Moby Dick

I first became interested in the varying philosophies in Moby Dick when I read about the carpenter. Ishmael describes the man like a pocket knife, saying that “if his superiors wanted to use [him] like a screwdriver, all they had to do was open that part of him” (451-2). At the end of the chapter, Ishmael tells us, “this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him…that kept him a great part of the time soliloquoizing” (452). The carpenter believes that everything is part of a machine, even people, and even parts of people. In fact, Melville begins the chapter by mentioning that when you think of humanity as a whole, each individual is the same as all the others. We are all part of the machine that is mankind. However, the carpenter, Ishmael assures us, is “no duplicate,” and that is why we should care about what he thinks (450). This got me interested in the individual philosophies of each of the characters in the novel. Melville wrote about them for a reason. They are not duplicates, and we should care what they think.

One of the most significant philosophies, I believe, is that of Queequeg. Queequeg is a foreigner. He is not white, and we know already that his religion differs from that of Ishmael and the other white sailors. Queequeg’s beliefs become really intriguing in chapter 110, “Queequeg in his coffin,” when he wills himself back to health. Queequeg explains to the sailors that “If a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him” (463). Immortality? It’s possible.

Now, because Queequeg did not fail in his attempt to deny death, Melville is saying not that it is possible in the real world, but that it is not a wrong belief. If Queequeg had failed, there might be a lesson in it, like: foreign beliefs are wrong, tribal cultures are wrong, Jesus is the way. But Queequeg succeeded, so what Melville might be advocating is that different religions are right for different people. If you believe it, it is true for you. Queequeg believed he had control over his own life and death, so he did. What I love about this chapter is that it reminds me of the novel Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. It is about two people who, through will-power and good habits, defy death, and live for thousands of years.

One of my favorite characters in Moby Dick is Stubb. In chapter 39, “First Night-Watch,” Stubb assures us that “a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer” (163). I agree. What a line to live by! To have a sense of humor is the smartest way to go about life – enjoying every bit of it, having no regrets, and finding the good in what you might not like or understand. Stubb’s carefree disposition reminds me once again of Jitterbug Perfume, which teaches us that a light heart will get us everywhere. It makes me think either Melville is ahead of his time, or Robbins got inspiration from an unlikely place: a happy sailor in a dense tragedy.

Starbuck is the opposite of Stubb. He looks for the bad everywhere. In “Dusk,” Starbuck exclaims, “O life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee!” Starbuck is the serious sailor who doubts Ahab and finds omens. Bad omens. A fantastic contrast between Starbuck and Stubb occurs in chapter 114, when Ishmael, Ahab, Starbuck and Stubb ponder the beautiful sea. Starbuck asks of the sea, “Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways,” once again emphasizing the bad parts of a good thing, whereas Stubb declares “that he has always been jolly” (473).

One could then read the novel to the end, and interpret all this to mean that no matter your beliefs, you will die. Even Queequeg, who can fight and win against deadly illness, can and does die in battle with a whale. You can think, if you want, that we are all going to die, but Queequeg, Stubb and I believe we are all going to live, and I leave you with this: “we’re in no more danger…than all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing the seas” (490).

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

I’d like to focus my blog on the issue of gender as it relates to the theatrical chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck.

First we see the bold image of Captain Ahab, walking the deck after breakfast as a country gentleman would subsequently take a stroll in his garden, though with a visage like the horizon of a coming storm. The most perceptive Stubb first notices this coming storm: (175) “D’ye mark him Flask? The chick that’s in him pecks the shell. ‘Twill soon be out.” The shell is broken and out flies that chick in this scene (Enter Ahab: Then all) as Ahab calls all hands to the Quarter-Deck–the stage of his subsequent lecture on the killing of the White Whale.

The Ra-Ra that follows is characteristic of many a homosocial scene: the general to his troops before battle, the head of a Fraternity to the soon-to-be inducted Freshmen, the Football coach at halftime. When Ahab says (178), “Aye Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me,” he seems to say that Moby Dick took his very manhood from him (and his countenance has since been a means of compensating for it). Ahab makes sure–as is necessary in these situations–to compliment and praise his crew as he stirs them up: (178) “What say ye men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”

What’s more, Ahab has a classic masculine vendetta, of enacting his vengeance on what Starbuck calls “a dumb brute.” Ahab reveals that he would go even further than that and smite that which is both inanimate and intangible: (179) “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other.” And so he remarks, and eye for an eye, a limb for a limb–such is his stereotypically masculine principle. Though one might say that he has already gotten his limb for a limb, as upon losing his hominid leg, he gains a leviathan one (of ivory).

Ahab, attending to his goals in this chapter in a most precise, calculated, and surgical matter, understands the power of the mob mentality he has created with his performance: (to Starbuck, 179) “The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?” They are, and both Starbuck and Ahab know that his sermon has produced the desired affect in inciting the crew and hindering opposition: “Starbuck is now mine, cannot oppose me now.

The speech delivered, Ahab facilitates a sort of White Whale Fraternity induction ceremony in which the men must drink and swear to bring death to Moby Dick. Finally, the performance ends as abruptly as it began–no lasting ceremonies, no lingering, no dilly-dallying. After all drink from the long, barbed, steel goblets and cry out their maledictions against the great White Whale, the men quickly disperse and Ahab disappears into his bachelor pad.

Pip, as the only major African-American character in the novel, provides a unique commentary on racial issues of 19^th century America. Melville, or rather, Ishmael presents Pip as “the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew” who merely serves as the Pequod’s ship-keeper, a sailor who stays on the ship while the whaleboats go out (Melville 398). However, from the moment Pip enters the novel his race plays a significant role in dictating his interactions and relationship with the other crew members.

Pip’s first soliloquy reveals to the reader all of the dangers he faces as a young African American boy on board the ship. Although he is evidently afraid of the storm and the inevitable encounter with Moby Dick, he is also afraid of the actions of the white sailors. It is apparent that his racial difference affects both his relationships with men and, in a larger sense, with God. In chapter 40, Midnight, Forecastle, Melville allows Pip to belittle himself and his race by submitting to the religious customs of the white Americans as an inferior ‘black’ being.

“Oh, though big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!” (Melville 171).

In chapter 93, Castaways, Ishmael highlights Pip’s immense fear of the sea, his unique relationship with the white men on the ship, and his symbolic role as the African American slave. In the beginning of the chapter when Melville compares Pip to the ship’s steward, Dough-Boy, he simultaneously elevates African-Americans while blatantly portraying racial stereotypes.  Ishmael describes Pip as “over tender-hearted, but at the bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe which ever enjoys all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race” Ishmael goes so far as to instruct the reader: “Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, paneled in king’s cabinets” (Melville 399). Ishmael’s depiction of Pip represents the 19^th century white man’s skewed view of the black race. Although the recognition of Pip’s ‘brilliance’ and his superiority to Dough-Boy reveals the greater humanity and more developed character of the black man in contrast to his white counterpart, the very nature of Ishamael’s description of Pip’s ‘tribe’  presents an extremely cliché racial representation. For example; the idea that African-Americans are constantly jolly and that they all play the tambourine.

Chapter 93 also contains a critical turning plot piece regarding Pip’s role in the novel. However, I won’t be addressing Pip’s dramatic shift to an integral symbol of insanity as a result of  being left to drift alone in the open sea, but rather his interactions with the other crew members during this fiasco.  In this Chapter Pip has been temporarily reassigned to Stubb’s whaleboat crew. The first time out he jumps from the boat, causing Stubb and Tashtego to lose their already harpooned whale. Upon this discretion Stubb forcefully lectures Pip on the importance of ‘sticking to the boat’. Interestingly, Stubb makes an obvious allusion to slavery in saying that “a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama” (Melville 400).  This reference emphasizes the presence of slavery in 19^th century America and reveals the social acceptance of a statement such as this. After Stubb attempts to use this statement to control Pip’s actions Ishmael interjects with insightful commentary regarding human tendencies of slavery, “Perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal , which propensity too often interferes with is benevolence” (Melville 400). It can be read that Melville intended this segment to be a critique of slavery and a broader commentary on human’s innate tendencies to ignore morality for self gain and, more specifically, monetary profit. This chapter is one of the many in Moby Dick that Melville has utilized to interject his negative feelings towards slavery in America.