A more detailed discussion of Jonah is in order.\u00a0 We first hear of him in Father Mapple\u2019s sermon.\u00a0 Jonah is the prophet in the apocryphal Bible story who refuses his calling and escapes to sea.\u00a0 He brings trouble to the ship, is tossed overboard, and then God sends a whale to swallow him.\u00a0 He begs God to save his life, and he is returned to dry land to fulfill his duties as a prophet.\u00a0 Jonah is usually a model for repentance.\u00a0 Father Mapple says: \u201cShipmates, I do not place Jonah before you as a model for repentance.\u00a0 Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah\u201d (41).<\/p>\n
The story of Jonah ends strangely.\u00a0 Jonah returns to land to tell the city of Nineveh of the punishment its people will receive from God for being wicked.\u00a0 The people repent and refuse food and water, hoping to appeal to God\u2019s compassionate nature.\u00a0 This convinces God to have mercy on the city.<\/p>\n
After this, Jonah becomes angry.\u00a0 He tells God: \u201cwas not this my saying, when I was yet in mine own country? Therefore I fled beforehand unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious G-d, and compassionate, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil.\u201d\u00a0 I take him to mean: \u201cI knew you were compassionate and you would spare Nineveh.\u00a0 Why did you need me?\u201d\u00a0 After this, Jonah begs for death.\u00a0 God simply asks him how angry he is.\u00a0 Jonah escapes to the desert and again begs for his death.<\/p>\n
I think this story is much more mysterious than traditional interpretations allow.\u00a0 While Father Mapple\u2019s vision of repentance is beautiful in its way, I cannot read it like that.\u00a0 Jonah is angry <\/em>with God for the life he was given, and he asks him to take it away.\u00a0 Ahab, then\u2014and I think the rest of the Pequod crew by extension\u2014is another Jonah, but he does not share the prophet\u2019s passivity.\u00a0 He is a rewrite of Jonah with an intense drive for rebellion.<\/p>\n The death-wish is worth mentioning again.\u00a0 Ishmael confesses his suicidal nature at the beginning of the book, calling his trips to the ocean a \u201csubstitute for pistol and ball.\u201d All of the whalers of the Pequod, in the carelessness in the face of death, seem to have these feelings.\u00a0 All of them are rebelling against the place that has been given to them.\u00a0 This becomes particularly relevant to the non-white harpooneers.<\/p>\n In the end, Ahab is struck down by the whale.\u00a0 God was willing to tolerate passive Jonah, but not a man such as Ahab.<\/p>\n The Hebrew Bible Online, Book of Jonah Chapter 4: http:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/jsource\/Bible\/Jonah4.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A more detailed discussion of Jonah is in order.\u00a0 We first hear of him in Father Mapple\u2019s sermon.\u00a0 Jonah is the prophet in the apocryphal Bible story who refuses his calling and escapes to sea.\u00a0 He brings trouble to the ship, is tossed overboard, and then God sends a whale to swallow him.\u00a0 He begs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108","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=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1109,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}