Mar 04 2010
Emotional Disconnect
The end of Moby Dick…
After class, I was really intrigued with Ishmael’s emotional disconnect at the end of the novel. Rereading quotes from the beginning and end of the novel, I was really struck by how he presented himself after this horrific experience. At first, I believed that Melville was perhaps playing on the fact that Ishmael had post traumatic stress from the sinking of the ship and the loss of so many friends and influential people. Or maybe Ishmael was finally attempting to be a reliable narrator. But neither of these reasons fit Ishmael’s personality, which we have all experienced throughout the book. Therefore, I fully believe that the last section of the book coincides with the insanity and imbalances of Ishmael that we read on the first page. Specifically this quote:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; when I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especiallywhenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. (1)
After these first few lines, I was really struck again by how insane and unreal Ishmael portrays himself. An individual who has a firm or even slightly less firm grasp on reality would never present himself, in a novel concerning a life changing voyage, as insane. It is as though he is warning his audience that he unreliable before we even get to the second page. Furthermore, to say that he becomes reliable at the end of the novel because of his emotional disconnect as seen in the following passage, it completely ridiculous:
Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. (552)
If anything, the emotional disconnect that Ishmael displays just shows how bizarre and unstable he is. For all of his previous comments that seemed to say that he was “married” to Queequeq and could not fathom the thought of living without him, there is no mention of Queequeq’s die. There is not mention of anyone else, his only comment is that he is the only one that survived. In my mind, that displays the type of individual who is narrating the story. It displays that Ishmael is not reliable, never was reliable and even warned us that he was unreliable.
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I had similar thoughts. It was interesting when Prof. Friedman said that this can be looked at as a survivor’s story, which can explain Ishmael’s reflection and exhaustive search for metaphysical meaning. However, I found this funny because Ishmael overdoes it like usual, more than any other person would. However, he must really be insane then because I don’t know how anyone could go through that and then write so light-heartedly pedestrian throughout the novel with no care of the car-wreck to come. “I was just walking along and…”
I think Ishmael hints that Queequeg will die early on, though it is strange and ambiguous. After Queequeg saves the drowning man Ishmael comments at the end of the ordeal, “From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, til poor Queequeg took his long last dive.” (Sig. 59), end of paragraph. Yet, how can he talk about his friend who is destined to die like that, unless he believes they are simply the playthings of the universe.