Moby Dick

Ah, the Spirit Spout. The chapter that supposes the great whale is following the Peaquod. Rife with foreshadowing and ominous imagery, this chapter can also be read as a testimony to the serenity and solitude of the sea–and the tricks such solitude can play in the minds of men. Alone for an eternity without so much as a humpback to show for it, the crew of the Peaquod have become accustomed to an empty ocean; a monotonous, pristine blue-grey sheet that plods along til disappearing beneath the fog of the horizon. Once broken by a spout–real or imagined–the shattered serenity evokes nightmarish thoughts of monsters and fiendish leviathans. Indeed the sea has been for some time their peaceful feminine companion, but as becomes clear in “The Symphony,” it had begun to turn on them in their minds. No longer peaceful, serene, and feminine, the once calm sea now the portent of their impending downfall.

Sailors of a whaling vessel had little to go by in the way of guarantees. The industry of Melville’s era did not benefit from the technologies of today’s world. Fishing then was a crapshoot of epic proportions. For the men of Ahab’s craft, the prospects of a payday were ever-dwindling and the horror of their doom-bound journey was creeping ever steadily into their consciousness. These were men primed for a conjured sign–a affirmation of their terrible destiny. Form the standpoint of a psychologist, the Peaquod was a case study for the breeding grounds of group-effect driven hysteria. One man’s diluted vision yielded the panic (or beginnings thereof) of an entire crew.

As has been made clear throughout the novel, the sea is all-powerful.  It can at once be a force of daunting deaths, and in another moment promoting a sense of serenity among the crewmembers on the Pequod.  Ishmael has many reflections and thoughts on the ocean, and also the way in which he understands the world, through being a shipmate on a whaling boat, by way of the ocean.  The power of it is most often overwhelming, and the intense insight it can offer a man is too much for many to handle (i.e. Pip).  But in Chapter 111, Ishmael has a more peaceful moment while experiencing the dreaminess of the Pacific’s “tide-beating heart of the earth” (Melville 465).

…for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling ways but made so by their restlessness” (465).

In this most serene moment, Ishmael understands the ocean as a sort of heaven for him.  But he then remarks that someone such as Ahab won’t ever have these feelings of calmness towards the sea.  Captain Ahab will never be “lifted by those eternal swells” of the sea, as he has accepted his fate, and is only able to focus on the task he feels has been set for him, to kill Moby Dick.  Ishmael also finds it somewhat difficult to imagine that “the hated white whale must even then be swimming” in this sea he himself feels so at peace with.  We are often reminded of all that the sea keeps in hiding, and while Moby Dick is one evil among many that lurk below, Melville also uses this chapter to remind us those hidden aspects contain the “soul” of the sea.  And in relating the soul of the sea to the soul of man, it is clear that both hide certain “gently awful stirrings” (465).

In chapters such as this one, Melville is contrasting the concentrated drama of the novel’s looming end with scenes of tranquility and thoughtfulness.  Pitting the two against each other can be seen as a reflection on the act of whaling itself, as it’s made up of moments of high intensity, interspersed with many lulls of waiting and watching.  Also, in showing that Ahab has no experience of these lulls, the reader is alerted to the drama he himself is constructing.  In not ever feeling a sense of calm, he is allowing Moby Dick to consume him, and thus forcing his fate to become a reality.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York, NY: Signet Classic, 1998.

In my first post I noted that Captain Ahab shared his name with the notorious King Ahab from the Book of Kings (1 Kings 16). Though it seemed apparent that Captain Ahab had the flaw of hubris, it was still not clear if he would follow the path of King Ahab. While overseeing the production of the harpoon that will be used to kill Moby Dick, Ahab seems to transform into someone entirely different. He uses the blood of the pagan “savages” in the making of the harpoon and exclaims:

Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli! (471)

Translated from Latin, Ahab’s cry becomes clear: “I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil!” With these words, Ahab seems to revoke his faith in God and monotheism by invoking the name of the devil and using pagan blood in the making of the harpoon. Ahab’s faith in God to help him succeed in his mission has been lost; he appears to have turned against God. This parallels nicely with King Ahab, who gave up monotheism to worship the pagan god Baal.

Now that Captain Ahab has begun to fulfill his destiny that came with his name, what is Melville trying to say? There is, no doubt, something unsettling about the unholy baptism that Ahab performs. It is no longer just about Moby Dick anymore. I can’t help but think of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which (from what I know about it) details Satan’s attempt to wage war in Heaven and his ultimate banishment to Hell. Captain Ahab, too, seems to be a “hell-raiser,” an individual who is not afraid to stir up a little trouble. Ahab is saying, “No!” to God by purposefully corrupting the Sacrament of Baptism and continuing on his pursuit to destroy the whale. If Ahab sees Moby Dick as God, or at least an agent of God, then it appears that he is in fact trying to overcome and metaphorically kill God. Thus he is no longer only Captain Ahab and “King Ahab,” but also Satan himself.

This side of Ahab, the part of him that relentlessly seeks the whale and willingly “blasphemes” against God, is only one part of him. To complicate matters further, Melville gives the reader a glimpse into who could be the “real” Captain Ahab in Chapter 132 “The Symphony.” I will discuss this chapter in my next blog post and how it gives some clues as to what exactly drives Ahab in his crazed pursuit of the whale (beyond simple revenge).

Sources:

1. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Kings+16&version=NIV (1 Kings 16:29-34)

From reading Moby Dick in high school, I always remembered “The Whiteness of the Whale” as my favorite chapter because of the eloquence of Melville’s writing. Is this chapter perhaps the best study in prose of a single color, ever? He explores the imagery and symbolism of whiteness across various references in various settings. Most importantly for this class and this topic, “The Whiteness of the Whale” helps readers to understand classifications of masculinity and how gender functions in the novel.

For Ishmael, this chapter is his announcement of the most horrifying attribute of the whale– its whiteness: “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me” (168). Whiteness is associated with “majesty” and the “divine,” but also “panic,” “dread,” and the “ghastly.” The color and the significance of the color become gendered by Ishmael: he links whiteness to men. Firstly, he notes that various nations “have in some way recognized a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric old kings of Pegu placing the title ‘Lord of the White Elephants’ above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue….whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds” (168). Absolutist monarchies of the past were propagandized by rulers as divine, or divinely acquired; so white, as a “symbol of the divine spotlessness” according to Ishmael, is an appropriate color to characterize those in power (168). White is associated with hegemonic patriarchy, which includes male-ruled politics, male-governed justice, and male-monitored religion. It is the color that represents the regality, wisdom, and all-out might of men.

Ishmael offers a contrast, that white is also linked to “the innocence of brides,” and thus their purity and virginity (168). This is an important acknowledgement because white can take on multiple forms and is not wholly male-owned or masculine in tone. But in the realm of men, it is attached to those who hold absolute power and may be prone to acts of terror and cruelty (…as we know that absolute power corrupts absolutely). Just as the King of Prussia rules over his land – and nation states have historically been referred to in the feminine, France and England and Russia described by historians through pronouns “she” and “her” – the white, male Moby Dick rules over his feminized sea.

The metaphor and symbolism of the color white can naturally be extended to race. As is evident through the hierarchy aboard the Pequod, the white men have control over the brown, ethnic, “othered” male. Ishmael notes that “this pre-eminence in [whiteness] applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe” (168).

Ishmael uses other articulate references to describe the elusiveness and awfulness of white, including the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The White Mountains and, more specifically, Mount Chocorua (their tallest peak), were habitually depicted in landscapes by the artists of the Hudson River School in the mid-nineteenth century. These artists believed in painting landscapes as evocations of the sublimity and divinity of nature, and thus the White Mountains were entirely appropriate as subject matter.

Based on Ishmael’s description, white is also associated with redemption: “in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed” (169). This phrase calls to mind the ivory white stub of Captain Ahab; perhaps the reader can infer that his artificial leg symbolizes his survival and redemption. He had fought Moby Dick, and while scathed, he carried on after the confrontation. Similarly, the captain of the Samuel Enderby from London, who we meet in Chapter 100, “Leg and Arm,” possesses an ivory white arm after he lost his real arm in a treacherous rendez-vous with the white whale. Moby Dick is characterized in this chapter as an “old great-grandfather” with “a milky-white head and hump, all crows’ feet and wrinkles” (391). The English captain also describes him as “the noblest and biggest” whale he ever saw (392). This depiction adds to our understanding of whiteness: the whiteness of the massive monster enhances his aura of wisdom, nobility, regality, and strength. Moby Dick’s tail is “like a marble steeple” that came down and ripped the captain’s boat completely in two, shredding it into splinters, when he met face-to-face with the most awful and impressive force of the sea (392).

But there is a clear difference between these two captains. The Englishman has clearly learned his lesson for acting over-aggressively and is now ready to retreat, vowing to focus his travels on capturing smaller whales and to never again target the enigmatic white whale: “‘he’s welcome to the arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to another one. No More White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?’ – glancing at the ivory leg” (395). Ahab does not think so. In contrast to the English captain, the white whale is still Ahab’s magnet. Thinking about pursuing Moby Dick causes his blood to boil and his heart to pulse so furiously that the planks aboard the Samuel Enderby beat in rhythm, as a man named Bunger says, surprisingly eloquently (395). Ahab continues to feels utterly emasculated by Moby Dick, to the point that it has driven him mad. He is not satisfied by his ivory white leg and does not accept the artificial walking substitute as a good enough redemption. He wants full revenge. This chapter reveals an emasculating moment in which Ahab has to awkwardly and clumsily transition from the Pequod to the Samuel Enderby – this being the first time he has set his peg leg aboard another ship besides his own. Despite the English captain’s warning, Ahab continues to be bitterly and madly driven in the pursuit of the white male to reassert his masculinity and experience the pride of killing the thing that no one else has managed to kill. But the reader can infer that Ahab’s ambition for revenge will inevitably end in his destruction.

“‘And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he swallows’” – the Englishman (394). Gulp.

In a previous post, I discussed Melville’s anthropomorphization of the sperm whale.  However, he frequently takes this several steps farther.  Not only does he see the whale as human, but he often sees it as above human, almost godlike.  This is demonstrated many times throughout the text.  In chapter 85, The Fountain, Melville discussed whether or not the whale has a voice.  He concludes that it does not.

But then again, what has the whale to say?  Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say in this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.

Melville sees this silence as majestic.  Of course, the second part of this statement seems to reflect on Melville himself, excusing him from speaking in writing this book.  More importantly, though, is the sense of the whale as profound, a noble creature.  Later in this chapter, Melville discusses the whale spout, debating whether it is mist or water.  He states that it is mist, and explains

to this conclusion i am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him for no common shallwo being…He is both ponderous and profound.  And I am convinced that from the ehads of all ponderous and profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts.

The whale is not only majestic because of his size or mystery.  He is a thinker of deep thoughts, profound on the level of Dante.  The mention of the Devil is a bit puzzling, as it suggests some sort of evil lurks within the whale.  However, evil or no, this creature ranks among the most sublime human thinkers.  Melville not only respects the whale, he seems to have some worshipful reverence towards it, and its “great inherent dignity.”  His encounters with whales seem to have convinced him of this, and Ishmael as well.  It does make one wonder how a man, a whaler, who sees the whale such could justify killing these creatures en masse.

This post does not really fit under “Characters and Characterization,” yet it relates to an earlier post I made in that section.  However, I think it relates more to the narrator, so I will classify it as such.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Ishmael is somewhat invisible as a character.  However, throughout the book, especially in later chapters, the reader gets glimpses of him.  One thing I’ve noted is his opinions on the work he has undertaken; this novel.  He seems to think rather highly of it, and see it as some sort of noble work. In chapter 104, The Fossil Whale, Ishmael states

For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outstretching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs.  Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme!  We expand to its bulk.  To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

In saying this, Ishmael connects this work to large themes of the universe.  He seems to be claiming that this book is mighty, as it deals with such a mighty theme.  More than that, it is so important as to weaken him, as he struggles with the meaning of the universe.  This fits in with what we discussed in the first class, how some people hate this book, but some think it holds all the answers to life.  Ishmael appears to be in the latter camp.

Of course, this begs the ever present question:  how separate are Ishmael and Melville?  Does Melville see his work this way?  I would argue yes, as he constantly inserts massive life morals and questions into the work.  To him, it is not just a book about a whale.  Did this make him more upset when  the critics slammed this work, or shelved it under “cetology?”  Or did he laugh at their folly, knowing the deep truths were there, and they just couldn’t see?

Chapter 88, Schools and Schoolmasters is another good example of a chapter where Melville uses whales to comment on humanity.  At first what struck me about this chapter was that it is one of the only instances where Melville mentions love.  Of course, this is whale love, not human love, but his language frames this whale love in human terms: “As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love” (380).

However, as the chapter continues, it appears to focus more on ideas of learning and growing up.  The male whale will cavort with a harem of female whales while he is young.  But as he matures, he will instead choose solitude and leave the harem and “he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets” (381).  For men in this book, the sea is also a source of “moody secrets.”  They often contemplate her vastness and her beauty.  Yet, for men, land is more likely to be the place where they settle down.  Melville settled down to a life on land with a wife and children after he spent years traveling the world in ships.

Though we as readers will not get to follow Ishmael past his time on the Pequod, it would be interesting to see how much longer he spends quieting his restlessness by going out to sea.  He obviously sees the sea as a “school” of sorts, as he relates chapters and chapters worth of scientific and philosophical information that he has learned while whaling.  But most likely eventually he, and men like him, will feel they have learned enough, and will return to land permanently.

For my final blog post on Moby Dick, I am going to forsake my category and write, instead, about something I found very touching towards the end of the novel, that being Ahab’s relationship with Starbuck as their fate draws near. In Chapter 132, “The Symphony,” Ahab seems to pour out his soul to his first mate:

…Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board! – lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in thine eye!

In this passage, Ahab admits his humanity. He remembers his own family, and owns (in preferring the gaze of man to that of God or that towards sea or sky) that he, perhaps, regrets his life away from them and the “normal” human existence that he could have lead. Yet after this touching speech, Ahab proves he is set on his destiny by pursuing Moby Dick. He has Starbuck stay behind in the fateful chase, preserving what Ahab deems true humanity- a man with a family whom he loves, with attachment to the land. Ahab seems to equate land with humanity, here, pronouncing Starbuck’s human eye as the “magic glass” with the exclamations, “By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone!” He sets the sea and sky as separate from humanity in putting the gaze into the human eye as one on a different level from that into the sea or sky. Ahab, after all his years at sea, has become inhuman in losing his connection with the land. We may view his fixed idea of his destiny as one pre-ordained by God, in line with Melville’s religious awareness, or we can say that Ahab made his own fate by choosing a life that precluded the sort of destiny that includes dying peacefully by the fireside, wrapped in blankets while your wife and child murmur their last farewells. Ahab’s destiny was self-made, and he acknowledges this in his speech to Starbuck.
Ahab enforces this realization by having Starbuck stay behind. Ahab sees Starbuck’s “far away home” in his eye and knows that Starbuck has not yet sealed his own fate. Starbuck remains a member of humanity, a person of the land who sojourns at sea and no more, which Ahab used to be before he devoted his entire life to the non-human realms, that of sea and sky and God and “destiny.” Ahab’s tenderness towards the first mate comes out, then, as he reminds Ahab as his own lost humanity.
This brings us back to the beginning of the novel, in which Ishmael talks of how he has to go out to sea every now and then “as a substitute for pistol and ball.” In saying that he avoids suicide by going to sea, Ishmael inherently equates the two (“With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship”). In other words, Ishmael gets tired of being a human, so enters a realm in which he does not have to be. Death, certainly, is such a realm, but Melville frames the sea as one, as well. It is thus fitting that Ishmael sets out on his watery journey with Queequeg, a man who would challenge any American’s views of humanity in the 19th century.
The idea of a seaward voyage as the end of one’s humanity can be seen in Ahab’s final farewell to Starbuck in Chapter 135, “The Chase – Third Day.” Ahab says, “’Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!’” which instantly brings to mind the image of Ahab himself, boarding a ship and ever afterwards missing from humanity. He understands in retrospect why the course of his life played out as it did. By his speech in “The Symphony,” we see that Ahab questions his life decisions:

…Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase?…how the richer or better is Ahab now?

Ishmael, on he other hand, understands his exact reasons for boarding the Pequod before he does it. He does it to escape life so that he can be better equipped to return to it. Ahab up and left his life on shore and got too caught up in the world of whaling to properly think about his priorities. He acquires a “destiny” by accident, by carelessness. Ishmael thinks (like it’s his job), and he avoids a watery death.

Not until yesterday’s class had I put any thought to the idea that the chapter named “The Spirit-Spout” might indeed by a premonition of the future of the Pequod.  But as I reread the chapter, I found that I had underlined the following passage in my first reading,

“And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring.  While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked.  But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.” (225)

The second sentence of the passage especially struck me because of the image of Ahab as man who is at the same time alive and dead, “his one live leg…every stroke of his dead limb…”(225)  Although Ahab often times seems to hide in his cabin, the Pequod is his tool of accomplishing his goal of killing the white whale; thus the every lives of the Pequod and her crew hang on his decisions and mood.  Thus second sentence seems to suggest that the Pequod hangs on the balance of life and death and Ahab’s ivory leg is a reminder of the possible ensuing death.  Furthermore, is Ishmael suggesting that the voyage could possibly go either way; success or failure?

I believe that that question is answered with the phantom spout or “Spirit-Spout”.  It is as though nature is teasing Ahab and his crew.  The spout is a reminder that the Pequod had a choice to break from Ahab’s devious plan to kill the white whale but chose not to.  Thus every night the phantom spout reminds them of their doomed journey.  It is as though a ghost lurks in the background, haunting every member of the crew.  The warning of doom did not end with the phantom spout, Ishmael also comments on the unusual birds that also haunt the deck.  He states, “And every morning, perched on our stays, row of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation…” (226) He suggests that perhaps nature, through the actions of the birds, has deemed the boat and its crew dead.  Perhaps the ship and the crew have become ghosts at sea just like the “Spirit-Spout”?

A close reading of the chapter “The Spirit Spout” betrays certain aspects of generally more understated functions of Melville’s narrative voice. Though the central aspect of this chapter is the “Spirit Spout” itself, there is an equally intriguing, if as of yet under discussed, part at the end of the chapter where Starbuck finds Ahab asleep in his cabin in a position that indicates that Ahab has been obsessively watching the direction of the ship’s course. I find this an interesting part of the narrative because the careful choice of language, along with the fact that Ishmael has been privy to the “spirit spout” in the earlier paragraphs of this chapter indicate that we are being talked to by Ishmael, but at the end of the chapter we see a sudden switch to a situation that Ishmael would have no way of commenting on. This shift in narrative voice in combination with continuity of tone indicate that Melville wants to tell us something of a philosophic nature about the scene in Ahab’s cabin. Certain aspects of the scene stand out, and individual words cannot be ignored because of the care and attention that was put into this chapter.

Never could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood…

This quote in particular seems very important. The narrator is saying that Starbuck is descending into the realm of Ahab. I do not feel like I am reading too much into the action of “Descending” when I say that the reader can conjure up images of the underworld or hell from hearing this seemingly simple sentence. I believe that the narrator wants to inform the reader’s interpretation of the “spirit spout” by showing that Ahab is chasing it down even in his sleep, as he is seen to be asleep while facing the compass. The crew has many different interpretations of what the spout might be or what it could signify, so by affirming Ahab’s obsession with it in proving that he is hoping to follow the direction of the spout we see that those that think there is something demonic about the spout may very well be in the right.

It also cannot be ignored that the narrator provides us with an interesting side note at the end of the chapter. In reference to the hanging compass we are told specifically that…

The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the compass at the helm, the captain, while below, can inform himself of the course of the ship.

Regardless of whether or not it is significant that “The Tell-Tale Heart” was published eight years prior to Moby Dick, the wording “Tell-Tale” carries the same ominous meaning. The narrator clearly finds it important to bring the reader out of the flow of the text so as to tell them that the tool Ahab is using to keep track of the direction of the ship is something that is ominous, and as a result the task that is being carried out with its aid is likely equally dark.

I for one feel that it is extremely important that we look this closely at this specific section of the story because through this scene we are able to see many things that will be mainstays throughout the book. Ahab’s obsession, Ahab’s madness, Starbuck’s questioning of Ahab’s ability to lead, the crew’s belief that Moby Dick is something more than whale, and Ahab’s connection with evil. All of these things are incredibly important aspects of the plot and as such it is no surprise that they are represented so strongly, and all at once, in this very significant part of the story.