Moby Dick

While reading chapter 93, The Castaway, a striking resemblance was drawn between Pip’s enlightenment and the foundation of Buddhism. Although I concede that Melville was–quite obviously–Christian and the entire book is dripping with biblical allusions, I find this sequence of events to be Melville’s way of giving other religions a “cameo,” so to speak.

Before Pip goes overboard, he is nervous and emotional. In Buddhism, the goal of enlightenment is to achieve nirvana and escape from the endless cycle of suffering that plagues human existence. In the most basic Buddhist scriptures, a normal, seemingly happy person undergoes suffering. This person could be Pip: he has his troubles but never bothers to rid himself of them. The only possible escape is salvation or heaven, which can be achieved if he lives a moral, proper, Christian life. Buddhism rejects the existence of a superior being and salvation. The ultimate goal is enlightenment and understanding, and sins are accepted as normal human behavior.

The reason I think Pip goes through a Buddhist-like enlightenment is because he has an incredible and frightening encounter with nature at its purest: he is left in the middle of the ocean. The first buddha–with the intention of gaining enlightenment (this is the primary difference between the two stories)–sits under a bodhi tree and opens his mind to nature and nothing else; eventually gaining perfect understanding of the universe. The buddha “comes at last to celestial thought” (Melville 372), just as Pip does.

The ship mates call Pip mad when he tries to describe his experience because they are not used to such philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Buddhism–or any Eastern spirituality–had not yet been introduced to places outside its native India and surrounding countries, and Americans were very set in their religious ways. Melville acknowledges this by calling this foreign religious experience “absurd and frantic” (372).

Furthermore, Pip’s concrete belief in Christianity, God, heaven, etc. would make such an enlightenment very unsettling and damaging to his mind. Christianity leaves little room for the awareness and understanding present in Buddhism, because Christians are instructed to place all their hope and trust in God. For Pip, the disenchantment with the beliefs he’s carried for his entire life would make him, as the ship mates call him, “mad.” This would explain Melville’s remark “So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense,” (372) meaning that if not prepares, men can lose their sense of self if they undergo such a traumatic enlightenment. Pip’s experience was traumatic and unexpected. This is the key difference between Pip and the Buddha: the Buddha was seeking such an experience, and all the pain and suffering he went through in the process was self-inflicted. Pip’s path to enlightenment was abrupt and unwanted, therefore causing his “insanity.”

Pervasive throughout Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick are references to religion, particularly Catholicism.   As the concepts of Heaven and Hell are central to this religion, it only makes sense for references of them to be prolific in this novel.

An epitomizing example of Heaven-on-Earth occurs in the chapter “A Squeeze of the Hand”.  In it, the protagonist Ishmael describes the experience of tempering and preparing the spermaceti while aboard the whaling ship the Pequod:

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,–literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that expressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it…while bathing in that bath, I felt free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

It is impossible to say that this is an inaccurate description of what the bliss of Heaven must feel like.  Ishmael’s mind is at ease and wholly content.  His physical sensations are pleasant and easy.  Even the surrounding sea, which is so often described as tumultuous, is calm and serene.  Ishmael even goes so far as to say that he feels “divinely free” from any malevolent sentiment whatsoever.  Melville makes it clear that Ishmael’s experience is perhaps next to Godly it is so positive.

Contrastingly, Ishmael is undoubtedly describing a secular Hell when he describes the try-works of the ship, which are used to boil the oil out of whales’ blubber:

Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.  Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time.  It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funeral pyres.  It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

This passage is absolutely steeped in Hellish references.  The description of the fiery burning of the whale can be very easily equated to Hell-fire.  Not only is it fire, but even its smoke is absolutely unbearable to inhale, but when around it “inhale it you must”, as one in Hell is forcibly subjected to Hell’s miseries.  Furthermore, Melville makes clear the nearness of death in this passage, mentioning that the smoke smells like the smoke one would smell from a funeral pyre.  This is an unbearably graphic image, the smell of human bodies burning, and once again, an image very reminiscent of Hell.  Furthermore, Melville assigns a Hindoo-like quality to the smell, suggesting its sacreligious (to Catholicism, anyway) and thus Hell-like nature.  Finally, Melville makes a very direct reference to Catholicism, mentioning that the try-works have a smell similar to the smell one would encounter on Judgment Day, and undoubtedly such an unpleasant smell would not be issued for anyone traveling to Heaven.

This presentation of dualities by Melville, particularly in chapters so close to another (there is only one very short chapter between them), reminds the reader that Heaven and Hell are not so far apart.  Both are experienced by Ishmael on the Pequod within a very short time span in the novel.  Perhaps this is echoing Melville’s ideas of a Calvinist fate, and is his way of showing to his audience that Heaven and Hell are both possible for any of us, and not only that, but that our mortality is inevitable and the afterlife is not far away.

In Chapter 23, The Lee Shore, Melville uses the character of Bulkington to demonstrate the physical and spiritual immersion of whalers into life at sea:

… it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe.

The excerpt continues the tone established at the beginning of the novel, where Ishmael describes his own relationship to the sea. For Bulkington, the sea had also become a means of escape and source of strange familiarity, or at least strange to those outside the whaling world. Bulkington does not appear to be particularly unique in his reversal of the typical notion of home, as Ishmael, Ahab, and indeed all the men on board share both a connection to the sea and an aversion of the safety of port. While the object of the voyage is to survive the perilous months at sea, battling weather and whales, even the particular whaling climate of Nantucket or other towns that cater to the industry does not suit one such as Buckington. Instead, “the land seemed scorching to his feet,” resulting in the desire to immediately begin another voyage.

Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

Here Melville further extends the metaphor, linking the sea to the freedom of thought and action. Dying on the sea becomes a more glorious end than on land, for the vastness and openness of the sea allows for the independence of the soul. The land, while safe and represented by safety, comfort, hearthstone, etc., restricts an individual’s internal growth, especially one inclined to the sea. Melville continuously explores the relationship between the effects of the environment on the individual, and the idea of what is or is perceived as natural by society and the reader. He pushes this notion by elevating the personal impact that the isolation and natural brutality of the sea has on different sailors and seeing how it accumulates into a core element of the community that develops on board a whaling ship.

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

Indeed, Ahab does see himself as a David based character since he seeks revenge against the White Whale.  In the Bible, David sought revenge against Goliath, who “was over nine feet tall” (1 Samuel 17:1-58, New International Version).  In a similar fashion, Goliath is as monolithic compared to David, as the White Whale is to Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab sees himself as the David character facing a Goliath, or Moby Dick.  Interestingly enough, the Post-Classical Jewish traditions emphasized Goliath as the one who represents paganism, as opposed to David, who is seen as the champion of the God of Israel. Knowing that David defeated Goliath in his youth, and later became a King, exactly shows that as one falls, another rises.  Clearly, David seized Goliath’s power and became a very important and influential figure in society.  David, from the Bible, even appears to have almost the same character and personality as Captain Ahab does.  “This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.  Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves;  for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands” (1 Samuel 17:1-58).  David here is aggressive  and seeks to exact revenge.  Captain Ahab also has the same fire  and obsessive passion to exact revenge and achieve his goals, as does David.   The manner in which David prepares for war and battle against the Goliath, parallels with the way in which Captain Ahab intends to finally bring down and kill Moby Dick.  The irony of it all is that Captain Ahab does not become victorious as he does not manage to survive.  However, much of David’s personality and character resonates with Captain Ahab.

Throughout Moby Dick, Melville obsesses over the concept of sanity, and the delicate balance inside each of us that can be tipped fairly easily. In Moby Dick, power is most frequently what is hanging in balance. Too much power, exemplified by Ahab, causes insanity. We find Ahab consumed by his absolute rule over his boat. This is the reason why he doesn’t emerge from the boat until they are well out to sea, and the reason why he dislikes gams. Ahab is so entangled in the societal microcosm of the Pequod that he shies away from contact with outsiders for fear of disrupting the bubble in which he is the master.

On the other end of the spectrum is Pip, whose utter lack of control eventually drives him to insanity. Already a slave, Pip’s sanity is broken when Stubb leaves him behind after he jumps overboard for fear of a whale:

Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably…The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body, but drowned the infinite of his soul (401)

Here Melville explores Ahab’s counterpart. Pip’s control over his own existence was so completely lost, that he resigned himself to a passive form of insanity as opposed to Ahab’s active.

But what of narration? These accounts of insanity give the reader a clue into the mental state of the narrator himself, be he Ishmael of Melville. Ahab hunts Moby Dick, because Moby Dick is the only thing that Ahab does not feel he has control over. The narrator, much like Ahab, is obsessed with his own sanity and mental processes because it is the only thing a person is sure they are in control of. Pip’s fall from sanity fascinates and terrifies both Melville and Ishmael.

Man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. (402)

The narrator here explores the fine line that we all tread between sanity and insanity, admitting at this point that he himself is unsure of which side he falls.

It will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself (402)

What does this reveal about the novel in its entirety? If the narrator himself is insane, then how can one rely on his judgments of other characters? Perhaps these are questions that Melville wanted the reader to ask in order to make the reader question their own sanity, and perhaps realize that sanity is fragile and relative.

In Chapter 123, “The Musket,”  Starbuck struggles with himself over shooting Ahab.  If he did, he would have the chance to return home safely, protecting the rest of the crew from a suicidal mission.  But he would be committing murder.  He asks, “Is heaven a murderer when its lighting strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together?”  (Melville, 456)  Can God murder?  Can God still be holy if God does kill someone, even if that person is a potential murderer?  And can a sin be nullified if it is for the protection of someone else?  Whose life is more sacred?  I have no answers to these questions, and I cannot dream of passing judgement on Starbuck.  Maybe Melville includes this chapter so that the readers will reflect on themselves and determine what is most valuable in their lives.

This idea of self-reflection is elaborated upon when Melville says that “Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel.”  (456)  This description alludes to the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Genesis 32:22-31.  The angel appears to Jacob after he has already spent several days preparing to meet with his brother Esau, whom he is afraid will attack.  (Biblegateway)  I see the confrontation with the angel as a physical representation of Jacob wrestling with his fears and his relationship to his brother.  And although Jacob does not win the fight, he receives a blessing.

Genesis 32:30 says that “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.'” (Biblegateway)  Since Starbuck’s opponent is another part of himself, isn’t part of him God?   This relates back to the idea that we discussed about Narcissus and never knowing oneself.  God, after all, is unknowable.  Maybe Melville says that God is the part of a person that he or she can never understand.  During Starbuck’s internal struggle, he sees his true self and what he is capable of — “he [sees] God face to face.”  He survives this encounter, making him stronger.  Just like Jacob, Starbuck has “struggled with God and with men and [has] overcome.” (Genesis 32:28, Biblegateway)  Jacob had to realize what he was capable of and how special he was before he could face his brother; Starbuck has to realize how strong he is by confronting both Ahab and his own desires before he can confront his future.  If Starbuck fought God, then by not killing Ahab, he, like Jacob, lost that first battle.  But maybe he will be rewarded with a happy future, just as Jacob received a blessing?  Or that’s just wishful thinking on my part.  If nothing else, he now knows who he is.

“Genesis 32” Biblegateway. New International Version, Web. 14 Feb 2010. <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%2032&version=NIV>

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

Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind.  A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.  No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed – “Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!”

The Pequod’s encounter with the giant squid is an ambiguous event, fraught with amazement and fear.  Ishmael feels a sense of wonder to behold the strange creature, which seems to be without any sort of analogy with which to understand it in relation to other life-forms.  Although the whalers are as knowledgeable as any other humans of the time about the denizens of the sea, there are still a huge number of creatures which they do not understand or have never even seen.  To superstitious sailors like Starbuck, the appearance of such an unearthly creature is a portent of bad luck.  To the modern reader, his dismay seems slightly ridiculous; what possible connection could a wandering squid have to the success or failure of the voyage?  His attitude, however, belies the difference between the understandings of nature that dominated in the early 19th century and today.

For many modern-day Americans, understanding of nature is largely shaped by the high-school biology textbook.  Cell theory, evolution, and a well-ordered taxonomy construct a nature that is orderly, scientific, and predictable.  All creatures (viruses controversially excepted) share the basic building block of the cell, and are therefore reducible to a common denominator.  Evolution holds that nature developed as a highly rational response to given conditions, and as these conditions change nature adapts to them.  The system of taxonomy, although constantly adjusting to new discoveries, provides a broad general framework which incorporates all life-forms into comforting categories.  There is little mystery or superstition in our modern conception of nature, but only a well-ordered understanding that subordinates the living world to our brainpower and categorizing skill.

Starbuck’s reaction to the squid comes from a much different place.  As a whaler, Starbuck knows quite a bit about the ocean and its inhabitants.  He has spent a large portion of his life at sea, and his trade brings him into intimate contact with many sea creatures.  Despite his experience, a different cultural world-view of nature colors his vision.  A modern sailor might see creatures that he or she had never heard of, but such a sailor could rest assured in the knowledge that rational science is close at hand to categorize and explain away all mystery.  While the scientific world-view is knocking on the door, and Melville spends much of the book writing about it, the cultural hegemony of rationality remains a province of the future.  As such, Starbuck is left to his own devices and the devices of religion to interpret the appearance of the ghostly squid.  Rather than resorting to unfamiliar science to explain the occurrence, Starbuck sees the apparition as an omen of bad news, which in the context of the book is not an inaccurate assessment.

Interestingly, Queequeg is not alarmed by the squid.  He knows that sperm whales eat squid, and therefore can relate the strange creature to something more concrete and knowable.  This process of rationalization, undertaken by one of the “savages,” would develop into a world-view which came to dominate our understanding of the natural world.

When Pip leaps overboard in Chapter 93, Stubb tells him he must never do such a thing again, or else he’ll be left behind. Of course, Pip, being young and inexperienced fails to take Stubb’s advice to heart, and ends up reacting similarly in a situation quite reminiscent of the first. While it’s unclear whether Stubb was being wholly serious in his threats to truly leave Pip behind, he does do just that (probably thinking another of the boats would pick him up), which results in Pip becoming “another lonely castaway” at sea for a considerable amount of time. The Pequod eventually picked him up, but the cheerful Pip was forever changed from that day on. The crew described him from then on as going “about the deck an idiot” (Melville 401). But Ishmael understood Pip’s drastic change rather differently.

“Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad” (402).

According to Ishmael, Pip came to a greater understanding of the world, something deeper, so mind-altering, that he could no longer communicate through simple exchange, which then made him seem deranged to others on the ship. The vulnerability Pip felt as he bobbed alone in the vast sea opened his mind to God-like truths. And those truths are so foreign to us that we liken someone such as Pip to be crazy, when really what we’re interpreting as “man’s insanity is heaven’s sense” (402). While we can’t know this as fact, Ishmael’s more thoughtful (and possibly optimistic) take on Pip’s condition most prominently points to his continued reverence of the sea and its capabilities.

The sea didn’t physically swallow Pip, but his soul seemed to have been. It drowned it, but not fatalistically—the sea “carried [Pip’s soul] down alive to wondrous depths” where he was granted access to all the “joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities” (402). It’s interesting that Ishmael finds the sea so rich and vast, holding many truths, yet he also considers it heartless, as if man must give up his emotions to understand the depths of the world. The omnipresent ocean can reveal to man the absurdity of his life, but only when he lets go of his emotional ties, or in Pip’s case, when he is forced to let go and engage in “the intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity” (401).

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Person-labeling is dangerous. Its seduction, however, in making easy categorizations of people so we can wrap our heads around them, make them easier to remember, has made it a fixture in human social life. How many times have you been asked, or asked, after brief introduction to a fellow Vassar student, the noxious, oppressive “what’s your major?” or “where do you live?” Certainly I have done so, if only as a feeble attempt to advance conversation rather than any genuine interest in, say, where someone lives. But then again, who should care? Perhaps I should grant you more benefit of the doubt, but I nonetheless maintain that it is largely a substanceless question, at least partially designed to fit that given person into your mental person-labeling chart. Worse is the “major” question. It allows you to “know” something about that person: “Oh, she’s a philosophy major. She likes big questions and, unless she goes to law school, may flounder in the professional circuit, having to deal with real, practical questions with which her knowledge of abstract concepts cannot help her.”  However right or wrong those immediate conclusions are is beside the point, and I hope you get mine.

So when Professor Friedman commented that Melville takes on his society’s propensity for qualitative categorization based on physical attributes (see any of Ishmael’s initial descriptions of anyone), I was eager to find a really good example in which a given character does not conform to his stereotype. My favorite one thus far  is from the beginning of Chapter 108, “Queequeg in His Coffin,” when Ishmael describes Queequeg as very sick:

“But as all else in him thinned, and his cheekbones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of luster; and mildly but deeply looked at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die.” (Signet, 460)

Queequeg might be labeled as a pagan, a tattooed freak, an incoherent, babbling brute, and a cannibal, all reinforcing his stereotype as a savage, but his penetrating, warm, affirming eyes transcend simple categorization, declaring his individuality. He is not merely a savage; he is Queequeg!

From chapters 109 to 127, science is losing the battle against Ahab, faith, and insanity. In chapter 118, the quadrant, a navigational device, fails. With time, Ahab begins to gain confidence, lose perspective, and turn to his own intuition over time-tested methods of navigation based on reason and science. Some of the crew, such as Starbuck, notice this transformation but do little to materially stop its progression.

“Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man’s eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun!… Curse thee, thou quadrant!… No longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye… thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!” (444)

But even the log and the line fail to guide Ahab, as we see after the compass fails in chapter 124. In chapter 125, Ahab says, “I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles [of the compass], and now the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all.” (461)

The systematic failure of the three navigational instruments shows how Ahab and his focused insanity begins filling the gaps when science or reason even begin to falter. In this instance, Melville seems to be showing how it is easy to let emotion, faith, or ego take the place of science when convenient. The general sense of foreboding (much of which is communicated by Starbuck) makes me think Melville is trying to say that despite the temptation, science should be respected and used as the primary tool for navigation. This could be seen as a metaphor for navigation in life for anyone – that people should embrace reason when making important decisions over faith, emotion, and other alternatives. Given Melville’s Calvinist upbringing, he probably did not fully subscribe to the above philosophy but most would agree that Ahab has taken his power seizure too far and that a healthy, brave step backwards and appeal to reason would do the Pequod’s crew and Ahab a world of good.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008