Moby Dick

In Chapter 123, “The Musket,”  Starbuck struggles with himself over shooting Ahab.  If he did, he would have the chance to return home safely, protecting the rest of the crew from a suicidal mission.  But he would be committing murder.  He asks, “Is heaven a murderer when its lighting strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together?”  (Melville, 456)  Can God murder?  Can God still be holy if God does kill someone, even if that person is a potential murderer?  And can a sin be nullified if it is for the protection of someone else?  Whose life is more sacred?  I have no answers to these questions, and I cannot dream of passing judgement on Starbuck.  Maybe Melville includes this chapter so that the readers will reflect on themselves and determine what is most valuable in their lives.

This idea of self-reflection is elaborated upon when Melville says that “Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel.”  (456)  This description alludes to the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Genesis 32:22-31.  The angel appears to Jacob after he has already spent several days preparing to meet with his brother Esau, whom he is afraid will attack.  (Biblegateway)  I see the confrontation with the angel as a physical representation of Jacob wrestling with his fears and his relationship to his brother.  And although Jacob does not win the fight, he receives a blessing.

Genesis 32:30 says that “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.'” (Biblegateway)  Since Starbuck’s opponent is another part of himself, isn’t part of him God?   This relates back to the idea that we discussed about Narcissus and never knowing oneself.  God, after all, is unknowable.  Maybe Melville says that God is the part of a person that he or she can never understand.  During Starbuck’s internal struggle, he sees his true self and what he is capable of — “he [sees] God face to face.”  He survives this encounter, making him stronger.  Just like Jacob, Starbuck has “struggled with God and with men and [has] overcome.” (Genesis 32:28, Biblegateway)  Jacob had to realize what he was capable of and how special he was before he could face his brother; Starbuck has to realize how strong he is by confronting both Ahab and his own desires before he can confront his future.  If Starbuck fought God, then by not killing Ahab, he, like Jacob, lost that first battle.  But maybe he will be rewarded with a happy future, just as Jacob received a blessing?  Or that’s just wishful thinking on my part.  If nothing else, he now knows who he is.

“Genesis 32” Biblegateway. New International Version, Web. 14 Feb 2010. <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%2032&version=NIV>

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1988, reissued 2008. Print.

Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind.  A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.  No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed – “Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”

The Pequod’s encounter with the giant squid is an ambiguous event, fraught with amazement and fear.  Ishmael feels a sense of wonder to behold the strange creature, which seems to be without any sort of analogy with which to understand it in relation to other life-forms.  Although the whalers are as knowledgeable as any other humans of the time about the denizens of the sea, there are still a huge number of creatures which they do not understand or have never even seen.  To superstitious sailors like Starbuck, the appearance of such an unearthly creature is a portent of bad luck.  To the modern reader, his dismay seems slightly ridiculous; what possible connection could a wandering squid have to the success or failure of the voyage?  His attitude, however, belies the difference between the understandings of nature that dominated in the early 19th century and today.

For many modern-day Americans, understanding of nature is largely shaped by the high-school biology textbook.  Cell theory, evolution, and a well-ordered taxonomy construct a nature that is orderly, scientific, and predictable.  All creatures (viruses controversially excepted) share the basic building block of the cell, and are therefore reducible to a common denominator.  Evolution holds that nature developed as a highly rational response to given conditions, and as these conditions change nature adapts to them.  The system of taxonomy, although constantly adjusting to new discoveries, provides a broad general framework which incorporates all life-forms into comforting categories.  There is little mystery or superstition in our modern conception of nature, but only a well-ordered understanding that subordinates the living world to our brainpower and categorizing skill.

Starbuck’s reaction to the squid comes from a much different place.  As a whaler, Starbuck knows quite a bit about the ocean and its inhabitants.  He has spent a large portion of his life at sea, and his trade brings him into intimate contact with many sea creatures.  Despite his experience, a different cultural world-view of nature colors his vision.  A modern sailor might see creatures that he or she had never heard of, but such a sailor could rest assured in the knowledge that rational science is close at hand to categorize and explain away all mystery.  While the scientific world-view is knocking on the door, and Melville spends much of the book writing about it, the cultural hegemony of rationality remains a province of the future.  As such, Starbuck is left to his own devices and the devices of religion to interpret the appearance of the ghostly squid.  Rather than resorting to unfamiliar science to explain the occurrence, Starbuck sees the apparition as an omen of bad news, which in the context of the book is not an inaccurate assessment.

Interestingly, Queequeg is not alarmed by the squid.  He knows that sperm whales eat squid, and therefore can relate the strange creature to something more concrete and knowable.  This process of rationalization, undertaken by one of the “savages,” would develop into a world-view which came to dominate our understanding of the natural world.

When Pip leaps overboard in Chapter 93, Stubb tells him he must never do such a thing again, or else he’ll be left behind. Of course, Pip, being young and inexperienced fails to take Stubb’s advice to heart, and ends up reacting similarly in a situation quite reminiscent of the first. While it’s unclear whether Stubb was being wholly serious in his threats to truly leave Pip behind, he does do just that (probably thinking another of the boats would pick him up), which results in Pip becoming “another lonely castaway” at sea for a considerable amount of time. The Pequod eventually picked him up, but the cheerful Pip was forever changed from that day on. The crew described him from then on as going “about the deck an idiot” (Melville 401). But Ishmael understood Pip’s drastic change rather differently.

“Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad” (402).

According to Ishmael, Pip came to a greater understanding of the world, something deeper, so mind-altering, that he could no longer communicate through simple exchange, which then made him seem deranged to others on the ship. The vulnerability Pip felt as he bobbed alone in the vast sea opened his mind to God-like truths. And those truths are so foreign to us that we liken someone such as Pip to be crazy, when really what we’re interpreting as “man’s insanity is heaven’s sense” (402). While we can’t know this as fact, Ishmael’s more thoughtful (and possibly optimistic) take on Pip’s condition most prominently points to his continued reverence of the sea and its capabilities.

The sea didn’t physically swallow Pip, but his soul seemed to have been. It drowned it, but not fatalistically—the sea “carried [Pip’s soul] down alive to wondrous depths” where he was granted access to all the “joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities” (402). It’s interesting that Ishmael finds the sea so rich and vast, holding many truths, yet he also considers it heartless, as if man must give up his emotions to understand the depths of the world. The omnipresent ocean can reveal to man the absurdity of his life, but only when he lets go of his emotional ties, or in Pip’s case, when he is forced to let go and engage in “the intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity” (401).

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Person-labeling is dangerous. Its seduction, however, in making easy categorizations of people so we can wrap our heads around them, make them easier to remember, has made it a fixture in human social life. How many times have you been asked, or asked, after brief introduction to a fellow Vassar student, the noxious, oppressive “what’s your major?” or “where do you live?” Certainly I have done so, if only as a feeble attempt to advance conversation rather than any genuine interest in, say, where someone lives. But then again, who should care? Perhaps I should grant you more benefit of the doubt, but I nonetheless maintain that it is largely a substanceless question, at least partially designed to fit that given person into your mental person-labeling chart. Worse is the “major” question. It allows you to “know” something about that person: “Oh, she’s a philosophy major. She likes big questions and, unless she goes to law school, may flounder in the professional circuit, having to deal with real, practical questions with which her knowledge of abstract concepts cannot help her.”  However right or wrong those immediate conclusions are is beside the point, and I hope you get mine.

So when Professor Friedman commented that Melville takes on his society’s propensity for qualitative categorization based on physical attributes (see any of Ishmael’s initial descriptions of anyone), I was eager to find a really good example in which a given character does not conform to his stereotype. My favorite one thus far  is from the beginning of Chapter 108, “Queequeg in His Coffin,” when Ishmael describes Queequeg as very sick:

“But as all else in him thinned, and his cheekbones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of luster; and mildly but deeply looked at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die.” (Signet, 460)

Queequeg might be labeled as a pagan, a tattooed freak, an incoherent, babbling brute, and a cannibal, all reinforcing his stereotype as a savage, but his penetrating, warm, affirming eyes transcend simple categorization, declaring his individuality. He is not merely a savage; he is Queequeg!

From chapters 109 to 127, science is losing the battle against Ahab, faith, and insanity. In chapter 118, the quadrant, a navigational device, fails. With time, Ahab begins to gain confidence, lose perspective, and turn to his own intuition over time-tested methods of navigation based on reason and science. Some of the crew, such as Starbuck, notice this transformation but do little to materially stop its progression.

“Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man’s eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun!… Curse thee, thou quadrant!… No longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye… thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!” (444)

But even the log and the line fail to guide Ahab, as we see after the compass fails in chapter 124. In chapter 125, Ahab says, “I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles [of the compass], and now the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all.” (461)

The systematic failure of the three navigational instruments shows how Ahab and his focused insanity begins filling the gaps when science or reason even begin to falter. In this instance, Melville seems to be showing how it is easy to let emotion, faith, or ego take the place of science when convenient. The general sense of foreboding (much of which is communicated by Starbuck) makes me think Melville is trying to say that despite the temptation, science should be respected and used as the primary tool for navigation. This could be seen as a metaphor for navigation in life for anyone – that people should embrace reason when making important decisions over faith, emotion, and other alternatives. Given Melville’s Calvinist upbringing, he probably did not fully subscribe to the above philosophy but most would agree that Ahab has taken his power seizure too far and that a healthy, brave step backwards and appeal to reason would do the Pequod’s crew and Ahab a world of good.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008

Having gotten to know Ahab thus far as the irreligious, vengeance-driven captain of the Pequod, it is interesting how quickly God comes up when Ahab’s pious first mate, Starbuck, directly questions the captain’s actions.  When an oil leak forms on the ship, a problem normally corrected by “upping the Burtons,” Ahab indifferently refuses to follow the regulatory procedures.  He says the only important goal of the trip is the capture of Moby Dick, and that the oil means nothing to him regardless of the owners’ expectations.

Ahab is infuriated with Starbuck’s dissension: “‘Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me? – On deck!’” And later, “‘There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod’” (494).

Ahab does not often mention Devils or God in any context.  Of course, in this situation, he uses religious rhetoric to paint himself as God, verbally smiting Starbuck for even thinking critically of his methods.  Not exactly a revelation of Ahab’s oft-hidden piety.  But what does this say about Ahab’s perception of God?  If he is serious about his belief that the almighty is not to be questioned, he is treading on thin ice in his quest to kill Moby Dick.  We have seen throughout the text ways in which God could be represented in the traditional sense, by the whale Moby Dick itself, or by the vast power and mysteriousness of nature and the ocean.  In any of these cases, Ahab is doing much more than just “thinking critically” about or against God’s will with his journey.  He is directly challenging the almighty.

Interestingly enough, Ahab eventually relents to Starbuck’s courageous request and orders the upping of the Burtons.  Ishmael wonders if it may have been a “flash of honesty” that caused Ahab’s uncharacteristically rational action.  Does this passage show a sense of deference to a higher being by Ahab?  A shred of a conscience, or honesty, or morality?  Does Ahab reference God to appeal to Starbuck, or is his mind often consumed by religion?  It appears as if all these questions, along with the resolution to a growing rivalry between Starbuck and Ahab, will be further hashed out as the novel continues.

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

Despite the temptation to write about the science of squeezing sperm out of whales, I’m choosing to discuss the dismal science. Chapter 97, The Lamp, is less than a page long and describes how whaling ships are always alight underneath the main deck because of the prevalence of lamps and oil. Whalemen enjoy light in dark places when such a possibility is considered expensive and luxurious by the rest of society. Melville makes the point that the whaleman “goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.” (381)

While this may seem reasonable at first glance, basic economics should indicate that a commodity as valuable as whale oil should still not be used so profligately. Despite its abundance, it still commands a high price outside of whaling vessels. The following quote addresses whale oil’s scarcity, which should correspond to a high price. “In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in the darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.” (381)

One justification for this profligacy is that these whalers live a dangerous lifestyle and thus discount the future more than people with safer jobs. Such an attitude would cause the crew to live exorbitantly today at the expense of future comfort that could be enjoyed through the proceeds of selling the oil. We should note though that the whalemen do not get to enjoy many other comforts at sea so they may actually value light more highly than we think.

The above two explanations are “rational.” I think in this chapter however, that Melville is making another reference to the devil-may-care attitudes that characterize much of the crew (i.e. Stubb and Flask). These guys already decided to abandon reason when they followed Ahab after he announced his true intentions about the Pequod’s voyage. Ahab did wait to reveal his true intentions but the crew could have mutinied if they thought the mission sufficiently dangerous. Burning the equivalent of money for a small gain doesn’t seem like such a stretch given the crew’s history.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008

Many of the middle chapters of the novel concern work on the ship, the multitude of which Melville/Ishamel detail in order to convey the scope, amount, and difficulty of the labor involved in running the ship. Ishmael also outlines the hierarchies of labor and laborers present on the ship, which I discussed in my last blog post. I wanted to hone in on a specific chapter, “The Monkey-Rope,” which follows Ishmael’s pattern of detailing work on the ship in the context of a philosophical lesson. It depicts one of the most difficult parts of the whaling process, displays hierarchy (or the lack thereof) between workers, and besides that, it is a pretty funny visual. “In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew,” Ishamel begins the chapter. “Now hands are wanted here. And then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene” (286). The consistency with which ‘all hands’ are required in this long, arduous process, the improbable task of piecing apart a mostly-submerged whale merely tied to a ship in the middle of the rolling ocean, is truly a testament to the whalers’ abilities, which Melville clearly admires. The actual use of the monkey-rope sees Ishmael and Queequeg literally joined at the hip by a cord as Queequeg attempts to mount, then strip the whale; Ishamael senses the absurdity of this labor, terming it a “humorously perilous business” (287). After detailing the labor, Ishmael reveals the philosophical ‘point’ he is using it to make.

“So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two: that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me in unmerited disaster and death” (287).

Although he somewhat dehumanizes himself and Queequeg as laborers, Ishmael more importantly recognizes the necessary breakdown of the labor hierarchy in order to get the job done. Lacking free will, the labor itself now governs them, and both lives depend on each other’s skill and commitment to the labor. It is interesting to work in a job in which one literally faces death, which Ishamel recognizes. Also funny (in a dark way) is the scene in which Tashtego and Daggoo thrust their whale-spades into the water after the sharks, which endangers Queequeg’s life with every thrust. In an occupation filled with hazards, this is certainly one of the greatest. Ishmael, though, sees philosophy in labor once again, and even the humor in putting one’s life in peril.

Ahab’s all-consuming monomanical vindictivness is most readily explained by his missing leg. The loss of this appendage has such a devastating effect on the psyche that he ceases to be among others in the world, or can not be in the world, until he captures Moby Dick.  Albeit, general psychology and common sense gives the reader the impression that Ahab’s mad quest is but a symptom of something deeper, a character trait fundamentally more insidious than a generalized insecurity resulting from a lost limb. The lost leg becomes but a symbol of a fallen nature. Speaking to the carpenter tasked to make a new leg, Ahab remarks:

‘Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?’ (Melville 454)

Ahab must be speaking of something else here. Something irretrievably lost but keenly needed for his vitality or redemption. Melville gives us no answers through this part of the story. Captain Boomer, of the Samuel Enderby, also lost a limb to Moby Dick. His take on the matter is decisively different from Ahab’s:

‘No, thank ye, Bunger,’ said the English captain, ‘he’s welcome to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?’ – glancing at the ivory leg. (Melville 426)

Of course, Ahab’s disinterestedness in this advice is what will soon doom him and the Pequod to danger and disaster. The plot thickens.

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

After Monday’s class, I decided to revisit the chapter entitled “Jonah Historically Regarded.”  In this chapter, Melville dives right into a specific discrepancy between science and religion with the story of Jonah.  The character introduced as Sag-Harbor uses his knowledge of whales to cast doubt on Jonah’s sojourn inside of one.  For each of his doubts, however, Ishmael/Melville presents an opposing interpretation that accounts for the scientific fact.  A possible interpretation even goes so far as to suggest that the whale was actually a ship simply named “The Whale.”

Melville uses this chapter to clearly set out the divide between science and religion.  Sag-Harbor is first inspired to question the Jonah story because “He had one of those quaint old fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, un-scientific plates” (353).  This immediately places science and the Bible in opposition.  Sag-Harbor continues to bring up ways in which science and geography would prevent the Jonah story from occurring as it does in the Bible.  The responses of biblical exegesis are very liberal, as exemplified in the above example of Jonah’s whale being a boat.

The fact that Melville even presents these alternatives shows that he is open to interpretation of religion.  He insists that the Jonah story is true, but he allows that there are discrepancies that need to be accounted for, such as the location of Nineveh regarding its proximity to deep water.

While Melville’s continuous emphasis on science throughout this novel demonstrates his interest, this chapter shows that he has also allowed science to enter into a dialogue with his religious belief.  I think this dialogue has an important bearing on what makes this book so interesting, as it permits Melville to better explore the natural and biblical world.