In Chapter 85, The Fountain, Ishmael explains the Sperm Whale’s spout, and proceeds to explain how the Sperm Whale has many features he admires, further elevating his opinion of the Sperm Whale and perhaps hinting at conservation, as we discussed in class.<\/p>\n
As Ishmael explains, the Sperm Whale spouts when he surfaces to breathe. In a way, the whale’s spout is his achilles heel;\u00a0the way whalers spot whales is usually by their spouts, and if a whale hadn’t surfaced whalers couldn’t harpoon them. Ishmael comments on this when he says “Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee!” (359). This sentence humbles whalers. You are indebted to the whale and his anatomy, Ishmael seems to say, for if he didn’t need to surface you would never catch him at all.<\/p>\n
Ishmael continues to tick off the features of the whale that he admires. He likes that whales don’t talk: “Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living” (360). His admiration culminates in his admiration of the whales as great thinkers, and he compares the whale spout to the “visible steam” above the heads of Plato, Pyrrho, etc. that comes from the activity of thinking hard, similar to the way his hair was wet because he had drank\u00a0six cups of hot tea in August. This last comparison sounds ironic,\u00a0but it is\u00a0by his exagerration that\u00a0Ishmael makes it clear how much he respects the Sperm Whales.<\/p>\n
In terms of conservation, Ishmael includes how the whale’s spout is believed to be acidic and poisonous, and says that “the wisest thing the investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone” (361).\u00a0This seems to \u00a0refer to Ahab’s stubborn pursuit of that which he knows to be harmful, with\u00a0Ishmael suggesting that the wisest thing Ahab can to is to leave Moby Dick alone. I\u00a0think that\u00a0Ishmael also meant it as a conservationist message.\u00a0\u00a0Even though Ishmael must kill the whales, he by no means thinks of himself as superior to them because he pursues them. He does not eve think of himself\u00a0 as their equals. Rather, he is humbled by them, recognizing that it is only in their need to spout that he can hunt them, and furthermore, only in their existance that he can even define himself as a “whaler.”<\/p>\n
Throughout “The Fountain,” Ishmael tells readers how they should be amazed and humbled the way he is by a beautiful and majestic creature. Reading this chapter after we discussed Melville’s desire to “save the whales,” or at least some of them, I feel that this was one chapter where Melville had conservation on his mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Chapter 85, The Fountain, Ishmael explains the Sperm Whale’s spout, and proceeds to explain how the Sperm Whale has many features he admires, further elevating his opinion of the Sperm Whale and perhaps hinting at conservation, as we discussed in class. As Ishmael explains, the Sperm Whale spouts when he surfaces to breathe. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-or-cetology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","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=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1132,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/1132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}