Moby Dick

Chapter 54 takes place “one saint’s eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn,” in Lima. The chapter mostly entails Ishmael telling a story about a sailor named Steelkilt. This story, however, is not relevant here. I would like to instead focus on Ishmael’s compatriots and how Melville portrays Spaniards.

Whereas we have explored many times over Melville/Ishmael’s view that, though savages, black people and Indians have many redeeming qualities. Chapter 54 does not treat Spaniards in such a nuanced or forgiving way. Though Ishmael’s friends do not have many lines in the chapter, when they do speak it is usually just to interrupt Ishmael’s story with an ignorant or stereotype-reinforcing comment. Take, for example, the words of Don Pedro:

Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

There is a patent contrast between words such as dull, lazy, and hereditary (“of a kind established by tradition”, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary) used to describe South American life and the vigorous life of New England. To the uninformed reader, South America sounds like a place filled with indolent slackers. By contrast, New England is filled with vital, quick-witted, hard-working individuals. Coincidentally, South America is filled with natives and Spaniards, while New England is populated mostly by whites. It would not have been difficult for a 19^th Century reader to make the implied connection. Also, notice that the Spaniard is calling himself lazy. Had Melville portrayed a white character calling a Spaniard these things, we could dismiss him and the words as petty bigots. However, why would a Spaniard slander himself? These things must be true then.

Melville provides his white audience with more feel-good fun facts in that same chapter when he writes,

Lakeman! [a.k.a. Steelkilt]— Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?’ said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass. [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

Not only would Melville’s audience get a good chuckle out of Don Sebastian’s ignorance (“Who doesn’t know where Buffalo is?”), but he also slips in the fact that Don Sebastian is wearing what I can only assume is a grass skirt, though we have little reason to believe that Spanish sailors would dress significantly different from their New England counterparts. What an educational chapter– I never knew Spaniards were obsequious, lethargic, verdure-clad alcoholics!

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