Moby Dick

In chapter 58 (“Brit”), Ishmael compares the land and the sea, which are then employed as metaphors on the nature of man. He begins the chapter with a discussion of brit, a “minute, yellow substance” the right whale feeds upon. Through the comparison of animals in the sea (such as the right whale) and those on land (such as the elephant), Ishmael segues into a more generalized discussion of the two masses. While our narrator believes many people generalize the sea and land to be made up of much the same elements, he points out that the “mortal disasters” of the sea are more quickly “lost” than the ones on land.

…to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it” (Melville 267).

To hear of men being swallowed by the sea, but never actually seeing it take place (or of what lies below the surface causing it), leads men to dismiss the overwhelming depth Ishmael believes the ocean possesses. It is that very lack of visibility—only seeing the surface—that both inspires fear and, at the same time, a blank slate for Ishmael to interpret its depths as he sees fit. On land, man’s inherent ability to see all of his surroundings means the majority of the mental work (of interpreting the world) is already done for him. For Ishmael, life on land forces his mind within itself (because he cannot project his own thoughts onto an already concrete society), and thus he comes close to madness; in going to sea, he’s looking to free his mind and allow his thoughts to flow uninhibited.
In relation to the human soul itself, Melville understands the ocean as surrounding the soul, and thus its true nature is nearly impossible to decode. And that there exists within an “insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy,” but it cannot be discerned among the depths.  And so our purest form of self is “encompassed by all the horrors of a half known life” (268). It is that search for self (the Tahitian island) that Ishmael has embarked upon, but he warns against anyone else ever pushing off, as he thinks its unlikely you’ll ever find meaning before “the masterless ocean overruns the globe” (267).

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