Moby Dick

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.

One does not often think that a creature still has the power to influence the living after it is already dead. What I have noticed a number of times throughout Moby Dick, is that there are a couple of occasions where creatures, usually the whale, can continue to influence the living after it is already dead. Set aside the fact that many parts of the whale are used by humans (oil, blubber, bones) after it had been killed, the dead whale still has the ability to instil fear in the living.  In the chapter The Funeral, Ishmael explains how once released back into the sea, the body of the whale still has an impact on those who sail the ocean, when he says:

“Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war, or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fouls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks and breakers hereabouts: beware!” (Melville 300)

While this is a more perceived danger that instils fear in sailors, the dead whale can also pose a real danger to those that kill it. In the chapter The Shark Massacre we see that numerous sharks surround the whale attached to the ship and attempt to devour the carcass. In an attempt to protect the whale carcass, the crew pokes at the swarming sharks with spades. During this process, Ishmael remarks that “It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures.” (Melville 293) Right after he thinks this, Queequeg brings the corpse of a dead shark on board (to be used for its skin) and almost looses his hand on the shark’s sharp teeth. Like the whale, the shark has the power to hurt and to harm the living even after his death.

I find this power and influence over the living world even after death to be an interesting concept and one that seems to be possessed by the whale throughout the novel. As Ishmael says on page 300, “Thus while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to the world.” (Melville)

In Chapter 48, The First Lowering, Flask stands on Daggoo’s shoulders. A momentous, earth-shattering occasion. Well, almost. It depends on how deeply we read into the event. Interpretations could run the gamut, anywhere from “Melville is showing that blacks can be used anywhere for anything!” to  “this is a metaphor for black superiority.” In between these extremes, we stumble upon the idea that this episode is a metaphor for American slavery. Several quotes from the chapter evidence this viewpoint, the first of which is an exchange between Daggoo and Flask:

“Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?”

“That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty feet taller.”, [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

How greedy! Little flask here gets a combined height of well over eleven feet, and yet he wants fifty more. One need not delve too deeply to see how this compares to American slavery. Here, an empowered yet diversely inferior white authority figure is using a black for his own ends, and then simply asks for more. Just as blacks were driven harder and harder in the South, more and more is asked of Daggoo without reward (though he is thanked at least). One could argue that Flask is only joking, but is it not so that there is a little truth behind every joke?

Melville points out this “poetic injustice” a few pages later when he writes that

…for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

Daggoo is a paragon of physical prowess. His muscles work in perfect conjunction, enabling him to remain stable as he supports a white man in a rocking boat. Unless my high school education has misguided me, I recall that a rocking boat was a metaphor for prewar America. Their differences irreconcilable, abolitionists and slave-owners at every moment risked capsizing the boat, or driving the country to war. In the middle stands the innocent negro, who, despite turbulent waters, remains steady and, ironically, it is this strength that made slavery so profitable and thus worth fighting for. Here Melville is praising blacks for their strength and fortitude, a trend he continues onto the next page:

So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

This passage reminds me of the negro gospels African slaves sang in the American South. The tone is one of resilience. It seems to say “You can try to destroy us, but we’re here to stay.” Interestingly, whites are the vain ones while blacks are the earth—immortal, beautiful, and giving. In the end, Melville implies, cream rises to the top and, someday, they will be our equals.

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 class we were reminded not to view “gender” as solely “female” and I think it is particularly important in this novel, given how there are simply no women on board this three year journey, to try and pull out the subtle and complex composition of gender aboard the Pequod. We have already explored in part the interesting interplay of feminine and masculine characteristics that exist within individual characters, such as Queequeg, but this presence of both genders co-existing within a crew of all men only seems to grow as the story progresses. It seems that the crew, who left their wives at home and ventured out, brave and daring into a task made only for the strongest of men, are now forced to shift over in time into a balance that requires the effeminate, the nurturing and even the homoerotic to come into view. A Squeeze of the Hand is one of the best and most entertaining examples of this, however as we discussed the chapter extensively I don’t feel the need to go into detail. I would just add to our discussion the somewhat obvious idea that while the chapter is clearly homoerotic, it seems a clear expression not of repressed homosexuality but of the pure sense of desire and sexual need that exists in humanity which here is coming forth despite the absence of women (the acceptable outlet for such desires of these men), and is directed without question or hindrance towards other men. In this way, though Melville for the most part appears to blend gender not into a neutral state but rather by incorporating pure elements of each into a constant tug-of-war, here appears to allow gender to be removed almost and human nature to be simply human nature.

There are many ways to read a novel and I have found myself in reading moments that appear to be primarily a commentary on race as suggesting something equally bold as gender roles or perhaps simply masculinity. Take, for instance, the moment in The First Lowering when Daggoo hoists Flask up upon his shoulders:

“…the gigantic negro, presented his flat palm to Flask’s foot, and…landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders…[T]he noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow flake” (p. 214)

This description, and others, seem to place Daggoo, Queequeg and the other non-white crew members on a level of higher masculinity in their physical forms and intense strength and skill; Flask is clearly both weaker and more effeminate here, described as “flaxen-haired” and resembling a snowflake. Of course this assignment of masculinity is not purely flattering – Daggoo is almost animalistic here, being ridden by the white man, but the measly quality of Flask’s size and manly presence is hardly flattering either and is clearly evident.

This idea of a hierarchy that creates elements of masculinity and effeminacy is not only present in the distinction between the races aboard, of course, but exists as well in the assertion of power and control in the established ranks on the ship. We can see this actually in the story of the Town-Ho when Radney tries to assert his authority by demanding Steelkilt sweep the deck – a job that is “the prescriptive province of the boys” (p. 240), and which is a “trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties”. Sweeping in a very stereotypical manner is seen classically as a woman’s chore and here on the deck is considered similarly a sort of “tidying of the house” kind of job. This, coupled with the idea that it is removed from the true duties of the ship and of whaling (which we already know are the duties of men) suggests a real blow to ones masculinity; this is clear also in the fact that while I won’t argue boys are seen as a feminine presence, they certainly are less masculine given they have not passed through puberty. In this way, gender and masculinity is a constant push and pull within the hierarchies both racially and through authoritative position.

The symbolic hierarchy that allows the Pequod to function as a successful whaling ship with three physically powerful non-white harpooners bolstering the administrative power of the three white mates, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask is a constant reminder of the racial diversity, stereotypes, and divides of the time. In this hierarchy all of the non-white characters are naturally subordinate to the whites and tend to function as caricatures of their cultures. In chapter 48, The First Lowering, Melville presents the reader with a unique scene that poses an interesting and ironic reminder of the racial hierarchy that embeds itself in every aspect of the novel’s progression. On page 214 Daggoo offers his body as a platform for Flask to more fully scan the ocean for whales,

“The sight of little flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro’s lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tines and her seasons for that.”

In this scene Flask standing on Daggoo’s shoulders becomes a physical reminder of the structure created by the three white mates and the three non-white harpooners on board the Pequod. In each case, the non-white man, whether Native American, Pacific Islander, or African, becomes merely a tool in the hands – or even under the feet – of the white man. However, it is interesting to point out that this passage applauds the physical wonders of Daggoo, noting him as superior to Flask as that ‘the bearer looked nobler than the rider’. Although Melville uses this passage to portray the power and superiority of white men of ‘inferior races’, he also uses it to display the unrelenting physical strength and important physical superiority of the non-white races. Additionally, this passage comments on the actual color contrast between the two races. The way in which Melville describes Flask’s Anglo appearance; ‘flaxen-haired Flask’, and in his reference to Flask as a ‘snow flake’ invokes a feeling of stark contrast between the ‘whiteness’ of Flask and the ‘blackness’ of Daggoo.

Melville’s portrayal of Daggoo’s unquestionable willingness to function as a physical tool just as a pedestal would serves as a blatant commentary on the voluntary submission of the non-white men to the white men both on board the Pequod and in 19^th century America. Melville is using the somewhat laughable scene of little Flask mounted on Daggoo’s shoulders to comment on the ridiculous nature of racial hierarchies that existed in 19^th century America.

In the chapter The Musket, Starbuck’s soliloquy as he ponders his fate on the Pequod, reminds me of Lady Macbeth’s similar monologue when she resolves to do anything in her power to help Macbeth ascend to the throne.  Both characters contemplate committing murderous deeds to meet their desires.  Lady Macbeth summons her resolve and courage, declaring, “Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature/  Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/ The effect and it!” (Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, scene 5).  She is unconcerned about the consequences of her actions, instead seeking to push away any thoughts of guilt. Starbuck, while holding a loaded musket, expresses the inner turmoil he feels towards his actions of obeying Ahab and the misgivings he has knowing that Ahab’s mission of killing Moby Dick may take the lives of the entire crew.  He says,

“But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ships company down to doom with him?—Yes, it would make him the willful murderer of thirty men and more if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way.  If, then, he were this instant—put aside, that crime would not be his.” (493)

Ultimately, Starbuck is unable to use the weapon in his hands to commit a murder. In contrast, Lady Macbeth is determined to act within her power and resources to achieve her goals.  Aware of the fact that this may require immoral actions, she seeks to keep those thoughts from her mind and not concern herself with the consequences.  Unlike Lady Macbeth, Starbuck’s conscience is too strong to be overcome, even as he thinks of his wife and child.  Although Starbuck is tempted to use the musket in his hands, he is unable to complete the murderous act and kill Ahab.  This monologue reveals the debate in his mind over whether killing one man to save the lives of thirty men would absolve the act of murder.  Starbuck’s decision to spare Ahab shows the strength of his inner character and belief in acting in a morally conscious way, even while realizing that he may die by following his stubborn captain’s mission.

Pip, as the only major African-American character in the novel, provides a unique commentary on racial issues of 19^th century America. Melville, or rather, Ishmael presents Pip as “the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew” who merely serves as the Pequod’s ship-keeper, a sailor who stays on the ship while the whaleboats go out (Melville 398). However, from the moment Pip enters the novel his race plays a significant role in dictating his interactions and relationship with the other crew members.

Pip’s first soliloquy reveals to the reader all of the dangers he faces as a young African American boy on board the ship. Although he is evidently afraid of the storm and the inevitable encounter with Moby Dick, he is also afraid of the actions of the white sailors. It is apparent that his racial difference affects both his relationships with men and, in a larger sense, with God. In chapter 40, Midnight, Forecastle, Melville allows Pip to belittle himself and his race by submitting to the religious customs of the white Americans as an inferior ‘black’ being.

“Oh, though big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!” (Melville 171).

In chapter 93, Castaways, Ishmael highlights Pip’s immense fear of the sea, his unique relationship with the white men on the ship, and his symbolic role as the African American slave. In the beginning of the chapter when Melville compares Pip to the ship’s steward, Dough-Boy, he simultaneously elevates African-Americans while blatantly portraying racial stereotypes.  Ishmael describes Pip as “over tender-hearted, but at the bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe which ever enjoys all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race” Ishmael goes so far as to instruct the reader: “Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, paneled in king’s cabinets” (Melville 399). Ishmael’s depiction of Pip represents the 19^th century white man’s skewed view of the black race. Although the recognition of Pip’s ‘brilliance’ and his superiority to Dough-Boy reveals the greater humanity and more developed character of the black man in contrast to his white counterpart, the very nature of Ishamael’s description of Pip’s ‘tribe’  presents an extremely cliché racial representation. For example; the idea that African-Americans are constantly jolly and that they all play the tambourine.

Chapter 93 also contains a critical turning plot piece regarding Pip’s role in the novel. However, I won’t be addressing Pip’s dramatic shift to an integral symbol of insanity as a result of  being left to drift alone in the open sea, but rather his interactions with the other crew members during this fiasco.  In this Chapter Pip has been temporarily reassigned to Stubb’s whaleboat crew. The first time out he jumps from the boat, causing Stubb and Tashtego to lose their already harpooned whale. Upon this discretion Stubb forcefully lectures Pip on the importance of ‘sticking to the boat’. Interestingly, Stubb makes an obvious allusion to slavery in saying that “a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama” (Melville 400).  This reference emphasizes the presence of slavery in 19^th century America and reveals the social acceptance of a statement such as this. After Stubb attempts to use this statement to control Pip’s actions Ishmael interjects with insightful commentary regarding human tendencies of slavery, “Perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal , which propensity too often interferes with is benevolence” (Melville 400). It can be read that Melville intended this segment to be a critique of slavery and a broader commentary on human’s innate tendencies to ignore morality for self gain and, more specifically, monetary profit. This chapter is one of the many in Moby Dick that Melville has utilized to interject his negative feelings towards slavery in America.

My topic was “Characters and Characterization,” but when Professor Friedman said that we could branch out in our posting topics, I was very excited because I could write about the critical issue of the ship-mates’ will versus necessity in obedience to kill Moby Dick. This problem of will starts as soon as it begins. In the Quarter-Deck scene, after Ahab has “roused the troops,” calls for buy-in:

“Disdain the task [of killling Moby Dick]? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for an ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooners!”(159)

That is, Ahab wants – or requires – his crew to hate the white whale, and have that be their motive in joining him on his quest. If Ahab truly just wants his crew to share his hate, it would be a sensical thing. In any group, the leader wants total commitment, total shared purpose. For instance, on a basketball team, much can be accomplished if everyone on the team understands the goals, and shares the will to do whatever each person can to achieve those goals. If their coach requires the team to get up at five in the morning for early morning cardio, the members go because they want to go, independent of their requirement to go, because they think it will help the team be the best it can be. The crew members on the Pequod don’t explicitly make any of these difficult sacrifices that basketball players might, besides the notable overarching likely sacrifice of their lives, but they do know the goal. It  seems, too, at first like there is emotional commitment, at least in their coach’s, Ahab’s, eyes. But unlike a good coach, or any good team leader, Ahab does not ask, ultimately, whether the crew members of the Pequod actually buy-in to his purpose. Indeed, right after he clamors, “ye will it,” instead of waiting for a response of confirmation, Ahab commands the harpooners. Their will is not known. But things get even hairier the very next line:

“Silently obeying the order, the three harpooners now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him.” (159)

They obey the order. That word in itself must contradict what Ahab wants of his men. But moreover, they do it “silently,” denoting a grudging necessity to follow command, not stemming in any part from their will. Again, five a.m. workouts are no fun, but the team members give some indication that they want to do it. And though they are the harpooners alone, it is no stretch to see their silent obedience extending to the whole crew. Starbuck, in particular, is often mentioned silently carrying out Ahab’s commands, nearly always in opposition to what Starbuck, himself, wants.

It is unreasonable, too, given the Pequod crew members, for Ahab to expect them to mimic his will, especially with the passion and philosophy that necessarily accompanies it. More than just Starbuck flat-out disagreeing with Ahab on his most important issue, Flask and Stubb do not, cannot, hate the white whale alone in the way that he plagues Ahab. In this way, it seems clear to me that Ahab’s mission was doomed, even from the onset. Ishmael mentions that the crew was the best possible, and that may be true. They don’t mutiny, after all, and the mission is carried out to the last, no small feat. I don’t know if whether everyone had bought in to Ahab’s purpose that anything would have changed, but this fragmentation, this imperfection of the crew to achieve a shared goal, predetermined their failure.

As we read on and Ahab’s mission of vengeance gets closer to its climax, we see more and more stirrings of insurrection on the Pequod, caused most principally by the crew’s fear of Ahab’s insanity.  Starbuck explicitly defies Ahab concerning the issue of whether or not to stop an oil leak (Chapter 109), and then later contemplates killing Ahab for the good of the remaining souls on the vessel (Chapter 123).  The crew has come to fear Ahab more than fate itself (538).  Interestingly enough, our narrator Ishmael has for the most part avoided revealing or acting upon any feelings of desperation.  He witnesses just about everything that happens on the Pequod, and is not ignorant of Ahab’s destructive course, but is hardly as desperate in his actions as, for example, Starbuck.

This should not be much of a surprise to us.  In the very first chapter of the book, Ishmael disclosed his general indifference about being completely subservient to a captain, even likening himself to a slave:

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about – however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way – either in a physical or metaphysical point of view that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. (24)

Ishmael is seeing the manifestation of his views play out – that “old hunks of a sea-captain” is driving his ship and crew to disaster.  Does Ishmael still rest comfortably, content with his work on the Pequod and the knowledge that the “universal thump” will be passed around eventually?  If he thinks that thump will be passed around to Captain Ahab, doesn’t he fear that it will come from Moby Dick, and that he will be victimized by it as well?  These are obviously the thoughts running through Starbuck’s head.  We talked in class about how Starbuck may be seen as an advocate of slave revolt and rebellion.  Ishmael, then, would be wholly indifferent to rebellion, someone satisfied with the system as is.  Are we meant as readers to comply with Ishmael’s indifference to rebellion, or even to notice it (it’s easy to forget that he is not only the narrator, but an acting member of the crew)?  When we reach the climactic meeting between Ahab and Moby Dick, Ishmael’s actions will reveal whether he is still the philosophical yet submissive man from that first chapter, or if he has a little revolt in him.

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