Moby Dick

“God keep me! — God keep us all!”

-Starbuck, The Quarter-Deck

Throughout the novel, Starbuck is forced into the rather uncomfortable situation of being the First Mate to a madman.  The mate is stuck with a captain who he honestly believes is leading his crew into great danger, and almost certainly into death.  It is one of the oldest dilemmas there is: duty versus morality.  Do you follow orders when you believe that they are not only misguided but, in all likelihood, insane?

I determined after reading The Quarter-Deck to look into the similarities between Starbuck’s situation and that of another of Shakespeare’s characters: Brutus, of Julius Caesar.  Both are central members of their respective governmental bodies, and both struggle with the fear that their leader is going down a dangerous path.

It seems to me that Starbuck and Brutus share the quality of nobility.  Brutus is the “noblest Roman of them all” according to Marc Antony, and it is clear to me that Starbuck is the noblest mate on the ship, as his two associates are full of vice and lack his leadership.  Flask and Stubb are defined by their vices: drinking and smoking.  Starbuck sincerely questions his leader’s choices in the name of his crew’s safety.  He contemplates killing his leader, just as Brutus does, in order to bring his crew back home safely.  Unfortunately for the crew, himself included, he chose not to follow his gut instinct.  And though he attempts to persuade Ahab that his vengeance can lead them only to despair, he fails in his goal.  And his son will never greet him on the hill at Nantucket’s port.

Brutus and Starbuck are, in their essence, the same character; they are men trapped in an impossible situation, stuck between duty to follow orders and good sense and honesty.  Their only major difference is that Brutus goes forth with the assassination of his close friend and leader, while Starbuck lets Ahab drive onward.

The words of Marc Antony describe these men best:

“This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He, only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.”

Melville puts Ahab in an interesting situation.  He portrays the story with elements of an epic poem and casts Ahab as the hero.  Homer and Ahab may both be plagued by hubris, but in the Odyssey for instance, Homer mainly wants to get home.  Ahab, on the other hand, is completely obsessed with a dangerous errand – the destruction of his arch-rival Moby Dick.  Melville foreshadows many times the dangers inherent in such a goal and with each day of the chase, the reader discovers more and more the futility of Ahab’s actions.  The white whale toys with the Pequod’s crew while Ahab rallies support, effectively condemns his shipmates, and attacks with incredible fervor and “bravery.”

But is Ahab actually brave?  Bravery definitely involves an element of foolhardiness, which Ahab has, but it should also involve agency.  No one is denying Ahab’s intelligence and command but his obsession leads me to believe his actions are out of his control, at least on a subconscious level.  Ahab admits he’s “fates lieutenant” and uses the word “brave” to inspire his shipmates in the following passage.  He probably felt brave himself as well at the time, but I wonder if his emotion may have been misguided:

“I  am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.  Look thou, underling!  That thou obeyest mine. – Stand round me, men… So with Moby Dick – two days he’s floated – to-morrow will be the third.  Aye, men, he’ll rise once more, – but only to spout his last!  D’ye feel brave men, brave?” (497)

He has nothing to lose by fighting Moby Dick even with the presence of all these bad omens and ominous signs.  Anything less than his actions, which were essentially suicide, would have appeared downright cowardly!  Melville could be conveying a message about illusory bravery.  Possibly that our typical heroes may be less brave than they seem.  Ishmael, the only crew member who survives, is not exactly the most brave or macho of the group.  I doubt this particular interpretation however because it’s not Ahab’s fault – he never received the chance to be truly brave because he never really had something to lose.  In reality, this is just a sad story.  An obsessed man with too much power went too far and realized A LOT of collateral damage.  Shame.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008

“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/

Bartleby and Modernity

Written in the middle of the nineteenth century, the story of Bartleby is stunning in its presaging of the alienation of urban middle class life in the twentieth century and in our own time. In the words of continental philosopher Hannah Arendt, the world inhabited by Melville’s characters is fundamentally a ‘society of job-holders.’

Turkey, Nippers, Ginger-Nut, and later Bartleby stand in as social types of this coming milieu, with their disenchantment, ‘ambition and digestion,’ and automaton qualities. Bartleby’s eccentricities are initially viewed in a positive light, as contributions. ‘His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry…his great, stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition.’ (13) This modern efficiency is set against a backdrop of disillusion and sterility in the financial district. In a brilliant showcasing of Melville’s descriptive qualities, he remarks, ‘This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!’  (14)

There are many ways of approaching this story. I read it in this particular light mostly because of the sharp focus on the corporate world in our time. More importantly, the critique of labor implied herein is still relevant as our corporate culture continues to fulfill the Arendtian ‘society of jobholders.’

Ahab’s Depravity and Dissonance

While reading the text, I couldn’t help but feel a disconnect between Ahab’s supposed darkness and Melville’s rendering of him.  In other words, the highly embellished, melodramatic descriptions of Ahab’s monomania are not convincing.  It is one of the few (perhaps inconspicuous) flaws of the novel and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been remarked on more often.  I’ll quote a few lines which, taken by themselves, do not flesh out the essence of the man and therefore leave the reader dissatisfied.

‘Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.’ 191 – Most of the writing on Ahab’s monomania is crafted in this decontextualized manner, with the exception of the two page soliloquy in the last quarter of the novel.

‘…in Ahab’s case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own.’ 195

‘In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.’ 498

Captivating descriptive prose without adequate character build up lends itself to the aforementioned dissonance. One wonders if this was intended by Melville. Is this truly a story about a depraved individual driven by monomania and overcompensation to a vengeful self-destruction? Or is it more a story of nature and community and philosophy? I’m left confused about the centrality of Ahab the man and his standing vis-à-vis the other characters on the Pequod..

Does anyone else sense the forced nature of his ‘evil’?

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Signet Classic. 1998

The inherent simplicity of the character, Bartleby, is only made so by Melville’s preference to not divulge any of his background or insight into his character.  But it’s that same simplicity that allows for any number of contemplations on the meaning of Bartleby’s story (“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street”), thus making it actually rather complex.  Bartleby is seemingly homeless, as he takes up residence in our narrator’s office, and his disinterest in human interaction leads one to also assume he is mentally ill in some capacity.  But really, we can’t be the least bit certain of any of these inferences.  From another perspective, Bartleby could be representative of all “misunderstood” individuals, of which Melville was one.  Because Melville was not well respected until after his death, it’s likely he was writing a bit of himself into the character of Bartleby.

The “mildness” of Bartleby’s character is at first rather funny, and the narrator even found it “not only disarmed [him], but unmanned [him], as it were” (Melville 5).  And the other employees he asks for advice on how to deal with Bartleby are equally amusing, especially considering the known invalidity of their statements based on the time of day’s influence on their particular personalities.  As we learn more (while it’s still only a little) about Bartleby’s character, after the narrator discovers he is living in the office, the tale becomes a more tragic and sympathetic one.

What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible!” (6).

Eventually, the suffering soul of Bartleby led to his self-inflicted death—his body ceased preferring to carry its own dead soul around.  While the narrator finds it sad that he did not seemingly have enough money to live elsewhere, he believed the true tragedy of Bartleby to be the terrible lonesomeness that must come with such a residence.  And it was that very solitude that the narrator cannot understand (and which made him greatly pity Bartleby), and which anyone who has not experienced a similar time being so alone could not relate.  But it does seem Melville could relate to Bartleby, and because the story seems a commentary on humanity as a whole, many others understand that lonesomeness as well.  And maybe another reason Melville gave us so little of Bartleby was so all of his “misunderstood” readers could more easily identify (by writing their own life details in) and thus personally make sense of the very flat character.

Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” http://www.enotes.com/bartleby-scrivener-text/bartleby-scrivener-1

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.

In a previous post, I discussed Melville’s anthropomorphization of the sperm whale.  However, he frequently takes this several steps farther.  Not only does he see the whale as human, but he often sees it as above human, almost godlike.  This is demonstrated many times throughout the text.  In chapter 85, The Fountain, Melville discussed whether or not the whale has a voice.  He concludes that it does not.

But then again, what has the whale to say?  Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say in this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.

Melville sees this silence as majestic.  Of course, the second part of this statement seems to reflect on Melville himself, excusing him from speaking in writing this book.  More importantly, though, is the sense of the whale as profound, a noble creature.  Later in this chapter, Melville discusses the whale spout, debating whether it is mist or water.  He states that it is mist, and explains

to this conclusion i am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him for no common shallwo being…He is both ponderous and profound.  And I am convinced that from the ehads of all ponderous and profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts.

The whale is not only majestic because of his size or mystery.  He is a thinker of deep thoughts, profound on the level of Dante.  The mention of the Devil is a bit puzzling, as it suggests some sort of evil lurks within the whale.  However, evil or no, this creature ranks among the most sublime human thinkers.  Melville not only respects the whale, he seems to have some worshipful reverence towards it, and its “great inherent dignity.”  His encounters with whales seem to have convinced him of this, and Ishmael as well.  It does make one wonder how a man, a whaler, who sees the whale such could justify killing these creatures en masse.

“Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye, come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? Ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! Man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my purpose is fixed with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.  Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents bed’s unerringly I rush!  Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!”

For me, this passage really drove home just how serious and driven Ahab is on his quest for Moby Dick.  He describes this purpose as having a path that is already fixed with iron rails- he is saying that this is already what he had decided on and his mind cannot be changed.  Also, he says that his soul is running on this path- this tells us how determined and deeply devoted Ahab is to killing the white whale.  Ahab also makes it clear during this soliloquy that none of the men on the ship are going to be able to change his mind about this, he is letting it be known that he is the captain of this ship and his word goes.   During the last part of this passage, Ahab also lets us in on the how far he is willing to go and what he is willing to risk and go through in order to achieve his goal.