Moby Dick

Melville seems to end his stories on a somber note.  Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener, and Benito Cereno all have some people die and some survive in their final moments.  Let us examine Ishmael, the lawyer, and Delano – three survivors.

In Moby Dick, largely due to Ahab’s leadership, everyone but Ishmael perishes by the white whale.  Ishmael is this self-taught Renaissance man who seems to know a bit about everything.  He is not particularly integral to the Pequod’s crew and is more a tool for Melville to narrate and muse.  We learn at the beginning that Ishmael goes to sea because he’s depressed and feels alienated from society.

The lawyer in Bartleby the Scrivener is vain and a bit conceited, but definitely generous.  He keeps defective staff members on his payroll and doesn’t fire Bartleby when he stops working.  He tries to understand Bartleby and why he stops doing his job, but to no avail.  Nonetheless, he retains his interest in the enigmatic scrivener and narrates his story to preserve his odd legacy.

Captain Delano seems like a moderately intelligent and contemplative, yet somewhat naive captain.  We note that he realizes something is amiss and sometimes this distracts him, but he always brushes these troubling thoughts away.  Had Delano been more suspicious, he probably would have given some kind of indication of his suspicion and been killed by Babo, along with Cereno.  I can see the lawyer in Bartleby the Scrivener, a moderately intelligent but strangely detached from reality kind of person, doing the same thing.  Bartleby, like Cereno, acts strangely and confuses the lawyer, who doesn’t immediately fire Bartleby but rather remains contemplative and never assumes the worst.

In class we discussed this almost endearing ignorance found especially in Delano and to an extent, the lawyer as a distinctly American quality.  Ishmael doesn’t seem to be quite as ignorant, but he’s just as pensive.  Contemplating life, the people in one’s life, and one’s environment (not always accurately) seems to bring the three survivors together.  Maybe Melville was similarly inclined to reflect on such matters.

Now consider those who die – specifically Ahab, Bartleby, and Cereno.   Bartleby is puzzling.  The reader doesn’t learn much about this odd scrivener, except that he was a good worker until he stopped.  Bartleby seems depressed and eventually lacks the will to continue living.  We don’t know the origin of his depression, but we can speculate that it had something to do with work.  It’s similarly difficult to get a handle on Cereno’s character.   Ahab definitely has a contemplative side, as seen in his heart-to-heart with Starbuck during “The Symphony” and he’s undoubtedly clever, but his one-track mind seems to overpower any deeper thoughts that may begin to occupy his consciousness.

Another interesting point is that Ahab, Bartleby, and Cereno all lost a significant amount of their humanities prior to conking out.  Ahab was a man on a mission with complete tunnel vision from the start of the book, Bartleby was estranged from his work and preferred not to do anything, and Cereno lived in complete terror of Babo.  None of them were emotionally free.  None of them could ponder like their surviving counterparts.

There are lots of parallels we can draw between the characters that ultimately end up alive or dead at the end of these three stories.  I can’t list them all here but thought these connections were interesting.  Perhaps Melville wanted to make the point that free, contemplative thought, even if it borders on ignorance or naïvete, is a desirable quality or one that’s necessary for long-term survival.  In real life, practical people who take action quickly are more likely to survive a given situation, but Melville desires a world in which the qualities he treasures keep people alive.  In Melville’s world, this type of musing is what adds the human element.

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