Feb 08 2010
The personalities of Stubb and Flask: the pothead and the drunk
This being my third or so reading of Moby Dick, I was tickled to find that I had not before noted the hilarity found in the relationship between the personalities of Stubb and Flask, and their names.
He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all might be a question…
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition…
Stubb is clearly a man who lives for the moment, all the while puffing on a stogie. His actions and attitude are relaxed, calm, uncaring, and often happily oblivious. Stubb is also is a bit of a jokster, occasionally picking on Flask. That Melville cast Stubb as a man of the herb is doubtful, but he is certainly characterized as such.
…in his poor opinion, the wonderous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least a water-rat, requiring requiring only a little circumvention, and some small application of time to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the mater of whales…
Flask’s primary characteristics are an oppositional attitude, a seemingly foundationless hatred of whales, and rather short temper. One can also assume he has a bit of a drinking problem. While marijuana use was not really a salient (or at least public) issue in Melville’s time, alcohol certainly was. Flask’s personality traits fit with those of a drunk.
Stubb and Flask are often described as representatives of opposing philosophies, and to be sure they are. However, I see them also as men of two different vices–and examples of the pitfalls of each. As a pothead, Stubb is happy, carefree, but consequently oblivious to the dangers of whaling; as an alcoholic, Flask is angry, impulsive, and, like Stubb, unaware of the dangers he faces. The difference is that Stubb has either forgotten the dangers, is too high to care, or has smoked himself into a philosophy of fatalism (the generally accepted philosophy of Stubb), while Flask is blinded by his anger/hatred, or is so mad at the whales he’d die trying to kill one. Stubb can’t see through the smoke, and Flask’s vision is blurred by the booze.
Might be a stretch, but I had fun writing about it!
One Response to “The personalities of Stubb and Flask: the pothead and the drunk”
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Not a stretch at all, Ari — a funny thing, to be sure! There is a wonderful critical article about Moby Dick that suggests that Stubb and Flask represent (along with Starbuck, Ishmael, Ahab) different versions of one person’s (Melville’s, probably) depression, and how to deal with it (Ahab is the mania; Ishmael is the depression; Flask and Stubb try to self-medicate). It’s a very good and interesting reading of the novel, and your interpretation of them as a kind of comedy routine of potheads and drunks is actually probably even better because it is probably more in keeping with the actual, 19th century subculture of whaling communities that Melville knew (I’m sure he encountered his share of potheads in that profession).