Moby Dick

Chapter 82, entitled The Honor and Glory of Whaling, is chock-full of both cultural and literary allusions. In this chapter, Melville recounts the stories of biblical and mythological figures who have killed or triumphed over whales. The chapter begins as Ishmael remarks,

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity. (Melville 395)

This passage and the chapter in general serve a dual purpose. It gives Melville another chance to display his knowledge of history, mythology, and scriptures, but it primarily functions as way for Melville to demonstrate to his readers that whales have been depicted as dangerous beasts throughout history, and sailors who willingly hunt these Leviathans are elevated into a heroic and almost god-like “fraternity.”

Melville’s first literary allusion describes the story of Perseus, who Melville defines as the “first whaleman.” Perseus was a hero from Greek mythology who saved the princess Andromeda from a “Leviathan” or whale. Melville writes,

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men’s lampfeeders. (395)

This passage is a curious juxtaposition to the last one; in the first, Melville honors whalers by putting them in the same class as “demi-gods” and “heroes.” But, in this passage he implies that killing whales “to fill men’s lampfeeders” is a “sordid intent.” I get the feeling that Melville is conflicted by whaling; while he is incredibly impressed with the courageousness it takes to attack a giant and powerful animal, he also feels that hunting whales for the sole purpose of oil is not so honorable and heroic.

Despite this not so subtle political commentary, Melville goes on and adds St. George (religious saint), Hercules (demi-god), Jonah (prophet), and Vishnoo (Hindu god) to the “emblazoned fraternity.” Although Melville was a politically-minded individual, it seems his principal goal in this chapter is to establish whalers as a brave and fearless group, despite the immoral aspects of their job.

I could not help but find a particular statement in Ishmael’s commentary of labor very controversial and slightly disturbing. In chapter 45, The Affidavit, Ishmael says “For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it” (Melville 184). This line reminded me of the blood diamond conflict in Africa. There are also many connections in Ishmael’s earlier remark “Who ain’t a slave?”

In class we spoke a lot about Melville’s commentary on labor and the melancholy. Melancholy was defined as extreme sadness, and even a psychological condition, as Freud says. However, the setting of the melancholy remained on the whaling ship, and nowhere else. In fact, nearly the entire book takes place exclusively on the whaling ship. Ishmael’s remark about spilt blood draws the readers attention to the effect of whaling voyages; the afterwards. In this way I believe Melville is appealing to the audience that has never seen the horrors of whaling. He points out that, although there are hardships in every form of labor, the hardships are directly transported (in this case in the form of lamps and candles) to the kitchen tables of his readers.

This notion is very reminiscent of the blood diamond conflict because the blood of many men is spilt over a luxury item. In Angola, Zimbabwe, Côte D’Ivoir, Liberia, and the Republic of Congo, diamonds became an item of extreme importance, similar to the Gold Rush in America, and in this case, whale oil. Both are very important resources that Americans are willing to buy for high prices. Our dependence on oil can be compared with our dependence on luxury and beauty. In these African nations, diamonds were hoarded and used for many purposes, including funding government wars. All nations with sufficient diamond mines fell to turmoil and civil war, making the diamonds more stained with human blood than the whale oil.

The United States got word of the atrocities in the diamond mining business and cut off business with Sierra Leone and other guilty countries. The amount of blood spilt over such a superficial item boggles my mind. Although whale oil does not hold the same materialistic qualities, Ishmael is pointing out the same conflict. Diamonds that cost many human lives were transported directly to the fingers, necks, and ear lobes of millions of ignorant men and women, just like whale oil was made into lamps and candles for people who had no idea how much suffering was involved.

In regards to Ishmael’s earlier comment “Who ain’t a slave?” I believe there are exceptions. The consumers are not always slaves. The buyers of whale oil and diamonds who never lift a finger are not slaves. In class we discussed the possibility of Melville being a social commentator. I did not invest in this claim until reading this line, for it is so directly confronting the audience about their ignorance. I do not think Melville is indignant about the situation, but I do think he aimed to make people aware of what hardships are involved in every type of labor, and that, as consumers of almost every good, we should be more grateful of what is put on our table.

In chapter 22 (“Merry Christmas”), the ship is finally setting out:

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows (92).

I think it is interesting how Melville/Ishmael uses weather and nature in this section. It is so cold outside that the water sprays the crew and coats them like they were wearing “polished armor” (92). Though one would think that the terribly cold elements would be a detriment, they are described in different terms. Instead, the freezing spray is almost providing a type of protection and is symbolically arming the crew for battle with the whales. The rest of the ship gets similar treatment, but it is described like a giant ferocious animal. When I first read this section, I immediately recalled tales of battle and the preparation and arming scenes that inevitably go along with them. Although I would imagine that the physical conditions (and the weather) would be horrible during winter in the Atlantic Ocean, Melville/Ishmael seems to want the reader to visualize the crew (and ship) as more than ready for the task ahead.

This point seems reinforced a couple paragraphs later:

Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer (92).

In this case, Ishmael acknowledges that the weather is indeed miserable, but yet his spirits remain high. He is clearly optimistic and looking forward to this journey–Ishmael sees “many a pleasant haven in store” on this trip (92). The language used to describe spring seems to imply something of a birth (or rebirth) for Ishmael, and this whaling expedition appears to be the impetus for that rebirth. It is fascinating to see how Melville, by using only a little language about nature, is able to imply so much about the mental readiness of the crew and Ishmael’s excitement to go to sea.

Melville evokes a complicated rendering of the popularly sentimentalized  “Noble Savage” in the Pequod’ three harpooners, Daggoo, Tashtego, and Queequeg. The trope of the Noble Savage goes waaay back, there are examples of it to be found in both Homer and Ovid. The term is an expression of the concept of primal man in the state of nature, uncorrupted and not weighed down by the burdens of civilization. That humans are potentially good, and civilization has distorted us. This idea picked up steam in the Romantic Period, with Rousseau, travel narratives, and Primitivism, and there are countless instances of its use in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It didn’t really take on negative connotations until Charles Dickens published a satirical essay attacking it as a romanticized cliché, entitled “The Noble Savage” – published in 1851, the same year that Moby Dick was published.

Melville uses the type distinctively in several respects. Most notably, the characters that invoke the Noble Savage are not serene tribal figures in their native lands, teaching a civilized newcomer their ways. Instead they have been subsumed into the western world, and have claimed positions of considerable power on the microcosm of the Pequod. Melville does not oversimplify the Noble Savage as purely good, tame and pleasing, the threat of past cannibalism hangs over their stories. Neither does he picture them as solely uncorrupted in the context of their uncivilized home, they operate within a western system and show themselves on multiple occasions to be more good and kind than white men. They may be used as token savages, but they are not just token savages. The harpooners form a complex picture of race that in ways attempts to subvert accepted notions of superiority. Melville uses a standard trope as a sort of “in” to contemporary consciousness and changes its players, context, and effects. He uses the term in chapter 34:

But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty, It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds” (134) (italics my own)

Here Melville seems to satirize the idea and use of “noble savage” itself, over sentimentalizing Daggoo’s communion with nature while marginalizing his appearance. The image of a huge African man taking tiny dainty bights is meant to humorously parallel the inherent contradiction of the term Noble Savage, when translated as a civil uncivilized person. Moby Dick presents a fascinating example of the Noble Savage, both mocking and reinforcing.

In “The Jeroboam’s Story”, the Pequod encounters the ship the Jeroboam, aboard which is a sailor claiming himself to be the archangel prophet Gabriel.  In the past, Gabriel declared that Moby Dick was “no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated” (306).  After Gabriel warns that the ship should not hunt Moby-Dick, the crew spots Moby-Dick and one of the ship’s mates, Macey, attempts to harpoon him, at which point Macey, and only Macey, is tossed into the sea “for ever sank” (307).

This mere claim of Gabriel, that Moby-Dick is the Shaker God, supports the theory that Moby-Dick is an instantiation of God.  Not only does Gabriel predict that misfortune will fall on anyone who attempts to kill Moby-Dick/God, this misfortune is actualized, lending credence to Gabriel’s claim.  Furthermore, in the Bible, Gabriel was a prophet who predicted the birth of two prominent figures, John the Baptist and Jesus.  Thus, Gabriel’s prophetic name further upholds the validity his conviction that Moby-Dick is God – if the Gabriel in the Bible was able to predict the birth of such a Biblically important figure as Jesus, then shouldn’t Gabriel of the Jeroboam be able to predict whether or not Moby-Dick is God?

In response to the account of Macey’s death, Ishmael points out that accidents of the kind that befell Macey are “almost as frequent as any” (307).  This causes reader doubt whether or not Moby-Dick should be thought of as God.  Perhaps this sort of accident is typical of whaling, of all whales, and nothing to note as particularly significant.  However, immediately after providing this doubt-inspiring comment, Ishmael then contradicts it, saying that in these types of accidents,

Strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the man being stark dead (307).

This suggestion of mystery involved in these accidents once again brings in the concept of divine intervention.  Perhaps the divinity of all whales, or the divinity of the sea, is what causes these men to be retrieved from the sea seemingly unharmed (except for, of course, the fact that they’re dead).  One would think that upon being hurtled into such a tumultuous environment as the struggle between a whale and a whaling ship, a man would be marred.  The fact that many of these men are not once again supports the idea that divinity is at work.

The contending points brought out in this chapter show that Melville/Ishmael are wrestling with the idea of the divinity of Moby-Dick.  It seems as though neither is willing to commit to the idea that Moby-Dick either represents, or does not represent, God.  Or perhaps the contradictory flavor of this chapter does not dictate that Melville/Ishmael are unsure of their sentiment on this subject, but rather that they are simply unwilling to show this sentiment to the reader.

In Chapter 90, “Heads or Tails,” the issue of labor and just rewards comes up in a conversation between “a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman” and some mariners who have successfully hunted down a whale. The mariners, naturally, believe the whale to be theirs, as they did all the work in catching and killing it. However, the aforementioned “charitable gentleman” claims that the whale belongs to the Lord Warden, or the Duke, as the whale was caught in his territory. In the conversation that ensues, to every question that the mariners ask about such an apparently unjust seizure, the charitable gentleman replies simply, “It is his” (“his” referring to the Lord Warden). The mariners cannot possibly argue with this repeated response. There is no room for logical discussion where such talk is employed.
The charitable gentleman’s “logic” does, however, line up with the kind used to justify slavery. Why must a man toil in the fields all day and reap not the benefits of his labors? Because he belongs to another man. Why must this man, if he escapes his unrewarded toil, be brought back to his owner under the penalty of the law? Because he is his. To most Americans at the time of Melville’s composing of Moby Dick, this so-called logic did not seem so ridiculous and unfair. Melville exposes the absurdity of slavery through the mariners who work so hard to secure a whale and have to give it up to someone much better off right after, as if they had simply plucked the fish out of the water on a whim. After reaching Chapter 90 in Moby Dick, readers are well acquainted with just how difficult it is to trap a whale. Melville has prepared them to receive this story with indignation and disgust.
Melville’s choice of “bad guy” in this anecdote appears counterintuitive. Why would a “very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman” behave so ignorantly, un-Christianly, and uncharitably? Clearly Melville employs some sarcasm, here, as he does often throughout the novel, but at the same time he could have easily believed such a gentleman to behave so poorly. Like I said, most Americans did not question slavery in the time of Moby Dick. In his portrait of the “bad guy,” Melville illustrates that even the most sensible, well-intentioned people are susceptible to cruel institutions. It does not take an obvious villain to enact a crime. Melville also reveals his skepticism of religion, here, showing that “Christian” can be an empty label, as most slave owners of his time were, indeed, “good Christians.”
This passage in the novel further exposes Melville’s idea of bad government/laws in that the mariners do not even know who the Lord Warden is, at first. This guy has the power to take their whale, yet he remains a stranger to them. This removal, like the charitable gentleman’s repeated insistence that the whale is the Lord Warden’s, does not allow for political debate. Melville has got a recurring them going in which problems arise from the lack of communication and cooperation between the “people” and the “government,” which I think I mentioned in my last post. As the Bible tells us and Melville repeats, all Kings do bad things.

Ishmael spends an entire chapter discussing “The Whiteness of the Whale,” which can be analyzed to cast light upon Melville’s thoughts on the white “race”. Ishmael contrasts the purity and beauty of whiteness in man-made settings with its terrible place in nature—on God’s most ferocious animals. These animals—the polar bear, great white shark, and Moby Dick—embody all that is terrible and terrifying about whiteness. These great animals, like the Albino, are too white; they have surpassed purity and beauty of whiteness and have come to represent the terrible power that pure whiteness holds.
Melville (and Ishmael) make the connection between the supremacy of whiteness and its position “giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe” (Melville 181). As discussed in my previous blog post, the white race is built up by subjugating others, including everything from “savages” to slaves. The ultimate power of the white race is compromised in its purity by the things it has to do to to get that power—torture and subjugate those beneath it. The contradictions in whiteness are evident in Ishmael’s association of personal freedom with his own “melancholy.” Ishmael characterizes whiteness as inherently unstable ever-changing, which both gives whiteness its power and makes it terrifying.
Ishmael alleviates this “white guilt” by giving up his freedom and joining the crew as a lowly deckhand, claiming that in so doing, he’s somehow similar to a slave (Melville 4). Not only does this give Ishmael the false idea that he could ever somehow approximate or understand the experience of a slave, but it belittles the experience of slavery for Melville’s white audience—if Ishmael, a free man, is willing to enter into a state of virtual slavery, then the real thing must not be that bad. Melville’s chapter on the whiteness of the whale serves to placate his audience’s white guilt and reassure them as to the rightness of whiteness.

Here’s the resource I mentioned in class that lets you look at a bunch of different translations of the Bible:

http://bible.cc/

enjoy!

This being my third or so reading of Moby Dick, I was tickled to find that I had not before noted the hilarity found in the relationship between the personalities of Stubb and Flask, and their names.

He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster.  Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair.  What he thought of death itself, there is no telling.  Whether he ever thought of it at all might be a question…

I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition…

Stubb is clearly a man who lives for the moment, all the while puffing on a stogie.  His actions and attitude are relaxed, calm, uncaring, and often happily oblivious.  Stubb is also is a bit of a jokster, occasionally picking on Flask.  That Melville cast Stubb as a man of the herb is doubtful, but he is certainly characterized as such.

…in his poor opinion, the wonderous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least a water-rat, requiring requiring only a little circumvention, and some small application of time to kill and boil.  This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the mater of whales…

Flask’s primary characteristics are an oppositional attitude, a seemingly foundationless hatred of whales, and rather short temper.  One can also assume he has a bit of a drinking problem.  While marijuana use was not really a salient (or at least public) issue in Melville’s time, alcohol certainly was.  Flask’s personality traits fit with those of a drunk.

Stubb and Flask are often described as representatives of opposing philosophies, and to be sure they are.  However, I see them also as men of two different vices–and examples of the pitfalls of each.  As a pothead, Stubb is happy, carefree, but consequently oblivious to the dangers of whaling; as an alcoholic, Flask is angry, impulsive, and, like Stubb, unaware of the dangers he faces.  The difference is that Stubb has either forgotten the dangers, is too high to care, or has smoked himself into a philosophy of fatalism (the generally accepted philosophy of Stubb), while Flask is blinded by his anger/hatred, or is so mad at the whales he’d die trying to kill one.  Stubb can’t see through the smoke, and Flask’s vision is blurred by the booze.

Might be a stretch, but I had fun writing about it!

Shortly after Ahab’s first appearance to the crew, in which he gives his speech and reveals the true nature of their quest, Starbuck makes an interesting comment regarding his fellow shipmates:

“Oh God! To sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers in them!  Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea.  The white whale is their demigorgon!” (150)

Of course, the lack of a feminine presence on the ship is a topic which has already been noted several times.  I found it interesting, however, that here Starbuck makes a direct reference to the lack of a mother’s influence on his crewmates, suggesting that they have been somehow tainted by their voyage and made something other than human.  Perhaps it is not surprising that this character, who has been established as a religious and conservative family man, is so opposed to the violent spirit of masculinity that seems to have overrun the ship following Ahab’s speech.  Nevertheless, it is significant that he states his opinion directly to us and continues to condemn his colleagues so thoroughly.

Ahab, in the depths of his genius and his insanity, is not overly subtle in his attempt to manipulate the crew into following him without question.   He uses the speech not only to imbibe a sense of adventure and thrill of the hunt , but also to strengthen the homosocial bonds between the crew, constantly addressing them as “men” or “boys.”   In the chapter immediately preceding Starbuck’s comment Ahab says to himself (or perhaps the reader), “Twas not so hard a task.  I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve” (149).  Even the weary Starbuck will not yet do anything other than quietly mourn for what he believes will prove to be a disastrous turn of events.  If the Pequod is to be interpreted as a nation, it is a nation where the “feminine” values of peace and rational thinking have been thrown to the sea in favor of a group mentality entirely focused on chasing and killing Moby Dick.

Perhaps, to some degree, Melville shares Starbuck’s fear of this dictator who is capable of inspiring fear, awe, and ultimately loyalty in his subjects on the way to a kind of totalitarianism.  In this respect it is not difficult to imagine why some in the 1930s looked back at Moby Dick and thought Melville anticipated this kind of militaristic regime.  One might say that rather than race or religion, the spirit of hypermasculinity has become a critical rallying point for these sailors who completely buy into Ahab’s own agenda.