{"id":575,"date":"2010-02-08T00:19:41","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T04:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=575"},"modified":"2010-02-08T00:19:41","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T04:19:41","slug":"daggoo-the-african","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=575","title":{"rendered":"Daggoo, the African"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided to analyze Melville\u2019s description of Daggoo and his subsequent commentary on slavery during the 19th<\/sup> century. A passage from Chapter 27 on page 114 provides an in depth description of Daggoo and his role as an African on the whaling ship.<\/p>\n

“Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, … with a lion-like tread \u2013 an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler\u2026Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a lot to say about this description of Daggoo, but I want to highlight that, as an African tribesman who \u201cvoluntarily shipped\u201d Daggoo functions in the novel as the symbolic replacement for much more common figures who don\u2019t actually show up in the novel. These figures who Melville is alluding to are African-American slaves or descendant of slaves who were kidnapped from Africa and brought to the American South. Ironically, Daggoo is portrayed as both powerful and barbaric in this passage. Melville uses derogatory and somewhat racist descriptors such as \u2018coal-black negro-savage\u2019 as well as fear invoking terms that somehow induce a certain level of respect such as \u2018imperial negro\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ironically, when Melville entertains the idea of Daggoo\u2019s position in comparison to white men, Daggoo prevails as a powerful \u2018fortress\u2019.\u00a0 In doing so, Melville is challenging the idea of slavery and submission of the Africans to white men. By describing Flask as a chess-man strongly invokes a reversal of roles and addresses society\u2019s contemporary understanding of racial dynamics. Despite this reversal of roles it is important to point out the fact that Daggoo is still diminished by Melville\u2019s initial description and forever defined by his \u2018savage\u2019 ways, such as the \u2018ring bolts\u2019 suspended from his ears. Melville provides a unique insight into the blatant divide between the \u2018white men\u2019 and the \u2018savages\u2019 both within the hierarchical dynamics of the whaling ship and within 19th<\/sup> century society.<\/p>\n

Considering that Melville wrote Moby Dick in 1851, when slavery was a major issue in America, and that the novel reveals signs of thoughtfully considering race, it is interesting that there aren\u2019t any slaves in the story at all \u2013 just different types of stand-ins for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I decided to analyze Melville\u2019s description of Daggoo and his subsequent commentary on slavery during the 19th century. A passage from Chapter 27 on page 114 provides an in depth description of Daggoo and his role as an African on the whaling ship. “Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, … with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","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=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}