Moby Dick

How far can you stretch American exceptionalism?  Take it too far, and America has regressed to the colonial era.  In class we discussed the hierarchy of the ship and how the Pequod represents a floating ship that Melville wants readers to compare with America.  Yet whaling is an industry of categorization and hierarchy.  Americans relied heavily upon the revenue and resources it brought in and used American success to raise the country’s status among other nations; Americans wanted to rule the seas.  But the organization of a whale-ship and of whaling as an industry mirrors the structure of the governments that America claimed to have separated itself from.  Americans their superiority stemmed from a democracy and the country flourished through the rule of the people.  Yet whaling was an industry that supported an “irresistible dictatorship,” as Ishmael describes Ahab’s captaincy (Melville, 129).

Whaling is entrenched in categorization and in the rankings of those categories.  The novel opens with pages of quotations assembled to describe every possible mention of  a whale in literature.  More categorization follows in  chapter 32 as a detailed account of cetology.  Later, Ishmael vividly describes the hierarchy of the crew.

In classifying whales in the chapter “Cetology,” Ishmael foreshadows the description of the organization of the crew in later chapters.  Throughout chapter 32, Ishmael makes it clear that some whales are useful for whalers and some whales have no value at all.  In the cases where he does not know much about a species, he simply cuts his description off abruptly.

From the first pages of quotations to the extensive chapter on cetology to the descriptions of the crew, Ishmael seems fixated on categorization and organization.  Perhaps Melville is trying to point out the extremity to which Americans try to fit people into categories, often at the exclusion or belittling of others.  When describing whales, Melville says that

“they form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis…nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way” (122)

People, like whales, are too diverse and complicated to fit in defined categories.  But then the narrator says that whales should be divided by only their outward characteristics; he has divided whales by these just as white Americans have divided people by their races.

Ishmael, however, does take the time to explain the other whales, not just the favored sperm whale.  This passage mirrors the scenes when Ishmael questions the racist views of white society; he yet again sways between complete categorization, trying to make sense of the world, and accepting differences.

But in his description of people, Ishmael says that the hierarchy is absolute.  He states that

“never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.” (129)

For whaling, the hierarchy is so important and the captain is so revered that even abuse is valued by the crew.  In chapter 31, “Queen Mab,” a merman says “No, you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb.  It’s an honor.” (115)  This seems to me on par with groveling at a king’s feet and thanking him for a whipping.  If the Pequod is supposed to represent America, then Melville is pointing out how backward America is compared to how she views herself; she has returned to the era of “knights and squires,” not the modern age of democracy.  How could Americans so embrace whaling when it perpetuated all of the qualities that Americans believed themselves to be rid of.  Or even beyond embracing, why did they glorify it?  Maybe in the race to get ahead they unwittingly took a few steps backwards.

But Ishmael (and Melville), even with all of the categories and hierarchies, have left open the possibility of free thinking.  Ishmael says in chapter 32, right after all of the divisions that he just made, “God keep me from ever completing anything.  This whole book is but a draught — nay, but the draught of a draught.” (128)  Melville is open to change, and perhaps his categories have slightly blurred boundaries.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1988. Reissued 2008. Print.

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