And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged headfirst into it and was drowned. But that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all (20).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Narcissus drowns because he is enthralled by his own beauty as reflected in the water. Although Narcissus\u2019 tale exists in a number of forms, the moral lesson drawn from each of them is generally the same: do not put so much stock in yourself, i.e., do not be vain. Ishmael strays away from more common understanding of the story\u2019s meaning and re-interprets the story as illustrating the problem of self-identity. The object whose image each of us must confront in the water, \u201cthe ungraspable phantom of life\u201d, which follows us through every single moment of our lives and yet fails to be wholly (or even remotely) understood, is in fact ourselves (20). It is a sad but nevertheless beautiful thought. I cannot help but feel that this thought may come up again later on in the book.<\/p>\n
(Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Norton, 2002.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At one point in Chapter One, Ishmael describes the mystical power water has always possessed to captivate the spirits of all humans. While \u201cthe Persians hold the sea holy\u201d, the Greeks \u201cgive it a separate deity\u201d and every \u201crobust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him\u201d dreams of shipping off to sea (19). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sources-or-literary-allusions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","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=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}