For my final post directly related to \u201cMoby Dick,\u201d I wanted to go back to one of my favorite chapters in the novel.\u00a0 I found one moment in \u201cGrand Armada\u201d to be one of the most touching in the text.\u00a0 While before Starbuck had bemoaned the fact the Pequod\u2019s crew had so little of their human mothers in them, Ishmael\u2019s brief encounter with mother whales and their own children invites the reader to see similar social constructs in the animals which have been portrayed so antagonistically up to this point.\u00a0 In this one moment of serenity, we sense that Ishmael may see the whale as not so different from men after all.<\/p>\n
It is no coincidence that Queequeg and Starbuck are the men who share this quiet insight with Ishmael.\u00a0 Both men have been previously \u201cfeminized\u201d in the text, at least within the context of the violent, hyper-masculine crew.\u00a0 As Queequeg is a celebrated killer of whales and a purported savage, it is ironic that he seems the most alarmed by any harm coming to this \u201cnursery.\u201d \u00a0His horrified reaction seems based more on instinct than any calculated assessment of the situation, as if he knows it is somehow inherently wrong to bring violence upon this peaceful herd.\u00a0 As I think we discussed in class, this incident is one example of how Melville may have been asking his readers to feel sympathy for the hunted animals. \u00a0For by disrupting this calm natural balance the crew brings disaster down onto themselves. \u00a0It has already been suggested that without a maternal influence, the men of the Pequod are destined to commit acts of violence and inhumanity.\u00a0 One could argue then, that the destruction of the maternal element in the ocean by the crew foreshadows the violence that will be done unto them by the same principle.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the next chapter delves further into this gendered description of whales in that female whales are depicted as creatures that exist as part of a peaceful and cohesive community.\u00a0 In contrast with this, he also develops more parallels between man and whale by indirectly associating Ahab with the aged male whales that go off on their own belligerent paths.\u00a0 In this sense Ahab and the crew of the Pequod are again disrupting a natural balance struck within the group of whales themselves.\u00a0 Together these two chapters offer a surprisingly human interpretation of the beast, a portrayal which I have a difficult time believing was not meant to elicit some degree of sympathy or at least contemplation on the part of the reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For my final post directly related to \u201cMoby Dick,\u201d I wanted to go back to one of my favorite chapters in the novel.\u00a0 I found one moment in \u201cGrand Armada\u201d to be one of the most touching in the text.\u00a0 While before Starbuck had bemoaned the fact the Pequod\u2019s crew had so little of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","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=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}