Moby Dick

This post does not really fit under “Characters and Characterization,” yet it relates to an earlier post I made in that section.  However, I think it relates more to the narrator, so I will classify it as such.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Ishmael is somewhat invisible as a character.  However, throughout the book, especially in later chapters, the reader gets glimpses of him.  One thing I’ve noted is his opinions on the work he has undertaken; this novel.  He seems to think rather highly of it, and see it as some sort of noble work. In chapter 104, The Fossil Whale, Ishmael states

For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outstretching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs.  Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme!  We expand to its bulk.  To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

In saying this, Ishmael connects this work to large themes of the universe.  He seems to be claiming that this book is mighty, as it deals with such a mighty theme.  More than that, it is so important as to weaken him, as he struggles with the meaning of the universe.  This fits in with what we discussed in the first class, how some people hate this book, but some think it holds all the answers to life.  Ishmael appears to be in the latter camp.

Of course, this begs the ever present question:  how separate are Ishmael and Melville?  Does Melville see his work this way?  I would argue yes, as he constantly inserts massive life morals and questions into the work.  To him, it is not just a book about a whale.  Did this make him more upset when  the critics slammed this work, or shelved it under “cetology?”  Or did he laugh at their folly, knowing the deep truths were there, and they just couldn’t see?

Chapter 88, Schools and Schoolmasters is another good example of a chapter where Melville uses whales to comment on humanity.  At first what struck me about this chapter was that it is one of the only instances where Melville mentions love.  Of course, this is whale love, not human love, but his language frames this whale love in human terms: “As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love” (380).

However, as the chapter continues, it appears to focus more on ideas of learning and growing up.  The male whale will cavort with a harem of female whales while he is young.  But as he matures, he will instead choose solitude and leave the harem and “he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets” (381).  For men in this book, the sea is also a source of “moody secrets.”  They often contemplate her vastness and her beauty.  Yet, for men, land is more likely to be the place where they settle down.  Melville settled down to a life on land with a wife and children after he spent years traveling the world in ships.

Though we as readers will not get to follow Ishmael past his time on the Pequod, it would be interesting to see how much longer he spends quieting his restlessness by going out to sea.  He obviously sees the sea as a “school” of sorts, as he relates chapters and chapters worth of scientific and philosophical information that he has learned while whaling.  But most likely eventually he, and men like him, will feel they have learned enough, and will return to land permanently.

For my final blog post on Moby Dick, I am going to forsake my category and write, instead, about something I found very touching towards the end of the novel, that being Ahab’s relationship with Starbuck as their fate draws near. In Chapter 132, “The Symphony,” Ahab seems to pour out his soul to his first mate:

…Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board! – lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in thine eye!

In this passage, Ahab admits his humanity. He remembers his own family, and owns (in preferring the gaze of man to that of God or that towards sea or sky) that he, perhaps, regrets his life away from them and the “normal” human existence that he could have lead. Yet after this touching speech, Ahab proves he is set on his destiny by pursuing Moby Dick. He has Starbuck stay behind in the fateful chase, preserving what Ahab deems true humanity- a man with a family whom he loves, with attachment to the land. Ahab seems to equate land with humanity, here, pronouncing Starbuck’s human eye as the “magic glass” with the exclamations, “By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone!” He sets the sea and sky as separate from humanity in putting the gaze into the human eye as one on a different level from that into the sea or sky. Ahab, after all his years at sea, has become inhuman in losing his connection with the land. We may view his fixed idea of his destiny as one pre-ordained by God, in line with Melville’s religious awareness, or we can say that Ahab made his own fate by choosing a life that precluded the sort of destiny that includes dying peacefully by the fireside, wrapped in blankets while your wife and child murmur their last farewells. Ahab’s destiny was self-made, and he acknowledges this in his speech to Starbuck.
Ahab enforces this realization by having Starbuck stay behind. Ahab sees Starbuck’s “far away home” in his eye and knows that Starbuck has not yet sealed his own fate. Starbuck remains a member of humanity, a person of the land who sojourns at sea and no more, which Ahab used to be before he devoted his entire life to the non-human realms, that of sea and sky and God and “destiny.” Ahab’s tenderness towards the first mate comes out, then, as he reminds Ahab as his own lost humanity.
This brings us back to the beginning of the novel, in which Ishmael talks of how he has to go out to sea every now and then “as a substitute for pistol and ball.” In saying that he avoids suicide by going to sea, Ishmael inherently equates the two (“With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship”). In other words, Ishmael gets tired of being a human, so enters a realm in which he does not have to be. Death, certainly, is such a realm, but Melville frames the sea as one, as well. It is thus fitting that Ishmael sets out on his watery journey with Queequeg, a man who would challenge any American’s views of humanity in the 19th century.
The idea of a seaward voyage as the end of one’s humanity can be seen in Ahab’s final farewell to Starbuck in Chapter 135, “The Chase – Third Day.” Ahab says, “’Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!’” which instantly brings to mind the image of Ahab himself, boarding a ship and ever afterwards missing from humanity. He understands in retrospect why the course of his life played out as it did. By his speech in “The Symphony,” we see that Ahab questions his life decisions:

…Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase?…how the richer or better is Ahab now?

Ishmael, on he other hand, understands his exact reasons for boarding the Pequod before he does it. He does it to escape life so that he can be better equipped to return to it. Ahab up and left his life on shore and got too caught up in the world of whaling to properly think about his priorities. He acquires a “destiny” by accident, by carelessness. Ishmael thinks (like it’s his job), and he avoids a watery death.

Not until yesterday’s class had I put any thought to the idea that the chapter named “The Spirit-Spout” might indeed by a premonition of the future of the Pequod.  But as I reread the chapter, I found that I had underlined the following passage in my first reading,

“And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring.  While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked.  But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.” (225)

The second sentence of the passage especially struck me because of the image of Ahab as man who is at the same time alive and dead, “his one live leg…every stroke of his dead limb…”(225)  Although Ahab often times seems to hide in his cabin, the Pequod is his tool of accomplishing his goal of killing the white whale; thus the every lives of the Pequod and her crew hang on his decisions and mood.  Thus second sentence seems to suggest that the Pequod hangs on the balance of life and death and Ahab’s ivory leg is a reminder of the possible ensuing death.  Furthermore, is Ishmael suggesting that the voyage could possibly go either way; success or failure?

I believe that that question is answered with the phantom spout or “Spirit-Spout”.  It is as though nature is teasing Ahab and his crew.  The spout is a reminder that the Pequod had a choice to break from Ahab’s devious plan to kill the white whale but chose not to.  Thus every night the phantom spout reminds them of their doomed journey.  It is as though a ghost lurks in the background, haunting every member of the crew.  The warning of doom did not end with the phantom spout, Ishmael also comments on the unusual birds that also haunt the deck.  He states, “And every morning, perched on our stays, row of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation…” (226) He suggests that perhaps nature, through the actions of the birds, has deemed the boat and its crew dead.  Perhaps the ship and the crew have become ghosts at sea just like the “Spirit-Spout”?

A close reading of the chapter “The Spirit Spout” betrays certain aspects of generally more understated functions of Melville’s narrative voice. Though the central aspect of this chapter is the “Spirit Spout” itself, there is an equally intriguing, if as of yet under discussed, part at the end of the chapter where Starbuck finds Ahab asleep in his cabin in a position that indicates that Ahab has been obsessively watching the direction of the ship’s course. I find this an interesting part of the narrative because the careful choice of language, along with the fact that Ishmael has been privy to the “spirit spout” in the earlier paragraphs of this chapter indicate that we are being talked to by Ishmael, but at the end of the chapter we see a sudden switch to a situation that Ishmael would have no way of commenting on. This shift in narrative voice in combination with continuity of tone indicate that Melville wants to tell us something of a philosophic nature about the scene in Ahab’s cabin. Certain aspects of the scene stand out, and individual words cannot be ignored because of the care and attention that was put into this chapter.

Never could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood…

This quote in particular seems very important. The narrator is saying that Starbuck is descending into the realm of Ahab. I do not feel like I am reading too much into the action of “Descending” when I say that the reader can conjure up images of the underworld or hell from hearing this seemingly simple sentence. I believe that the narrator wants to inform the reader’s interpretation of the “spirit spout” by showing that Ahab is chasing it down even in his sleep, as he is seen to be asleep while facing the compass. The crew has many different interpretations of what the spout might be or what it could signify, so by affirming Ahab’s obsession with it in proving that he is hoping to follow the direction of the spout we see that those that think there is something demonic about the spout may very well be in the right.

It also cannot be ignored that the narrator provides us with an interesting side note at the end of the chapter. In reference to the hanging compass we are told specifically that…

The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the compass at the helm, the captain, while below, can inform himself of the course of the ship.

Regardless of whether or not it is significant that “The Tell-Tale Heart” was published eight years prior to Moby Dick, the wording “Tell-Tale” carries the same ominous meaning. The narrator clearly finds it important to bring the reader out of the flow of the text so as to tell them that the tool Ahab is using to keep track of the direction of the ship is something that is ominous, and as a result the task that is being carried out with its aid is likely equally dark.

I for one feel that it is extremely important that we look this closely at this specific section of the story because through this scene we are able to see many things that will be mainstays throughout the book. Ahab’s obsession, Ahab’s madness, Starbuck’s questioning of Ahab’s ability to lead, the crew’s belief that Moby Dick is something more than whale, and Ahab’s connection with evil. All of these things are incredibly important aspects of the plot and as such it is no surprise that they are represented so strongly, and all at once, in this very significant part of the story.

For this post I figured I’d tackle the most subtle, perplexing aspect of Ishmael’s narration: the foot note. What is the purpose of the footnote in Moby Dick? What are these pesky, little creatures that pop up at the bottom of the sea?

Since nobody else has the time and patience, I did an exhaustive search of the book and counted a total of 17 footnotes (if anyone wants to challenge me on this matter please go ahead).*

Footnotes typically belong to the phylum of non-fiction, in which case they are added by the author, or in an antiquated or translated work of fiction, in which they are added by an editor or translator, like in my Norton ed. of The Brothers Karamazov.

So does Meville revolutionize the footnote by employing it in Moby Dick?

At first glance, they seem to be nothing out of the ordinary, often giving the appearance of explaining dry, technical details. In fact, this could have added to the early mis-categorization of the book as a novel about cetology. In the chapters Cetology and The Right Whale’s Head, they are used to give further insight on the categorization and anatomy of whales, backing up the perception that the book is primarily about whales. However, as often with Melville, this soon proves not to be the case. In the chapter The Whiteness of the Whale, the footnote recalls personal observations and memories, giving the appearance of a travel narrative.  Others explain the meaning of mariner terms and other aspects of whaling life to land-locked, tight-lipped readers, in which case they could also be a satire for the travel narrative he felt he had outgrown. Melville certainly takes as much creative license with footnotes as he does with other narrative and stylistic forms in Moby Dick.

There are many other types of footnotes in Moby Dick:

Humorous footnotes that give color to the text:

The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement upon original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooner the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder. (Signet, 311)

Feminist-footnotes:

When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the mother’s pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolor the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries. (376)

Elitist footnotes:

But as these pig-fish are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology. (128)

Abuse of footnotes:

(See The Whiteness of the Whale)

Whatever you may make of them, or even if you skip over them, these footnotes leave us a footprint of Melville’s thought.

So, next time you stumble upon a footnote in the text, stop and take note. You may find something interesting.

*Compiled list of footnotes (by no means authoritative):

Signet Edition

Pg. 106,128,133,182,183,199,200,228,234,276,277,293,311,325,376,406,456,527

** I can’t count, there are actually 18

In chapter 124, Ahab asserts his navigational skill:

…He hurried towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading. “East-sou’east, Sir,” said the frightened steersman. “Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?” Upon this every soul was confounded… the old man [Ahab] with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses- that’s all.”

Here we see one more element of the danger in whaling: not only can the physical power of the sea capsize a boat or wash a man overboard, but the navigational system is vulnerable. Without the astute senses of Ahab, the Pequod could have taken a wrong course for days or weeks, following a broken compass instead of their planned route. This is again an example of man vs. nature, where the natural world has the ability to interfere with that of man, or the ship. The crew relies on technology, and loses its ability to observe one of nature’s most basic facts: the sun rises in the East, and sets in the West. In the continuing struggle between man and nature throughout the novel, it is moments such as these that demonstrate what the crew misses by campaigning in opposition to nature, instead of working cooperatively with it or with respect to it. Ahab is able to discern the problem and the cause, but steadfastly refuses to recognize the solution.

“Men,” said he [Ahab], steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any.”

Ahab chooses again to forgo the warnings of nature and impose his will on his surroundings. It appears to be a minor issue: a ship has to have a working compass. However, as one of many examples of Ahab’s determination and relentless aggression, it serves to show the extent to which Ahab will go in order to assert his dominance. For this reason, Ishmael notes that “In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.”

As we reread and reflected on “The Spirit Spout” (Ch. 51) in class today, I approached it from a spiritual perspective, perhaps due to the name of the chapter.  What I found within, however, is a sort of summation of Captain Ahab’s hubris, how it spreads to the crew and yet another foreshadowing of the consequences, but this time in a more spiritual sense than solely a religious one (I believe that there is a difference, anyway). 

In the very start of the chapter, Ishmael makes a direct connection between the spout and a higher power: “Lit up by the moon, [the spout] looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea” (Melville 253).  Perhaps some extension or appendage of god or gods (a pagan reference?), the spout is representing the whale as something beyond man’s reach.  This idea is only deepened by the failed chases that continue into the chapter, giving an image of forever chasing something that will yield nothing if it doesn’t want to. 

Once the image of the spout as a celestial extension is produced, the spread of hubris around the ship is easy to see.  Despite the fact that all of these spouts occur at night, the men desperately and continually (at least for a time) chase after these mysterious occurrences in the dark.   Ahab’s personal harpooner, Fedallah, seems to be sort of responsible for the fervor that has risen among the men:

“‘There she blows!’ Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure.  For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.” (254)

With Fedallah prevoking the crew with his war cry, almost every man aboard would lower in the dark if they approached the creature that produced the spout, an action which Ahab would most certainly support if the spout proved to belong to Moby Dick, as he and the crew seem to believe: “It seemed… that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick” (254).  As we discussed in class, the crew seems very willing to give Moby Dick a malevolent intention which he does not naturally posess, believing that the whale was “treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas” (255). 

By giving the whale this dark power, they are arming it with the very weapons needed for their downfall, an occurrence that is heavily foreshadowed.  As soon as the spout is first spotted, Ahab begins to roam the deck, and his very pacing was indicative of a death rattle: “While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked” (254).  Only Ishmael seems to be aware that now that the Captain has the crew on his side, their doom is almost certainly sealed.

In chapters 55-57, Melville reflects on what seems to be yet another whale-related obsession, that of aesthetics and representation. This inclination was first summoned in the Spouter Inn, when Ishmael was drawn to the enigmatic painting hung in the entryway. In 55 and 56 he revisits the topic, drawing an ever-heavier veil of mystery around the whale. There are few even barely tolerable representations of the whale in painting, as the whale’s form is a thing that seems to positively resist representation. This is because the whale is only ever seen living by whalemen, and whalers are not painters. The skeleton of the whale, or even its lifeless body cannot show us its true visage, the whale is a lived being, and always partially submerged in water. In Melville’s time there was no conceivable way for the whale’s full swimming figure to be taken in by the human eye, and there never could be. It was unknowable, not subject to our limited knowledge. To create a copy of a whale, or indeed a copy of anything that touches the eternal is not possible, not even imaginable.

Chapter 57 seems a bit of a departure from the discussion of the “high” arts, in this departure it incredibly questions the constructed division of art and craft, and of marginalized peoples. Ishmael greatly admires bone carvings, and remarks upon the similarity between pacific island carvings and whaler’s carvings,

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery”  244

Here Ishmael defines savagery as “that condition in which God placed (man)”, a telling and radical statement. The ‘savages’ are not godless primitives, but men that are not substantively different in makeup, all disparities a result of a lack of Christian society. And for Ishmael this is not necessarily a “lack”, clearly, as he himself has chosen to forsake the western world for the sea, in search of something or some understanding that has not become confused and corrupted. Ishmael proclaims:

I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him” (245)

After using the word liberally for the whole of a novel, Ishmael’s understanding of “savage” metamorphoses in front of us. He traces connections between the art, of what he terms the “Hawaiian savage”, the “white sailor-savage”, the “Greek savage”, and memorably refers to Durer as a “Dutch savage”. Ishmael satires the audacity of shrinking any person to fit the label savage, by using it indiscriminately to describe both extolled cultures and artists to the distained and forgotten. He compares the human perseverance exhibited in the years spent on a small intricate carving to the invention of a Latin lexicon, a radical idea sweeping away barriers of cultural authority, instead probing past rigid constructions to what Ishmael really cares about, the universal human spirit.

After spending today’s class talking about Melville’s ecocentricism (or lack thereof), I would like to point out some religious connections with his love of nature. I personally believe that Melville did “worship” all living things under the sun. It is for this reason that Ishmael spends so much time analyzing the ferocity and grandeur of the whale by describing the shape of it’s head and other anatomically symbolic attributes. This love for all nature, to me, is part of Ishmael’s religious perspective because he believes all creatures were created by God and we are as menacing to nature as nature is to us.

In chapter 66, The Shark Massacre, this sentiment is evident. In the first few lines, Ishmael describes such violent and ferocious creatures as “wondrous” and “vigorous” (271). When Queequeg and Stubb begin killing the sharks with whaling spades, Ishmael refers to it as a murder. He slightly humanizes the sharks even though they are menacing, violent, and eating the whale attached to the ship. The language Ishmael uses is also very unsure. When he describes the sharks being stabbed in the skulls, he calls the brains the “seemingly only vital part,” “entrails seemed swallowed,” and “a generic vitality seemed to lurk in what might be called the individual life” (272). Ishmael’s uncertainty proves that he, or Melville, believes nature should not be tampered with, and humans do not know as much as we think about other species. This connects to our discussion on global warming as well: since we are the “dominant and most developed” species on the planet, we think we can conquer and understand everything that is foreign to us.

From this passage I infer that Melville believes men should stick to what they know and leave alone what is out of their hands. God created all creatures to peacefully coexist, and he did not intend for men to disrupt the system as Queequeg and Stubb did. Ishmael has faith that God made all of nature with equal intent, and Ishmael trusts God’s decision. Queequeg, on the other hand, does not. At the end of the chapter he acknowledges this sentiment: “Queequeg no care what god made him shark, wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one damn Ingin” (272).

In class we also brought up the common sentiment, especially present in Ahab, that nature is malevolent to humans. Ishmael/Melville clearly do not believe this if Ishmael is personifying sharks. In this regard the narrator thinks that it is selfish for men to claim such a high status in a world of things created equally. God made the sharks just as he made us, therefore the sharks find us just as malevolent toward them as we think they are toward us. This view of creation is very philosophical and very optimistic, but it is not surprising considering Ishmael’s tendency to philosophize everything. For once, his religious perspectives are happy and trustworthy.