Moby Dick

After viewing the  film The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin for a religion class, I started wondering about the role of organized religion in Melville’s novel, Moby Dick.  My result: the realization that Captain Ahab, as captain of the vessel called the Pequod, is the shepherd of his crew.  Ahab is the priest and father of a nautical parish, a lonely church set on the sea.

Why make this analogy, you ask?  It is simple.  Melville was a religions man, raised in a family of devout Calvinists, in a time when possession and demonic powers were still feared to some extent, no matter how small.   It was key to Calvinists that one not fall from the path of righteousness, and this path was beset on all sides by Satan and his minions. Yet Ahab, as the priest and leader of his men is a failure.  He has fallen from the path.  He is the perfect example of a spiritual leader who has failed and follows a path of darkness.

The first step in Ahab’s fall was his worship of a false idol.  Ahab turns away from God and begins to worship the White Whale.  And in this context, where the sea is the cruel unforgiving, dark region of the earth, they are passing through hell to find his “god.”  He leads goes astray, taking his flock, and this being the case, he dooms them all to hell and a watery grave.  They meet a cruel fate for turning away from goodness.  Even at the beginning of the novel, the right path is shown: in the church, in the sermon of the preacher, Jonah’s tale is described, and this should warn them that hell is found in the watery deep.

Throughout the book this is a fascinating thread to follow.  Ahab repeatedly defies the Christian God and, as the leader of his crew, he takes them with him.  He is truly a failed shepherd that has led his flock into the mouth of the beast.

As much as I am intrigued by the countless complexities presented in Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener, I decided to focus specifically on the last paragraph in which the reader, and the lawyer, gains the tiniest bit of perspective on Bartleby’s life prior to his simple existence as an obstinate Scrivener. Just as the narrator wonders, I too wonder whether such a miserable job–burning letters that have been sent to people who have since died or vanished–was the cause of Bartleby’s gradual demise and ultimate descent into possible insanity. Upon the narrator’s discovery of Bartleby’s prior employment, he exclaims,

“Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can nay business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters…”(Melville 29).

The narrator’s assumptions seem perfectly logical to me, however I wonder if he is simply using this small tidbit of knowledge about Bartleby to excuse what really happened to Bartleby, and moreover the narrator’s personal failure in helping Bartleby escape his misery. I am just questioning this idea, because throughout the story the narrator is constantly questioning himself and weighing his obligation to help Bartleby vs. the annoyance of his presence in his office. I’m not sure if this critique holds much ground, but it was just one of my initial reactions to the narrator’s response to Bartleby’s past.

In further examining Bartleby as a dead letter sorter and what dead letters may symbolize I think it is important to note the final line of the story. “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” (Melville 29). In closing the story with this boldly symbolic statement, Melville is obviously trying to emphasize to the reader that Bartleby and his fate are a symbol for the plight of human existence and perhaps the consequences of societal pressures and constraints. And what is Melville trying to say the ultimate consequence and outcome of becoming trapped within the constructs of society…? Well, death of course. I think there is a lot to be said about the message Melville is offering concerning the daily struggles of a man stuck in the repetitious work of middle class America who is constantly subject to the will of others, but that is a whole other discussion. I think that Bartleby’s period of employment at the Dead Letter office symbolizes the nature of Bartleby’s demise. Just as the narrator describes the letters as “on errands of life, these letters speed to death”, Bartleby, on his path towards liberation and freedom via the assertion of his individual will (by “preferring not to”) he has actually initiated his path to death.

The premise of the Dead Letter Office remains somewhat of a mystery to me, but I think it is an interesting way to end the story. Melville could’ve simply concluded with Bartleby’s death, but he decided to provide the reader and the narrator with some perspective into Bartleby’s mysterious existence with the Dead Letter Office. Ah Melville! Ah humanity!

In the chapter, The Chase – Second Day, Melville conceives several literary devices that are quite intriguing.

In the first, on page 534 in the Signet book, Melville writes,

“The rigging lived.  The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs.”

His combination of metaphors here is fascinating.  Instead of simply saying that the men rigged the mastheads, Melville uses metonymy to say this with “The rigging lived.”  Without the further context provided in the next sentence, this is rather confusing, as the rigging sounds personified.  He then compares the mast-heads to tree tops and implicitly describes the riggers, referring only to their limbs.

In another example, on the same page, he describes Ahab  mistaking something else for Moby Dick’s spout.  He writes,

“…for hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck, when he struck the key-hole to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles.”

Here, he employs two metaphors within a sentence to describe a single subject.  This creates a unique sort a imagery, with several unlike things being compared in the same breath.  The imagery becomes quite surrealistic.  It is enjoyable how Melville here is complicating and enriching the description of the scene at hand by at once referring to an orchestra and a band of gunmen, which are two things that have no connection to what is actually happening on the boat, but that keep the story interesting and inventive.

Lastly, on the next page (535), Melville states,

“Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated back-stays and halyards.”

As with this sentence, it certainly is easy, especially within the rest of the epic text, to pass over the subtle poetry laced throughout Moby Dick. This specific example captured my attention.  Indeed, I had to reread this sentence to ensure I had interpreted it correctly.

“…The men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck…”

How beautiful!  Simply said, Melville has a great imagination, which makes this book all the more delightful and entertaining.

In Chapter 83, Jonah Historically Regarded, Ishmael interestingly contemplates religion and science. This is not the first time Jonah is mention in the book, nor is it surprising, with the overt mention of the whale in the story. However, I think this chapter adds an interesting dimension to Ishmael’s character.

Ishmaels has shown himself, in certain moments, to lean more towards the logical and scientific than the religious (such as when he criticizes Queequeg’s Ramadan as being silly and bad for the body). In this chapter, he also reveals himself to be religious. Through the character of Sag Harbor, he draws attention to  some of the discrepancies in the story, and his attempts to explain them seem halfhearted. After reading his meticulously detailed descriptions of whaling, one expects him to dissect the story of Jonah in the same way: paying attention to the details. However, he doesn’t. When he addresses the fact that a whale could not swallow a whole man, Ishmael says: “Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless.” He leaves the paragraph at that. So, why would Ishmael bring up a possibility, promptly reject it, and then give no other explanations?

I think he purposely doesn’t try to give readers any convincing scientific or logical explanation for the discrepancies because he wants the reader to recognize that there are some things for which one just has to put logic aside and believe. Ishmael finally ends the chapter by telling us: “all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his foolish pride of reason […] Besides, to this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah” (355). Don’t reason it too much, just believe it, Ishmael seems to tell us. His repetition of the word “foolish” in his description of Sag Harbor is especially striking—Ishmael, to this point, has hardly struck me as a character who would find logic foolish. His use of the word foolish here to describe Sag Harbor’s pride, once again, reminds men to not be too arrogant (something that comes up again and again in this book). In this chapter, he checks man’s pride, telling them not to try and use reason to justify religion, because religion is bigger, and beyond the reach of logic.   This shows his religious side, the side of him inclined to believe in this story and in God even though the facts don’t add up.

For my last blog post I’m going to take a break from nature and the environment to discuss one of my favorite scenes in this novel. When we were discussing in class how Ahab’s speech during the chapter “The symphony” was one of the greatest written portions of this book, I really couldn’t help but to agree. In this chapter we see Ahab bare his soul to Starbuck in a way that completely and tragically humanized him as a character. It left the tone of the rest of the novel in a sort of determinist, and again tragically drawn out opera of moments. We knew he was going to die, we knew he might take others with him, but it was the way things had to unfold. They just couldn’t go any other way. This is why I believe this chapter is called the symphony, because at this point the novel seemed really like a great piece of music, with the meloncholy notes already written, just not yet played. And yes I know how dramatic I sounded just now. From this chapter we really knew how it all might end. Even the rest of the book seemed to rise to a musical climax of chase and confrontation, and end as mournfully as we knew it would.

“…lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! Not with the far away home I see in that eye!”

How at this point could any hatred the reader had towards Ahab not be replaced by a sort of resigned sadness. This crazy obsessed man just described how possessed he was by this vengeance he could not stop, and begged his first mate not to go with him, because he wanted him to return home at least. Starbucks hatred and mutiny for the old man also somewhat died to be replaced by an admiration for this noble but dammed soul. Don’t get me wrong, I still blame Ahab and his obsession for destroying the lives of so many sailors and families, but Melville made it a point, at the very end, to sympathize with a character we’ve been afraid of and hated for most of the novel. When at the same time I dislike when authors make antagonists more complex and likable because it makes me more sad and less able to hate them, it is really a great addition to a character.

In terms of environment and nature, I don’t remember exactly

It is not really opinion, but closer to fact that Ahab, the captain of the doomed ship the Pequod, was an unhealthily obsessed man. He turned his feelings of imasculinity, his pain, his insanity, on a reasonless creature that caused him the loss of his leg when he was viciously hunting it down.

We discussed in class how Ahab’s hunt for Moby dick was a way for him to subdue nature, to take control of the world in such a way to be considered hubris. I can somewhat see this mode of thinking in how the final confrontation with Moby Dick played out. It’s easy to see this ending in two different ways. An epic conflict drawing to a close, a struggle, the ship taken down by a whirlpool of monumentous proportions as the captain shouts final words of unending hate at the great leviathon that caused his destruction. That really sounds the stuff of epic poetry in itself, or at least Pirates of the Caribbean. On the other hand though, it was incredibly senseless. Maybe a hundred sailors’ lives cut down short for a madman’s obsession of a creature that couldn’t feel hate, or vengeance. I can’t decide which way Melville intended it though, one way or both.

But to my original point, does nature in this book retaliate in such a way to punish Ahab who as a man saught to assert his dominion and vengeance over danger? I could definitely see it that way.

“…not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See!Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is toug, though that madly seekest him.” (546)

It is this line that for me that truly held nature blameless in this struggle. It wasn’t a novel about a war between nature and Ahab, but a war between a man and himself, and what he couldn’t let go.

The Epilogue is fascinating to me for a variety of reasons: partly for its sheer brevity, partly for the hint at survivor’s guilt, and also partly for what it implies about nature. The sea, which had become so violent in response to Ahab and the Pequod, is suddenly much more calm after the Pequod’s destruction. While before (in the final chapter), “[r]etribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in [Moby Dick’s] whole aspect” (506), after the whale destroys the ship “the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago” (508). This idea is described in even greater detail in the Epilogue. There, the “unharming sharks, they glided by [Ishmael] as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks” (509). It is incredible to describe creatures sharks, notoriously deadly creatures in most literature, as “unharming” with “padlocks on their mouths.” Suddenly, the sea is no longer a frightening and deadly place to Ishmael. In fact, it seems that fate or destiny (or perhaps nature itself) wants Ishamael to survive. It seems to me that Ishmael is implying that once nature has defeated man and his violent tendencies, it wants someone to live to tell the tale so that perhaps it might be a lesson or instruction to others. Again, this appears to link all of nature with itself; in other words, each entity and being in nature seems to communicate with each other–they all act in “concert” (like in “The Symphony”). In the Epilogue, not only is the sea now calm, but so are the sharks and “savage sea-hawks.” The balance of nature has been restored and the sea, and nature in general, continues just as it did “five thousand years ago” (508). I think the interesting implication here is that nature can (and does) exist without us, without humans, and that it will continue to do so in the future. Nature has disarmed another potential threat and will continue on in its seemingly peaceful “nature.”

I found this final section of the text quite interesting, but I still have some questions, and I am curious what other people think. Does Melville view this text as a cautionary tale, a way of warning people about attempting to destroy nature? How does fate play a role in the final section of the book? Is Ishmael correct when he attempts to make meaning of the signs he sees around him, thereby determining that his fate was to retell this tale? Or is Melville saying something about survivor’s guilt and, by extension, implying that fate isn’t really there, but is rather just our way of attempting to make meaning out of what happens in our lives?

“The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth? – Because one did survive the wreck” (509).

Ishmael remains alive at the end of the wreck, presumably the only means through which this text is produced. As everyone else is killed on way or another by Moby Dick, Ishmael is “dropped astern,” where he spends the rest of the battle “floating on the margin of the ensuing scene” but, of course, “in full sight of it” (509). This last picture, Ishmael sort of passively experiencing everything that happens on the ship, is a good manner in which to examine the novel. Ishmael’s rational for whaling is not that of Ahab’s, who finds an even more compelling reason to continue his life’s obsession, or any of the mates, also whaling lifers, or that of the harpooneers; he goes as a “substitute for the pistol and ball” (1). He ruminates on his own melancholic existence while aboard the boat, and it seems like he probably spends a lot of time alone. However, sine this novel is his ‘story,’ he must be privy to situations and conversations in which he does not take part and for which he cannot seem to be in the same place. I get this sense of Ishmael sort of lurking around, a non-offensive type with whom the other men on the ship are unconcerned about him overhearing what they say. However, Ishmael senses a story building beyond the usual whaling enterprise, and a set of complex characters whose fate centers on the decisions of a brutal antagonist. Ishmael seems to have very few direct conversations with any of his superiors, yet his knowledge of them seems based on having spent much personal time with them. He neglects to mention the names of almost anyone else aboard- all we have is Ahab, the mates, the harpooneers, the mysterious Fedallah, Pip, and a random name dropped here and there; this seems odd in such a long narrative in which these other men are constantly present. It is almost as if Ishmael senses who will be the key players in the story, and in the interest of producing a more gripping narrative, he gives the men on the ship a treatment not even close to the minutely descriptive one he gives the whale. As the story progresses, Ishmael is relatively mute on his feelings about chasing Moby Dick, instead locating the Ahab-Starbuck conflict drama play out without trying to influence the reader too much. He wants them to find Moby Dick, for the sake of the story.

I was reading a comment in which someone said they would like to see Johnny Depp as Ishmael in an imagined film version, the only concern being that his dynamism would steal the screen. I agree- Ishmael would need to better be able to disappear into the background, as he does so often in the novel. He certainly spends all of his time thinking, and whether or not he does the research for the more ‘informational’ portions of his narrative on the ship or after reaching shore, we get the sense that he is eternally plotting how this work will look- he certainly is smart enough to know that this chase will end in disaster, and has made himself passive enough to escape the literal need for his death.

         Around two thirds of the way through Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, there are two consecutive chapters dedicated to describing physical attributes of the sperm whale. The first of these, Chapter 85, is entitled “The Fountain” and depicts the spouting of the whale. The eighty-sixth chapter is entitled “The Tail” and discusses this part of the whale.

      At the beginning of “The Fountain,” a moment of the religion versus science debate that has undercurrents throughout the novel arises. Ishmael states that whales have been “spouting all over the sea” for “six thousand years” (Melville, 357). This follows the creationist theory, as the bible presents the idea that god created life six thousand years ago. However, immediately following this statement, Ishmael adds “—and no one knows how many millions of ages before” (Melville, 357). This interjected addendum expresses doubt towards creationism, lightly supporting evolution.

            Melville’s depiction of the whales’ spouts adds to the sense of mystery about the whale. He describes them with the metaphor “sprinkling or mystifying pots” (Melville, 358). Melville also uses the discussion of the whale’s spout to create an emotional response in the readers to the whale through stating that they have “regular lungs, like a human beings” (Melville, 358).  Ishmael describes the internal anatomical evolutionary adaptations that whales have developed that allow them to remain underwater without drawing breath for long periods of time.  The whales’ need to come to the surface to breath is represented as a reason that the whaler should be humbled, as he is only so powerful and cannot chase the whale into the depths of the sea (Melville, 359). The spout adds more mystery to the whale by Ishmael’s wonder as to what exactly is being expelled from the whale’s blowhole – if there is anything besides water, and what form that water is in (Melville, 360-361).

            Coming full circle and returning to religion at the end of the chapter, Ishmael describes rainbows as rays from “Heaven” (Melville, 362). He discusses the idea that rainbows only appear when sunlight shines through water vapor/mist, and thus presents the rainbows that sometime appear in the spouts of whales as religious symbols.

            In the following chapter, “The Tail,” Ishmael describes the tail of the sperm whale and its motions in detail, and illustrates it as a thing of immense power and size, but also of delicate beauty and grace (Melville, 363-365). Ishmael states that “real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but often bestows it” (Melville, 363). This sentence can be viewed in several manners. When applied to humans, there could be some gender connotations intended that would break down some of the gender binary – i.e., that “strong men” can/should have beauty, and “beautiful women” can/should have strength.   Ishmael also states that the sperm whales often use their tails when attacking ships, serving to place the tail as an element of foreboding.

            The chapter ends somewhat ironically. The chapter is the description of the tail, but ends with the mention of the whale’s face (367). In addition, although the entire chapter has been dedicated to describing the sperm whale’s tail and how it is used, Ishmael states that he has an “inability to express it” (Melville, 366). He proceeds to state “dissect him how I may, then,…but….I know him not, and never will” (Melville, 367). This again serves to add a sense of mystery to the whale. It also is humbling to mankind. Thirdly, it conveys the idea that whales are not just simple beings – a “shell” of a body and nothing inside – but that they have souls.

Besides having a completely different subject, I found that Bartleby the Scrivener also differed from Moby Dick in its narration style.  Ishmael is very present at the beginning of Moby Dick, but his voice becomes increasingly disembodied as the novel continues.  The unnamed lawyer narrator remains present throughout Bartleby, and readers follow him through all his various interactions with other characters.

Ishmael does not interact much with other characters after he arrives on the Pequod.  While his voice continues to inform the reader of what is happening on the ship, we rarely get an actual glimpse of him.  He appears briefly in such chapters as The Monkey-Rope and A Squeeze of the Hand.  Yet he still does not enter into dialogue with anyone aboard the ship.  The most dialogue that Ishmael engages in during the part of the book that he is on the ship happens when he is having a flash forward to later describing the Town-Ho’s story to friends in Lima.  Ishmael as a body aboard the ship seems to disappear from the story entirely until the Epilogue.  He does not even alert the reader that he was one of the men on Ahab’s boat until after the ship has sunk.

The narrator of Bartleby has conversations with numerous other people in the text, and often uses the pronoun “I” to describe his personal thoughts and feelings.  His constant flow of opinions and theories regarding Bartleby’s condition contrasts sharply with the reader’s lack of insight into Bartleby’s mind.

I enjoyed reading a piece by Melville where the narrator remained consistent for the duration of the plot.  The narrator was as reliable as Bartleby was unreliable as an employee.