Mar 01 2010
Moby Dick’s pitchpoling
I previously posted about an instance in which Melville uses a footnote to describe the migratory patterns of sperm whales. Stylistically this had struck me, as it was an interesting device to find used sparingly in the middle of the novel. I noticed too how the narrator’s voice changed between the footnote and the rest of the text. He sounded more authoritative on the nature of whales, referring to a scientific publication that appeared to be fictionalized.
Much later on in the book, there is notably another example of Melville’s use of a footnote to describe the habits of whales. In the middle of the The Chase – First Day chapter (the bottom of page 537 in the Signet book), the narrator illustrates a maneuver of the whale in which the whale leaps into the air, as if to obtain a better vantage point of the area around him. I wonder how certain Melville himself felt about this reason for the whale’s breaching, or rather, if people in his time commonly believed this. One web page I’ve found lists other plausible explanations for breaching, and says that scientists are still speculative as to an exact reasoning.
Interestingly, the narrator says this is “peculiar” to sperm whales, which does not seem to be the case, as other types of whales, especially the humpback, are known to breach.
Here is a video of a humpback’s impressive breaching:
You can see the great ocean swells that come after the whale hits the water, which Melville describes in the line before the footnote mentioned.
Of note, Melville does not refer to the whale’s leaping as “breaching,” but rather as “pitchpoling,” which is a dangerous type of capsizing, and is nicely illustrated here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/pitchpoling
“Pitchpoling” is the title of Chapter 84 in the book, but is actually referring to the ship and not the whale.
One Response to “Moby Dick’s pitchpoling”
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A great post, Sam — thanks for adding the media and pointing us to the website. I am gratified to see that you did some Ishmael-like research of your own into the footnotes’ content, and that you were curious about the breaching, and what is known about it. It is a mysterious activity in whales, and some scientists (including the ones I met while whale-watching off the coast of Cape Cod) suggest it might be a social thing: that whales are curious about us, and they want to see what we’re doing up here. I don’t know about that, but it certainly IS true that whales are very social, AND very curious about humans in boats. But I think your last sentence in this post opens up possibilities for yet another post, which could be about why Melville equates the whale’s pitchpoling with the ship’s pitchpoling? What does the whale’s breaching activity have to do with the ship’s capability to capsize? And why is Melville yet again equating man’s efforts with whales’? Interesting line of thought you present, here.