Moby Dick

Ahab and Starbuck seem polar opposites. Starbuck, pragmatic, sensible, realistic; Ahab, supernatural, transcendent, crazed. While on their beliefs they clash, I would contend that they share the profound link of past experience shaping their lives. It is well known that Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick, and on his trip back home “then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and, so interfusing, made him mad” (Signet, 177). That, however, is just explanation and clarification for the reader; Melville opens a can of worms when Ishmael imbeds a secret of Starbuck’s past in a discussion of his character:

“And that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?” (109).

Ishmael, however, to my mind, does not stay on the topic long enough. Why is Starbuck a whaler? Wouldn’t a truly pragmatic person stay away from whaling? It is clear that Starbuck cannot be a coward, but Ishmael’s blindness to the concept that whaling may not be the greatest occupation precludes him from understanding the depth of the difficulty Starbuck must have had when he decided to whale. Could it be that Starbuck has undertaken whaling, and the pragmatic approach of killing whatever whale they can to avenge his brother and father, to get “even” with whales? Wouldn’t killing Moby Dick be the ultimate revenge?  

Perhaps he identifies with Ahab’s struggle beyond human compassion. In his soliloquy, he laments his situation:

“Oh! I plainly see my miserable office, – to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with a touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I had it” (162).

Some lurid woe that would shrivel him up, had he had it? His father and brother were killed by whales! Surely Starbuck knows the pain of losing what is truly important. That he concedes the extent of pain suffered to Ahab, then, besides giving insight into how truly broken Ahab is by his incident with Moby Dick, could indicate a sympathy to Ahab’s cause from Starbuck.

I’m not sold myself. I made a lot of logic jumps. But for how complicated Ahab is, it is fitting that his foil rivals his complexity. And the search to unmask their complexities may both begin with understanding their past.

Father Mapple is certainly  a compelling character, and a shining example of the depth and complexity Melville can convey in limited space.  A whaler in his youth and in his old age a preacher, for Ismael, Mapple seems to be occupying an existence somewhere between preacher, whaler, and prophet.  The image of Mapple’s chapel is a striking one: memorial plaques lamenting fallen sailors surround modest pews, but the pulpit, the bow of a whaling vessel complete with retractable rope ladder, is in stark contrast with the rest of the room.  A first look at the decor leads the reader to take Mapple as either a looney, or worse an attention hound–a conclusion that Ishmael himself makes, but seems determined to fight through.  Indeed, Ishmael spends a paragraph convincing himself (and in turn the reader) that Mapple has a legitimate reason for preaching from such an audacious pulpit.

Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage.  No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen.

Until Ishmael utters the above quote, the reader is unsure of the significance of either the chapel or the preacher.  Will this be another meaningless digression from the story?  Is the chapter going to focus on Queequeg and religion?  It is unclear until Ishmael brings the “unseen” into the fold.  From this point in the chapter on, the reader is waiting for the preacher to reveal whatever it is that is unseen; they are waiting for the sermon.  Mapple at once becomes much more that a man in the midst of “healthy old age,” more than a whaler, more than a preacher.  He becomes a messenger, a cog in the story essential to the reader’s understanding.  Once he finishes his sermon, he has become a prophet.

The beauty of Father Mapple is that he is such a fleeting physical presence–five pages of over five hundred–yet we learn so much about him with very little actually said about him.  We see his chapel, and draw some conclusions.  Those conclusions are in turn challenged and debunked with the help of some narratorial introspection.  Finally, we hear his sermon, and any remaining inkling of our previous doubts are cast deep into the depths as we see him elevated to prophetic status.  And then, as quickly as he came, he is gone, and we are left only with the lesson of his sermon: self indulgence and fear of god are mutually exclusive.

The first line of Moby Dick draws the reader close into the mind of the narrator, with his command, “call me Ishmael,” (Melville,  For the first 21 chapters, and presumably the whole text, we see the word through the eyes of the enigmatic Ishmael.  We know his thoughts, feelings, and deepest opinions.  However, he himself is invisible.  We see what he sees, but have no way to look at him as a character.  Melville forces us to piece together the central figure of the book through his feelings, opinions, and subtle allusions to his past.

In the first chapter, Ishmael explains why he goes to sea, and why he will never go as a passenger; he has no money and he enjoys the freedom of the forecastle deck.  He acknowledges that, as a common sailor,

they rather order me about some…and at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough.  It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselars, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes.  And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tarpot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster…the transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor. (Melville, 4)

Ishmael speaks in the third person, but he clearly speaks of himself .  We have a glimpse of his past as a blue-blooded, well educated, and powerful individual.  This, of course, makes the reader wonder what happened to turn Ishmael from the son of some wealthy house to a penniless sailor.  The answer seems to lie in Melville’s own life.  Melville was born to an important New York Dutch family, well-educated, and spent several years teaching school before signing on as a deck hand to sail to Liverpool.  Ishmael is clearly modelled on his creator, Herman Melville.  The author seems to be purposefully obscuring the face of Ishmael so that we might not notice it is actually him.

There may be an additional reason for Ishmael’s obscurity.  It allows the reader to put a bit of himself into the character.  Perhaps this is one of the reason this book rings so true for so many.  Through Ishmael, the reader can get into this world, know the characters, and experience the same adventures and change of hearts as the elusive narrator.  We cannot hold a mirror up to him to see what he looks like, allowing us to use him as a window instead.

(New York: Signet Classic, 1998)

The characters presented in the early chapters of Moby Dick are studies in contrast, with religion (and its attendant hypocrisy) sparring with realism or work. This framework allows Melville to unambiguously state his own positionality vis-à-vis the main narrator Ishmael. Ishmael is portrayed as the tolerant pragmatist, quietly decrying insidious forms of discrimination in New Bedford. Upon first seeing Queequeg enter his room at The Spouter-Inn, Ishmael remarks, ‘And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin…’ (Melville 20) As their relationship matures, Ishmael finds Queequeg’s ‘paganism’ a more honest and noble mode of existence, in contradistinction to the ‘civilized hypocrisies’ and ‘bland deceits’ of the harsh Puritanism of New England.

If Christian kindness has proven itself hollow (Melville 49), the Pequod’s Captain Bildad becomes the representative of a certain form of piousness that cannot reconcile itself with the practicalities of everyday life, leading to Ishmael’s rebuke of Christianity. For Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad’s worst offense was his inaction during a particularly perilous journey to Japan with Captain Ahab.  After presenting Queequeg with a tract titled “The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose,” Bildad implores Peleg if he never considered God’s judgment in the moment of crisis in Japan. In a furious response, Peleg admonishes Bildad’s piousness;

“Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,-“hear him all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the Judgment then? No! No time to think about Death then! Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands- how to rig jury-masts- how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of.” (Melville 88).

In conclusion, the foundational dichotomy between intolerant religious views and work (where one’s worth can only be gleaned through action, or the showing of practical skill in public view) frames this part of the story and informs Melville’s characterization. One can assume that this theme will be made even more manifest once the Pequod sets sail

Melville, Herman.  Moby Dick. New York: Signet Classic,  1998.

The posts for this group should focus on issues of character: how passages from the novel reveal hidden depths of a particular character, or how an event in the novel informs your understanding of a particular character. Posts can focus on issues of motivation (what motivates a character to act as he does?), narration (how does the narrative description of the character change or affect your understanding of the character? Can you see a discrepancy between the character’s actions and the narrator’s descriptions?), attitude (what is the narrator’s attitude towards the character, and what does this attitude do to color your perception of the character?).