{"id":1286,"date":"2010-03-04T17:01:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T21:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2010-03-04T17:01:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T21:01:45","slug":"anthropomorphizing-the-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1286","title":{"rendered":"Anthropomorphizing the Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are many occasions throughout the novel where Melville describes whales by giving them human characteristics.\u00a0 Most noticeably is in the chapter <em>Schools<\/em><em> and Schoolmasters.<\/em> First, he describes females whales by saying<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAs ashore the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who often come to deadly battle, and all for love.\u201d (Melville, 380)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And later, compares whales to college students by saying<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cLike a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more then he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard.\u201d (Melville, 382)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In addition, throughout the chapter he refers to the whales in anthropomorphic terms such as describing the whales \u201cembracing\u201d, or as \u201cgentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is not a style seen uniquely in this chapter.\u00a0 Later in <em>The Dying Whale<\/em> we again see the comparison of whales to humans when, while watching a dying whale turn his head towards to sun, Ahab comments on how the whale, like man, adores the sun\u2019s warmth.\u00a0 On page 477 he says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cHe turns and turns him to it,\u2014how slowly, but how steadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!\u201d (Melville, 477)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is possible that in ascribing human characteristics to the whale he is attempting to hint at a bigger issue. In anthropomorphizing the whales, it makes hunting them seem more callous, exploitative, and even, perhaps, murderous.\u00a0 In doing so, Melville could be attempting to critique the exploitation of the white man in other forms as well, such as slavery.\u00a0 We have discussed in class a number of times that the issue of slavery was very relevant at the time that Moby Dick was written, and this would be Melville\u2019s way of making an analogous statement about the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are many occasions throughout the novel where Melville describes whales by giving them human characteristics.\u00a0 Most noticeably is in the chapter Schools and Schoolmasters. First, he describes females whales by saying \u201cAs ashore the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who often come to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whaling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286","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=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1287,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions\/1287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}