{"id":522,"date":"2010-02-06T19:45:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T23:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=522"},"modified":"2010-02-06T20:00:33","modified_gmt":"2010-02-07T00:00:33","slug":"the-brutality-of-the-pequods-fated-pariahs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=522","title":{"rendered":"The Brutality of the Pequod&#8217;s Fated Pariahs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>The Brutality of the Pequod&#8217;s Fated Pariahs <\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\u2018Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job\u2019s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals \u2013 morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, soofficered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge.\u2019\u00a0 (Melville 180)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>All the men under Ahab\u2019s mad quest, the so-called <em>mongrel renegades, castaways, <\/em>and <em>cannibals<\/em>, share what Ishmael recognizes as a certain status of pariahdom. Outcast from the security of land and thrown into the danger of the seas, they participate in the particularly inelegant activity of whaling, reinforcing their outsider status.<\/p>\n<p>Melville\u2019s brilliance lies in his subtle indictment of the savageries of whaling and of Ahab\u2019s monomania, the subtlety inhering in the device of using beautiful prose to ameliorate violent scenes. The description of the demise of the whale Stubb kills in Chapter 61 is evocative of this device. As the whale bled, \u2018the slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men.\u2019 (Melville 278) The violence visited upon the whale is projected back to the whalers themselves, exposing their iniquities, at least as seen through the eyes of Ishmael. When the whale finally dies, the bloody scene is deceptively rendered in seemingly pleasant language; \u2018At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frightened air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea.\u2019 (Melville 279) Melville\u2019s descriptive powers perhaps make these scenes palatable to the reader, but in conveying this false sense of tranquility, they paradoxically foreshadow portents (the calm before the storm, so to speak)<\/p>\n<p>It is important to note that Ahab&#8217;s physicality and his vindictive quest is not euphemized. Perhaps we are supposed to maintain some modicum of sympathy for the ship&#8217;s subalterns, while focusing on Ahab&#8217;s monomania, which is amplified by the contrast in prose.<\/p>\n<p>Melville, Herman. <em>Moby Dick. <\/em>New York: Signet Classic, 1998<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Brutality of the Pequod&#8217;s Fated Pariahs \u2018Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job\u2019s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals \u2013 morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","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=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}