Moby Dick

“…the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed his [Ahab’s eyes]; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber…”

Much can be made of the above quotation for it has much thought inspiring substance packed into a short space. To begin, the first line lays bare the odd relationship between Ahab and his secret harpooner. A relationship where the power structure is not what it ought. No matter the imagined strength of the Fedallah’s magic, Ahab is still the captain of the Pequod, but by all accounts seems himself captained by the Parsi’s convulsions and murmured prophecies. Further, Ahab is a New England Quaker who by tradition has no business consorting with the likes of a Parsi. But Ahab is no ordinary man, and needless to say, by practice at least, no longer a Quaker.

That first line, nay the second word, makes clear that Fedallah is no simple figure. ““Inscrutable”” to the crew, but also to the reader. This post is indeed a testament to the debate that surrounds the character’s character; and by character I of course mean moral fiber. Decades gone by and still no one is sure whether he was penned as good or evil. (My take is that he was penned as ambiguous; there to spark and keep the interest of the masses-and provide fodder for discussions such as this.)

Finally, the last line. At first glance, this seems a indication of some spiritual possession or sorcery. Indeed in may be so. However, there could well be other explanations. In previous posts I have attempted to rationalize some of the characters’ primary attributes. Fedallah does not sleep. This can certainly be interpreted in a mystical manner, and if one is reading the novel in that light, so be it. But if one reads the novel as a comenntary on the whaling industry/culture (Stubb and Flask: Alcoholic and pothead), Fedallah’s lack of sleep could well be read as stress induced insomnia; brought on by prolonged separation from his native culture/immersion into an alien one. Or possible still, brought on by the constant paranoia born of his perceived (prophesied) impending meeting with/death by the white whale. That explanation also serves to rationalize the prophesies as the delusions of a man stressed to the breaking point by a career of danger in a foreign culture, topped by a clandestine voyage of revenge.

*I had intended to post this before Monday’s discussion on gender, but because of internet problems, am only posting this now.

In reading this story through a scientific lens, I find it worth noting that in many instances, Melville is conversely unscientific in his descriptions of whales.  That is, he consciously abandons writing accurately about the natural world, as to make his tale more literary and poetic.  It is interesting how Melville is deliberately inconsistent about this accuracy.  One example that struck me was concerned with the gender and anatomy of the whale.

In the beginning of chapter 102, A Bower in the Arsacides, Melville writes, “But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbuttom him still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton (432 to 433).”

The male subject in the passage refers to the Sperm Whale, but Melville confuses this,in the same sentence, when he describes undressing the whale from its “hose” and “garters,” which are distinctly feminine objects.  As was stated in Monday’s lecture, Melville complicates gender descriptions throughout the book, sometimes probably much more subtly than others.  From what I have noticed, I think that Melville, in other places in the book, consistently refers to whales in the masculine form, but here he is being playful and speculative about gender, which makes for interesting questions.

Also, here Melville is being unscientific in that he is pretending the whale is removing its clothing, rather than being anatomically dissected, which he seems to be referring to, however figuratively .

At the very start of Melville’s Moby Dick, we meet our narrator, Ishmael.  Before we can even escape the confines of the first paragraph, he immediately throws his sanity into question: “…whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me… then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.  This is my substitute for pistol and ball” (Melville 3).  In terms of narration, Ishmael has now made it quite difficult for the reader to trust his oncoming reports.  When he admits that this time around he wants to try a whaling voyage, that distrust deepens; why would the reader ever trust the perspective of a man with the desire to virtually enslave himself for 3-5 years?

But, as we soon see, this madness is all relative.  Perhaps, one might think, to be a whaler a man must contain some type of madness within himself, whether it be the madness of Ahab’s aporia, Starbuck’s superstition, Stubb and Flask’s self medication, or Pip’s susceptibility to the endless vaults of the sea.  After meeting these personalities, Ishmael’s manic-depressive manner seems to fit right in with the motley crew of the Pequod.

Ishmael’s madness is managed (or expressed, one might say) largely in his complete abandonment of the construct of “happiness” as seen on shore.  As Ishmael has his first shift at the masthead in open water, he reflects on how his happiness and his madness intertwine and how they manifest themselves in whaling as a solution: “The whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber” (172).  Ishmael sees the root of his madness in his philosophic mind; he loves the masthead because it gives his mind a temporary outlet, alleviating his melancholy… or perhaps heightening its control over him, so he can lose himself within it (which is arguably what happens to Pip when he falls overboard).  As we discussed in class, this makes him a bad sailor, but it is one of the reasons he is drawn to whaling.

Another time we see Ishmael reflecting on this is in his first interaction with spermaceti.  It is the first time that Ishmael really articulates (both for us and most likely for himself) his reasons for abandoning shore in his depression:

I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally.  (456)

Ishmael sees the construct of life on land as something barring men from their true happiness-society forces man to come to grips with what he lacks, and to form his new happiness around domestic life.  The manual work of bursting clods of spermaceti finally allows Ishmael to unlock his own true happiness, and we finally see why he rejects life on the land at his most depressed: escaping the confines of the earth allows him to unlock his true happiness, and at the same time and revel in his madness, rather than suppress it. 

Works Cited:

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Northwestern University Press, 1988. Reissued 2003. Print.

There’s something to be said about a narrator who finds not just religious significance—but religion itself—in a whale penis. In brief chapter ninety-five, “The Cassock,” Ishmael equates whale member with paganism and Christianity alike, and in doing so describes an inherently gruesome piece of cetological anatomy as a transformative and powerful icon.

After a quick physical description of the “wondrous cone,” Ishmael launches into a mystic tangent inspired by the member, which he describes thusly:

…as jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea, and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did despose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook of Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15^th chapter of the first book of Kings.

Here, Ishmael likens the penis to Yojo, without whose influence Ishmael would have never found the Pequod, and to the pole of Asherah, a Semitic fertility goddess, for which the biblical Queen Maachah was defrocked of her widowed Queen status. In doing so, he ascribes to a squalid hunk of dead animal flesh a power capable of wisdom, fertility, and temptation. Needless to say, this is an unreasonable amount of significance for even the most dedicated whaler to derive from severed genitalia—unless, of course, Melville was trying to make a point.

[I’d like for a second to break form and make note of two things—one, that here again we see Melville toying with male sexuality (be it human or otherwise), and two, that this passage marks yet another reference to the book of Kings, this time explicitly.]

Melville’s “point,” if he has one, becomes clear in the remainder of the chapter. Ishmael takes the subsequent paragraph to describe in meticulous detail the calculated method behind the task of a “mincer,” which is to remove the pelt of the member, hang the pelt to dry, and out of it to create a protective coat. Melville describes the man after he dons the coat: “The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.” Melville’s choice of the word “canonicals,” with its obvious religious denotation, paints the mincer as a cleric or clergyman, whose duty is a religious one. The curious use of second person pronouns and imperative commands (i.e., “ Look at the sailor…”) in this paragraph suggests a invitation to the reader by Ishmael to bear witness to the religious event. Ishmael continues: “Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.” With this sentence, Ishmael suggests that not only does the whale-penis coat signify the performance of a religious act, but also that it is a unique and necessary component of the act itself.

The third paragraph makes a religious implication even more obvious: “Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishoprick, what a lad for Pope were this mincer!” The penis has lived up to its promise of power by this point, having taken a normal whaling man and transformed him into (Ishmael would say so, anyway) a Papal candidate. In describing it thusly, Ishmael elevates what he admits in the first paragraph to be an oft-overlooked piece of a whale’s anatomy to a mystical, transformative icon. Melville’s aforementioned “point” might be, then, that the whale, even taken in piecemeal, is an extraordinarily powerful beast and symbol. Or maybe he’s talking about God. Or maybe Ishmael’s just sexually attracted to whales. Whatever Melville’s really trying to say, he makes a strong case for it by convincingly relating Pope and whale penis.

Superstition is a concept that is seen in abundance throughout the novel. The men aboard the Pequod seem to be incredibly superstitious, and always very quick to believe the negative in a situation – perhaps in an attempt to protect oneself. Considering that whaling is a very dangerous endeavour, to believe the worst rumours, if it makes one more inclined to be careful, could potentially save one’s life.  As Ishmael says in the chapter Moby Dick, “fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events.” (172)  That is to say that while some rumours may get wildly out of control, they are often based on some sort of truth to begin with.  Thus, if there is a reason to be afraid, it is better to believe the rumours and be careful, than it would be to ignore them and be careless in the face of certain danger. Again Ishmael articulates this by saying

“Not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them.” (Melville 172)

Because whalers are in direct contact with these dangers, superstition is an important form of defence.

I wonder, however, if this superstition and inclination to believe the worst, is in fact a kind of self fulfilling prophecy which causes these negative events to occur.  The first example of this is in the chapter Sunset where Ahab reveals to us that it had been foretold that he would be dismembered by a whale. This prophecy likely shaped the way his life has unfolded thus far, and led him to pursue Moby Dick as he has. This choice in lifestyle makes the prophecy much more likely and able to come true.  Had Ahab paid no attention to this prophecy, his obsession with killing Moby Dick would likely not be as great.

The power of the interpretation of events in a positive or negative light is seen again in the chapters Squid, and Stubb Kills a Whale.  After mistaking a squid for Moby Dick, the crew takes this as a bad omen, as Stubb says “The great live Squid, which, they say, few whale ships ever beheld, and returned to their posts to tell of it.” (Melville, 270) however, Queequeg sees the events in a different light, suggesting that the sight of a squid could in fact mean that a whale is nearby. As they continue their search, they do in fact find a whale, and manage to kill it. While it is possible that even without Queequeg’s positive outlook the crew would have found and killed their first whale regardless, I believe that the crew’s  inclination towards belief in the worst most likely only helps to cause the worst, and does nothing to seek a more positive outcome. while interpreting events in a more positive light, could help them to seek a more positive outcome.

In Chapter 126, “The Life-Buoy,” Starbuck and the rest of the gang are confronted with the idea of making Queequeg’s former coffin into a substitution life-buoy for the one previously lost from the Pequod. In Starbuck’s practical yet nervous fashion, he instructs the ship’s carpenter to carry out this oddly morbid task, giving him step-by-step instructions on how to do the job until the carpenter shoos him away. After Starbuck takes his leave, the carpenter goes on to complain about his new assignment:

Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he wont put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I don’t like this cobbling sort of business—I don’t like it at all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something regularly begins at the beginning and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end…

I realize this above passage is a lot to deal with at once, but the carpenter’s main complaint is that the work he is told to complete, i.e. turning his previously made coffin into a life-buoy, is an “undignified” sort of work, the kind meant for someone of a lower station than his. The carpenter seems to think this because he is not given a new job in constructing this life-buoy, but is rather “tinkering” with something already made, even though it was done so by him. Thus, what mostly disturbs the carpenter is the idea of a never-ending job. (I’ll return to this point shortly.) His grumblings about such work lowering his station serve as a mere distraction for the deeper bother that pervades the situation of turning a vehicle of death into a vehicle of life, a bother that Starbuck transfers onto him with his nervous fussing about how the carpenter is to complete this task. We can see by their dialogue that Starbuck clearly annoys the carpenter with this fussing, and this annoyance prompts the carpenter’s soliloquy more than the lowly stigma of the job does. The situation is akin to when your mother makes you do the dishes against your will, and you mumble about how the dish soap smells bad when you really find the scent quite appealing but cannot simply acquiesce to the disagreeable task.
However, the carpenter does seem particularly caught up in the idea of the “never-ending job,” to which I previously alluded. He makes something that goes unused, and now he must make it to serve an entirely opposite purpose. The idea of this would frustrate anyone, but one would think the carpenter an exception to this rule in a circumstance in which he has the power to, essentially, convert death into life. Yet the carpenter exhibits complete indifference to such concepts, nonchalantly stating that Queequeg, the ungrateful man, would not even “put his head into” the coffin the carpenter had crafted for him! Instead, the carpenter favors the importance of a set of opposites different from that of life and death; he focuses on the idea of new versus worked-over, and “mathematical” versus muddled. As for the former in regards to labor, the carpenter’s favoring of the new alludes to a preference for trade work over labor in the fields and other types of maintenance work. If you work in a craft, you renew your work every day, creating a new table, for instance, each time one is commissioned. If you toil in the fields or mend people’s dysfunctional items, performing labor akin to those of slaves and the lower classes, your work is never fresh- you are always toiling from the same, old cloth, so to speak. This exposes the way society, in Melville’s time, prompted people to view different types of work as more or less “dignified.”
On the topic of the carpenter favoring the “mathematical” over the muddled, this could relate to the idea of skilled versus unskilled labor. However, I think this has something to say about fate, destiny- people’s lives. Though the carpenter refers directly to his job of converting the coffin, he may also be saying that people go about changing their minds in regards to their destinies. Queequeg cannot just commission a coffin one day and suggest it be turned into a life-buoy the next! He has no respect for fate, in behaving so. The carpenter thinks things (humans, in particular) should have finite lives (of which they are not completely in control), consisting of clear beginnings and expiration dates. This, too, relates back to his preference for trade work over cyclical labor in the fields or the mending of broken goods. Fixing the broken or changing an object’s use is going against the idea of destiny. In turning the coffin into a life-buoy, the carpenter is wary of messing with fate.

Back-tracking by quite a bit, Chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” is significant because it is the first chapter in which Ahab addresses his men and in which the dynamic of the entirely male crew is revealed. Ishmael describes the intense pacing of Ahab around his cabin and the deck before he orders Starbuck to summon the crew. Once the mass of men is collected in one location, Ahab initiates a cycle of wild and boisterous chanting:
“‘What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?’
‘Sing out for him!’ was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.
‘Good!’ cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question has so magnetically thrown them” (142-43).
This chanting back and forth between the captain and his crew continues. This is Ahab’s way of “rallying the troops” before he even mentions the mission of vengeance that is at the heart of the voyage. Words like “impulsive,” “wild approval,” “hearty animation,” and “magnetically” jump out because they are so sensational and they give the reader the impression of a “mob mentality” existing aboard the wholly male Pequod. Ahab is gleeful at how much control he seems to have over his men from the very start as he calls out questions and then listens to the answers shouted back at him in unison. Even the shipmates are taken aback by their instinctual responses and yet they continue to respond naturally: “More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each others, as if marveling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions” (143). The reader is reminded of the control a general or lieutenant has over a group of men in a militaristic setting.

Next, Ahab begins to reveal the sinister side of his plot. He moves closer to his sailors, shows them a gold coin in one hand, and announces that the killer of a large white-headed whale shall receive this coin. The immediate response of the crew is a joyous “‘Huzza! Huzza!’” (143). Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg recognize their captain’s description of the white whale as they have all heard of Moby Dick. Starbuck makes the connection between Moby Dick and Ahab’s lost leg, to which Ahab admits. All of the men continue to chant and shout excitedly and supportively, as if completely unperturbed by the announcement of this secondary mission of the Pequod; however, Starbuck is rational and sharp enough to realize the dilemma, and so he challenges Ahab. While the others do not recognize that they have been cheated by Ahab – that they are now trapped on a ship hunting a very large and dangerous whale without knowing before boarding that this would be the captain’s main goal – Starbuck comments that “I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee…it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market” (145). Ahab tries to appeal to Starbuck’s sense of pride, and although Starbuck quiets his dissent, he quietly mutters to God to look out for his safety and the safety of the others.

After having already used vocal stimulation and fiscal incentive to rally his men on a personal vendetta, Ahab calls for them to congregate in a circle on the deck, and for his harpooners to carry their weapons. Ishmael describes the eyes of the riveted men as “wild” and compares them to “the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves” who “meet the eye of their leader” (146-47). Ahab whips out his next tool in exciting his male crew – the pewter brimming with alcohol. Ahab orders his men to “‘Drink and pass!’” the pewter around in the circle so that every man receives some of the delicious beverage (147). The pewter is refilled and the men continue to drink. They drink upon their captain’s command as he yells out to the seas and the skies that the Pequod will be hunting Moby Dick to his death. Finally, after “the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew,” Ahab waves his hand for them all to disperse and returns to his cabin to rest (148). It was thus the captain’s combination of excitedly vocal chanting, monetary reward, and communal drinking that activates the crew and puts them in this so-called frantic state. Melville is exploring the stereotypes of manhood, masculinity, and the bonds between men. Money and alcohol are stereotypical allures for men, and Ahab utilizes them cleverly. The only true resistance he receives comes from Starbuck, who realizes he has no way out of this mess and must rely on God to save his life. Therefore, “The Quarter-Deck” is an important chapter that establishes the dynamic of the crew, who answer wholeheartedly and excitedly to the mad Ahab without truly appreciating how they have been wronged.

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!

Melville makes direct reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the title of Chapter 31, “Queen Mab”. In Scene IV of Romeo and Juliet Mercutio talks of Queen Mab “the fairies’ midwife” who visits men in their sleep driving “an empty hazelnut” chariot “athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep”.  She makes the sleeper dream of that which the dreamer’s desires, e.g., the soldier dreams “of cutting foreign throats”.

In Chapter 31 Stubb recounts a peculiar dream he had the night before to Flask. Stubb describes,

“You know the old man’s ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it.” (113)

Strangely, Stubb, even as he continues to kick Ahab, believes that Ahab’s kick “may not have been much of an insult” (113), after all it was not as if Ahab had kicked him with a living limb; according to Stubb, “. . . there’s a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump” (113). Suddenly “a badger-haired merman” appears in the dream and physically threatens Stubb if he does not stop kicking Ahab’s leg. The merman explains to Stubb that he should consider it’s an honor to be kicked “by a great man with a beautiful ivory leg” just as it is an honor “to be slapped by a queen” (114).

How can Stubb’s dream be interpreted with consideration of the title? Queen Mab makes men dream of what they desire. So, what does Stubb desire or fully expressed, what do his dream latently tell us about his desires? Does he passively wish to be “kicked”, i.e, dominated, by Ahab? If so, does the merman’s logic of honor behind passivity reflect Stubb’s own justification for subsuming to Ahab’s tyranny?

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html

For today I want to explore one of the most curious and intriguing chapters in the novel, “A Squeeze of the Hand,” in which Melville describes the camaraderie of the Pequod’s crew as they extract and harvest spermaceti from a dead whale. The title itself – I presume very cleverly and purposefully chosen by Melville – carries an obvious erotic connotation. The chapter was a target of nineteenth century critics disapproving of the homoerotic overtones in Melville’s writing, just as the scenes in which Ishmael and Queequeg share a bed as if man and wife in the early portions of the novel were targets. Like many of Melville’s chapters in Moby Dick, “A Squeeze of the Hand” is simultaneously brief and complex, short and profound. It can almost stand alone: it does not push the main plot forward; it reveals truths about life; and it is beautifully and vividly written. At the same time, it is a useful chapter that fits into the overall structure of the book.

Firstly, the chapter functions partially to give the reader more information about the process of whaling, much like “The Line” does. It explains how the lumps in the spermaceti need to be squeezed and smoothed out by the hands of the men so that they are turned into a consistent fluid. The act has a fiscal bend to it: the sperm itself is a commercially coveted product, a “favorite cosmetic,” “sweetener,” “softener,” and “delicious mollifier” (372). A little wiki research tells me that the wax-like substance was used in cosmetics, lubricants, leatherworking, and the production of candles. Secondly, also separate from the homoeroticism apparent in its language, this chapter functions on a homosocial level. Melville portrays the comradery of shipmates working together to complete a task – one that, as a refreshing change from hours of arduous labor aboard the Pequod, is fun, messy, exciting, and pleasurable. It is a prime example of the bonding of men in a social working environment.

But the homoeroticism in “A Squeeze of the Hand” is undeniable, and thus the chapter goes beyond mere technical description of whaling and description of homosocial comradery. Melville’s very graphic and evocative language includes careful choices of words and phrases, i.e. “Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into It”; “I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules”; “abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling”; “at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally” (372). (In addition, as I was reading, the description of the unctuousness of the substance reminded me of the imagery produced by contemporary artist Matthew Barney in The Cremaster Cycle, a series of abstract art films in which fantastical characters squirm and crawl in tunnels of white, thick, messy, globbing fluid meant to resemble semen. I can only imagine what Barney would do with this scene if he were to make a film version of Moby Dick; funnily enough, he has made a film about a Norwegian whaling vessel.) Given Melville’s alarmingly and emphatically erotic language, one can understand why this chapter was such an outrage among nineteenth century readers and critics!

Melville’s inclusion of the word “unwittingly” in the phrase “unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands” is intriguing because it implies that Ishmael becomes so caught up in this moment of pleasure that he cannot control his desire to touch the other men and feel sentimental about being with them. The experience is exciting for Ishmael and made more exciting by the fact that he can share it with his crewmates. Perhaps as he wrote this, the supposedly homosexual Melville identified with his character in terms of having uncontrollable sexual attraction to men. (On this note, after reading Ishmael’s emphatically erotic and loving description of the squeezing of the sperm, I wish I could read the same event from the point of view of the other characters to see if the pleasure is experienced by them as much and as sensually as Ishmael. I feel uncertain that the others were having dreams about “long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti” – easily the most absurd, tongue-in-cheek illusion in the entire comical chapter. I believe comedy must have been another function of this chapter in Melville’s mind, just as the scenes of Ishmael and Queequeg are so ridiculous they inspire the reader the laugh out loud.)

I think, however, the most important function of the chapter is not to shock the reader with its homoerotic language but to reveal how lonely, difficult, and dreary the whaling life can be on the seas for months at a time. The men are away from civilization for long periods and have little contact with other people; additionally, they must be going crazy just from having to sleep in such uncomfortable cabins at night! Although we know that Ishmael chooses to go to sea for positive psychological purposes, as he explains in the first chapter that sailing is a superior option for him than suicide (or homicide), the overt pleasures and delights of the whaling lifestyle must be few and far between. Thus, an experience like this smoothing of the whale spermaceti stands out as being fun and different. It is a departure from the usual. It feels good and, at least in Ishmael, inspires happy illusions and visions.

Another intriguing aspect of the chapter is how Melville uses food metaphors to describe the satisfaction of the action: for instance, Ishmael says that the spermaceti are “gentle globules of infiltrated tissues…richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma…” (372) and that the whale’s blanket of blubber “is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season” (374). This might have been a technique by Melville to shock the reader: “How can such an act be so enjoyable and even mouth-watering?,” one might ask. The comparison of the whale’s body parts to food, ranging from grapes to venison to wine, is so vivid and delicious-seeming that the reader might fall into Melville’s trap and want to try tasting the blubber or sperm for himself or herself. This, in combination with Ishmael’s statement that he could spend his entire life squeezing the sperm with his male comrades, challenges the conventional, heteronormative reader. Not all happiness is experienced through heteronormative relationships between men and women in typical settings with typical gender dynamics.

To conclude, I believe Melville used this chapter to function as technically explanatory, comical, implicative of homosocial comradery, implicative of homoeroticism, and, perhaps most importantly, revealing of the difficulty of the whaling lifestyle. It certainly calls into question traditional masculinity and expected roles of men in a same-sex environment.