{"id":886,"date":"2010-02-22T13:00:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=886"},"modified":"2010-02-22T13:00:57","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T17:00:57","slug":"the-quarter-deck-fraternity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=886","title":{"rendered":"The Quarter-Deck Fraternity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d like to focus my blog on the issue of gender as it relates to the theatrical chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck<\/em>.<\/p>\n

First we see the bold image of Captain Ahab, walking the deck after breakfast as a country gentleman would subsequently take a stroll in his garden, though with a visage like the horizon of a coming storm. The most perceptive Stubb first notices this coming storm: (175) “D’ye mark him Flask? The chick that’s in him pecks the shell. ‘Twill soon be out.”<\/em> The shell is broken and out flies that chick in this scene (Enter Ahab: Then all) as Ahab calls all hands to the Quarter-Deck–the stage of his subsequent lecture on the killing of the White Whale.<\/p>\n

The Ra-Ra that follows is characteristic of many a homosocial scene: the general to his troops before battle, the head of a Fraternity to the soon-to-be inducted Freshmen, the Football coach at halftime. When Ahab says (178), “Aye Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me,”<\/em> he seems to say that Moby Dick took his very manhood from him (and his countenance has since been a means of compensating for it). Ahab makes sure–as is necessary in these situations–to compliment and praise his crew as he stirs them up: (178) “What say ye men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”<\/em><\/p>\n

What’s more, Ahab has a classic masculine vendetta, of enacting his vengeance on what Starbuck calls “a dumb brute.” Ahab reveals that he would go even further than that and smite that which is both inanimate and intangible: (179) “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other.”<\/em> And so he remarks, and eye for an eye, a limb for a limb–such is his stereotypically masculine principle. Though one might say that he has already gotten his limb for a limb, as upon losing his hominid leg, he gains a leviathan one (of ivory).<\/p>\n

Ahab, attending to his goals in this chapter in a most precise, calculated, and surgical matter, understands the power of the mob mentality he has created with his performance: (to Starbuck, 179) “The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?”<\/em> They are, and both Starbuck and Ahab know that his sermon has produced the desired affect in inciting the crew and hindering opposition: “Starbuck is now mine, cannot oppose me now.<\/p>\n

The speech delivered, Ahab facilitates a sort of White Whale Fraternity<\/em> induction ceremony in which the men must drink and swear to bring death to Moby Dick. Finally, the performance ends as abruptly as it began–no lasting ceremonies, no lingering, no dilly-dallying. After all drink from the long, barbed, steel goblets and cry out their maledictions against the great White Whale, the men quickly disperse and Ahab disappears into his bachelor pad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d like to focus my blog on the issue of gender as it relates to the theatrical chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck. First we see the bold image of Captain Ahab, walking the deck after breakfast as a country gentleman would subsequently take a stroll in his garden, though with a visage like the horizon of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[182,273,272],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","tag-captain-ahab","tag-starbuck","tag-stubb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","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=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}