Moby Dick

I’d like to focus my blog on the issue of gender as it relates to the theatrical chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck.

First we see the bold image of Captain Ahab, walking the deck after breakfast as a country gentleman would subsequently take a stroll in his garden, though with a visage like the horizon of a coming storm. The most perceptive Stubb first notices this coming storm: (175) “D’ye mark him Flask? The chick that’s in him pecks the shell. ‘Twill soon be out.” The shell is broken and out flies that chick in this scene (Enter Ahab: Then all) as Ahab calls all hands to the Quarter-Deck–the stage of his subsequent lecture on the killing of the White Whale.

The Ra-Ra that follows is characteristic of many a homosocial scene: the general to his troops before battle, the head of a Fraternity to the soon-to-be inducted Freshmen, the Football coach at halftime. When Ahab says (178), “Aye Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me,” he seems to say that Moby Dick took his very manhood from him (and his countenance has since been a means of compensating for it). Ahab makes sure–as is necessary in these situations–to compliment and praise his crew as he stirs them up: (178) “What say ye men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”

What’s more, Ahab has a classic masculine vendetta, of enacting his vengeance on what Starbuck calls “a dumb brute.” Ahab reveals that he would go even further than that and smite that which is both inanimate and intangible: (179) “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other.” And so he remarks, and eye for an eye, a limb for a limb–such is his stereotypically masculine principle. Though one might say that he has already gotten his limb for a limb, as upon losing his hominid leg, he gains a leviathan one (of ivory).

Ahab, attending to his goals in this chapter in a most precise, calculated, and surgical matter, understands the power of the mob mentality he has created with his performance: (to Starbuck, 179) “The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?” They are, and both Starbuck and Ahab know that his sermon has produced the desired affect in inciting the crew and hindering opposition: “Starbuck is now mine, cannot oppose me now.

The speech delivered, Ahab facilitates a sort of White Whale Fraternity induction ceremony in which the men must drink and swear to bring death to Moby Dick. Finally, the performance ends as abruptly as it began–no lasting ceremonies, no lingering, no dilly-dallying. After all drink from the long, barbed, steel goblets and cry out their maledictions against the great White Whale, the men quickly disperse and Ahab disappears into his bachelor pad.

Though he wrote Moby Dick before the wave of “science versus religion” debates that came when Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, it appears that Herman Melville was more than familiar with the tension between science and religion. In Chapter 58, Ishmael makes a powerful remark regarding the sea, noting that, “Man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it” (267). Ishmael suggests that man has become too powerful, that humans no longer have any sense of wonder and awe in regards to the sea. Similarly, Melville could be suggesting that by attempting to conquer nature (and the world) through science, humans have abandoned feelings of “awfulness” and “awe-fulness” when considering God.

If the sea can be taken as a metaphor for the power of God, or even an extension of said power, then it does appear that Melville is commenting upon his society’s growing apathy toward the “divine being.” Why is this important to Melville? Perhaps he felt that the conflict between religion and science could be reconciled; science can only answer so much, and while there is nothing wrong in attempting to understand our world, it is beyond human capacity to conquer it. We must accept that there are some things that we will never be able to do or understand.

This quote could also serve as a warning to the crew aboard the Pequod; since they seek to overcome fate and destroy Moby Dick, they are accepting that they have indeed lost their fear of the sea — and God. As hinted throughout the entire book, things will more than likely not end favorably for the crew aboard the Pequod, suggesting that the awfulness of God and sea will return to mankind (if the Pequod is to serve as a example).

Looking at Ishmael’s quotation from a modern perspective, it almost seems strange to think that the people of the mid-19th century believed they had control over the world when, over a hundred years later, humans have extended further control over nature and are still attempting to conquer it. I wonder what Melville would have thought of our modern world if he could have seen it; would he stay firm in his assertion that we have lost our sense of “awfulness of the sea” and God? Or perhaps he would say that we have lost the sense, but are aware of that loss. It is striking to see how easily Ishmael’s quote can relate to modern day debates between faith and science; we are still struggling, it seems.

I found the various encounters the Pequod had with other ships to be a kind of relief, a chance for the reader to even slightly escape the confines of the ship and its inhabitants and see how they interact with their peers in the larger world.  Of course, these can be read as more than chance meetings, as each ship also seems to embody its own ideology or somehow act as a symbol of an idea Melville wanted to get across in the text.  Here, I think, it may also be significant that ships are conventionally referred to with female pronouns, and can thus make interesting cases for the representation of gender in the novel.
I found the meeting with “The Virgin” in chapter 81 o be a particularly good example of this.  While “virginity” is often associated with youthful femininity in Western culture, it does not necessarily preclude a connection to male virginity as well; thus, the fact that the German word “jungfrau” (the ship’s true name) contains in it the word for “woman” is perhaps more significant in an indirect way.  I hope that this analysis is not reading too much into the text by latching on to one of the relatively few references to women, and making it more than was intended.  However, I thought that in the context of our discussion of Melville’s own life and experiences with women and marriage, one could read this ship as a kind of statement on one aspect of its nature.
We first meet the Virgin empty of oil and thus “deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin” (315).  However, it becomes apparent that the naiveté suggested by the name also refers to their lack of skill and knowledge of whaling.  After supplying the other ship with supplies the crew of the Pequod is insulted that it turns around and begins to compete for the same target.   Although the Pequod ultimately triumphs over the inexperienced Virgin, the old whale is practically defeated already – in it the crew finds an old piece of harpoon – perhaps the remnant of other whalers as incompetent in catching their prey as the Virgin.  We feel pity for this creature who has apparently been hounded by whalers all his miserable life only to die a meaningless death as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  The last we see of the Virgin, it is off chasing an “uncapturable” whale, completely unaware that its chase is in vain.  Perhaps this is not at all what Melville intended, but this desperate, fruitless search for a whale (combined with the name of the ship) almost reminded me of a young girl seeking a husband to provide the same thing a whale would provide for the Virgin: money.  However, like young girls can sometimes be, the Virgin is selfish and naïve, causing more harm than good.

I noticed in Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand” that there are numerous religious allusions.  It is evident that Herman Melville intentionally writes in a sexual manner and refers directly to the pleasure and joy of squeezing sperm with his hands.  However, the religious undertones are quite implicit.  Melville, I feel, draws an obvious connection between religion and sexuality.

First of all, for Ishmael, sperm represents a religious deliverance for it dissipates anger, bad temper, ill-willed thought, and all forms of malice.  Ishmael describes the joy of bathing his hands in the sperm.  “… while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever” (page 601).  The fact that Melville uses the word “divinely” connects sexuality to religion.

Ishmael’s feelings of affection and comraderie with his fellow-whalemen while holding and squeezing their hands together in the globules of sperm, reminds me of the part of the Church service when we turn to each other in the pews and greet one another saying, “Peace be with you.”

Another reference that Ishmael makes connecting religion and sex is his longing to squeeze sperm “eternally.”  “I am ready to squeeze case eternally” (page 602).  His reference to eternity can be seen as a religious connotation.  Furthermore, he goes on to say that he dreams and has “… visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti” (page 602).  How odd it is to imagine Heaven inhabited by angels delighting themselves in jars of semen!!  It is incredibly that in this one chapter, Melville meshes both eroticism and religion.

In Chapter 32, “Cetology,” Ishmael both questions and confirms the human need to classify, bending the rules of science and making up his own classification system. Interestingly, Ishmael’s uses words for different sizes of books to organize his classification:

“First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend thema ll, both small and large. I. The FOLIO WHALE, II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III, the DUODECIMO WHALE” (Melville 129).

Books used to be made by printing a certain number of pages on a sheet of paper, and then folding the paper. Books made by printing two pages on each side of a sheet of paper are called Folios. Octavos are made by printing eight pages of text on one sheet of paper, and folding eight times, and the duodecimo format has twelve pages per sheet (Ishmael left out quarto, four pages of text per sheet.) When the size of the paper used is constant, folios come out the largest, and then octavo, and then duodecimo, and similarly, Ishmael uses Folio for the larger whales, Octavo for medium ones, and duodecimo for smaller ones. I thought it was an interesting way of putting art and science together.

Ishmael’s classification is not scientific at all, and in fact he critisizes Linnaeas’ for “fain have banish[ing] the whales from the waters” (128). Linnaeas’ findings about how whales differ from fish are summarized as “lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded” (128). This description of the whale is favorable; “cold blooded” is not usually taken as a compliment. However, Ishmael still considers whales to be fish, because they live in the water.

This chapter might be another way that Ishmael suggests that whales aren’t so different from us (and that we are not so different from whales).

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

Information about book sizes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_size

In chapter 51, “The Spirit-Spout”, the Pequod runs into a massive storm. For the whalers, nothing clarifies their predicament like the times when the sea is most dangerous.

In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await the issue of the gale. Then captain and crew become practical fatalists… Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted soldiers in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast.

The overwhelming power of the sea renders the men silent and fatalistic, as the possibility of death and the helplessness of man in the face of nature dominate the minds of the crew. Melville also links the sea to madness, demonstrating that it requires a certain degree to cope with such a devastating and common event while whaling. Ahab is portrayed as resolute, even sleeping while exposed to the storm because of his relentless defiance of the sea. Yet he clearly possesses no agency or ability to influence the sea or the storm, regardless of his declarations of being God and master of the Pequod. This  reminder of forces greater than Ahab and the wider world only occurs when nature intervenes on the ship. The single-mindedness of the Pequod’s and Ahab’s goal requires such a larger force in order to provide the perspective of madness that Melville cultivates in the crew. When the sea turns hostile, there is no possibility for Ahab to influence events either on the ship or in the sea. His manic obsession with the white whale does not diminish, but the reader and, one hopes, the crew, can see through the extreme example of the storm to the broader fact that the sea is ultimately in control of the Pequod’s fate, not the captain.

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

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

Even early in the book, the relationships between the men on the boat are very important to the story and the dynamics emerging in the relationships have a lot symbolism and metaphorical messages within them. We see at the end of chapter 10, the relationship and dynamic beginning to form between Ishmael and Queequeg…

“How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg- a cozy loving pair.”

I found this whole chapter very interesting, following Ishmael’s internal battle over sharing a bed with the harpooner he has yet to meet- a situation that most would probably find awkward and be wary of.  Though in the end, Ishmael decides to go ahead with it and Queequeg and he stay up most of the night smoking and chatting.  Be see the early stages of a profound bond being formed between these two men.  Once on the ship, the men will be heavily dependent on each other, and trust will most definitely be an important factor.  During this part of the book, Ishmael mentions that he is impressed by Queequeg’s dignity and kindness; two characteristics that are good to have in someone on whom you will be depending.  It struck me at this point that it is qualities like these that will determine status in the world upon the Pequod, not wealth or race.  It is also clear from the way that Ishmael describes himself and Queequeg as “a cozy loving pair” in their “hearts’ honeymoon” that Ishmael feels a connection with Queequeg and is open to new experiences with his new friend and in general about the whaling ship.

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 Chapter 70, entitled The Sphynx, Ishmael describes the process by which the massive head of a sperm whale is decapitated and hung alongside the Pequod, “buoyed up by its native element”, i.e. , floating in the water (249). Ishmael describes, “It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert” (249).  The Sphinx, in Egyptian mythology was looked upon as a guardian of temples and the secrets that lay within them. In Greek mythology the Sphinx was sent to Thebes by the the Gods and would pose a riddle to those who wished to pass by and would kill those who failed to answer correctly. The Sphinx is represented not only as a guardian but also as a bearer of wisdom.

Ahab stares over the side of the ship at the head of the whale. He begins to speak to the decapitated head as if it were “the Sphinx of the Seas”, so to speak, the keeper of some ancient and vast knowledge of the deep, and of the horrors which have unfolded within it. A knowledge which itself reveals real truth. Ahab says:

. . .Speak mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all the divers, thou hast dived the deepest . . . thou hast has been where bell or diver never went . . . Oh head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham . . .” (249).

The whale is conceived as something which has persisted throughout the ages and has come to an understanding of the intricacies of our world’s mechanisms; they have come to see and grasp the way in which the inner-cogs governing the its functioning.  Ahab, representative of mankind, deeply desires and struggles fruitlessly to attain this wisdom, admits that if even the most righteous man (e.g., Abraham) were to ever gain insight into these truths, he would be driven to evil. The attaining of the unattainable would be catastrophic. Although… doesn’t the search itself lead man partake in evil?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx