Moby Dick

In the middle few hundred pages of Moby Dick, we finally get to experience catching and cutting up the Pequod’s first whale.  Ishamael takes a lot of time explaining to the reader exactly what must happen to properly complete this task.  Some parts of this appear very scientific, while others are open to variation.  Throughout the entire process, there is the danger of deadly accident.  While Ishmael seems to want to relate the science of catching and harvesting a sperm whale properly, he also lets the reader in on instances when the science fails and mistakes happen.

Ishmael himself sees a way to improve the way a whale is harpooned when he suggests that the boatheader and the harpooner do not switch places in the boat:

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and unnecessary.  The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing what whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman (280).

Ishmael has come to this conclusion through his experience with whaling and shows that the discipline can still be improved.

Other aspects, however, are very exact.  Ishmael describes the precision needed to behead the sperm whale.  He says that it is “a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced surgeons very much pride themselves, and not without reason” (300-301).  Other parts of cutting up and separating the various parts of the whale have very strict procedures, and yet Ishamael will still tell us when the Pequod does something slightly different, as when the monkey rope attached to Queequeg is attached directly to him as well.

Great risk is always present even when everyone is following all the rules.  Tashtego very unexpectedly falls into the whale while removing sperm and causes the head to fall into the water.  These events contrasted with the scientific mood Melville seems to be striving for in the surrounding chapters when he describes the physical aspects of the sperm and right whales.  Whaling therefore appears much more up to chance.  Sharks may come and eat the entire whale while it is tied to the boat over night, or they may not.  Queequeg may get hit with a dart meant for a shark while he sits on the whale’s back, or he may not.  I think that both the specific steps involved in whaling and the constant danger of the unexpected contribute to why Ishmael, and therefore Melville, are so obsessed with the activity.  Both the steps and the dangers are portrayed prominently in these chapters.

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.

The topic that was randomly assigned to me was Environment and nature, which for the sake of this blog and a few others I will assume to be vague. Let’s just say I’m examining the social environment in Ahab’s mind, and his thirst for destroying a whale, which is a part of nature.  When reading Moby Dick, and Ahab’s insane reason for hunting a whale, i couldn’t help but think of a masculinity issue being at play. The descriptions of past Ahab’s character as a good captain would’ve endeared me to him before he was shown if I hadn’t already heard how crazy he was in pop culture. However eventually  we come to see him as a man devoid of really any other characteristics besides his vengeance for a beast without reason. In class and in other circles, Ahab’s injury is seen as one that robbed him masculinity. He was essentially “de-masted”. Reading this book, I couldn’t help but agree. Not only did the accident rob him of really any functioning position beside captain, but in is thirst for vengeance their seems to be a lack of passion for anything else in the whaling ship that does not discern Moby. As the crew hunts down a non-Moby whale in the graphically memorable “Stubbs kills a whale” chapter, Ahab is completely separate from this, mostly disappointed. This is seen in clear contrast to the rest of the crew when the omnipresent narrator takes over and we get to see his actions as coldly calculating. I could talk in length about his death in this subject; him jumping off with spear in hand in a final effort to take down Moby, but I really feel anyone could tell where I would go with this… My point is really that Ahab’s first fateful encounter of the whale robbed him most of all any other base emotion beside an obsessive vengeance. In hunting down Moby I think, and I know I’m reaching, that Ahab was either trying to take it back or express the only form of masculinity he had left. “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”

We spoke the first day of class about Melville’s Protestant background contributing to the book’s religious themes.  Moby Dick is greatly concerned, my notes say, with the individual and his/her relation to fate.  In “The Monkey Rope,” the chapter concerned with the cutting up of the now-deceased sperm whale, Ishmael supports Queequeg, who must balance on top of the whale, his feet in and out of the shark-filled bloody water, dissecting the beast.  The monkey rope, tied around the waist of both Queequeg and Ishmael, is the support system; if one falls, the other will too.  Ishmael notices at this moment that his fate is completely dependent on an outside source.

I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of the two: that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have sanctioned so gross an injustice. (341)

Ishmael’s sudden discomfort with his lack of control – to him, a “gross injustice” – should really lead him down a slippery slope of realization that the monkey rope should be the least of his worries.  After all, his most trusted friend on the ship, Queequeg, is attached on the other end.  Ishmael’s fate truly lays in the hands of Ahab, the crazed captain of the voyage.  If Ahab’s fate is doomed, there is nothing Ishmael can do to save himself.

And, to this point, there is no reason for Ishmael to trust the divinity of his captain’s fate.  He has already reflected that Ahab is an alien to the Christendom to which he nominally belongs (171).  Ishmael received a mortal wound to his free will the moment he stepped on the ship, sailing with a crazy captain, on a dangerous mission of vengeance, who is probably not guided much by Providence.  This situation, as symbolically exemplified by the monkey rope passage, is not a good one for anyone – especially not a Protestant concerned with his fate.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1991.

When looking for character development, most readers would skip over the cetology chapter.  However, Melville inserts a remarkable amount of personality into his description of the whales.  This is not surprising, considering that, in many ways, Moby Dick is the central character of the novel.  In the Cetology chapter, Ishmael refers to every whale as “he,” not “it,” an important, humanizing distinction.  Some descriptions are more clearly human-esque than others, such as when Ishmael refers to the Sulphur Bottom whale as a

retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings.  He is seldom seen…and then alays at too great a distance to study his countenance.  He is never chased; he would run away with the rope-walks of lline.  Prodigies are told of him.  Adieu, Sulphur Bottom!  I can say nothing more that is true of ye (p. 133)

This description sounds eerily applicable to a human, especially the phrase “retiring gentleman” and the words “profounder” and “countenance.”  Ishmael is describing a shy man, who runs away from those who pursue him.  Few have seen his face, and they know little about him.  Without the mention of diving, this could easily be a reclusive guest at an inn or some mystical stowaway on the Pequod.

The characterization of whales seems to be a matter of some debate with the characters in the text.  When describing Moby Dick’s encounter with Ahab, and the taking of Ahab’s leg, Ishmael states that “no turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice,” (p. 177).  This creature is vindictive, which gives him power of thought like a human.  The very fact that he has a name, Moby Dick, shows that the line between animal and human is blurred in this narrative.  Of course, not everyone sees it this way.  When Ahab informs the crew of the goal of this journey, Starbuck protests.

‘Vengeance on a dumb brute!’ cried Starbuck ‘that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness!  To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous!’

Starbuck does not approve of anthropomorphism.  To him, blurring the line between human and “dumb brute” is unacceptable, blasphemous.  The repeated descriptions of whales as having human characteristics, and the strength of Starbuck’s objections, suggests that this debate will carry on throughout the novel.

(New York: Signet Classic, 1998)

In the assigned reading, Ishmael and the narrator slowly zoom in on the whale. The reader enjoys a holistic picture to begin. Chapter 32 is all about Cetology, which takes a detached, scientific and impersonal view of the whale. Ishmael leaves his discussion of Cetology unfinished: “even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower.” (128) He gives some excuse about great things being left unfinished such as architectural masterpieces. This rang somewhat sarcastic to me though, as his primitive treatment of whale taxonomy (despite the existence of the Linnaean system) could hardly be compared to the likes of the Sagrada Familia.

In chapters 55 and 56, Ishmael zooms in from the scientific to a more feelings-oriented perspective on whale understanding. He discusses first the bad pictures of whales and then “of the less erroneous pictures of whales, and the true pictures of whaling scenes.” (241) Chapter 57 is all about “whales in paint; in teeth; in wood; in sheet iron; in stone; in mountains; in stars.” (244)

In his scientific and philosophical study of the whale, Ishmael is not content with visual descriptions alone. Chapter 65 is dedicated to “the whale as a dish.” (269)

Just a few pages later, Ishmael ponders “what and where is the skin of the whale?” (274) In chapter 68, the crew is cutting open a whale and Ishmael takes to intense observation. He looks at the “infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the whale,” (275) and calls this “the skin of the skin,” referring to the blubber as the primary layer of skin. This could potentially be a metaphor for the fact that despite people (such as sailors on the Pequod) claiming and appearing to have thick skin, they all have a sensitive layer (skin of the skin), which may be more exposed than they think.

Zooming in further, Ishmael observes the sperm whale’s head in chapter 74 and the head of a right whale in 75. This is where the subtle anthropomorphism becomes far more overt. About the sperm whale, Ishmael makes comments like, “there is more character in the Sperm Whale’s head,” (295) and “pepper and salt color of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large experience.” (295) He even asks, after pondering the distance between the sperm whale’s eyes, “is his brain so much more comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man’s, that he can at the same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction?” (297) His musings become even more philosophical and anthropomorphic by the end of chapter 75. For instance:

“Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale’s there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head’s expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel’s side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.” (301)

As Ishmael and the narrator move from the scientific to the artistic and culinary and eventually consider the body and head of the whale, the commentary becomes increasingly human-related and philosophical. The flow from one of these chapters mentioned above to the next feels punctuated and dramatic. One possible interpretation is that the sailors and man itself is not so different from what it hunts. This could either be a means to diminish the significance of man or to elevate the status of whales, which given Melville’s obsessions and the respect that most of the sailors have for nature and Moby Dick, seems the more likely alternative.

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

Above is a non-exhaustive list of possible explanations for Ishmael/Melville’s description of Fedallah and his Oriental homeland in Chapter 50, though we know that Fedallah’s true homeland, Persia, is actually a separate entity from East Asia altogether! The description is markedly negative:

“He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent— those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbis, indulged in mundane amours.”, [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

To begin with, it is unlikely that Ishmael should hold a grudge against someone he had (1) only just met, (2) had never done him any harm, and (3) is a fellow whaler who, for all of his mysteriousness, is still working toward the same goal at himself. Therefore, Ishmael’s unflattering tale of origin is not due to a bias against Fedallah’s character.

In that case, could Ishmael’s assertion of primitiveness stem from an ignorance of East Asian culture and geography? Perhaps to a certain degree. However, the “insulated…unalterable countries” Ishmael mentions had not yet begun to industrialize at this time. Only after the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s did Japan begin to develop industry and to shift away from Bushido and agrarianism. Many other “Oriental isles”, such as Papua New Guinea, many Polynesian islands, and parts of the Philippines and Indonesia, remain largely culturally and technologically isolated even to this day. Combined with the fact that Melville himself had firsthand experience with some of these places lead one to conclude that the strange description of Asia is not due to ignorance.

At the same time, Melville is definitely taking poetic license here. It is preposterous to claim that, merely by *looking* at Fedallah, one can see the origins of humanity. This dramatic, and ostensibly bigoted, verbiage seems to be the strongest incentive for Ishmael’s soliloquy. In order to evoke how very different the islanders’ culture is, Melville chose to not only separate them spatially from the reader, but temporally as well.

I’d also like to mention the extreme irony of the narrator’s charge that Fedallah came from an ignorant place where man was “unknowing whence he came”, even though the Genesis-citing speaker was probably ignorant of his own origins, as Darwin’s Origin of Species wouldn’t be published for another eight years.

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.

For all the talk of Melville’s progressive (or not so progressive) stance on race, few have questioned the category of race itself. Melville and his narrator, Ishmael, have varying responses to the “cannibals” at different points in the text. Their responses range from outright terror—“had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than I ever bolted a dinner (Melville 21)”—to patronizing, “these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvelous how essentially polite they are (Melville 27),” almost as if Ishmael were talking about a small child who had learned to say “please” and “thank you.” On either end of the spectrum of responses, Queequeg is clearly not the same as Ishmael, and his racial otherness characterizes his difference.
At one point in the text, Melville attempts to moralize on race relations for his audience, via Ishmael’s realization that “ignorance is the parent of fear (21).” Melville’s superficial attempts at moralizing on peace and serenity between races belies his work on the project of reaffirming both whiteness and the category of race itself. Race, on this liberal arts campus, is commonly discussed as a construct, and Melville’s text illustrates how individuals build race as a category, normalizing whiteness and casting those with different skin colors as a different race.
Ishmael almost constantly reaffirms whiteness as the default, in his first meeting with Queequeg, assuming that he is simply a tan white man who had traveled to New Zealand and received their tribal tattoos. He didn’t realize that Queequeg was not a white man until he saw him practicing his worship, exposed his hair knot, the extensive full-body tattoo covering Queequeg’s “purple” skin. Melville never speaks openly of “race,” but by spending excessive time describing and exoticizing Queequeg, Melville reaffirms whiteness as the default (and therefore unworthy of long descriptions). Setting whiteness as the default sets up racial relations to consider “whites” as superior to others, and whiteness has become a constant project of keeping itself in the default position by subjugating and dominating other “races.”
The project of constructing race and keeping whiteness as the default relies on the sorts of markers Ishmael uses to mark Queequeg as a “savage.” These racially-coded features would have resonated with Melville’s audience, clearly delineating Queequeg as “other,” without ever outright saying that he is of a different race. Seemingly arbitrary markers such as these are the code by which we read and interpret race, and the invisibility of these markers allow the project of whiteness to become normalized and shielded from critical analysis.

The religious themes in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, appear quite often. Captain Ahab appears to be the religious analogue of the bringer of chaos and doom. Ishmael slowly manages to see the true nature of Captain Ahab. Ahab begins to spend less time in the cabin, feeling that he is not getting any work done. Captain Ahab is rarely seen and Elijah appears often to help Ishmael and Queequeg manage their goals for the day. Strangely enough though, Ishmael talks about how he values the whaling profession as a profitable career and how it satisfies kings and queens, due to the value of whale oil.

Interestingly enough, Ishmael delves into cetology, as he converses about the various types of leviathans that exist. The leviathan exists in the Bible as a monstrous sea creature that is nigh invulnerable to all forms of physical attacks. The leviathan is also described as bringing chaos and doom to whoever sails on the sea. The White Whale in Moby Dick is delineated as being legendary, omnipresent, eternal and immortal. On another note, Ahab can be seen as the devil here, as he offers to give the crew a Spanish ounce of gold if they successfully locate the White Whale. I can see Ahab as the devil here because he represents the snake that entices Adam and Eve with the apple, that should bring them happiness and glee, but instead gives them only lots of trouble. Just like the devil dooms both Adam and Eve, Captain Ahab dooms his own crewmen and harpooners. In a similar manner, the crew of the ship will eventually have to deal with the monolithic White Whale. Furthermore, Gabriel thinks that Moby Dick is the incarnation of the Shaker God and one of the seamen hears a peculiar sound, which might in fact be God.