Feb 27 2010
What About Fleece?
So far no one has written about Chapter 64, “Stubb’s Supper”, which I find surprising because it contains the character who is more like a slave than any other in the novel—Fleece. Not only does Fleece sound like Buckwheat, making him sound stereotypically ignorant, but his behavior reflects this as well, as most of the chapter is Fleece indulging Stubb’s every whim. Often, this is a humiliating experience:
There are those sharks now over the side, don’t you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to ‘em; tell ‘em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]
Fleece proceeds to deliver a “sermon” to the sharks, first accepting them as his fellow creatures, but in the end damning them for making a racket. All the while Stubb is standing over his shoulder, laughingly goading the poor old man on. For instance, Stubb tells Fleece “you mustn’t swear that way when you’re preaching. That’s no way to convert sinners, cook!” Though usually jovial, if not magnanimous, here Stubb acts quite viciously. Perhaps he thinks he is just having fun, but to toy with a man half-a-century your senior is highly out of line and blatantly disrespectful. In short, it’s the kind of thing that is only socially acceptable in an exchange between a master and his slave, for only in this relationship does the victimized party have no recourse.
When Stubb tires of this game, he proceeds to his original purpose of criticizing Fleece’s whale-cooking abilities. After all, he didn’t wake Fleece in the middle of the night for nothing. Rather than simply saying “my steak is overdone, Fleece”, Stubb impulsively toys with Fleece beforehand:
“Well,” said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; “I shall now go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you, cook?””,
“What dat do wid de ‘teak,” said the old black, testily.
“Silence! How old are you, cook?”
“’Bout ninety, dey say,” he gloomily muttered.
“Silence!” is ordered, and a reluctant answer given. Are we so sure there are no slaves on board the Pequod? This exchange continues until Stubb reveals his sadism:
Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad, that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don’t you?
Not only did Stubb rudely awake Fleece just to complain about his cooking, but he actually enjoyed the cooking! No wait, he hated it so much that he had to eat it as quickly as possible. After all, when I’m presented with a nice, big plate of Brussels sprouts, I am so repulsed by the sight of them that I panic and eat them all very rapidly, forgetting that I can simply compost the little cabbages. I believe that these quotes speak for themselves, and I hope that my peers will in turn weigh in on the question of whether or not Fleece is a slave.
One Response to “What About Fleece?”
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This is a very interesting point. I think contrasting Fleece’s condition with Pip, who is doted upon by Ahab after losing his mind, is a point that could make this argument very compelling.
However, that’s just a side note. What I think is even more interesting than the contrast between Pip and Fleece is the contrast between Fleece and the Dough-Boy, who is forced to wait upon Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo at the dinner table. This is a rather long quote, but I feel that it paints quite a picture:
“Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him.” (Melville 164).
In terms of attack, I think that the simulation of a scalping is especially interesting, because it is so closely associated with the idea of The Savage, which the three harpooners are most certainly cast into. Either way, the Dough-Boy, who is white, is forced to wait upon these colored men, and seems rather trapped by fear for it:
“[The] Dough-Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.” (165)
Even as this man is forced to serve them (by Ahab’s orders), the contrast is still heightened: “[The Harpooners] dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices,” (164). So these men, who on land would be disenfranchised, on the Pequod occupy a different pecking order, where they are placed above whites like Ishmael, and are able to bully white men like the Dough Boy, because their might and skill is so valuable. This creates a situation that is rather opposed to the one described above: while typical racism still very much persists on board the Pequod, it can also be just as easily turned on its head, although racist vibes are still there; the harpooners, after all, speak much more by violent action than Stubb, who must only rely on his words.