Feb 27 2010
Melville as the Awkward Racist
I have already spent two posts attempting to reconcile Melville’s ostensibly racist language with the belief that he was not at all racist, and the more I delve into the subject, the more I ask, “What the hell, Herman?” He writes chapter after chapter about how wonderful Queequeg and the other savages are, and then this kind of thing happens once again:
You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea… [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]
Somehow the harpooners are paragons of moral character and physical strength, and yet Queequeg is a dancing-ape? Now I grant that the rope is called a monkey-rope no matter who is tied to the business end, but this analogy deserves a look-see. The problem I have with this passage is that Queequeg is the one in control. Ishmael states that “should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake.” Should Ishmael not be the ape? The one whose life lies in the hands of another’s actions? But no, Queequeg is the ape. I find it all too plausible that Melville simply thought that comparing a white man to an ape would be unrealistic when there’s a perfectly good savage you can use in his stead.
The irony of this is realized in the very next paragraph, where Ishmael states that he is both “wedded” and the “twin brother” of Queequeg. Further, there is not even a whiff of resentment on Ishmael’s part that he is connected to a black man. Pretend for a moment that one of the racist townspeople from To Kill A Mockingbird was transposed into Ishmael’s place. All one would hear is a stream of bigoted expletives at Starbuck or Stubbs about how it is most unnatural to tie together the fates of a white man and a lowly negro. Thus, while portraying black people as simian, Melville also implies that there is no difference in the value of a black person’s and white person’s life. This point is evidenced by Ishmael’s train of thought on the following pages. Rather than complain about the injustice of his situation, he instead discusses the tenuousness of life. To Ishmael, the relevant fact is that his life is in someone else’s hands; the color of those hands is irrelevant.
3 Responses to “Melville as the Awkward Racist”
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Jared- First of all, I love the way you write. I feel like I am having a personal conversation about Moby Dick. Anyways, I think you present an interesting paradox between Melville’s personal opinions and the way he writes and discusses race. Part of the problem is that we have to realize the time period in which Moby Dick was written. As we discussed in class, certain phrases were not necessarily deemed inappropriate. That being said, I think that Melville writes this way to provoke a reaction from his audience. How is it that Ishmael can be verbally racist but in all actuality love and view Queequeg as an equal? Ishmael’s conflicting personality perhaps speaks to the conflict in the US at the time it was written as well. Many people probably said outwardly racist comments but at the same time did not believe that slaves were “savages”. But who am I to make that assumption…
I think it’s important to address racism when reading a novel. One should always maintain a critical viewpoint of the author’s assumptions about race and how those assumptions come out in the way they depict their characters. There is a famous essay ( http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html ) by Chinua Achebe about racism in Heart of Darkness which is very passionate and admirable. He writes that the novel is blatantly racist and, despite any aesthetic value it may have, should not be held as highly as it is. I think I probably I agree with him–I’ve never liked the book much.
I think Melville is a different case, and you should give him more of a chance here. The idea behind the monkey-rope is that not that Ishmael’s survival depends on Queequeg, but that they are dependent on each other. Consider the arrangement. Each man has a rope tied to him. Ishmael is on the ship, above; Queequeg is on the whale, below. If Queequeg moves wrong and falls, Ishmael falls with him, and they both die. The same thing happens if Ishmael makes a mistake. He explains: “But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it” (288). This second sentence is oddly phrased, but he means that he holds only one end–Queequeg holds the other, and they are dependent on each other to live through this. There is even a footnote to the quote above explaining that “…it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together.” This comes, I think, directly out of the democratic vision Ishamel has of the Pequod in Chapter 26. On any other vessel, the ship-end of the rope would have been tied to the ship and perhaps gripped idly by a crew member. But on the Pequod it is a man tied to a man, and they are bound by love and honor to live or die together.
With this, Ishmael’s subsequent tribute to Queequeg is genuine, not ironic. Ishmael–though often ironical in his lyrical flightiness–cannot be doubted when it comes to his love for Queequeg. Think of their meeting, their bonding, his ponderings early in the book, musing on how flexible our prejudices become when love arrives. The color is Queequeg’s hands is irrelevant, and this is a good and admirable thing.
I think that while all of these opinions are certainly valid, another perspective has not been examined that certainly could be possible. It seems to me that, from time to time in the novel, Ishmael is racist only when it is convenient to him. When he is unsure of rooming with a mysterious stranger, who is Queequeg, at the beginning of the novel he is undoubtedly racist in his attitudes towards Queequeg. However, as Ishmael becomes closer to Queequeg and his fear subsides, this racism is subdued. Perhaps, in this situation, Ishmael’s racist comment is derived from his disgust with the fact that his fate can lie in another’s hands. Clearly, fate is something that Ishmael (and in some dimensions, every character) in the novel struggles with, so perhaps part of this disgust he feels regarding his powerlessness over his fate is placed squarely on Queequeg’s shoulders when Queequeg is in a position that in many dimensions allows him to control Ishmael’s fate. If Queequeg screws up, Ishmael dies. By minimizing Queequeg to a “dancing-ape”, Ishmael is attempting to minimize the fact that he is not in control of his own fate.