Moby Dick

The end of Moby Dick…

After class, I was really intrigued with Ishmael’s emotional disconnect at the end of the novel.  Rereading quotes from the beginning and end of the novel, I was really struck by how he presented himself after this horrific experience.  At first, I believed that Melville was perhaps playing on the fact that Ishmael had post traumatic stress from the sinking of the ship and the loss of so many friends and influential people.  Or maybe Ishmael was finally attempting to be a reliable narrator.  But neither of these reasons fit Ishmael’s personality, which we have all experienced throughout the book.  Therefore, I fully believe that the last section of the book coincides with the insanity and imbalances of Ishmael that we read on the first page.  Specifically this quote:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; when I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especiallywhenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.  This is my substitute for pistol and ball. (1)

After these first few lines, I was really struck again by how insane and unreal Ishmael portrays himself.  An individual who has a firm or even slightly less firm grasp on reality would never present himself, in a novel concerning a life changing voyage, as insane.  It is as though he is warning his audience that he unreliable before we even get to the second page.  Furthermore, to say that he becomes reliable at the end of the novel because of his emotional disconnect as seen in the following passage, it completely ridiculous:

Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last.  It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. (552)

If anything, the emotional disconnect that Ishmael displays just shows how bizarre and unstable he is.  For all of his previous comments that seemed to say that he was “married” to Queequeq and could not fathom the thought of living without him, there is no mention of Queequeq’s die.  There is not mention of anyone else, his only comment is that he is the only one that survived.  In my mind, that displays the type of individual who is narrating the story.  It displays that Ishmael is not reliable, never was reliable and even warned us that he was unreliable.

           Throughout the novel of Moby Dick, Herman Melville presents the whale in various ways, and these different methods of presentation serve various purposes in how the Herman Melville would, presumably, like the reader to perceive the whale. As the sperm whale is the object of the hunt in the novel, the descriptions of this species are generally the most important.

            The first main mention of the sperm whale comes relatively early in the novel, in the thirty-second chapter, which is entitled “Cetology.” The very first description of the sperm whale is that

“He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained” (Melville, 129).

This description serves to make the plot of the novel more impressive to the reader and to add suspense to the moment in which the sperm whale is first “encounter[ed]” (Melville, 129.) As the chapter does, in many ways, come from a cetological and taxonomic viewpoint, however, this first description of the sperm whale can be viewed as a scientific one.

            There are several other descriptions of the sperm whale that serve to add an element of excitement and fear to the novel, such as in chapter forty-one, where Ishmale states that the sperm whale is “fearfully distinguished from all other species of Leviathan” and adds that many experienced and courageous whalers, refuse to hunt the sperm whale because of its “monst[rous]” nature (Melville, 173). Another example that adds to the intimidation of this species of whale is the mention in forty-fifth chapter that sperm whales can have a tendency to attack the ships that hunt them – a statement that ends up being foreshadowing. In the 133^rd chapter, “The Chase – The First Day,” Moby Dick “shoot[s] his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat” and takes “its bows full within his mouth” (Melville, 526).

            The first encounter with the sperm whales occurs during the forty-eighth chapter, entitled “The First Lowering.” In this chapter, the whales are almost described as being a force of nature and completely one with the sea – “All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water and air” (Melville, 219). While this is literally the state of the particular area of ocean as caused by the whales, this can also be viewed as metonymy. This use of metonymy instills a sense of mystery, intangibility, and uncontrollability in the reader about the whales. In the same hunt, the whales are compared to an earthquake (Melville, 218). This hunt ends in failure and disaster, with the whale escaping, the boat capsizing, and the men stranded for a night. As Moby Dick has already been presented as the fiercest and most difficult to catch of all whales, the fact that the hunt of other sperms whales ends so badly sets a feeling of unease in the reader of what is to come.

What I found most interesting about the novel Moby Dick is the way in which it calls into question the power and the status of man. While humans tend to think that we are above all else, as we cultivate land, hunt sea-life, and take what we want when we want it. While I am unsure of the intentionality of the message, I believe the novel calls into question how powerful we really are.

Most notable we see this in the death of the Pequod’s crew. Ahab, after believing that he was more powerful then the whale, and thus, able to kill him, succeeds in getting not only himself, but his whole crew killed (with the exception of Ishmael), and even his ship destroyed.  It seems to send the message that when you underestimate, disrespect, and exploit the earth and its creatures, no good will come of it.

As we discussed earlier in the semester, this could be a larger message about man’s exploitation of the earth. If we continue to abuse the earth, just like Ahab in his quest for dominance over the whale, most likely we will end up killing ourselves before we succeed in killing the earth.

The novel also suggests the cyclical nature of the universe. Just as the Pequod chases whales, specifically, Moby Dick, the Pequod gets chased by the pirate ship in the Grand Armada.  This could serve to illustrate how ocean life, and life in general, is more cyclical and less hierarchical then we would like to think. Everyone who lives, will one day die. All powerful nations are eventually surpassed by the power of another. And perhaps one day man will be replaced in its supremacy by something else. There are larger forces at play, and when it comes down to it, no one is all powerful. Man, therefore, will not succeed in selfishly serving his own purposes, without consequences to himself.

Along with many other things throughout the novel, the depiction and sentiment towards the sea changes along with the shifting narrator, and is also an indicator of the narrators growth.

The omniscient narrator seems to be ambivalent towards the ocean. This is because the ocean is itself ambivalent. Terrible storms and death are carried by the same playful breezes that originate in the tropical air that first stirs Ahab from his seclusion. Melville has personified, and masculinized the sea as the heaving chest of Sampson.

It is also interesting to see the change in Ishmael’s attitude toward the sea from the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel. In the beginning, Ishmael regards the sea as a sanctuary from the perils of life on land.  A charming mistress ever enticing him towards the shore. He has many positive feelings towards the ocean, and as such considers it, to a certain degree, a partner of the human race:

If they but knew it, all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. 1

At the end of the novel, however, Ishmael regard the ocean as an unfeeling, ever present entity that allows us to feed off of its bounty simply because of lack of emotion. Ishmael recognizes the immense, impersonal nature of the ocean, and that it was here long before man and will be long after:

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago 551

Notice also the white imagery employed in these final lines. This perhaps hints towards the fact that Moby Dick will always be hunted to some degree in some form or another by someone, just as the ocean will roll on and on. Moby Dick represents the unattainable, and there will always be someone who thinks the unattainable attainable.

To me, the story of Bartleby the Scrivener mirrors that of Moby Dick in more than a few ways. In my last post (or comment, I can’t remember) I talked about how Moby Dick would have been a very different, and lass powerful allegory, had Starbuck followed his gut and killed Ahab. In the same vein, had Bartleby accomplished something (other than the interpretation that he achieved inner peace or something) with his increasingly frequent refusals, the story would have been significantly less thought provoking. Bartleby’s death, like that of the Peaquod’s crew, brings the story to an appropriate head, and serves as a catalyst for interpretive debate.

Another similarity between the two tales is the presence of three hyperbolized “mates.” In Moby Dick, the mates are true mates: Stubb, Flask, and Starbuck. In the short story they are Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby. In both yarns, the mates have distinctive characteristics that act as guides for the development of the story. Without the backdrop of the unique personalities of Stubb and Flask, the relationship between Starbuck and Ahab would not have been as recognizably deep as it was. Similarly, without the faults and blunderings of Turkey and Nippers to cast Bartleby’s early performance into stark contrast with theirs, the narrator would not have taken to him so. We can even interpret their names in a similar manner: Turkey is a bit of an old turkey, and Nippers is a young and ambitious busybody; Stubb tokes up and Flask gulps down. Bartleby and Starbuck have the normal names and are the more central to the story of their respective counterparts.

Finally, both works are clearly representative of higher issues. Bartleby can be read as a rant against the the mundanity of office work; a critique of America’s path to corporate mechanization; or even a Marxist manifesto. Moby, as we well know has a thousand possible readings…

There are many occasions throughout the novel where Melville describes whales by giving them human characteristics.  Most noticeably is in the chapter Schools and Schoolmasters. First, he describes females whales by saying

“As ashore the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who often come to deadly battle, and all for love.” (Melville, 380)

And later, compares whales to college students by saying

“Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more then he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard.” (Melville, 382)

In addition, throughout the chapter he refers to the whales in anthropomorphic terms such as describing the whales “embracing”, or as “gentleman.”

This is not a style seen uniquely in this chapter.  Later in The Dying Whale we again see the comparison of whales to humans when, while watching a dying whale turn his head towards to sun, Ahab comments on how the whale, like man, adores the sun’s warmth.  On page 477 he says:

“He turns and turns him to it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!” (Melville, 477)

It is possible that in ascribing human characteristics to the whale he is attempting to hint at a bigger issue. In anthropomorphizing the whales, it makes hunting them seem more callous, exploitative, and even, perhaps, murderous.  In doing so, Melville could be attempting to critique the exploitation of the white man in other forms as well, such as slavery.  We have discussed in class a number of times that the issue of slavery was very relevant at the time that Moby Dick was written, and this would be Melville’s way of making an analogous statement about the issue.

In this post I decided to recall the class discussion of race as an ideology in Moby Dick. After finishing the novel I am still left with numerous overarching questions regarding Melville’s stance on race and how he intended to portray and critique the racism of his time, but in looking through the various posts and in trying to sort through my personal interpretations, I have come to the conclusion that Melville is not a racist. He frequently makes the point to give the ‘non white’ races positions of power and influence and in this may very well be trying to use Moby Dick to communicate anti-slavery sentiments.

More specifically I wanted to examine Toni Morrison’s assertions in her essay, ‘Unspeakable Things Unspoken’ regarding Melville’ s race related intent in Moby Dick. As highlighted in class, Morrison is claiming that Melville isn’t merely anti-slavery or supportive of slave revolts, but trying to overthrow the existing ideology of whiteness. Morrison states that

“he [Melville] was overwhelmed by the philosophical and metaphysical inconsistencies of an extraordinary and unprecedented idea that had its fullest manifestation in his on time in his on country, and that that idea as the successful assertion of whiteness as ideology” (Morrison 22).

In reading more of Morrison’s analysis of Moby Dick, her arguments became increasingly convincing. She explores Ahab’s character and his madness in his quest to destroy Moby Dick. I found her analytical viewpoint very interesting and persuasive and have come to agree that Melville very probably could’ve intended for the white whale, Moby Dick, to represent the ideology of race. Morrison makes numerous intriguing points involving this metaphor and how it plays out with Ahab’s psychosis and the concept of whiteness vs. savagery, or rather, the “white racial ideology that is savage” (Morrison 21).

Although I find Morrison’s discussion of Moby Dick very convincing, I think that Moby Dick, being a complex novel with countless symbols, metaphors, themes, and social commentaries, I don’t think it can be read purely as a racial narrative. Perhaps where Morrison loses me is in her analysis of Ahab’s psychosis and how in fact, his racism as represented by his intent to triumph over Moby Dick, has caused and perpetuated his madness.

With no surprise, Morrison highlights a few sections in the chapter, The Whiteness of the Whale, in order to bolster her argument. I definitely agree with her analysis in that Melville is not exploring white people, but whiteness idealized. I don’t want to go into analyzing this chapter too much because it has obviously been done repeatedly in class and on the blog. However, in my reevaluation of the novel it continues to resurface as one of the most powerful and intellectually challenging and confusing chapters. I think that in discussing both beautiful and dangerous sinister images of whiteness Melville is attempting to explore the evolution of whiteness as an ideology. But, to openly question the very notion of white racial superiority would have been very bold and risky in his time, so Melville indirectly critiques and questions whiteness and in the end leaves it to the readers to extrapolate their own conclusions. This is made obvious in the last sentence of the chapter, “…and of all these things the Albino Whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?” (Melville 189).

Works Cited

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

Morrison, Toni. “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature.” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 07 Oct 1988. Lecture.

The most distinctive part of Bartleby’s personality in this story is his peculiar refusal to carry out the most ordinary tasks. This got me thinking: what is he actually refusing? He is refusing more than simple orders to make a copy, phone call, or drop off some papers. There is no way Melville could stop there: this refusal must symbolize something greater than Bartleby, greater than the office, greater than Melville himself (it is also possible that I have grossly high expectations of Melville when it comes to embedded symbolism and allegory after reading Moby Dick). The way I interpreted his refusal was in relation to Mahatma Gandhi and his “passive resistance.”

The phrase “passive resistance” embodies Bartleby’s quirk: he does not argue, he does not complain about being ordered around, he does not offer an explanation even when asked directly. But out of context, the phrase “passive resistance” means much more. Gandhi advocated peaceful and nonviolent opposition as another option. The goal was the same: to achieve social and political accomplishments, but the methods were different. No war, no violence, and in Bartleby’s case, the less extreme: no arguing, no complaining. Gandhi was the spiritual and political figurehead for those fighting against oppression in India. Bartleby is fighting against the common, everyday mundanity and minor oppression in American office life.

I could possibly take this further and say that Bartleby’s use of passive resistance symbolizes either his or Melville’s general distaste with the economic control of the American bureaucracy. Bartleby himself is described as liking money, and his boss is no better, therefore the resistance to corporate America would be all the more powerful when coming from someone as money-focused as Bartleby. One could easily do a Marxist reading of this story and call Bartleby the representative of the entire proletariat: starting small by refusing insignificant office orders, and making his way to a full blown revolution. I am completely aware how ridiculous this sounds, however I think a lot of literary weight rests on the phrase “I prefer not to.”

“Ah Bartleby!  Ah humanity!”  (Melville, 27)

By putting the two exclamations together, Melville seems to equate the two.  Although I saw the narrator as the most “normal” character in the story, this last sentence makes him the least human because he is the opposite of Bartleby.  Bartleby possesses a humanity that all of the other characters not only lack, but fail to understand.

Throughout the story, as we discussed in class, Bartleby’s free will stands out as his defining personality trait in the sentence “I would prefer not to.”  We think of free will as one of the characteristics that distinguishes people from animals, whom we think of as more simple-minded.  The narrator assumes that his staff will do whatever he tells them too…that they will follow him like sheep.  By assuming this, he shows that he himself is trapped in this mindless system.  So Bartleby is actually more of a human than the other characters.

Although Bartleby does not eat, live, or act like an ordinary person, he dies; and mortality is a defining characteristic being human.  While the narrator will just continue in his law practice, Melville has Bartleby take the ultimate step in life: death.  In his unchanging life, the static narrator is less human than the strange man he employs.

In this last paragraph as well, Melville reveals that Bartleby was once a “normal” person, too, like the narrator, because he at did have a “normal” job — clerkship in the Dead Letter Office.  This was a perfect job for him: a lost man sorting lost mail.

The Dead Letter Office could also be a metaphor for the rest of humanity –people, like the narrator, who have no purpose because they do not think.  They are going nowhere in life because they simply follow whatever path is in front of them [in the narrator’s case, this is the “easiest way of life” (1)].  While people are trapped on this path, Bartleby is in turn trapped in this world of people who cannot think for themselves.  Even when he leaves the office, he escapes that one dead office for another.  For him, staring out of a window for hours on end was not entrapment, because he wanted to do this.  The moments of his exerting his free will were like finding the rings and checks lost in the undeliverable mail — they show that true humanity exists, but cannot survive in such a place.  Bartleby is eventually squashed out of existence by the animalistic populace.

Bartleby, in losing the work that made him “normal,” began to gain a personality that made him human.  Maybe Melville wants to say that there are more important things in life than the day to day business that the narrator, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut are caught up in.  The enigmatic, seemingly ghostly man, who does everything out of the ordinary, is actually the most human.

“Dead Letter Office.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2009. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_letter_office>.

Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.” eNotes.com. 2010. eNotes.com, Inc., Web. 3 Mar 2010. <http://www.enotes.com/bartleby-scrivener-text/bartleby-scrivener-1>.

Lashed round and round to the fish’s back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab. [from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick]

This passage drives home a couple of themes that have been central to this entire novel since the beginning: the question of what to make of religions other than Christianity, and the concept of fate.

I’ll start with addressing the first of these two topics: what are you supposed to make of non-Christian religions, if you are Herman Melville in the 1850’s, or if you’re Ishmael around that same time, or if you’re someone reading this book when it was released?  Throughout the book, Melville routinely includes references to alternative religions, seeming to play with the idea that perhaps they are valid.  Here, however, it seems that Melville makes some sort of statement about Fedallah, the “Persian fire-worshipper”.  This particular character’s demise is comprised of being dragged to death through the water by Moby-Dick, his body mangled and torn.  One can argue that this is a comment about the character’s religion, as he is referred to as a “Parsee” in this passage, a direct reference to his “Persian fire-worshipper” identity. His body did not meet a respectful end upon his death, and perhaps this is a comment on the end his soul met as well.  Or, perhaps, Melville is making a comment on how religions other than Christianity were treated at that time in the States — not well.  Perhaps Melville is using Fedallah’s mangled body as a symbol for the mangling that mainstream America did to other religions.  And the passage certainly makes us feel for Fedallah — who deserves to die in that way?  Was Melville trying to make his readers feel for worshipers of religions besides the Christian norm?

A concept also thoroughly addressed by this passage that is very closely tied to religion is the concept of fate.  Firstly, Melville makes a foreshadowing reference to the fate of the ship: Fedallah is lashed round and round the whale, much as the Pequod will become thrashed round and round in the vortex of water that destroys it.  Is it a coincidence that these two things, Fedallah and the rest of the Pequod, met the same fate?  Is Melville saying that perhaps there is no escaping our own fate, so even though Fedallah does not die with the rest of the crew, he is still lashed round and round as the ship will be later?  (But then why does Ishmael escape this fate?  Perhaps Melville is both showing us the power of fate, but asking us to question it at the same time.)  Furthermore, Melville makes clear to mention that the distended eyes of Fedallah focus on Ahab.   Perhaps this is a reference to the role that Ahab played in the fate of Fedallah (and the rest of the Pequod).  Ahab was the one who decided to lead the crazy mission to kill Moby-Dick, and so perhaps he is responsible for the fate of Fedallah, and Fedallah is blaming him even after his death by staring at Ahab with his distended, dead eyes.  Or, perhaps, Melville is forcing the reader to question the validity of the dead Fedallah’s sentiment, rather than presenting such sentiment as true.  Is it possible for one man to control another man’s fate, or is every man’s fate controlled by some higher power?  If Moby-Dick represents God (as often he is said to), and he is what caused Ahab to lead this crazy mission, is the case simply that Moby-Dick (and thus God) caused the fate of Ahab and the crew that followed him?  Is this to say that God controls the fate of all of us?

Both of these subjects make one point clear: the way in which Melville structured his themes and symbolism does not lead the reader to one definite conclusion.  It allows for a variety of interpretations, a variety of ideas.  It causes the reader to question, rather than follow.  And perhaps this is just what Melville wanted.