{"id":370,"date":"2010-02-01T02:39:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T06:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=370"},"modified":"2010-02-01T02:39:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T06:39:45","slug":"making-order-of-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=370","title":{"rendered":"Making order of Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon first opening Melville’s Moby Dick, <\/em>I was immediately struck by the etymology and quotation pages. \u00a0Although seemingly unimportant even after reading, once I began to delve into the pages of the actual novel, the pages began to gain more sense.\u00a0 I was interested to see that almost all of the\u00a0excerpts\u00a0and much of the actual text refer to the whale as \u201cleviathan\u201d, rather than \u201cwhale\u201d or any other descriptive word.\u00a0 Interested, I did more research into the meaning and etymology of the word, and found that \u201cleviathain\u201d has a highly biblical background, stemming from the Hebrew word \u201clevyatan\u201d meaning twisted or coiled (ExperienceFestival.com).\u00a0 Although it has many common uses, religiously the word has come to equal the ideas of Satan (mankind\u2019s opposition to God) and more importantly, chaos: Psalm 74: 13-14 states<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt was You who drove back the sea with Your might, who smashed the heads of the monsters in the waters; it was You who crushed the heads of Leviathan, who left him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.\u201d (OpenBible.info)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This general idea being that God defeated the Leviathan of the deep in order to create the earth according to his will (ExperienceFestival.com), I began to see references to attempted order in the text of Moby Dick <\/em>itself; as if to combat the chaos of the whale itself, whalers create order where order does not inherently exist, both on land and by sea.<\/p>\n

An interesting example of this forced order on land can be seen in the empty whalers\u2019 graves in the New Bedford church:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u201cOh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among the flowers can say-here,\u00a0here\u00a0<\/em>lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these\u2026. What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave.\u201d (Melville 41)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As these men have been lost ambiguously to the sea, their bodies were never recovered and given a proper Christian burial.\u00a0 The families of these men attempt at closure and healing with these empty stones to signify the death of their loved ones, although as Ishmael so solemnly observes, \u201c\u2026In [the widows\u2019] unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh\u201d (Melville 41).\u00a0 Thus, although there is little to do to prevent or eventually cope with the loss of a loved one at sea, these people try their best to make order.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Although many small steps are taken to assure the most physical order at sea (exhaustive cataloging, skill ranking above race, the knight\/squire relationships, etc.), the First Mate, Starbuck, makes the first announced attempt at mental order.\u00a0 Se he says, \u201c\u2018I will have no man in my boat\u2026who is not afraid of a whale\u2019\u201d (Melville 125).\u00a0 What he is saying, Ishmael observes, is that \u201cthe most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril\u201d (125), while \u201can utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward\u201d (125).\u00a0 No order can be made from thoughtlessly barging into the dangerous situations that the crew is sure to encounter-thus, although the peril is inevitable, Starbuck hopes that his men will take his advice to heart, and approach the whale with reverent and controlled fear rather than an overconfident, passionate war cry. \u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the ship owners, Captain Peleg, balances Starbuck by saying \u201cNo time to think about death [when the ship is sinking].\u00a0 Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands\u201d (99).\u00a0 So, between Starbuck and Peleg, a mental balance can be forged: calm reverence to avoid needless death, and quick thinking and bravery when death cannot be avoided.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Works Cited:<\/p>\n

Melville, Herman.\u00a0Moby Dick<\/em>. Northwestern University Press, 1988. Reissued 2003. Print.<\/p>\n

“Leviathan.” Global Oneness<\/em>. Web. 31 Jan. 2010. <http:\/\/www.experiencefestival.com\/a\/Leviathan\/id\/515120><\/p>\n

\u201cWhales: Related Bible Verses.\u201d OpenBible.Info. Wed. 31 Jan. 2010. <http:\/\/www.openbible.info\/topics\/whales><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon first opening Melville’s Moby Dick, I was immediately struck by the etymology and quotation pages. \u00a0Although seemingly unimportant even after reading, once I began to delve into the pages of the actual novel, the pages began to gain more sense.\u00a0 I was interested to see that almost all of the\u00a0excerpts\u00a0and much of the actual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","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\/370","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\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}