Moby Dick

Descartes decided that “I think, therefore I am.” Ishmael believes that in order to think, one must first be, and in order to think well, one must be well as well. By examining the tradition of fasting, Melville connects ideas that are spiritual (religion) with a basis in the physical world, suggesting that the mind has a physical place in the body and treating the idea of the “mind” in a scientific way.

After Queequeg has spent days and nights fasting, Ishmael tries to discourage him from partaking in an activity which he perceives to be “stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense”(83). (I thought it was intersting that Hygiene was capitalized here, as if Melville would like to emphasize the hygiene is just as important as the religions that get capitalized.) Melville writes that

fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts must necessarily be half starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, says I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans. (83)

Melville writing is suggestive, and he makes makes use of the idea of cause and effect, which is scientific in nature. If the body caves in, he writes, then the spirit caves in as well, implying that the body and spirit exist together, and that the state of one affects the state of the other. Melville recognizes that our existance has a physical, scientific basis in addition to a spiritual one.

 Melville’s tone funny and sarcastic here (“hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling.” ) He suggests that the mind and body are connected, that the spirit has a physical manifestation, and that our physical states also affect the mind. In this way, he adds science to religion; there would be no religion if we are not in a condition to believe in it, he suggests.

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

After the lecture last class, I found it interesting, looking back through the text, to notice how Melville includes bits of his own personal experience and outlook through the guise of Ishmael.  For instance, when Ishmael describes some impressions of Queepeg, he says,

“It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country.  I quaked to think of it.  A peddler of heads too – perhaps the heads of his own brothers.  He might take a fancy to mine – heaven!  look at that tomahawk! (21-22)”

This quote particularly strikes me because of the narrator’s absurdity, but importantly, I remembered learning how in 1841 during one of his voyages to the Pacific – possibly it was to the Marquesa islands – Melville himself feared being the victim of a cannibalistic attack.  It is rather interesting then to see how even though the author had suffered from this specific paranoia, he chooses an almost mocking tone in narrating Ishmael’s thoughts on the subject.   Perhaps by the time he was writing this book – about 10 years later – he had overcome this fear, or maybe it was through being humorous that he became more comfortable about it.

It was mentioned in class too that Melville’s first novel, Typee, written in 1845, was based on his trip to the Marquesa islands.  I find this interesting that he was able to create, or tell, so many stories from his few experiences at sea.  Surely they were of great returns.  This intrigues me as I sometimes think about how authors, whether they aim to write fictionally or autobiographically, are able  to reinvent through text their personal experiences.  I wonder what intentions Melville had of writing his experiences before he took his voyages.  He must have known he would be seeing and experiencing places and people that would be wholly new to him, but what’s fascinating to me is how his ruminations and observations are still being read and discussed today.

In the opening paragraph of the Moby Dick, Ishmael’s cherished relationship with the ocean is established. In the mysterious, and ominous introduction, our narrator invokes the sea as a healer of land-induced woes. When Ishmael feels grimness in his soul he retreats to the sea for solace and rejuvenation. The “watery part of the world” offers Ishmael a “substitute for pistol and ball” (Melville 1). The free-flowing movement of the sea seems to lull our narrator back into a more peaceful and quiet frame of mind.

His suicidal thoughts (or potentially murderous tendencies) are not attributed to anything specific, so it’s difficult to say if Ishmael believes the physical land to be at the root of his darkness, or whether he just finds the sea to be a retreat from his own personal demons (not in relation to the land itself). Regardless, his ocean solution is not commonplace, yet Ishmael speaks as if it is a very normal way to deal with depression. In fact, so normal that he feels “almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean…” (1).

Melville’s attempts to normalize the lifestyle of taking “to the ship” functions to alert readers to the important role the sea is going to play in the rest of the novel. In order for readers to access the tale they must adopt those feelings as well. Ishmael is looking to get out on the open water “as soon as [he] can,” but it’s not until the 22nd chapter that Melville finally takes us aboard the ship. This extended time spent on land offers readers a foundation for the inevitable ensuing contrast of life at sea.

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

The idea of whaling is one that is central to the plot of the novel, which is evident even in the book’s introductory chapters. What I found most interesting thus far, is the way in which the idea of whaling is depicted in the novel. Already on the first page we learn that whenever Ishmael feels “it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul” he goes to sea, and describes these actions as “my substitute for pistol and ball” (Melville 1). Later in the novel we see that whaling also serves the purpose of uniting men of different races.  At first when Captain Peleg meets Queequeg, after previously agreeing to allow him to sail with them, he says that “he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft.” (Melville 84).  However, after seeing Queequeg’s talent with a harpoon, the captains are quick to overlook his religious and racial background and accept him as part of their crew.  These circumstances seem to create an image of whaling as very powerful, and this idea is reiterated by the seeming reverence that is paid to the whale, the practice of whaling, and to those people who dare to practice it in the novel. An example of this would be in the introduction of Father Mapple, when Melville writes “No one having previously heard his story, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the upmost interest” (Melville 36) because of the “adventurous maritime life” (Melville 36) that he led.

While in these cases whaling, while still for the most part shrouded in mystery, seems to have positive benefits, the depiction of the activity throughout the novel is much less positive.  It is interesting that despite the great respect people seem to have for whaling and all that surrounds it, it is continuously depicted as very dark, and sometimes seems to be associated with death. In fact even the Pequod itself seems to be a symbol of death. It is not only named after a tribe of Indians that are no longer in existence, but it is also covered in whale bones, teeth and dark paint (Melville 66).  It makes sense that the imagery surrounding such a violent and dangerous pursuit would be dark, and perhaps it is this danger that inspires such awe towards those who dare to attempt such a feat.

From the beginning, Herman Melville makes it clear that his novel Moby Dick has a great deal to do with religion, and in many cases, Christianity in particular.   While he does dabble in including references to other religions, most of the references Melville makes, at least in this first portion of the novel, have to do directly with Christianity.  Perhaps this reflects Melville’s own Calvinist upbringing, while also portraying his willingness to question and explore “other-ness”.

The first sentence of the novel, in fact, states simply “Call me Ishmael” (Melville, 1).  This reference to a somewhat contentious character from the Bible is an interesting choice by Melville.  Melville shows that the Bible is so significant to him that the narrator of his epic work refers to himself as a Biblical character, yet it is interesting that this character is not straight forwardly a “good” or a “bad” person in the Bible.  Perhaps Melville is already adding dimension and character development by doing this, refusing to ever let the main character in his novel be simple.

Melville also references the Greek gods in Ishmael’s first tangential description of the power and draw of the sea, in which Ishmael questions, “Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove?” (3).  Ishmael is not only interested in his religion, but in the religions of the past, to the extant that his reference shows some knowledge of the Greek gods’ genealogy.  Perhaps this shows an added element of interest placed by Melville in other religions, and a willingness to take them seriously.

Ishmael later shows the sentiment that being Christian is not the end all and be all of being a good person when he says, “Better sleep with a sober Cannibal than a drunken Christian” (24).  This again shows Melville’s willingness to explore the validity of sentiments other than Christianity, to the extent that he will even consider people who are so uncivilized that they are referred to as cannibals as, in some situations, being better than Christians.

Melville makes it clear that religion is an important subject in this novel, and he does have quite a focus on Christianity and the importance of Christianity.  However, he also shows that he is willing to explore and take seriously the idea that Christianity is not the only valid religion, or that Christians are always the best people.

It is quite clear from the beginning of this novel that Melville views whaling and seafaring as a man’s world; in the description of the boarders,

“[t]hey were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers…” (p. 29);

this list is only a brief suggestion of all the roles upheld by men in this profession. It becomes important, then, in analyzing gender roles in this novel to first acknowledge the absence of a female presence and then look to the examples we are given to formulate some idea of what women stand for in this novel, and how they stand in contrast to the heavily masculine (though potentially “homosocial” or homoerotic as someone has already stated) lifestyle and personality depicted in this book.

In this first section, we see women in two basic ways: as upholding the stereotype of the female as predominantly a wife and housekeeper, and secondly as someone who reprimands or is overly stubborn and frantic in disposition. The first is evidenced primarily by the role of Mrs. Hussy, who is the first real female character we encounter; she runs an inn and readies the meals and keeps weapons out of the rooms in a motherly fashion but does little else of importance. In addition to this there appear small details such as the women who sit, mourning the loss of their seamen in the chapel, and the difference between Queequeg’s honorable relatives:

“His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors” (p. 53);

the women gain status only by the men they align themselves with.

The second aspect of the female I observed is also present in the character of Mrs. Hussy who is seen reprimanding both upon our first view of her and when Ishmael seeks her out to open his door. We see this particularly clearly during the panic that ensues when Ishmael becomes concerned about Queequeg behind the locked door and she is wholly concerned with the house and the door not being broken and in fact matches Ishmael’s emotional level in protecting it. The housemaid, as well, reveals a sense of women as irrational, overly emotional beings, who cannot keep their heads on during a state of panic in her reaction by screaming out “murder” and running about the house; this may contribute, though not directly stated, to the complete absence of women we see on the actual boats, which Ishmael makes quite clear is a demanding, honorable, and manly endeavor.

“…but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is his absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the invisible images of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.”

Herman Melville lived and wrote in the midst of the American transcendentalist movement. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau wrote and theorized about a pantheistic philosophy which mysticized the natural world. They believed that prolonged, isolated contemplation of nature could lead to an enlightened self-fulfillment. Transcendentalism permeates Moby Dick. Ishmael speaks constantly to the reverie of the sea, which overwhelms the senses and defeats the mast-head lookouts of the Pequod. As Thoreau sought out isolation in his cabin and the solace of nature to forget the cares of the world, so too does Ishmael remedy his misanthropic side with refuge in the profound isolation of the sea.

While nature can be a place of enlightenment, it also threatens those who would try to understand or to conquer it. Death threatens the mast-head philosophers if they gaze too deeply into nature’s secrets, as they can plunge to the deck below if they lose their grip in their reverie. Moby Dick himself, the most obvious personification of nature in the novel, destroys all those who would challenge him and his domain. The same majestic qualities of nature that invoke awe also strike terror into the whalers and reader alike. In this respect, it is difficult to separate Melville’s religious symbolism from his depictions of nature. One of the most powerful descriptions of nature comes from Father Mapple’s sermon on Jonah and the whale. God, the tempest, and the whale are all one and the same, predestined to act according to God’s plan. Ahab’s fatal flaw is, as in many a Greek tragedy, hubris. He makes the mistake of believing that he can strike back against the natural, divine forces which took away his leg. His arrogance leads to his inevitable, terrible downfall.

At one point in Chapter One, Ishmael describes the mystical power water has always possessed to captivate the spirits of all humans. While “the Persians hold the sea holy”, the Greeks “give it a separate deity” and every “robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him” dreams of shipping off to sea (19).

The most interesting defense he provides for the deep bond between man and water comes in the form of a reconstrual of the tale of Narcissus originating from Greek mythology (Wikipedia: Narcissus).  Ishmael states,

And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged headfirst into it and was drowned. But that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all (20).

Narcissus drowns because he is enthralled by his own beauty as reflected in the water. Although Narcissus’ tale exists in a number of forms, the moral lesson drawn from each of them is generally the same: do not put so much stock in yourself, i.e., do not be vain. Ishmael strays away from more common understanding of the story’s meaning and re-interprets the story as illustrating the problem of self-identity. The object whose image each of us must confront in the water, “the ungraspable phantom of life”, which follows us through every single moment of our lives and yet fails to be wholly (or even remotely) understood, is in fact ourselves (20). It is a sad but nevertheless beautiful thought. I cannot help but feel that this thought may come up again later on in the book.

(Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Norton, 2002.)

Ahab and Starbuck seem polar opposites. Starbuck, pragmatic, sensible, realistic; Ahab, supernatural, transcendent, crazed. While on their beliefs they clash, I would contend that they share the profound link of past experience shaping their lives. It is well known that Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick, and on his trip back home “then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and, so interfusing, made him mad” (Signet, 177). That, however, is just explanation and clarification for the reader; Melville opens a can of worms when Ishmael imbeds a secret of Starbuck’s past in a discussion of his character:

“And that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?” (109).

Ishmael, however, to my mind, does not stay on the topic long enough. Why is Starbuck a whaler? Wouldn’t a truly pragmatic person stay away from whaling? It is clear that Starbuck cannot be a coward, but Ishmael’s blindness to the concept that whaling may not be the greatest occupation precludes him from understanding the depth of the difficulty Starbuck must have had when he decided to whale. Could it be that Starbuck has undertaken whaling, and the pragmatic approach of killing whatever whale they can to avenge his brother and father, to get “even” with whales? Wouldn’t killing Moby Dick be the ultimate revenge?  

Perhaps he identifies with Ahab’s struggle beyond human compassion. In his soliloquy, he laments his situation:

“Oh! I plainly see my miserable office, – to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with a touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I had it” (162).

Some lurid woe that would shrivel him up, had he had it? His father and brother were killed by whales! Surely Starbuck knows the pain of losing what is truly important. That he concedes the extent of pain suffered to Ahab, then, besides giving insight into how truly broken Ahab is by his incident with Moby Dick, could indicate a sympathy to Ahab’s cause from Starbuck.

I’m not sold myself. I made a lot of logic jumps. But for how complicated Ahab is, it is fitting that his foil rivals his complexity. And the search to unmask their complexities may both begin with understanding their past.

Father Mapple is certainly  a compelling character, and a shining example of the depth and complexity Melville can convey in limited space.  A whaler in his youth and in his old age a preacher, for Ismael, Mapple seems to be occupying an existence somewhere between preacher, whaler, and prophet.  The image of Mapple’s chapel is a striking one: memorial plaques lamenting fallen sailors surround modest pews, but the pulpit, the bow of a whaling vessel complete with retractable rope ladder, is in stark contrast with the rest of the room.  A first look at the decor leads the reader to take Mapple as either a looney, or worse an attention hound–a conclusion that Ishmael himself makes, but seems determined to fight through.  Indeed, Ishmael spends a paragraph convincing himself (and in turn the reader) that Mapple has a legitimate reason for preaching from such an audacious pulpit.

Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage.  No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen.

Until Ishmael utters the above quote, the reader is unsure of the significance of either the chapel or the preacher.  Will this be another meaningless digression from the story?  Is the chapter going to focus on Queequeg and religion?  It is unclear until Ishmael brings the “unseen” into the fold.  From this point in the chapter on, the reader is waiting for the preacher to reveal whatever it is that is unseen; they are waiting for the sermon.  Mapple at once becomes much more that a man in the midst of “healthy old age,” more than a whaler, more than a preacher.  He becomes a messenger, a cog in the story essential to the reader’s understanding.  Once he finishes his sermon, he has become a prophet.

The beauty of Father Mapple is that he is such a fleeting physical presence–five pages of over five hundred–yet we learn so much about him with very little actually said about him.  We see his chapel, and draw some conclusions.  Those conclusions are in turn challenged and debunked with the help of some narratorial introspection.  Finally, we hear his sermon, and any remaining inkling of our previous doubts are cast deep into the depths as we see him elevated to prophetic status.  And then, as quickly as he came, he is gone, and we are left only with the lesson of his sermon: self indulgence and fear of god are mutually exclusive.