Moby Dick

Chapter 88, Schools and Schoolmasters is another good example of a chapter where Melville uses whales to comment on humanity.  At first what struck me about this chapter was that it is one of the only instances where Melville mentions love.  Of course, this is whale love, not human love, but his language frames this whale love in human terms: “As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love” (380).

However, as the chapter continues, it appears to focus more on ideas of learning and growing up.  The male whale will cavort with a harem of female whales while he is young.  But as he matures, he will instead choose solitude and leave the harem and “he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets” (381).  For men in this book, the sea is also a source of “moody secrets.”  They often contemplate her vastness and her beauty.  Yet, for men, land is more likely to be the place where they settle down.  Melville settled down to a life on land with a wife and children after he spent years traveling the world in ships.

Though we as readers will not get to follow Ishmael past his time on the Pequod, it would be interesting to see how much longer he spends quieting his restlessness by going out to sea.  He obviously sees the sea as a “school” of sorts, as he relates chapters and chapters worth of scientific and philosophical information that he has learned while whaling.  But most likely eventually he, and men like him, will feel they have learned enough, and will return to land permanently.

Though he wrote Moby Dick before the wave of “science versus religion” debates that came when Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, it appears that Herman Melville was more than familiar with the tension between science and religion. In Chapter 58, Ishmael makes a powerful remark regarding the sea, noting that, “Man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it” (267). Ishmael suggests that man has become too powerful, that humans no longer have any sense of wonder and awe in regards to the sea. Similarly, Melville could be suggesting that by attempting to conquer nature (and the world) through science, humans have abandoned feelings of “awfulness” and “awe-fulness” when considering God.

If the sea can be taken as a metaphor for the power of God, or even an extension of said power, then it does appear that Melville is commenting upon his society’s growing apathy toward the “divine being.” Why is this important to Melville? Perhaps he felt that the conflict between religion and science could be reconciled; science can only answer so much, and while there is nothing wrong in attempting to understand our world, it is beyond human capacity to conquer it. We must accept that there are some things that we will never be able to do or understand.

This quote could also serve as a warning to the crew aboard the Pequod; since they seek to overcome fate and destroy Moby Dick, they are accepting that they have indeed lost their fear of the sea — and God. As hinted throughout the entire book, things will more than likely not end favorably for the crew aboard the Pequod, suggesting that the awfulness of God and sea will return to mankind (if the Pequod is to serve as a example).

Looking at Ishmael’s quotation from a modern perspective, it almost seems strange to think that the people of the mid-19th century believed they had control over the world when, over a hundred years later, humans have extended further control over nature and are still attempting to conquer it. I wonder what Melville would have thought of our modern world if he could have seen it; would he stay firm in his assertion that we have lost our sense of “awfulness of the sea” and God? Or perhaps he would say that we have lost the sense, but are aware of that loss. It is striking to see how easily Ishmael’s quote can relate to modern day debates between faith and science; we are still struggling, it seems.

In Chapter 23, The Lee Shore, Melville uses the character of Bulkington to demonstrate the physical and spiritual immersion of whalers into life at sea:

… it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe.

The excerpt continues the tone established at the beginning of the novel, where Ishmael describes his own relationship to the sea. For Bulkington, the sea had also become a means of escape and source of strange familiarity, or at least strange to those outside the whaling world. Bulkington does not appear to be particularly unique in his reversal of the typical notion of home, as Ishmael, Ahab, and indeed all the men on board share both a connection to the sea and an aversion of the safety of port. While the object of the voyage is to survive the perilous months at sea, battling weather and whales, even the particular whaling climate of Nantucket or other towns that cater to the industry does not suit one such as Buckington. Instead, “the land seemed scorching to his feet,” resulting in the desire to immediately begin another voyage.

Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

Here Melville further extends the metaphor, linking the sea to the freedom of thought and action. Dying on the sea becomes a more glorious end than on land, for the vastness and openness of the sea allows for the independence of the soul. The land, while safe and represented by safety, comfort, hearthstone, etc., restricts an individual’s internal growth, especially one inclined to the sea. Melville continuously explores the relationship between the effects of the environment on the individual, and the idea of what is or is perceived as natural by society and the reader. He pushes this notion by elevating the personal impact that the isolation and natural brutality of the sea has on different sailors and seeing how it accumulates into a core element of the community that develops on board a whaling ship.

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