When Pip leaps overboard in Chapter 93, Stubb tells him he must never do such a thing again, or else he\u2019ll be left behind. Of course, Pip, being young and inexperienced fails to take Stubb\u2019s advice to heart, and ends up reacting similarly in a situation quite reminiscent of the first. While it\u2019s unclear whether Stubb was being wholly serious in his threats to truly leave Pip behind, he does do just that (probably thinking another of the boats would pick him up), which results in Pip becoming \u201canother lonely castaway\u201d at sea for a considerable amount of time. The Pequod eventually picked him up, but the cheerful Pip was forever changed from that day on. The crew described him from then on as going \u201cabout the deck an idiot\u201d (Melville 401). But Ishmael understood Pip\u2019s drastic change rather differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cPip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God\u2019s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad\u201d (402).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
According to Ishmael, Pip came to a greater understanding of the world, something deeper, so mind-altering, that he could no longer communicate through simple exchange, which then made him seem deranged to others on the ship. The vulnerability Pip felt as he bobbed alone in the vast sea opened his mind to God-like truths. And those truths are so foreign to us that we liken someone such as Pip to be crazy, when really what we\u2019re interpreting as \u201cman\u2019s insanity is heaven\u2019s sense\u201d (402). While we can\u2019t know this as fact, Ishmael\u2019s more thoughtful (and possibly optimistic) take on Pip\u2019s condition most prominently points to his continued reverence of the sea and its capabilities.<\/p>\n
The sea didn\u2019t physically swallow Pip, but his soul seemed to have been. It drowned it, but not fatalistically\u2014the sea \u201ccarried [Pip\u2019s soul] down alive to wondrous depths\u201d where he was granted access to all the \u201cjoyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities\u201d (402). It\u2019s interesting that Ishmael finds the sea so rich and vast, holding many truths, yet he also considers it heartless, as if man must give up his emotions to understand the depths of the world. The omnipresent ocean can reveal to man the absurdity of his life, but only when he lets go of his emotional ties, or in Pip\u2019s case, when he is forced to let go and engage in \u201cthe intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity\u201d (401).<\/p>\n
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick<\/em>. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Pip leaps overboard in Chapter 93, Stubb tells him he must never do such a thing again, or else he\u2019ll be left behind. Of course, Pip, being young and inexperienced fails to take Stubb\u2019s advice to heart, and ends up reacting similarly in a situation quite reminiscent of the first. While it\u2019s unclear whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","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=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}