Moby Dick

In chapter 51 (“The Spirit-Spout”), Ishmael discusses how nature compares to men and their voyage:

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow (210).

It’s intriguing how Ishmael (and seemingly the crew) seems almost to give the sea a personality and sense of agency. The sea, apparently, is aware of Ahab’s mission and is set on “vacating itself of life” so that nothing can be killed. This personification of the ocean is further reinforced by Ishmael’s description that the sea “heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred” (210). At times in this chapter the sea is described in direct contrast to the sailors’ moods, yet at other times it appears to directly influence the mood of the crew. Ishmael discusses the sea as a place of doom:

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon (210).

It is fascinating to note how the sea (and nature) can be so filled with wide open promise and endless opportunity, but also can be a place akin to hell or purgatory, where one is doomed to roam for eternity. This is especially interesting when it is compared to Ishmael’s description of the sea in the first chapter. I wonder what a reader should understand about the sea through these various descriptions. Has Ishamel become disillusioned with sailing (thanks to Ahab)? Or has something else occurred here? Or is Ishmael (and Melville) allowing the sea to speak for him, by making it into another personality, another character in this novel?

In ‘The Blacksmith’, Ishmael expands upon his understanding of the sea as an escape from the troubles of life.  When death seems the only possible place left to go, Perth (like Ishmael) finds the sea.  Similar to the opening paragraph of the novel in which he discusses his own reasons for going to sea, in this chapter, Ishmael gives us Perth’s reasons, based on his “wretched” life on land.   Prior to boarding the Pequod, Perth was “robbed” of his happy life, owing in large part to alcoholism.  He lost his family and his home, and “staggered off a vagabond in crape” (Melville 468).  Though his life was seemingly lost, he was not able to commit suicide—the blank slate of the sea beckoned him.  It was a submittal to a different kind of death, “a life which, to [his] now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, [was] more oblivious than death” (468).

The sea attracted Ishmael for similar reasons; the oblivion of the sea provided him grounds for deep thought and reflection.  But the seas barrenness also brings man a simplicity to his life, which can pervade even his mind.  Without the many complexities of life on land, a man (such as Perth) can be stripped down to his barest form.

Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart” (466)

In embodying the hammer, Perth truly left his “landed world” behind.  His broken heart brought him to sea, and then turned into a tool.  The sea didn’t restore his life, or his heart, instead it simplified it so much that it became wholly unnecessary for him to be anything more than his work.  He’s entered into a transitory state—he’s ceased living, but because he’s not dead either, he can only do those most basic functions, biding what time the sea chooses to give him.

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

Chapter 87. “The Grand Armada” begins with a description of the Pequod’s surroundings, namely the straits of Sunda, a known whaling haven that contains not only the danger of the seas but also of the local inhabitants. Melville clearly delineates an East vs. West binary, where the actual physical landscape “should bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping western world.” While he dismisses the Western tradition of homage in sailing past foreign land, and credits the locals in Southeast Asia with ignoring this idea, he presents the culture as one of savagery and piracy. However, his anti-Western rhetoric suggests that their actions are in some ways valid, though they still serve as an additional danger to the crew of the Pequod.

Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.

In the context of these external pressures, Melville describes how a whaling ship, devoid of cargo and singleminded in its pursuit of leviathons, manages such a long trip among hostile conditions.

She has a whole lake’s contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities… She carries years’ water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafter off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York and back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves.

The sea dominates the novel, but as a source of water it is utterly useless. With the dangers inherent in landing for supplies, it makes more sense to carry a massive amount of water from your home port. On one hand, this adds to both the community of the ship as well as the pressure on that community to coexist without taking breaks from constant travel on the sea. On the other hand, this reference to Nantucket and the home port somewhat contradicts  the nature of those on board. The water may be palatable and the preference while at sea, but many in the crew are aboard because of the escape that whaling provides and the unique motivations that drive them away from the safety of land. In their most basic needs, however, they do rely exclusively on Nantucket water. These background passages by Melville serve to further define the community of the whale-ship, and its relationship to one place in particular when “the circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world.”

In Chapter 23, The Lee Shore, Melville uses the character of Bulkington to demonstrate the physical and spiritual immersion of whalers into life at sea:

… it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe.

The excerpt continues the tone established at the beginning of the novel, where Ishmael describes his own relationship to the sea. For Bulkington, the sea had also become a means of escape and source of strange familiarity, or at least strange to those outside the whaling world. Bulkington does not appear to be particularly unique in his reversal of the typical notion of home, as Ishmael, Ahab, and indeed all the men on board share both a connection to the sea and an aversion of the safety of port. While the object of the voyage is to survive the perilous months at sea, battling weather and whales, even the particular whaling climate of Nantucket or other towns that cater to the industry does not suit one such as Buckington. Instead, “the land seemed scorching to his feet,” resulting in the desire to immediately begin another voyage.

Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

Here Melville further extends the metaphor, linking the sea to the freedom of thought and action. Dying on the sea becomes a more glorious end than on land, for the vastness and openness of the sea allows for the independence of the soul. The land, while safe and represented by safety, comfort, hearthstone, etc., restricts an individual’s internal growth, especially one inclined to the sea. Melville continuously explores the relationship between the effects of the environment on the individual, and the idea of what is or is perceived as natural by society and the reader. He pushes this notion by elevating the personal impact that the isolation and natural brutality of the sea has on different sailors and seeing how it accumulates into a core element of the community that develops on board a whaling ship.

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

Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind.  A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.  No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed – “Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”

The Pequod’s encounter with the giant squid is an ambiguous event, fraught with amazement and fear.  Ishmael feels a sense of wonder to behold the strange creature, which seems to be without any sort of analogy with which to understand it in relation to other life-forms.  Although the whalers are as knowledgeable as any other humans of the time about the denizens of the sea, there are still a huge number of creatures which they do not understand or have never even seen.  To superstitious sailors like Starbuck, the appearance of such an unearthly creature is a portent of bad luck.  To the modern reader, his dismay seems slightly ridiculous; what possible connection could a wandering squid have to the success or failure of the voyage?  His attitude, however, belies the difference between the understandings of nature that dominated in the early 19th century and today.

For many modern-day Americans, understanding of nature is largely shaped by the high-school biology textbook.  Cell theory, evolution, and a well-ordered taxonomy construct a nature that is orderly, scientific, and predictable.  All creatures (viruses controversially excepted) share the basic building block of the cell, and are therefore reducible to a common denominator.  Evolution holds that nature developed as a highly rational response to given conditions, and as these conditions change nature adapts to them.  The system of taxonomy, although constantly adjusting to new discoveries, provides a broad general framework which incorporates all life-forms into comforting categories.  There is little mystery or superstition in our modern conception of nature, but only a well-ordered understanding that subordinates the living world to our brainpower and categorizing skill.

Starbuck’s reaction to the squid comes from a much different place.  As a whaler, Starbuck knows quite a bit about the ocean and its inhabitants.  He has spent a large portion of his life at sea, and his trade brings him into intimate contact with many sea creatures.  Despite his experience, a different cultural world-view of nature colors his vision.  A modern sailor might see creatures that he or she had never heard of, but such a sailor could rest assured in the knowledge that rational science is close at hand to categorize and explain away all mystery.  While the scientific world-view is knocking on the door, and Melville spends much of the book writing about it, the cultural hegemony of rationality remains a province of the future.  As such, Starbuck is left to his own devices and the devices of religion to interpret the appearance of the ghostly squid.  Rather than resorting to unfamiliar science to explain the occurrence, Starbuck sees the apparition as an omen of bad news, which in the context of the book is not an inaccurate assessment.

Interestingly, Queequeg is not alarmed by the squid.  He knows that sperm whales eat squid, and therefore can relate the strange creature to something more concrete and knowable.  This process of rationalization, undertaken by one of the “savages,” would develop into a world-view which came to dominate our understanding of the natural world.

When Pip leaps overboard in Chapter 93, Stubb tells him he must never do such a thing again, or else he’ll be left behind. Of course, Pip, being young and inexperienced fails to take Stubb’s advice to heart, and ends up reacting similarly in a situation quite reminiscent of the first. While it’s unclear whether Stubb was being wholly serious in his threats to truly leave Pip behind, he does do just that (probably thinking another of the boats would pick him up), which results in Pip becoming “another lonely castaway” at sea for a considerable amount of time. The Pequod eventually picked him up, but the cheerful Pip was forever changed from that day on. The crew described him from then on as going “about the deck an idiot” (Melville 401). But Ishmael understood Pip’s drastic change rather differently.

“Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad” (402).

According to Ishmael, Pip came to a greater understanding of the world, something deeper, so mind-altering, that he could no longer communicate through simple exchange, which then made him seem deranged to others on the ship. The vulnerability Pip felt as he bobbed alone in the vast sea opened his mind to God-like truths. And those truths are so foreign to us that we liken someone such as Pip to be crazy, when really what we’re interpreting as “man’s insanity is heaven’s sense” (402). While we can’t know this as fact, Ishmael’s more thoughtful (and possibly optimistic) take on Pip’s condition most prominently points to his continued reverence of the sea and its capabilities.

The sea didn’t physically swallow Pip, but his soul seemed to have been. It drowned it, but not fatalistically—the sea “carried [Pip’s soul] down alive to wondrous depths” where he was granted access to all the “joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities” (402). It’s interesting that Ishmael finds the sea so rich and vast, holding many truths, yet he also considers it heartless, as if man must give up his emotions to understand the depths of the world. The omnipresent ocean can reveal to man the absurdity of his life, but only when he lets go of his emotional ties, or in Pip’s case, when he is forced to let go and engage in “the intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity” (401).

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

In chapter 22 (“Merry Christmas”), the ship is finally setting out:

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows (92).

I think it is interesting how Melville/Ishmael uses weather and nature in this section. It is so cold outside that the water sprays the crew and coats them like they were wearing “polished armor” (92). Though one would think that the terribly cold elements would be a detriment, they are described in different terms. Instead, the freezing spray is almost providing a type of protection and is symbolically arming the crew for battle with the whales. The rest of the ship gets similar treatment, but it is described like a giant ferocious animal. When I first read this section, I immediately recalled tales of battle and the preparation and arming scenes that inevitably go along with them. Although I would imagine that the physical conditions (and the weather) would be horrible during winter in the Atlantic Ocean, Melville/Ishmael seems to want the reader to visualize the crew (and ship) as more than ready for the task ahead.

This point seems reinforced a couple paragraphs later:

Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer (92).

In this case, Ishmael acknowledges that the weather is indeed miserable, but yet his spirits remain high. He is clearly optimistic and looking forward to this journey–Ishmael sees “many a pleasant haven in store” on this trip (92). The language used to describe spring seems to imply something of a birth (or rebirth) for Ishmael, and this whaling expedition appears to be the impetus for that rebirth. It is fascinating to see how Melville, by using only a little language about nature, is able to imply so much about the mental readiness of the crew and Ishmael’s excitement to go to sea.

…any man unaccustomed to such sights…would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.

The sharks which accompany the whalers on their hunts and in the butchering of their whales embody the mystical, savage energy Melville ascribes to the sea.  The image of sharks in the sea as maggots in cheese is a particularly revealing metaphor.  When Melville was writing, many people believed that maggots and other small vermin arose to life spontaneously from inanimate matter.  “Spontaneous generation” was conclusively disproved later in the century, but in the beginning of the 19th century it didn’t seem so obvious.  Life was thought to arise in all sorts of places as a more animated form of the matter from which it came.  In this sense, the sharks that infest the waters around the Pequod are literally the physical incarnation of the sea’s uncontrollable, irrational force.  The water teems with its deadly progeny, both incredible and terrifying to behold.

They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound…A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed.  Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharkss almost took poor Queequeg’s hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.

The sharks do not possess any sense of self-preservation beyond their all-consuming desire to eat, which drives them even to eat themselves when wounded by the whaling spades.  In this respect, their manic drive mirrors that of Ahab.  To the sharks, the whaling spades might as well be a force of nature, unfathomable and unassailable.  Ahab was also wounded by a force of nature, but unlike the sharks, he has the ability to envision the being which “demasted” him.  His thirst for revenge is not unlike the sharks’ thirst for blood which causes them to gorge on their own entrails, and in his quest he eventually consumes himself.  Taking the Ahab-as-shark metaphor to the next level, Ahab might be interpreted as already dead.  Without any reason or understanding, he, like the dead shark, can only snap out compulsively at whatever draws near him.  Unfortunately for the crew of the Pequod, their fates are inextricably linked to that of their mad captain.

In chapter 58 (“Brit”), Ishmael compares the land and the sea, which are then employed as metaphors on the nature of man. He begins the chapter with a discussion of brit, a “minute, yellow substance” the right whale feeds upon. Through the comparison of animals in the sea (such as the right whale) and those on land (such as the elephant), Ishmael segues into a more generalized discussion of the two masses. While our narrator believes many people generalize the sea and land to be made up of much the same elements, he points out that the “mortal disasters” of the sea are more quickly “lost” than the ones on land.

…to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it” (Melville 267).

To hear of men being swallowed by the sea, but never actually seeing it take place (or of what lies below the surface causing it), leads men to dismiss the overwhelming depth Ishmael believes the ocean possesses. It is that very lack of visibility—only seeing the surface—that both inspires fear and, at the same time, a blank slate for Ishmael to interpret its depths as he sees fit. On land, man’s inherent ability to see all of his surroundings means the majority of the mental work (of interpreting the world) is already done for him. For Ishmael, life on land forces his mind within itself (because he cannot project his own thoughts onto an already concrete society), and thus he comes close to madness; in going to sea, he’s looking to free his mind and allow his thoughts to flow uninhibited.
In relation to the human soul itself, Melville understands the ocean as surrounding the soul, and thus its true nature is nearly impossible to decode. And that there exists within an “insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy,” but it cannot be discerned among the depths.  And so our purest form of self is “encompassed by all the horrors of a half known life” (268). It is that search for self (the Tahitian island) that Ishmael has embarked upon, but he warns against anyone else ever pushing off, as he thinks its unlikely you’ll ever find meaning before “the masterless ocean overruns the globe” (267).

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

In the first chapter of Moby Dick (“Loomings”), Ishmael discusses his decision to go to sea. He claims that he has a desire to sail around the world whenever he feels depressed or gloomy, because sailing helps him feel happier and more content (1). However, Ishmael does not think that this desire rests solely with him, but rather “almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings toward the ocean” (1). Ishmael describes thousands of men who stand by the ocean in a dreamlike state (1). Water appears to have a profound effect on them (and people in general). The ocean is like a great frontier and there seems to be something magical about its properties:

Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever (2).

Throughout the previous description it is difficult to discern if it is Melville or Ishmael speaking. I would argue that it is likely both, since I imagine that Melville’s and Ishmael’s views align here. The ocean is set up as a wide open expanse on which to wonder and marvel at the earth. It is also an occasion to ponder and question one’s fate or destiny (and whether one has one, and, if so, what it might be). It seems that Melville is describing the ocean much like America was often viewed: an open frontier filled with nature and a place still largely untouched by man and his industrializing influences. It seems likely that later in the novel, the ocean (much like the wild west) will itself be wild and dangerous. However, Melville and Ishmael clearly believe that there is something that guides a person toward it (whether in spite of or because of its danger).

Melville seems to suggest that there is an innate or natural desire to be near water, something that draws people close to it. The ocean (and water generally) does seem to inspire reflection and meditation. From the sounds of waves crashing on the beach, to the trickle of a stream, and even the fact that our own reflections can be seen in water (leading to an interesting double meaning), water has a naturally comforting nature, which in turn makes it more likely to find oneself thinking about life. The fact that Melville links philosophy with water (in the quoted passage above) seems quite profound. Should the reader begin wondering about larger significances of what the ocean stands for or what it means? It seems likely that, just like Ishmael and the crew of the Pequod, we too should be on the lookout for signs, things that would indicate something larger than just a simple concept or thing. But in this case, what should we think? Is the water indeed like a great frontier? Is it representative of nature itself? Does sailing on a voyage become a metaphor for living life? Perhaps we should continue to look for more signs to attempt to find out.