Moby Dick

Ishmael makes it clear in the beginning of the novel that he is suffering from a sense of melancholy that is leading him towards thoughts involving a gun, whether this is a statement of suicidal or homicidal intent is up for debate, but what is certain is that Ishmael is experiencing deep despair. He hopes to remedy his feelings of sadness by giving himself fully to back breaking work upon a whaling vessel. This is not an uncommon means of dealing with internal struggle. I cannot help but be reminded of Levin from Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” when the issue of escaping internal conflict through labor is discussed. I feel that Ishmael’s attempt to escape melancholy through means of labor is in contrast to Levin even though their actions are outwardly similar.

When looking to Ishmael’s statements in Chapter 35 “The Mast Head” we see that Ishmael is not able to escape from his internal demons as he spends all of the time he has to himself in deep contemplation. Levin feels deep despair and attempts to deal with his feelings by retreating to the countryside and working along with his serfs. Once Levin is out in nature he is able to focus all of his energy on mowing grass and he feels a great weight lifted from his shoulders because he finds a simple purity in manual labor that lets him escape the inner turmoil he cannot deal with otherwise. Ishmael responds to despair in a similar way, but it is inwardly very different. Ishmael goes on a whaling ship to partake in physical labor, but he does so in hopes that he can hand over his will and actions to the captain of the ship, losing himself of the responsibility he has over his life. As a result his mind feels no weight lifted from it. Instead when he has long periods of time to himself he finds the same melancholy that had plagued him on land. This is because Ishmael seeks a different kind of freedom in labor, and this is freedom from determining what he is to do with his physical self. The whaling vessel does nothing to lift stress from his mind. Ishmael lives in a society where there is a heavy feeling of fate that permeates all he does. In giving his body over to an outside source he likely hopes he can trick himself into feeling like he is going through the actions that are determined for him without needing to waste his mental energies on deciding what those actions should be. As a result Ishmael’s method of escaping his despair is one that forces him to dwell in his sadness and perhaps is a way for him to try to sort everything out from within.

We therefore see that Levin and Ishmael deal with stress differently because of their cultures. Levin hopes to use labor to focus his mind on something that is physically draining but not stressful, and Ishmael hopes to use labor to save his mind for thinking about the things that make him sad and to try to deal with these things since his mind is not needed for menial tasks. Ishmael feels that he must act this way because as far as he is concerned he has a fate looming over him of which he cannot predict, and it is this fate that he hopes to understand more about through inward meditation. For Ishmael this meditation can only be achieved with work.

After the lecture last class, I found it interesting, looking back through the text, to notice how Melville includes bits of his own personal experience and outlook through the guise of Ishmael.  For instance, when Ishmael describes some impressions of Queepeg, he says,

“It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country.  I quaked to think of it.  A peddler of heads too – perhaps the heads of his own brothers.  He might take a fancy to mine – heaven!  look at that tomahawk! (21-22)”

This quote particularly strikes me because of the narrator’s absurdity, but importantly, I remembered learning how in 1841 during one of his voyages to the Pacific – possibly it was to the Marquesa islands – Melville himself feared being the victim of a cannibalistic attack.  It is rather interesting then to see how even though the author had suffered from this specific paranoia, he chooses an almost mocking tone in narrating Ishmael’s thoughts on the subject.   Perhaps by the time he was writing this book – about 10 years later – he had overcome this fear, or maybe it was through being humorous that he became more comfortable about it.

It was mentioned in class too that Melville’s first novel, Typee, written in 1845, was based on his trip to the Marquesa islands.  I find this interesting that he was able to create, or tell, so many stories from his few experiences at sea.  Surely they were of great returns.  This intrigues me as I sometimes think about how authors, whether they aim to write fictionally or autobiographically, are able  to reinvent through text their personal experiences.  I wonder what intentions Melville had of writing his experiences before he took his voyages.  He must have known he would be seeing and experiencing places and people that would be wholly new to him, but what’s fascinating to me is how his ruminations and observations are still being read and discussed today.

Melville’s narration in Moby Dick can be described as moody. Ishmael is presented as such a believable character because he exhibits the unpredictable highs and lows of the author. While Ishmael is a believable character, the question of his reliability as a narrator is another issue. Starting with the line “Call me Ishmael”, the reader can’t help but wonder who the person that we are commanded to refer to as Ishmael actually is. The narrator called Ishmael takes many shapes, which I will now explore.

I believe that Ishmael’s narration takes the shape of and is characterized by those he comes in contact with. This is exemplified by the simple narration that Queequeg always seems to inspire. Needless to say, Queequeg’s speech is extremely basic, but what is interesting is how Ishmael answers his child-like presence with a simplicity of his own:

But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition state-neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner. His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate.(27)

Notice how Ishmael addresses the reader, adopting a colloquial tone that distinguishes itself from much of the rest of the narration. This tone is furthered by the short, elementary sentences that follow. This tone is juxtaposed by another one of Ishmael’s forms, which is that of Melville himself. Quite often Melville blatantly takes over the narration in the form of deep philosophical musings. The following is one of my favorite examples of this so far:

But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me . (35-36)

What caught my eye about this passage first was the skill and beauty of the language itself. What indicates that we are no longer understanding the world through the eyes of Ishmael but through the eyes of Melville is the use and repetition of the word “Methinks” which is uncommon in the novel, and is used tactfully by Melville to emphasize the passage to the reader as one of personal worth.

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.

Posts from this group will focus on the tricky concept of narration — at times, Ishmael seems to be in full control of the narrative (he IS the narrator). At other times, he seems to disappear behind an all-seeing, omniscient form of narration that seems out of place with the first-person narrative. Focus on passages or aspects of the novel where the narration is important, either because it calls attention to itself loudly (for example, there are moments in the novel where the narration resembles a play or telescript), or where the narrator seems biased, unreliable, etc. Notice what you can about disparities between what Ishmael-the-narrator might be thinking and what Melville-the-author may have intended or meant to hide behind Ishmael’s narration.