting a natural balance struck within the group of whales themselves.  Together these two chapters offer a surprisingly human interpretation of the beast, a portrayal which I have a difficult time believing was not meant to elicit some degree of sympathy or at least contemplation on the part of the reader.

In Chapter 128, “The Pequod Meets the Rachel,” the reader experiences one of Captain Ahab’s cruelest and most selfish moments in the novel. As he slows his speed to meet the other ship, Ahab unhesitatingly calls out in question of the white whale. He sickly yet predictably exhibits maniacal joy upon hearing from the captain that Moby Dick has indeed been sighted.

Next, this other captain boards The Pequod to petition his urgent cause to Ahab. One of his ship’s whale-boats has recently been lost, and on it is his twelve year-old son; thus, he pleads to Ahab to have the two ships join forces in pursuit of his son and other lost crewmates and agrees to pay entirely for the forty-eight hour search to make up for The Pequod’s lost profits during what Stubb describes as “the height of the whaling season” (469). This captain attempts to present his case in such a way that Ahab must relate to it and agree wholeheartedly to the request. In fact, the conversation between the two – if we can even call it a conversation, as Ahab does not utter a word until the very end – is like a man-to-man kind of talk. The captain tries to appeal foremost to Ahab’s sense of paternal affection and protectiveness: for instance, he implores, “‘Do to me as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a boy, Captain Ahab – though but a child, and nestling safely at home – a child of your old age too – Yes, yes, you relent; I see it – run, run, men, now, and stand by to square in the yards’” (470).

However, there are warning signs to us readers that Ahab is not about to acquiesce – particularly in terms of his body language and facial expression. All while the captain of the Rachel expresses the graveness and desperation of his dilemma, Ahab is described as listening “icily” and standing “like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own” (470). This prepares us for his negative response: Ahab abruptly and curtly cuts off the fellow captain, just as he is assuming that The Pequod will join the hunt for his loved one, and rejects his wish. Ahab claims that his ship cannot afford to lose any time and that it must carry on its way at full speed; subsequently, “hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin, leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter rejection of his so earnest suit” (470). Ahab’s feelings have hardened so much so that he does not feel the homosocial bonds that should connect to him to other men and other sailors. He has abandoned the empathy and compassion of a parent. The only hunt Ahab is interested in is his personal one for vengeance. As I read this, I couldn’t help but tear up – Ahab is so sick and twisted, he cannot pause his chase for two days to help another man find his kin? Even Ahab’s crew, many of whom live in fear of their absolutist monarch, expect to take the more sympathetic and less selfish course, as Stubb remarks, “‘His son!…oh, it’s his son he’s lost! I take back the coat and watch-what says Ahab? We must save that boy’” (469).

Besides revealing more about Ahab as a character, this chapter lends the reader some interesting historical information about common whaling practices in the nineteenth century. The narrator informs us that, although not true in this case with the Rachel, a Nantucket captain typically sent his son away for three to four years to sail aboard another ship besides his own. This was done out of fear of the father losing his neutrality, which could negatively affect the success of the whaling expedition and the development of the young boy. Melville writes, “the first knowledge of a whaleman’s career shall be unenervated by any chance display of a father’s natural but untimely partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and concern” (470). As a boy growing up to be a whaler in Nantucket, you better have been prepared to grow up fast! No holding your father’s hand. And perhaps the captain of the Rachel has to learn a harsh lesson for going against the grain and trying to simultaneously play the roles of captain and father. Unfortunately for him in Chapter 128, he encounters the wrong ship run by the wrong man. Most likely his son will be lost forever to the mother sea…

In Melville’s short story Benito Cereno there appear many of the same themes and dynamics as we observed in Moby Dick. Here, however, we do see women aboard: the “Negresses”  (as Melville calls them) or female slaves upon the San Dominick. In one particular moment, our antagonist Captain Delano sees one of these women asleep with her child crawling by her:

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering Negress…lying… like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts was her wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from the deck…its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her…This incident prompted him to remark the other Negresses more particularly than before… Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as doves.

Both the women and her child are directly compared to animals. It is true that Babo is also described as being a kind of faithful dog to the Spanish captain, but his physical proximity to this white man and his sense of purpose place him in a different rhelm than the black women. This is the common idea of how race creates the notion of the “other”, but even this label has its own divisions; a women of a “lesser” race is more of an “other” than a man of the same.

This idea is further suggested by the relationship between Don Benito and Babo. In Moby Dick, we discussed the homo-social and homo-erotic elements aboard the Pequod, but I wrote a post on how these undertones surfaced due to the natural sexuality of all human beings coupled with the absence of women. Here women are present, yet Babo’s affection is directed not towards them but towards his male “master” and captain. Babo supports Don Benito in many ways including physically:

so that, the better to support him, the servant, placing his master’s hand on his naked shoulder, and gently holding it there, formed himself into a sort of crutch.

This image is somehow sensual and suggestive. This element is present as well in the chapter In the Cuddy, when Babo shaves Don Benito:

the servant commenced operations by throwing back his master’s collar and loosening his cravat.

And when Babo accidentally draws blood, he and Don Benito remain afterwards on good terms causing Captain Delano to consider it all “a sort of love-quarrel”. It seems then that Melville continues in this story on his social commentary or at least questioning of masculinity, sexuality and race. But though we may,as we did in Moby Dick, be struck by the apparently anti-racist push of Melville by reading such bold moments as the following:

“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano. “Don Benito, I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him.”

This angelic, bumbling slave is in the end a dangerous, violent and manipulative being. Thus, as always, we are left questioning (perhaps along with Melville) what the message really is and what aspects are the result of prejudices and uncertainties.

As one of the most explicitly gendered chapters in the entire novel, “The Symphony” provides a host of opportunities for interpretation.  Neither does Melville seem entirely consistent with what he describes as “feminine” or “masculine,” within this chapter or throughout the text as a whole.  The “masculine sea” in “The Symphony” has been decidedly feminine and even maternal in the past, and other female descriptions of the natural world in the chapter seem to conflict with this masculinized sea that is a part of it.  In fact, the “strong, troubled murderous thinkings” of the sea creatures seem to describe Ahab more than anything – furthering the idea that he is somehow apart from the rest of the world, and also foreshadowing the violent nature of what is to come.  I was especially surprised to hear the (feminine and natural) world called a “step-mother” for Ahab, “cruel – and forbidding” in the past but which actually “now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck” (479).  Reading this I was curious if by 1850 the “cruel step-mother” stereotype that has been so reinforced in modern culture had yet taken root.

Nevertheless, if Ahab has indeed lost his humanity, as we have discussed several times in class, then it makes sense for the feminized world encompassing humanity and nature to be only indirectly related to him – thus a stepmother rather than a biological mother.  As this chapter is all about making the reader sympathize with the grizzled old captain, that he is again distanced from this world by some “cruel” force even as he describes his desire to return to his family and the world of normalcy is very bittersweet.  In fact, the thing that holds him back again and again seems to be himself, “the cantankerous thing in his soul” (478).  Perhaps Mother Nature herself is responsible for putting this “thing” there and driving him to these lengths; and yet, even if he would now be welcome into this other world represented by his “stepmother,” it is too late for Ahab to turn back.  What began as a chapter with some margin of hope that Ahab could accept the embrace of the world at large and abandon his suicidal search for Moby Dick ends with bleak resignation that Ahab is doomed, unable to shake off the cruel binds of his calling.

Ishmael’s farewell to Queequeg in “Queequeg in His Coffin” is fascinating and revealing in our studying of their specific relationship and the relationships between men in Moby Dick. Melville’s writing in this chapter is beautiful, stirring, and emotional. Ishmael goes well beyond feeling mere sympathy for Queequeg in his weakened, feverish state, as he acknowledges the connection that has formed between him and his “poor pagan companion, and bosom friend, Queequeg” (425). I find Ishmael’s use of the expression “bosom friend” unusual, because, while fairly common in the nineteenth century, it was more traditionally applied to friendships between women. For instance, I recall Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables being a particular fan of the saying when she spoke of her relationship with Diana Barry. Then again, the dynamic between Ishmael and Queequeg has always defied traditional gender roles, as we can remember from their nights of sleeping together as if man and wife before even boarding the Pequod.

Yet, despite Ishmael’s undeniable closeness to and affection for Queequeg, he continues to describe his companion as a pagan, as a savage, as an “Other.” He again emphasizes the tattoos that cover the harpooner’s body; as his body shrinks away, Ishmael claims that “there seemed to be little left of him, but his frame and tattooing” (425). Going even further to Orientalize his friend and cast him outside traditional white culture, Ishmael compares the dying Queequeg to a slimy lizard!: “The tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well” (425). However, as we have come to expect, Ishmael is often full of contradictions. He observes the softness and mildness that Queequeg exudes in his sickened state. Also, while some of these passages indicate that Ishmael continues to view his culture as superior, he exhibits at least some respect and reverence for the culture of the Other a bit deeper into the chapter: “[Queequeg] had learned that all whaleman who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milk way” (426). This is easily one of the most beautifully worded images in the entire novel. It proves that Ishmael does have it in him, perhaps more so than a typical white American, to treat the traditions and practices of a foreign culture with delicateness and understanding. He even bridges the cultures by correlating a custom held for dead whalers in Queequeg’s world and a custom held for dead whalers in Nantucket. Considering the intimacy of Ishmael and Queequeg, I would have expected more of this language from our narrator by this point in the novel. Despite the bonds of male-to-male friendship, some judgment, ignorance, and racism inevitably remain.

I also found it fitting that Queequeg wants to be buried alongside his harpoon in his coffin-like canoe. Even though the fever weakens him and brings him within an inch of death, he demands that it not emasculate him. Being buried with his weapon honors his hard work during life as a whaling harpooner and reaffirms his masculinity. This is interesting considering that Queequeg is often feminized and portrayed as crossing the typical gender divide more so than the other sailors on the Pequod. But again asserting his manliness, the harpooner immediately calls for his weapon when he recovers (out of nowhere, seemingly) from his fever. He practically returns from the dead and wants to rejoin the battle within seconds: “He suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fit” (429). The harpooner is back!

I posted to the environment, nature category on the Spirit Spout. My post was entiteled “which is worse?”

Ah, the Spirit Spout. The chapter that supposes the great whale is following the Peaquod. Rife with foreshadowing and ominous imagery, this chapter can also be read as a testimony to the serenity and solitude of the sea–and the tricks such solitude can play in the minds of men. Alone for an eternity without so much as a humpback to show for it, the crew of the Peaquod have become accustomed to an empty ocean; a monotonous, pristine blue-grey sheet that plods along til disappearing beneath the fog of the horizon. Once broken by a spout–real or imagined–the shattered serenity evokes nightmarish thoughts of monsters and fiendish leviathans. Indeed the sea has been for some time their peaceful feminine companion, but as becomes clear in “The Symphony,” it had begun to turn on them in their minds. No longer peaceful, serene, and feminine, the once calm sea now the portent of their impending downfall.

Sailors of a whaling vessel had little to go by in the way of guarantees. The industry of Melville’s era did not benefit from the technologies of today’s world. Fishing then was a crapshoot of epic proportions. For the men of Ahab’s craft, the prospects of a payday were ever-dwindling and the horror of their doom-bound journey was creeping ever steadily into their consciousness. These were men primed for a conjured sign–a affirmation of their terrible destiny. Form the standpoint of a psychologist, the Peaquod was a case study for the breeding grounds of group-effect driven hysteria. One man’s diluted vision yielded the panic (or beginnings thereof) of an entire crew.

From reading Moby Dick in high school, I always remembered “The Whiteness of the Whale” as my favorite chapter because of the eloquence of Melville’s writing. Is this chapter perhaps the best study in prose of a single color, ever? He explores the imagery and symbolism of whiteness across various references in various settings. Most importantly for this class and this topic, “The Whiteness of the Whale” helps readers to understand classifications of masculinity and how gender functions in the novel.

For Ishmael, this chapter is his announcement of the most horrifying attribute of the whale– its whiteness: “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me” (168). Whiteness is associated with “majesty” and the “divine,” but also “panic,” “dread,” and the “ghastly.” The color and the significance of the color become gendered by Ishmael: he links whiteness to men. Firstly, he notes that various nations “have in some way recognized a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric old kings of Pegu placing the title ‘Lord of the White Elephants’ above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue….whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds” (168). Absolutist monarchies of the past were propagandized by rulers as divine, or divinely acquired; so white, as a “symbol of the divine spotlessness” according to Ishmael, is an appropriate color to characterize those in power (168). White is associated with hegemonic patriarchy, which includes male-ruled politics, male-governed justice, and male-monitored religion. It is the color that represents the regality, wisdom, and all-out might of men.

Ishmael offers a contrast, that white is also linked to “the innocence of brides,” and thus their purity and virginity (168). This is an important acknowledgement because white can take on multiple forms and is not wholly male-owned or masculine in tone. But in the realm of men, it is attached to those who hold absolute power and may be prone to acts of terror and cruelty (…as we know that absolute power corrupts absolutely). Just as the King of Prussia rules over his land – and nation states have historically been referred to in the feminine, France and England and Russia described by historians through pronouns “she” and “her” – the white, male Moby Dick rules over his feminized sea.

The metaphor and symbolism of the color white can naturally be extended to race. As is evident through the hierarchy aboard the Pequod, the white men have control over the brown, ethnic, “othered” male. Ishmael notes that “this pre-eminence in [whiteness] applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe” (168).

Ishmael uses other articulate references to describe the elusiveness and awfulness of white, including the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The White Mountains and, more specifically, Mount Chocorua (their tallest peak), were habitually depicted in landscapes by the artists of the Hudson River School in the mid-nineteenth century. These artists believed in painting landscapes as evocations of the sublimity and divinity of nature, and thus the White Mountains were entirely appropriate as subject matter.

Based on Ishmael’s description, white is also associated with redemption: “in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed” (169). This phrase calls to mind the ivory white stub of Captain Ahab; perhaps the reader can infer that his artificial leg symbolizes his survival and redemption. He had fought Moby Dick, and while scathed, he carried on after the confrontation. Similarly, the captain of the Samuel Enderby from London, who we meet in Chapter 100, “Leg and Arm,” possesses an ivory white arm after he lost his real arm in a treacherous rendez-vous with the white whale. Moby Dick is characterized in this chapter as an “old great-grandfather” with “a milky-white head and hump, all crows’ feet and wrinkles” (391). The English captain also describes him as “the noblest and biggest” whale he ever saw (392). This depiction adds to our understanding of whiteness: the whiteness of the massive monster enhances his aura of wisdom, nobility, regality, and strength. Moby Dick’s tail is “like a marble steeple” that came down and ripped the captain’s boat completely in two, shredding it into splinters, when he met face-to-face with the most awful and impressive force of the sea (392).

But there is a clear difference between these two captains. The Englishman has clearly learned his lesson for acting over-aggressively and is now ready to retreat, vowing to focus his travels on capturing smaller whales and to never again target the enigmatic white whale: “‘he’s welcome to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to another one. No More White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?’ – glancing at the ivory leg” (395). Ahab does not think so. In contrast to the English captain, the white whale is still Ahab’s magnet. Thinking about pursuing Moby Dick causes his blood to boil and his heart to pulse so furiously that the planks aboard the Samuel Enderby beat in rhythm, as a man named Bunger says, surprisingly eloquently (395). Ahab continues to feels utterly emasculated by Moby Dick, to the point that it has driven him mad. He is not satisfied by his ivory white leg and does not accept the artificial walking substitute as a good enough redemption. He wants full revenge. This chapter reveals an emasculating moment in which Ahab has to awkwardly and clumsily transition from the Pequod to the Samuel Enderby – this being the first time he has set his peg leg aboard another ship besides his own. Despite the English captain’s warning, Ahab continues to be bitterly and madly driven in the pursuit of the white male to reassert his masculinity and experience the pride of killing the thing that no one else has managed to kill. But the reader can infer that Ahab’s ambition for revenge will inevitably end in his destruction.

“‘And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he swallows’” – the Englishman (394). Gulp.

I’d like to focus my blog on the issue of gender as it relates to the theatrical chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck.

First we see the bold image of Captain Ahab, walking the deck after breakfast as a country gentleman would subsequently take a stroll in his garden, though with a visage like the horizon of a coming storm. The most perceptive Stubb first notices this coming storm: (175) “D’ye mark him Flask? The chick that’s in him pecks the shell. ‘Twill soon be out.” The shell is broken and out flies that chick in this scene (Enter Ahab: Then all) as Ahab calls all hands to the Quarter-Deck–the stage of his subsequent lecture on the killing of the White Whale.

The Ra-Ra that follows is characteristic of many a homosocial scene: the general to his troops before battle, the head of a Fraternity to the soon-to-be inducted Freshmen, the Football coach at halftime. When Ahab says (178), “Aye Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me,” he seems to say that Moby Dick took his very manhood from him (and his countenance has since been a means of compensating for it). Ahab makes sure–as is necessary in these situations–to compliment and praise his crew as he stirs them up: (178) “What say ye men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”

What’s more, Ahab has a classic masculine vendetta, of enacting his vengeance on what Starbuck calls “a dumb brute.” Ahab reveals that he would go even further than that and smite that which is both inanimate and intangible: (179) “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other.” And so he remarks, and eye for an eye, a limb for a limb–such is his stereotypically masculine principle. Though one might say that he has already gotten his limb for a limb, as upon losing his hominid leg, he gains a leviathan one (of ivory).

Ahab, attending to his goals in this chapter in a most precise, calculated, and surgical matter, understands the power of the mob mentality he has created with his performance: (to Starbuck, 179) “The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?” They are, and both Starbuck and Ahab know that his sermon has produced the desired affect in inciting the crew and hindering opposition: “Starbuck is now mine, cannot oppose me now.

The speech delivered, Ahab facilitates a sort of White Whale Fraternity induction ceremony in which the men must drink and swear to bring death to Moby Dick. Finally, the performance ends as abruptly as it began–no lasting ceremonies, no lingering, no dilly-dallying. After all drink from the long, barbed, steel goblets and cry out their maledictions against the great White Whale, the men quickly disperse and Ahab disappears into his bachelor pad.

I found the various encounters the Pequod had with other ships to be a kind of relief, a chance for the reader to even slightly escape the confines of the ship and its inhabitants and see how they interact with their peers in the larger world.  Of course, these can be read as more than chance meetings, as each ship also seems to embody its own ideology or somehow act as a symbol of an idea Melville wanted to get across in the text.  Here, I think, it may also be significant that ships are conventionally referred to with female pronouns, and can thus make interesting cases for the representation of gender in the novel.
I found the meeting with “The Virgin” in chapter 81 o be a particularly good example of this.  While “virginity” is often associated with youthful femininity in Western culture, it does not necessarily preclude a connection to male virginity as well; thus, the fact that the German word “jungfrau” (the ship’s true name) contains in it the word for “woman” is perhaps more significant in an indirect way.  I hope that this analysis is not reading too much into the text by latching on to one of the relatively few references to women, and making it more than was intended.  However, I thought that in the context of our discussion of Melville’s own life and experiences with women and marriage, one could read this ship as a kind of statement on one aspect of its nature.
We first meet the Virgin empty of oil and thus “deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin” (315).  However, it becomes apparent that the naiveté suggested by the name also refers to their lack of skill and knowledge of whaling.  After supplying the other ship with supplies the crew of the Pequod is insulted that it turns around and begins to compete for the same target.   Although the Pequod ultimately triumphs over the inexperienced Virgin, the old whale is practically defeated already – in it the crew finds an old piece of harpoon – perhaps the remnant of other whalers as incompetent in catching their prey as the Virgin.  We feel pity for this creature who has apparently been hounded by whalers all his miserable life only to die a meaningless death as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  The last we see of the Virgin, it is off chasing an “uncapturable” whale, completely unaware that its chase is in vain.  Perhaps this is not at all what Melville intended, but this desperate, fruitless search for a whale (combined with the name of the ship) almost reminded me of a young girl seeking a husband to provide the same thing a whale would provide for the Virgin: money.  However, like young girls can sometimes be, the Virgin is selfish and naïve, causing more harm than good.