Moby Dick

In a book teeming with allusions- the Biblical multitude, those ranging across the literary canon, the scientific, and those with philosophical undertones, chapter 82, “The Honor and Glory of Whaling,” stands out as being less about allusion (and it’s not, since the characters and events are confronted directly) and more concerned with the validation of whaling in showcasing the numerous important (and powerful) historical figures who have been associated with the act. As opposed to many of the middle chapters, in which an explanation is followed by Ishmael’s ruminations on its philosophical meaning, he states outright:

“The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very springhead of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though by subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity” (324).

In the ensuing examples, Ishmael seeks not only to parade those mythic figures, but to also validate his own labor as an important enterprise. He makes specific reference to feats of whaling, like Perseus’ experience with the Leviathan, “an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart” (324). He compares whaling to artistry; even earlier he refers to the harpoon from stubs boat that kills a whale as “the magical line” (257). The act of whaling in itself, as Ishmael conveys in reciting these stories, is an almost supernatural act, the killing of an unkillable Leviathan by humans with human instruments, a task that should, by likelihood, be restricted to immortals and superhumans. Compare this to many of Ishmael’s earlier ruminations on his place in the labor hierarchy, serving under Ahab and the mates. Now, he is in the loftier position of being subordinate to gods and superhumans. His exploration of the powerful and famous associated with whaling is part of his book-long rumination on whaling as a concept- the legitimacy of whaling as an enterprise. He (and Melville) obviously have enormous respect for whales, but also clearly admire their historical and literary forbears. Melville/Ishmael never goes as far as to incriminate whaling or whalers in any negative pursuit, but it is clear that we should not necessarily take his commendations at face value.

Almost all the characters on the Pequod absolve themselves of responsibility and allay their melancholia by attributing actions and events to Providence or fated destiny. Melville’s Calvinistic pre-determinism is at work here, but I argue that he ultimately rejects it in the case of Ahab. In the chapters leading up to the final chase of Moby Dick, Starbuck’s dire warnings against continuation of the voyage are a counter to Ahab’s claims of lack of agency.

Here are some phrases and sentences that show the overwhelming obsession with fate in the last quarter of the novel.

‘Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of “Ho! The fair wind! Oh-he-yo, cheerly, men!” the crew singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.’ 492

‘…the fated Pequod’ 498

‘…they were not grieved at this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfillment of an evil already presaged. ‘ 502

‘But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight.’ 516

‘Ha! Yonder! Look yonder, men!’ cried a foreboding voice in the wake.’ 518

‘By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder, windlass, and Fate is the handspike.’ 522

As Ahab’s monomania degenerates into raving incoherence, he increasingly blames his state on Fate. In a sense, this voyage was meant to occur in the scheme of things. Starbuck desperately cautions against Ahab’s proposals, but  to no avail. Perhaps it was an attempt to get through Ahab’s madness to the reasoning part of his mind, with the lesson that Ahab had indeed chosen this path and could depart from it if he so wanted.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Signet Classic. 1998

What is the significance of Melville’s changing of the narrator’s voice after the Peqoud sets sail? To be sure, Ishmael is a major part of the opening chapters of the novel, so why do we suddenly cease to hear his voice for such a long time? It can not be denied that Ishmael has not disappeared completely, as sections such as the few chapters on Cetology seem to carry on the spirit of Ishmael’s “Whale Mania” that is found in the introductory sections of the book, and these moments are clearly examples of Ishmael’s voice. But we soon encounter scenes in the novel where Melville presents the action of his characters through the use of stage direction. It can not be said that this is done because Ishmael is not present at the scene and lacks opinion on the matter because he is not an omniscient narrator, nor can it be said that an omniscient narrator wouldn’t have made sense to add for the purpose of presenting these scenes to the reader, as at times in the later sections of the novel it does seem that Melville has suddenly given us a third-party omniscient onlooker to describe the action that is certainly not Ishmael. I find it hard to believe that the entire idea of Ishmael was nothing more than one of the many tangents Melville takes building off of his “riff” that is Moby Dick. There would have been no reason for Ishmael to take such a prominent role for such a long time before setting out to sea were this the case. In addition I find it very unlikely that the world would have latched onto the line “Call me Ishmael” were Ishmael eventually made to be irrelevant. Instead I feel that Ishmael acts as Melville’s avatar in the novel and the sections right after taking sail where we seem to loose touch with Ishmael act to give us information about a scene in a way that Ishmael could not have at this early point in the trip. Ishmael is very good at commenting in a philosophical way on things that happen as part of the daily routine on a whaling vessel, but I get the impression that he is not the best person to describe direct human interaction. I learn much more about how Ishmael feels about people when I hear him talk about a piece of rope then when I hear him speak directly about Ahab. Certainly by the end of the novel the reader has learned enough about Ishmael’s feelings on humanity’s struggle with the concept of God that one can come to an educated conclusion about how Ishmael would have responded in any scene when he is not present. It seems that Melville wanted Ishmael to remain a slightly solitary individual with very specific ideas, through whom he could speak, but Melville did his best to keep him out of the world of commenting on interactions between parties that did not include him. This also serves a purpose in that because these scenes occur so soon after setting sail the reader is able to picture Ishmael cherishing the fact that he is away from land and perhaps away from his depression so tangibly that Ishmael doesn’t go all philosophical on us for a few “days”. Regardless, I believe there is true purpose for the narrative voice in Ishmael’s disappearance for a fairly large part of the novel, and that this purpose says nothing about his absence being the norm, but instead the disappearance of Ishmael is one of Melville’s “riffs” in order to convey a point about humanity that is not best suited to Ishmael despite the fact that in most situations Ishmael is the best observer possible.

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality.  He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin.  In Noah’s flood, he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

In this passage, Melville expresses the belief, common at the time, that there was no way humans could really affect the earth in a substantial way.  In the fledgling United States, the European colonizers were just beginning to scratch the surface of the land’s enormous natural resources.  To white “settlers,” the frontier seemed like it would stretch forever to the West.  Even in the East, which had been colonized for two hundred years, there remained large areas still populated by indigenous peoples with the intrusion of only a few white homesteaders.  The late-20th century anxieties about habitat destruction, environmental contamination, and and eventually global warming were far away.  “The whale” metaphorically stands in for all of nature, and Melville places him above both human religion and government.  He swam over the various seats of human power and was impervious to God’s flood, so the whale as a species could never be brought low by human whalers.  In the face of such permanence, humans are compared to the rats of the Netherlands, powerless to stop their destruction at the hands of an angry God or Nature.  While this sentiment seems quaint in our own time of real environmental devastation by human hands, it is very much a product of a moment when earth’s bounty seemed limitless.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

The final sentence of the book similarly comments on nature’s indifference to mankind, although this time in a much more reflexive, existential fashion.   All the sound and fury of the chase and climactic battle between Ahab and Moby Dick has subsided.  The Pequod and its crew are quickly sinking to the bottom of the ocean, but from the surface of the sea all seems calm.  Ahab left a huge vortex in his wake that sucked down all the crew but one, but after they are gone the “shroud of the sea” covers them all, never to be seen again.  As before, Melville speaks to his belief in the essentially untouchable character of nature.  “The sea rolls on as it rolled five thousand years ago,” and Melville believes it will roll on, unaltered, for five thousand more.  In comparison to such a powerful, faceless, inevitability, the challenges and triumphs of humanity seem very small and inconsequential.  In the face of a conflated God and Nature, the drama of Ahab, the Pequod, and Moby Dick are dismissed as minor irrelevancies.

Macbeth in Moby Dick

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly: if th’ assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all — here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’ld jump the life to come.

—Macbeth, I.vii

Throughout Moby Dick, Melville repeatedly references the plays of Wm. Shakespeare, both directly and through parallel situations and characters.  What struck me most was the relationship between Starbuck and Ahab, which bears a great resemblance to that of many of Shakespeare’s most important duos.  What drives this relationship and its correlation to Shakespeare is the power dynamic, the question of loyalty versus morality and even selfishness.  The three pairs of characters that are most present in Melville’s text are Hamlet and Claudius (the Prince and King), Macbeth and Duncan (the Thane and King) and finally Brutus and Caesar (the Senator and Emperor).  In this post, I will be looking into Macbeth’s relation to the text

You might notice a theme among these pairs: they all have bloody ends for the regent, who begins the story with power.  Each of the characters, who begin in the more prostrate position in their dynamic, performs regicide.  They plot and plan the murder of their leader, yet in each case they question their motives.

The first example, which is stunning, is the relation to Macbeth that Starbuck displays in The Musket, in which he examines the rifle that Ahab had just pointed at him.  He contemplates mutiny, staring at the tool of his potential assassination, contemplating every inch of its lock, stock and barrel.  Similarly, Macbeth, immediately before he murders King Duncan in his bedchamber, has a vision of the dagger with which he will slaughter the King.  Each of them stand staring at these weapons, thinking on what they would gain by killing their leader.  What makes this instance even more interesting is where they diverge, though. Whereas Macbeth continues onward, slaughtering his strong, intelligent leader and descending into madness, Starbuck falters and does not go forward with his mutiny.  Macbeth goes insane while butchering a leader who was psychologically stable.  Starbuck on the other is psychologically stable and fails to murder his mad captain.

“…the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed his [Ahab’s eyes]; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber…”

Much can be made of the above quotation for it has much thought inspiring substance packed into a short space. To begin, the first line lays bare the odd relationship between Ahab and his secret harpooner. A relationship where the power structure is not what it ought. No matter the imagined strength of the Fedallah’s magic, Ahab is still the captain of the Pequod, but by all accounts seems himself captained by the Parsi’s convulsions and murmured prophecies. Further, Ahab is a New England Quaker who by tradition has no business consorting with the likes of a Parsi. But Ahab is no ordinary man, and needless to say, by practice at least, no longer a Quaker.

That first line, nay the second word, makes clear that Fedallah is no simple figure. ““Inscrutable”” to the crew, but also to the reader. This post is indeed a testament to the debate that surrounds the character’s character; and by character I of course mean moral fiber. Decades gone by and still no one is sure whether he was penned as good or evil. (My take is that he was penned as ambiguous; there to spark and keep the interest of the masses-and provide fodder for discussions such as this.)

Finally, the last line. At first glance, this seems a indication of some spiritual possession or sorcery. Indeed in may be so. However, there could well be other explanations. In previous posts I have attempted to rationalize some of the characters’ primary attributes. Fedallah does not sleep. This can certainly be interpreted in a mystical manner, and if one is reading the novel in that light, so be it. But if one reads the novel as a comenntary on the whaling industry/culture (Stubb and Flask: Alcoholic and pothead), Fedallah’s lack of sleep could well be read as stress induced insomnia; brought on by prolonged separation from his native culture/immersion into an alien one. Or possible still, brought on by the constant paranoia born of his perceived (prophesied) impending meeting with/death by the white whale. That explanation also serves to rationalize the prophesies as the delusions of a man stressed to the breaking point by a career of danger in a foreign culture, topped by a clandestine voyage of revenge.

*I had intended to post this before Monday’s discussion on gender, but because of internet problems, am only posting this now.

In reading this story through a scientific lens, I find it worth noting that in many instances, Melville is conversely unscientific in his descriptions of whales.  That is, he consciously abandons writing accurately about the natural world, as to make his tale more literary and poetic.  It is interesting how Melville is deliberately inconsistent about this accuracy.  One example that struck me was concerned with the gender and anatomy of the whale.

In the beginning of chapter 102, A Bower in the Arsacides, Melville writes, “But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbuttom him still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton (432 to 433).”

The male subject in the passage refers to the Sperm Whale, but Melville confuses this,in the same sentence, when he describes undressing the whale from its “hose” and “garters,” which are distinctly feminine objects.  As was stated in Monday’s lecture, Melville complicates gender descriptions throughout the book, sometimes probably much more subtly than others.  From what I have noticed, I think that Melville, in other places in the book, consistently refers to whales in the masculine form, but here he is being playful and speculative about gender, which makes for interesting questions.

Also, here Melville is being unscientific in that he is pretending the whale is removing its clothing, rather than being anatomically dissected, which he seems to be referring to, however figuratively .

At the very start of Melville’s Moby Dick, we meet our narrator, Ishmael.  Before we can even escape the confines of the first paragraph, he immediately throws his sanity into question: “…whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me… then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.  This is my substitute for pistol and ball” (Melville 3).  In terms of narration, Ishmael has now made it quite difficult for the reader to trust his oncoming reports.  When he admits that this time around he wants to try a whaling voyage, that distrust deepens; why would the reader ever trust the perspective of a man with the desire to virtually enslave himself for 3-5 years?

But, as we soon see, this madness is all relative.  Perhaps, one might think, to be a whaler a man must contain some type of madness within himself, whether it be the madness of Ahab’s aporia, Starbuck’s superstition, Stubb and Flask’s self medication, or Pip’s susceptibility to the endless vaults of the sea.  After meeting these personalities, Ishmael’s manic-depressive manner seems to fit right in with the motley crew of the Pequod.

Ishmael’s madness is managed (or expressed, one might say) largely in his complete abandonment of the construct of “happiness” as seen on shore.  As Ishmael has his first shift at the masthead in open water, he reflects on how his happiness and his madness intertwine and how they manifest themselves in whaling as a solution: “The whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber” (172).  Ishmael sees the root of his madness in his philosophic mind; he loves the masthead because it gives his mind a temporary outlet, alleviating his melancholy… or perhaps heightening its control over him, so he can lose himself within it (which is arguably what happens to Pip when he falls overboard).  As we discussed in class, this makes him a bad sailor, but it is one of the reasons he is drawn to whaling.

Another time we see Ishmael reflecting on this is in his first interaction with spermaceti.  It is the first time that Ishmael really articulates (both for us and most likely for himself) his reasons for abandoning shore in his depression:

I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally.  (456)

Ishmael sees the construct of life on land as something barring men from their true happiness-society forces man to come to grips with what he lacks, and to form his new happiness around domestic life.  The manual work of bursting clods of spermaceti finally allows Ishmael to unlock his own true happiness, and we finally see why he rejects life on the land at his most depressed: escaping the confines of the earth allows him to unlock his true happiness, and at the same time and revel in his madness, rather than suppress it. 

Works Cited:

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Northwestern University Press, 1988. Reissued 2003. Print.

There’s something to be said about a narrator who finds not just religious significance—but religion itself—in a whale penis. In brief chapter ninety-five, “The Cassock,” Ishmael equates whale member with paganism and Christianity alike, and in doing so describes an inherently gruesome piece of cetological anatomy as a transformative and powerful icon.

After a quick physical description of the “wondrous cone,” Ishmael launches into a mystic tangent inspired by the member, which he describes thusly:

…as jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea, and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did despose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook of Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15^th chapter of the first book of Kings.

Here, Ishmael likens the penis to Yojo, without whose influence Ishmael would have never found the Pequod, and to the pole of Asherah, a Semitic fertility goddess, for which the biblical Queen Maachah was defrocked of her widowed Queen status. In doing so, he ascribes to a squalid hunk of dead animal flesh a power capable of wisdom, fertility, and temptation. Needless to say, this is an unreasonable amount of significance for even the most dedicated whaler to derive from severed genitalia—unless, of course, Melville was trying to make a point.

[I’d like for a second to break form and make note of two things—one, that here again we see Melville toying with male sexuality (be it human or otherwise), and two, that this passage marks yet another reference to the book of Kings, this time explicitly.]

Melville’s “point,” if he has one, becomes clear in the remainder of the chapter. Ishmael takes the subsequent paragraph to describe in meticulous detail the calculated method behind the task of a “mincer,” which is to remove the pelt of the member, hang the pelt to dry, and out of it to create a protective coat. Melville describes the man after he dons the coat: “The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.” Melville’s choice of the word “canonicals,” with its obvious religious denotation, paints the mincer as a cleric or clergyman, whose duty is a religious one. The curious use of second person pronouns and imperative commands (i.e., “ Look at the sailor…”) in this paragraph suggests a invitation to the reader by Ishmael to bear witness to the religious event. Ishmael continues: “Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.” With this sentence, Ishmael suggests that not only does the whale-penis coat signify the performance of a religious act, but also that it is a unique and necessary component of the act itself.

The third paragraph makes a religious implication even more obvious: “Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishoprick, what a lad for Pope were this mincer!” The penis has lived up to its promise of power by this point, having taken a normal whaling man and transformed him into (Ishmael would say so, anyway) a Papal candidate. In describing it thusly, Ishmael elevates what he admits in the first paragraph to be an oft-overlooked piece of a whale’s anatomy to a mystical, transformative icon. Melville’s aforementioned “point” might be, then, that the whale, even taken in piecemeal, is an extraordinarily powerful beast and symbol. Or maybe he’s talking about God. Or maybe Ishmael’s just sexually attracted to whales. Whatever Melville’s really trying to say, he makes a strong case for it by convincingly relating Pope and whale penis.

Superstition is a concept that is seen in abundance throughout the novel. The men aboard the Pequod seem to be incredibly superstitious, and always very quick to believe the negative in a situation – perhaps in an attempt to protect oneself. Considering that whaling is a very dangerous endeavour, to believe the worst rumours, if it makes one more inclined to be careful, could potentially save one’s life.  As Ishmael says in the chapter Moby Dick, “fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events.” (172)  That is to say that while some rumours may get wildly out of control, they are often based on some sort of truth to begin with.  Thus, if there is a reason to be afraid, it is better to believe the rumours and be careful, than it would be to ignore them and be careless in the face of certain danger. Again Ishmael articulates this by saying

“Not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them.” (Melville 172)

Because whalers are in direct contact with these dangers, superstition is an important form of defence.

I wonder, however, if this superstition and inclination to believe the worst, is in fact a kind of self fulfilling prophecy which causes these negative events to occur.  The first example of this is in the chapter Sunset where Ahab reveals to us that it had been foretold that he would be dismembered by a whale. This prophecy likely shaped the way his life has unfolded thus far, and led him to pursue Moby Dick as he has. This choice in lifestyle makes the prophecy much more likely and able to come true.  Had Ahab paid no attention to this prophecy, his obsession with killing Moby Dick would likely not be as great.

The power of the interpretation of events in a positive or negative light is seen again in the chapters Squid, and Stubb Kills a Whale.  After mistaking a squid for Moby Dick, the crew takes this as a bad omen, as Stubb says “The great live Squid, which, they say, few whale ships ever beheld, and returned to their posts to tell of it.” (Melville, 270) however, Queequeg sees the events in a different light, suggesting that the sight of a squid could in fact mean that a whale is nearby. As they continue their search, they do in fact find a whale, and manage to kill it. While it is possible that even without Queequeg’s positive outlook the crew would have found and killed their first whale regardless, I believe that the crew’s  inclination towards belief in the worst most likely only helps to cause the worst, and does nothing to seek a more positive outcome. while interpreting events in a more positive light, could help them to seek a more positive outcome.