I have already spent two posts attempting to reconcile Melville\u2019s ostensibly racist language with the belief that he was not at all racist, and the more I delve into the subject, the more I ask, \u201cWhat the hell, Herman?\u201d He writes chapter after chapter about how wonderful Queequeg and the other savages are, and then this kind of thing happens once again:<\/p>\n
You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea\u2026 [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Somehow the harpooners are paragons of moral character and physical strength, and yet Queequeg is a dancing-ape? Now I grant that the rope is called a monkey-rope no matter who is tied to the business end, but this analogy deserves a look-see. The problem I have with this passage is that Queequeg is the one in control. Ishmael states that \u201cshould poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake.\u201d Should Ishmael not be the ape? The one whose life lies in the hands of another\u2019s actions? But no, Queequeg is the ape. I find it all too plausible that Melville simply thought that comparing a white man to an ape would be unrealistic when there\u2019s a perfectly good savage you can use in his stead.<\/p>\n
The irony of this is realized in the very next paragraph, where Ishmael states that he is both \u201cwedded\u201d and the \u201ctwin brother\u201d of Queequeg. Further, there is not even a whiff of resentment on Ishmael\u2019s part that he is connected to a black man. Pretend for a moment that one of the racist townspeople from To Kill A Mockingbird<\/em> was transposed into Ishmael\u2019s place. All one would hear is a stream of bigoted expletives at Starbuck or Stubbs about how it is most unnatural to tie together the fates of a white man and a lowly negro. Thus, while portraying black people as simian, Melville also implies that there is no difference in the value of a black person\u2019s and white person\u2019s life. This point is evidenced by Ishmael\u2019s train of thought on the following pages. Rather than complain about the injustice of his situation, he instead discusses the tenuousness of life. To Ishmael, the relevant fact is that his life is in someone else\u2019s hands; the color of those hands is irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have already spent two posts attempting to reconcile Melville\u2019s ostensibly racist language with the belief that he was not at all racist, and the more I delve into the subject, the more I ask, \u201cWhat the hell, Herman?\u201d He writes chapter after chapter about how wonderful Queequeg and the other savages are, and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}