Moby Dick

In Chapter 126, “The Life-Buoy,” Starbuck and the rest of the gang are confronted with the idea of making Queequeg’s former coffin into a substitution life-buoy for the one previously lost from the Pequod. In Starbuck’s practical yet nervous fashion, he instructs the ship’s carpenter to carry out this oddly morbid task, giving him step-by-step instructions on how to do the job until the carpenter shoos him away. After Starbuck takes his leave, the carpenter goes on to complain about his new assignment:

Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he wont put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I don’t like this cobbling sort of business—I don’t like it at all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something regularly begins at the beginning and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end…

I realize this above passage is a lot to deal with at once, but the carpenter’s main complaint is that the work he is told to complete, i.e. turning his previously made coffin into a life-buoy, is an “undignified” sort of work, the kind meant for someone of a lower station than his. The carpenter seems to think this because he is not given a new job in constructing this life-buoy, but is rather “tinkering” with something already made, even though it was done so by him. Thus, what mostly disturbs the carpenter is the idea of a never-ending job. (I’ll return to this point shortly.) His grumblings about such work lowering his station serve as a mere distraction for the deeper bother that pervades the situation of turning a vehicle of death into a vehicle of life, a bother that Starbuck transfers onto him with his nervous fussing about how the carpenter is to complete this task. We can see by their dialogue that Starbuck clearly annoys the carpenter with this fussing, and this annoyance prompts the carpenter’s soliloquy more than the lowly stigma of the job does. The situation is akin to when your mother makes you do the dishes against your will, and you mumble about how the dish soap smells bad when you really find the scent quite appealing but cannot simply acquiesce to the disagreeable task.
However, the carpenter does seem particularly caught up in the idea of the “never-ending job,” to which I previously alluded. He makes something that goes unused, and now he must make it to serve an entirely opposite purpose. The idea of this would frustrate anyone, but one would think the carpenter an exception to this rule in a circumstance in which he has the power to, essentially, convert death into life. Yet the carpenter exhibits complete indifference to such concepts, nonchalantly stating that Queequeg, the ungrateful man, would not even “put his head into” the coffin the carpenter had crafted for him! Instead, the carpenter favors the importance of a set of opposites different from that of life and death; he focuses on the idea of new versus worked-over, and “mathematical” versus muddled. As for the former in regards to labor, the carpenter’s favoring of the new alludes to a preference for trade work over labor in the fields and other types of maintenance work. If you work in a craft, you renew your work every day, creating a new table, for instance, each time one is commissioned. If you toil in the fields or mend people’s dysfunctional items, performing labor akin to those of slaves and the lower classes, your work is never fresh- you are always toiling from the same, old cloth, so to speak. This exposes the way society, in Melville’s time, prompted people to view different types of work as more or less “dignified.”
On the topic of the carpenter favoring the “mathematical” over the muddled, this could relate to the idea of skilled versus unskilled labor. However, I think this has something to say about fate, destiny- people’s lives. Though the carpenter refers directly to his job of converting the coffin, he may also be saying that people go about changing their minds in regards to their destinies. Queequeg cannot just commission a coffin one day and suggest it be turned into a life-buoy the next! He has no respect for fate, in behaving so. The carpenter thinks things (humans, in particular) should have finite lives (of which they are not completely in control), consisting of clear beginnings and expiration dates. This, too, relates back to his preference for trade work over cyclical labor in the fields or the mending of broken goods. Fixing the broken or changing an object’s use is going against the idea of destiny. In turning the coffin into a life-buoy, the carpenter is wary of messing with fate.

Back-tracking by quite a bit, Chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” is significant because it is the first chapter in which Ahab addresses his men and in which the dynamic of the entirely male crew is revealed. Ishmael describes the intense pacing of Ahab around his cabin and the deck before he orders Starbuck to summon the crew. Once the mass of men is collected in one location, Ahab initiates a cycle of wild and boisterous chanting:
“‘What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?’
‘Sing out for him!’ was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.
‘Good!’ cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question has so magnetically thrown them” (142-43).
This chanting back and forth between the captain and his crew continues. This is Ahab’s way of “rallying the troops” before he even mentions the mission of vengeance that is at the heart of the voyage. Words like “impulsive,” “wild approval,” “hearty animation,” and “magnetically” jump out because they are so sensational and they give the reader the impression of a “mob mentality” existing aboard the wholly male Pequod. Ahab is gleeful at how much control he seems to have over his men from the very start as he calls out questions and then listens to the answers shouted back at him in unison. Even the shipmates are taken aback by their instinctual responses and yet they continue to respond naturally: “More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each others, as if marveling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions” (143). The reader is reminded of the control a general or lieutenant has over a group of men in a militaristic setting.

Next, Ahab begins to reveal the sinister side of his plot. He moves closer to his sailors, shows them a gold coin in one hand, and announces that the killer of a large white-headed whale shall receive this coin. The immediate response of the crew is a joyous “‘Huzza! Huzza!’” (143). Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg recognize their captain’s description of the white whale as they have all heard of Moby Dick. Starbuck makes the connection between Moby Dick and Ahab’s lost leg, to which Ahab admits. All of the men continue to chant and shout excitedly and supportively, as if completely unperturbed by the announcement of this secondary mission of the Pequod; however, Starbuck is rational and sharp enough to realize the dilemma, and so he challenges Ahab. While the others do not recognize that they have been cheated by Ahab – that they are now trapped on a ship hunting a very large and dangerous whale without knowing before boarding that this would be the captain’s main goal – Starbuck comments that “I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee…it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market” (145). Ahab tries to appeal to Starbuck’s sense of pride, and although Starbuck quiets his dissent, he quietly mutters to God to look out for his safety and the safety of the others.

After having already used vocal stimulation and fiscal incentive to rally his men on a personal vendetta, Ahab calls for them to congregate in a circle on the deck, and for his harpooners to carry their weapons. Ishmael describes the eyes of the riveted men as “wild” and compares them to “the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves” who “meet the eye of their leader” (146-47). Ahab whips out his next tool in exciting his male crew – the pewter brimming with alcohol. Ahab orders his men to “‘Drink and pass!’” the pewter around in the circle so that every man receives some of the delicious beverage (147). The pewter is refilled and the men continue to drink. They drink upon their captain’s command as he yells out to the seas and the skies that the Pequod will be hunting Moby Dick to his death. Finally, after “the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew,” Ahab waves his hand for them all to disperse and returns to his cabin to rest (148). It was thus the captain’s combination of excitedly vocal chanting, monetary reward, and communal drinking that activates the crew and puts them in this so-called frantic state. Melville is exploring the stereotypes of manhood, masculinity, and the bonds between men. Money and alcohol are stereotypical allures for men, and Ahab utilizes them cleverly. The only true resistance he receives comes from Starbuck, who realizes he has no way out of this mess and must rely on God to save his life. Therefore, “The Quarter-Deck” is an important chapter that establishes the dynamic of the crew, who answer wholeheartedly and excitedly to the mad Ahab without truly appreciating how they have been wronged.

Chapter 54 takes place “one saint’s eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn,” in Lima. The chapter mostly entails Ishmael telling a story about a sailor named Steelkilt. This story, however, is not relevant here. I would like to instead focus on Ishmael’s compatriots and how Melville portrays Spaniards.

Whereas we have explored many times over Melville/Ishmael’s view that, though savages, black people and Indians have many redeeming qualities. Chapter 54 does not treat Spaniards in such a nuanced or forgiving way. Though Ishmael’s friends do not have many lines in the chapter, when they do speak it is usually just to interrupt Ishmael’s story with an ignorant or stereotype-reinforcing comment. Take, for example, the words of Don Pedro:

Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

There is a patent contrast between words such as dull, lazy, and hereditary (“of a kind established by tradition”, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary) used to describe South American life and the vigorous life of New England. To the uninformed reader, South America sounds like a place filled with indolent slackers. By contrast, New England is filled with vital, quick-witted, hard-working individuals. Coincidentally, South America is filled with natives and Spaniards, while New England is populated mostly by whites. It would not have been difficult for a 19^th Century reader to make the implied connection. Also, notice that the Spaniard is calling himself lazy. Had Melville portrayed a white character calling a Spaniard these things, we could dismiss him and the words as petty bigots. However, why would a Spaniard slander himself? These things must be true then.

Melville provides his white audience with more feel-good fun facts in that same chapter when he writes,

Lakeman! [a.k.a. Steelkilt]— Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?’ said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

Not only would Melville’s audience get a good chuckle out of Don Sebastian’s ignorance (“Who doesn’t know where Buffalo is?”), but he also slips in the fact that Don Sebastian is wearing what I can only assume is a grass skirt, though we have little reason to believe that Spanish sailors would dress significantly different from their New England counterparts. What an educational chapter– I never knew Spaniards were obsequious, lethargic, verdure-clad alcoholics!

Melville makes direct reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the title of Chapter 31, “Queen Mab”. In Scene IV of Romeo and Juliet Mercutio talks of Queen Mab “the fairies’ midwife” who visits men in their sleep driving “an empty hazelnut” chariot “athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep”.  She makes the sleeper dream of that which the dreamer’s desires, e.g., the soldier dreams “of cutting foreign throats”.

In Chapter 31 Stubb recounts a peculiar dream he had the night before to Flask. Stubb describes,

“You know the old man’s ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it.” (113)

Strangely, Stubb, even as he continues to kick Ahab, believes that Ahab’s kick “may not have been much of an insult” (113), after all it was not as if Ahab had kicked him with a living limb; according to Stubb, “. . . there’s a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump” (113). Suddenly “a badger-haired merman” appears in the dream and physically threatens Stubb if he does not stop kicking Ahab’s leg. The merman explains to Stubb that he should consider it’s an honor to be kicked “by a great man with a beautiful ivory leg” just as it is an honor “to be slapped by a queen” (114).

How can Stubb’s dream be interpreted with consideration of the title? Queen Mab makes men dream of what they desire. So, what does Stubb desire or fully expressed, what do his dream latently tell us about his desires? Does he passively wish to be “kicked”, i.e, dominated, by Ahab? If so, does the merman’s logic of honor behind passivity reflect Stubb’s own justification for subsuming to Ahab’s tyranny?

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html

For today I want to explore one of the most curious and intriguing chapters in the novel, “A Squeeze of the Hand,” in which Melville describes the camaraderie of the Pequod’s crew as they extract and harvest spermaceti from a dead whale. The title itself – I presume very cleverly and purposefully chosen by Melville – carries an obvious erotic connotation. The chapter was a target of nineteenth century critics disapproving of the homoerotic overtones in Melville’s writing, just as the scenes in which Ishmael and Queequeg share a bed as if man and wife in the early portions of the novel were targets. Like many of Melville’s chapters in Moby Dick, “A Squeeze of the Hand” is simultaneously brief and complex, short and profound. It can almost stand alone: it does not push the main plot forward; it reveals truths about life; and it is beautifully and vividly written. At the same time, it is a useful chapter that fits into the overall structure of the book.

Firstly, the chapter functions partially to give the reader more information about the process of whaling, much like “The Line” does. It explains how the lumps in the spermaceti need to be squeezed and smoothed out by the hands of the men so that they are turned into a consistent fluid. The act has a fiscal bend to it: the sperm itself is a commercially coveted product, a “favorite cosmetic,” “sweetener,” “softener,” and “delicious mollifier” (372). A little wiki research tells me that the wax-like substance was used in cosmetics, lubricants, leatherworking, and the production of candles. Secondly, also separate from the homoeroticism apparent in its language, this chapter functions on a homosocial level. Melville portrays the comradery of shipmates working together to complete a task – one that, as a refreshing change from hours of arduous labor aboard the Pequod, is fun, messy, exciting, and pleasurable. It is a prime example of the bonding of men in a social working environment.

But the homoeroticism in “A Squeeze of the Hand” is undeniable, and thus the chapter goes beyond mere technical description of whaling and description of homosocial comradery. Melville’s very graphic and evocative language includes careful choices of words and phrases, i.e. “Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into It”; “I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules”; “abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling”; “at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally” (372). (In addition, as I was reading, the description of the unctuousness of the substance reminded me of the imagery produced by contemporary artist Matthew Barney in The Cremaster Cycle, a series of abstract art films in which fantastical characters squirm and crawl in tunnels of white, thick, messy, globbing fluid meant to resemble semen. I can only imagine what Barney would do with this scene if he were to make a film version of Moby Dick; funnily enough, he has made a film about a Norwegian whaling vessel.) Given Melville’s alarmingly and emphatically erotic language, one can understand why this chapter was such an outrage among nineteenth century readers and critics!

Melville’s inclusion of the word “unwittingly” in the phrase “unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands” is intriguing because it implies that Ishmael becomes so caught up in this moment of pleasure that he cannot control his desire to touch the other men and feel sentimental about being with them. The experience is exciting for Ishmael and made more exciting by the fact that he can share it with his crewmates. Perhaps as he wrote this, the supposedly homosexual Melville identified with his character in terms of having uncontrollable sexual attraction to men. (On this note, after reading Ishmael’s emphatically erotic and loving description of the squeezing of the sperm, I wish I could read the same event from the point of view of the other characters to see if the pleasure is experienced by them as much and as sensually as Ishmael. I feel uncertain that the others were having dreams about “long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti” – easily the most absurd, tongue-in-cheek illusion in the entire comical chapter. I believe comedy must have been another function of this chapter in Melville’s mind, just as the scenes of Ishmael and Queequeg are so ridiculous they inspire the reader the laugh out loud.)

I think, however, the most important function of the chapter is not to shock the reader with its homoerotic language but to reveal how lonely, difficult, and dreary the whaling life can be on the seas for months at a time. The men are away from civilization for long periods and have little contact with other people; additionally, they must be going crazy just from having to sleep in such uncomfortable cabins at night! Although we know that Ishmael chooses to go to sea for positive psychological purposes, as he explains in the first chapter that sailing is a superior option for him than suicide (or homicide), the overt pleasures and delights of the whaling lifestyle must be few and far between. Thus, an experience like this smoothing of the whale spermaceti stands out as being fun and different. It is a departure from the usual. It feels good and, at least in Ishmael, inspires happy illusions and visions.

Another intriguing aspect of the chapter is how Melville uses food metaphors to describe the satisfaction of the action: for instance, Ishmael says that the spermaceti are “gentle globules of infiltrated tissues…richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma…” (372) and that the whale’s blanket of blubber “is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season” (374). This might have been a technique by Melville to shock the reader: “How can such an act be so enjoyable and even mouth-watering?,” one might ask. The comparison of the whale’s body parts to food, ranging from grapes to venison to wine, is so vivid and delicious-seeming that the reader might fall into Melville’s trap and want to try tasting the blubber or sperm for himself or herself. This, in combination with Ishmael’s statement that he could spend his entire life squeezing the sperm with his male comrades, challenges the conventional, heteronormative reader. Not all happiness is experienced through heteronormative relationships between men and women in typical settings with typical gender dynamics.

To conclude, I believe Melville used this chapter to function as technically explanatory, comical, implicative of homosocial comradery, implicative of homoeroticism, and, perhaps most importantly, revealing of the difficulty of the whaling lifestyle. It certainly calls into question traditional masculinity and expected roles of men in a same-sex environment.

While reading chapter 93, The Castaway, a striking resemblance was drawn between Pip’s enlightenment and the foundation of Buddhism. Although I concede that Melville was–quite obviously–Christian and the entire book is dripping with biblical allusions, I find this sequence of events to be Melville’s way of giving other religions a “cameo,” so to speak.

Before Pip goes overboard, he is nervous and emotional. In Buddhism, the goal of enlightenment is to achieve nirvana and escape from the endless cycle of suffering that plagues human existence. In the most basic Buddhist scriptures, a normal, seemingly happy person undergoes suffering. This person could be Pip: he has his troubles but never bothers to rid himself of them. The only possible escape is salvation or heaven, which can be achieved if he lives a moral, proper, Christian life. Buddhism rejects the existence of a superior being and salvation. The ultimate goal is enlightenment and understanding, and sins are accepted as normal human behavior.

The reason I think Pip goes through a Buddhist-like enlightenment is because he has an incredible and frightening encounter with nature at its purest: he is left in the middle of the ocean. The first buddha–with the intention of gaining enlightenment (this is the primary difference between the two stories)–sits under a bodhi tree and opens his mind to nature and nothing else; eventually gaining perfect understanding of the universe. The buddha “comes at last to celestial thought” (Melville 372), just as Pip does.

The ship mates call Pip mad when he tries to describe his experience because they are not used to such philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Buddhism–or any Eastern spirituality–had not yet been introduced to places outside its native India and surrounding countries, and Americans were very set in their religious ways. Melville acknowledges this by calling this foreign religious experience “absurd and frantic” (372).

Furthermore, Pip’s concrete belief in Christianity, God, heaven, etc. would make such an enlightenment very unsettling and damaging to his mind. Christianity leaves little room for the awareness and understanding present in Buddhism, because Christians are instructed to place all their hope and trust in God. For Pip, the disenchantment with the beliefs he’s carried for his entire life would make him, as the ship mates call him, “mad.” This would explain Melville’s remark “So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense,” (372) meaning that if not prepares, men can lose their sense of self if they undergo such a traumatic enlightenment. Pip’s experience was traumatic and unexpected. This is the key difference between Pip and the Buddha: the Buddha was seeking such an experience, and all the pain and suffering he went through in the process was self-inflicted. Pip’s path to enlightenment was abrupt and unwanted, therefore causing his “insanity.”

Pervasive throughout Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick are references to religion, particularly Catholicism.   As the concepts of Heaven and Hell are central to this religion, it only makes sense for references of them to be prolific in this novel.

An epitomizing example of Heaven-on-Earth occurs in the chapter “A Squeeze of the Hand”.  In it, the protagonist Ishmael describes the experience of tempering and preparing the spermaceti while aboard the whaling ship the Pequod:

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,–literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that expressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it…while bathing in that bath, I felt free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

It is impossible to say that this is an inaccurate description of what the bliss of Heaven must feel like.  Ishmael’s mind is at ease and wholly content.  His physical sensations are pleasant and easy.  Even the surrounding sea, which is so often described as tumultuous, is calm and serene.  Ishmael even goes so far as to say that he feels “divinely free” from any malevolent sentiment whatsoever.  Melville makes it clear that Ishmael’s experience is perhaps next to Godly it is so positive.

Contrastingly, Ishmael is undoubtedly describing a secular Hell when he describes the try-works of the ship, which are used to boil the oil out of whales’ blubber:

Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.  Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time.  It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funeral pyres.  It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

This passage is absolutely steeped in Hellish references.  The description of the fiery burning of the whale can be very easily equated to Hell-fire.  Not only is it fire, but even its smoke is absolutely unbearable to inhale, but when around it “inhale it you must”, as one in Hell is forcibly subjected to Hell’s miseries.  Furthermore, Melville makes clear the nearness of death in this passage, mentioning that the smoke smells like the smoke one would smell from a funeral pyre.  This is an unbearably graphic image, the smell of human bodies burning, and once again, an image very reminiscent of Hell.  Furthermore, Melville assigns a Hindoo-like quality to the smell, suggesting its sacreligious (to Catholicism, anyway) and thus Hell-like nature.  Finally, Melville makes a very direct reference to Catholicism, mentioning that the try-works have a smell similar to the smell one would encounter on Judgment Day, and undoubtedly such an unpleasant smell would not be issued for anyone traveling to Heaven.

This presentation of dualities by Melville, particularly in chapters so close to another (there is only one very short chapter between them), reminds the reader that Heaven and Hell are not so far apart.  Both are experienced by Ishmael on the Pequod within a very short time span in the novel.  Perhaps this is echoing Melville’s ideas of a Calvinist fate, and is his way of showing to his audience that Heaven and Hell are both possible for any of us, and not only that, but that our mortality is inevitable and the afterlife is not far away.

In Chapter 23, The Lee Shore, Melville uses the character of Bulkington to demonstrate the physical and spiritual immersion of whalers into life at sea:

… it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe.

The excerpt continues the tone established at the beginning of the novel, where Ishmael describes his own relationship to the sea. For Bulkington, the sea had also become a means of escape and source of strange familiarity, or at least strange to those outside the whaling world. Bulkington does not appear to be particularly unique in his reversal of the typical notion of home, as Ishmael, Ahab, and indeed all the men on board share both a connection to the sea and an aversion of the safety of port. While the object of the voyage is to survive the perilous months at sea, battling weather and whales, even the particular whaling climate of Nantucket or other towns that cater to the industry does not suit one such as Buckington. Instead, “the land seemed scorching to his feet,” resulting in the desire to immediately begin another voyage.

Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

Here Melville further extends the metaphor, linking the sea to the freedom of thought and action. Dying on the sea becomes a more glorious end than on land, for the vastness and openness of the sea allows for the independence of the soul. The land, while safe and represented by safety, comfort, hearthstone, etc., restricts an individual’s internal growth, especially one inclined to the sea. Melville continuously explores the relationship between the effects of the environment on the individual, and the idea of what is or is perceived as natural by society and the reader. He pushes this notion by elevating the personal impact that the isolation and natural brutality of the sea has on different sailors and seeing how it accumulates into a core element of the community that develops on board a whaling ship.

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

Indeed, Ahab does see himself as a David based character since he seeks revenge against the White Whale.  In the Bible, David sought revenge against Goliath, who “was over nine feet tall” (1 Samuel 17:1-58, New International Version).  In a similar fashion, Goliath is as monolithic compared to David, as the White Whale is to Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab sees himself as the David character facing a Goliath, or Moby Dick.  Interestingly enough, the Post-Classical Jewish traditions emphasized Goliath as the one who represents paganism, as opposed to David, who is seen as the champion of the God of Israel. Knowing that David defeated Goliath in his youth, and later became a King, exactly shows that as one falls, another rises.  Clearly, David seized Goliath’s power and became a very important and influential figure in society.  David, from the Bible, even appears to have almost the same character and personality as Captain Ahab does.  “This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.  Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves;  for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands” (1 Samuel 17:1-58).  David here is aggressive  and seeks to exact revenge.  Captain Ahab also has the same fire  and obsessive passion to exact revenge and achieve his goals, as does David.   The manner in which David prepares for war and battle against the Goliath, parallels with the way in which Captain Ahab intends to finally bring down and kill Moby Dick.  The irony of it all is that Captain Ahab does not become victorious as he does not manage to survive.  However, much of David’s personality and character resonates with Captain Ahab.

Throughout Moby Dick, Melville obsesses over the concept of sanity, and the delicate balance inside each of us that can be tipped fairly easily. In Moby Dick, power is most frequently what is hanging in balance. Too much power, exemplified by Ahab, causes insanity. We find Ahab consumed by his absolute rule over his boat. This is the reason why he doesn’t emerge from the boat until they are well out to sea, and the reason why he dislikes gams. Ahab is so entangled in the societal microcosm of the Pequod that he shies away from contact with outsiders for fear of disrupting the bubble in which he is the master.

On the other end of the spectrum is Pip, whose utter lack of control eventually drives him to insanity. Already a slave, Pip’s sanity is broken when Stubb leaves him behind after he jumps overboard for fear of a whale:

Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably…The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body, but drowned the infinite of his soul (401)

Here Melville explores Ahab’s counterpart. Pip’s control over his own existence was so completely lost, that he resigned himself to a passive form of insanity as opposed to Ahab’s active.

But what of narration? These accounts of insanity give the reader a clue into the mental state of the narrator himself, be he Ishmael of Melville. Ahab hunts Moby Dick, because Moby Dick is the only thing that Ahab does not feel he has control over. The narrator, much like Ahab, is obsessed with his own sanity and mental processes because it is the only thing a person is sure they are in control of. Pip’s fall from sanity fascinates and terrifies both Melville and Ishmael.

Man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. (402)

The narrator here explores the fine line that we all tread between sanity and insanity, admitting at this point that he himself is unsure of which side he falls.

It will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself (402)

What does this reveal about the novel in its entirety? If the narrator himself is insane, then how can one rely on his judgments of other characters? Perhaps these are questions that Melville wanted the reader to ask in order to make the reader question their own sanity, and perhaps realize that sanity is fragile and relative.