Moby Dick

For today I want to explore one of the most curious and intriguing chapters in the novel, “A Squeeze of the Hand,” in which Melville describes the camaraderie of the Pequod’s crew as they extract and harvest spermaceti from a dead whale. The title itself – I presume very cleverly and purposefully chosen by Melville – carries an obvious erotic connotation. The chapter was a target of nineteenth century critics disapproving of the homoerotic overtones in Melville’s writing, just as the scenes in which Ishmael and Queequeg share a bed as if man and wife in the early portions of the novel were targets. Like many of Melville’s chapters in Moby Dick, “A Squeeze of the Hand” is simultaneously brief and complex, short and profound. It can almost stand alone: it does not push the main plot forward; it reveals truths about life; and it is beautifully and vividly written. At the same time, it is a useful chapter that fits into the overall structure of the book.

Firstly, the chapter functions partially to give the reader more information about the process of whaling, much like “The Line” does. It explains how the lumps in the spermaceti need to be squeezed and smoothed out by the hands of the men so that they are turned into a consistent fluid. The act has a fiscal bend to it: the sperm itself is a commercially coveted product, a “favorite cosmetic,” “sweetener,” “softener,” and “delicious mollifier” (372). A little wiki research tells me that the wax-like substance was used in cosmetics, lubricants, leatherworking, and the production of candles. Secondly, also separate from the homoeroticism apparent in its language, this chapter functions on a homosocial level. Melville portrays the comradery of shipmates working together to complete a task – one that, as a refreshing change from hours of arduous labor aboard the Pequod, is fun, messy, exciting, and pleasurable. It is a prime example of the bonding of men in a social working environment.

But the homoeroticism in “A Squeeze of the Hand” is undeniable, and thus the chapter goes beyond mere technical description of whaling and description of homosocial comradery. Melville’s very graphic and evocative language includes careful choices of words and phrases, i.e. “Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into It”; “I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules”; “abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling”; “at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally” (372). (In addition, as I was reading, the description of the unctuousness of the substance reminded me of the imagery produced by contemporary artist Matthew Barney in The Cremaster Cycle, a series of abstract art films in which fantastical characters squirm and crawl in tunnels of white, thick, messy, globbing fluid meant to resemble semen. I can only imagine what Barney would do with this scene if he were to make a film version of Moby Dick; funnily enough, he has made a film about a Norwegian whaling vessel.) Given Melville’s alarmingly and emphatically erotic language, one can understand why this chapter was such an outrage among nineteenth century readers and critics!

Melville’s inclusion of the word “unwittingly” in the phrase “unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands” is intriguing because it implies that Ishmael becomes so caught up in this moment of pleasure that he cannot control his desire to touch the other men and feel sentimental about being with them. The experience is exciting for Ishmael and made more exciting by the fact that he can share it with his crewmates. Perhaps as he wrote this, the supposedly homosexual Melville identified with his character in terms of having uncontrollable sexual attraction to men. (On this note, after reading Ishmael’s emphatically erotic and loving description of the squeezing of the sperm, I wish I could read the same event from the point of view of the other characters to see if the pleasure is experienced by them as much and as sensually as Ishmael. I feel uncertain that the others were having dreams about “long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti” – easily the most absurd, tongue-in-cheek illusion in the entire comical chapter. I believe comedy must have been another function of this chapter in Melville’s mind, just as the scenes of Ishmael and Queequeg are so ridiculous they inspire the reader the laugh out loud.)

I think, however, the most important function of the chapter is not to shock the reader with its homoerotic language but to reveal how lonely, difficult, and dreary the whaling life can be on the seas for months at a time. The men are away from civilization for long periods and have little contact with other people; additionally, they must be going crazy just from having to sleep in such uncomfortable cabins at night! Although we know that Ishmael chooses to go to sea for positive psychological purposes, as he explains in the first chapter that sailing is a superior option for him than suicide (or homicide), the overt pleasures and delights of the whaling lifestyle must be few and far between. Thus, an experience like this smoothing of the whale spermaceti stands out as being fun and different. It is a departure from the usual. It feels good and, at least in Ishmael, inspires happy illusions and visions.

Another intriguing aspect of the chapter is how Melville uses food metaphors to describe the satisfaction of the action: for instance, Ishmael says that the spermaceti are “gentle globules of infiltrated tissues…richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma…” (372) and that the whale’s blanket of blubber “is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season” (374). This might have been a technique by Melville to shock the reader: “How can such an act be so enjoyable and even mouth-watering?,” one might ask. The comparison of the whale’s body parts to food, ranging from grapes to venison to wine, is so vivid and delicious-seeming that the reader might fall into Melville’s trap and want to try tasting the blubber or sperm for himself or herself. This, in combination with Ishmael’s statement that he could spend his entire life squeezing the sperm with his male comrades, challenges the conventional, heteronormative reader. Not all happiness is experienced through heteronormative relationships between men and women in typical settings with typical gender dynamics.

To conclude, I believe Melville used this chapter to function as technically explanatory, comical, implicative of homosocial comradery, implicative of homoeroticism, and, perhaps most importantly, revealing of the difficulty of the whaling lifestyle. It certainly calls into question traditional masculinity and expected roles of men in a same-sex environment.

I apologize for this post coming so late, but I wanted to look back at the first scenes in the novel in which Ishmael and Queequeg interact, in chapters 3 and 4. As other blog posts in this topic have already mentioned, the lack of female characters in Moby Dick leaves us readers with no choice but to closely examine the homosocial and pseudo-homosexual relationships that take place in the realm of Melville’s imagination. The first communication between Ishmael and Queequeg is odd, amusing, and revealing.

Ishmael admits being terrified of the tattooed cannibal but then acknowledges that his fear is unfounded and born out of ignorance: “What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself–the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” (22). Ishmael describes his night of sleep with the foreigner as the best of his life, but upon waking he discovers “Queequeg’s arm thrown over [him] in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought [he] had been his wife” (22). But this “pagan,” tattooed arm is not any ordinary arm; Ishmael compares it to the patchwork quilt on the bed they share. (Perhaps irrelevant, but I couldn’t help but think of Freudian discussions of fetishes in the early twentieth century.) Queequeg’s gender role is confused by conflicting, contradictory character traits and habits – for instance, “the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style” (as if Ishmael is his wife) contrasts with his appearance, tattoos, snoring, grunting, harpoon shaving, etc.

I believe Melville wrote this humorous exchange with the intent to make readers laugh. In fact the scene is hysterical in its awkwardness. Besides serving as a moment of a comedy in a largely dark, romantic novel, this scene might also be Melville’s way of exploring “the Other.” Ishmael the narrator seems to mimic Melville the author in many ways, and Ishmael’s struggling to work through and understand the exotic foreigner’s habits, customs, and intentions parallels Melville’s struggling to accept and trust the foreigners of the Pacific and the Caribbean in his own travels. Ishmael is ignorant of Queequeg’s background and thus these few pages in the novel serve as a cultural exploration: how might gender roles and expectations be different for Queequeg, an unknown and unpredictable force, than typical Americans in the nineteenth century? Queequeg is “off” in that he does not satisfy our culture’s understanding of gender divisions, as is revealed in his loving clutch of Ishmael in bed. He walks the line between masculinity and femininity. This further sets him apart as an outsider and clarifies that he is very different from Ishmael and the other American-born and raised men on the Pequod who abide by typical gender roles. Queequeg is “otherized” even more greatly. On page 25, Ishmael uses two different metaphors to assert Queequeg’s differentness and his transitioning into a person who fits more naturally and fluidly into normal society: “But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition stage—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner. His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate” (25).

Moby Dick, at least through the first 21 chapters, is primarily concerned with masculinity. To demonstrate, leafing through a Google image search of “Moby Dick,” one will find completely unrelated images of cars and narcotics before coming across an image invoking any feeling of femininity, let alone one of a female character. Significant characters in these chapters are almost entirely male, themes addressed are traditionally masculine ones, and allusions are to still more male characters for masculine works. Melville was also influenced, first and foremost, by male authors; stylistically by Sir Thomas Browne, the 17th century prose writer, by Shakespeare, especially for his characters, and of course, by his contemporary, Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom the novel is dedicated.

In the opening paragraph, Ishmael tells us that, “If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.” Though Melville does not mean men in the sense of humanity, he means only men, and excluding women. Ishmael holds that men go to sea and does not leave any interpretation that women too may be drawn to the sea and take up the lives of whalewomen alongside their husbands. He is a sexist and selfish narrator for our story, and when he goes on in chapter 1 to discuss his interest in going to sea as a sailor, rather than a passenger, he seems to imply that real men live as active, paid sailors, and women and the rest, go as the paying passengers.

Under the masculine perspective of our narrator, there lie some homosocial, if not homosexual themes in these opening chapters. The character interactions are primarily homosocial and may touch on a possible homosexual undertone when Ishmael must go to bed with Queequeg, though Melville heteronormatively points out that, “No man prefers to sleep two in a bed.”

However masculine, no story can be completely devoid of feminine influences. As Ishmael duly points out when describing the warmth of his and Queequeg’s bed, “…there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.” Among these touches of the other gender, we see work here fulfilled in very traditional male-female roles: The sailors are all men, while the women remain at shore to tend the the sailors, their families, and their (husbands’) businesses, as this was a sexist society. And then of course, the good old Pequot is portrayed as a female vessel, referred to as “she” as most all ships are.

Melville may have been concerned with issues of race and equality when writing his great work, but through the reading of these introductory chapters, one may doubt that he held any similar views of gender equality or the importance of the feminine perspective.

Posts for this group should focus on issues of gender (masculinity, femininity) as they appear in particular passages of the novel. You could ask yourself the question, for example, “How is a particular passage or event in the novel gendered? Is it betraying a particularly masculine perspective, and why?” You could also discuss perceptions and representations of masculinity, femininity, homosexual (or homosocial) relations, or Melville’s (Ishmael’s) perceptions of feminism and the feminine. You could also discuss passages in the novel that relate nature to gender, work/labor to gender, and so forth.