novel of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

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ISHMAEL: NARRATOR AND CREATOR

by

R I CHARD GRAHAM HOPKIN S

B. A . ( H o n o u r s ) , C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i t y , 1961

A T H E S I S SUBMITTED I N PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR T H E DEGREE OF

MASTER O F ARTS

i n the D e p a r t m e n t

o f

English

@ RICHARD GRAHAM HOPKINS 1970 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

D e c e m b e r , 1970

APPROVAL

Name: Richard Hopkins

Degree: Master of A r t s

T i t l e of Thesis: "Ishmael: Narra tor and Creator"

Examining Committee:

+m"I"BTaEET &or Supervisor

(G. M. Newman) Examining Committee

- = . I - .- . (R. Dunham)

Examining Committee

(B. Grenber f External Examher Professor of English Universi ty of B r i t i s h Columbia Vancouver, B r i t i s h Columbia

Date Approved: & - @pJ@Lc/13~

ABSTRACT

As the title implies, this thesis, following

Bezanson and others, approaches Moby-Dick by way of

the controlling consciousness of its narrator, Ishmael.

And further, the thesis explores the implications of

treating Ishmael as the 'creatort of the novel, both for

the material he has added subsequent to the presumed

events he is dealing with, and for the manipulation

and magnification of those events which occurs in the

retelling or re-creation of the story of Ahab and the

White Whale.

The thesis makes the assumption that Ishmael's

survival is fortuitous, being the last and most catastro-

phic of the accidents he encounters. His narrative is,

therefore, retrospective--a point which is emphasized

for its importance to an understanding that Ishmael's

narrative is produced in the light of his knowledge of

the ultimate catastrophe. Ishmael, because of his

fortuitous survival, conceives very tmetaphysicallyt

of his situation which, in the years following his

rescue by the Rachel, leads him to ponder the meaning

of the events in which he was involved and to consider

the fundamental problems of human existence which were

presented to him so forcibly during his voyage on the

iii

Pequod. Ishmael's difficulty in even establishing the

facts about many aspects of his story (let alone the

meaning) is accompanied by a similar difficulty in

arriving at any conclusions about the nature of human

existence. The thesis maintains, therefore, that the

story of Ahab and the White Whale becomes for Ishmael

a paradigm (as it were) revealing all the inadequacies

o f human knowledge and understanding and illustrating

the impossibility of penetrating through the inscrutable

appearances of the external world to that 'certain sig-

nificance' for which men persistently hanker.

The thesis is divided into four parts which are

not designated as chapters partly because of their

length and partly because of their internal divisions.

The thesis attempts to follow the processes o f Ishmael's

narrative and creative efforts and it seemed appropriate

t o use as flexible a structure as possible for this

purpos

Part I is entitled 'Ishmael as Creator' and seeks

to show that Ishmael is creative both in the sense of

being the 'creator of Moby-Dick through the elaboration

and magnification of characters and events, and also

in the sense of having an active and imaginative mind.

Part 11, entitled 'What Ishmael s Language Reveals,

starts from the assumption that Ishmael's problems and

concerns will be revealed not only explicitly in his

language but also implicitly by various stylistic

mannerisms, and by what he cannot say as well as by

what he does say.

Part 111, entitled 'The Search for Some Certain

Significance,' develops the concerns of Ishmael referred

to in Part I1 and seeks to make evident the ontological

and epistemological (to use shorthand) nature of the

problems confronting him.

Part IV, ~Conclusions,~ sums up Ishmael's final

position (which is seen as basically existential) and

links the discussion to Melville in order to complete

the framework within which the thesis is constructed.

The thesis recognizes that Melville encompasses every-

thing in the novel, including the narrator. In effect,

therefore, the approach taken by the thesis becomes a

device to make possible an exploration of the novel as

a self-contained, self-sustaining 'world' operating

according to its own (hopefully) discoverable laws.

TABLE O F CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I:

PART 11:

PART 111:

PART I V :

FOOTNOTES

ISHMAEL A S CREATOR

WHAT ISHMAEL'S LANGUAGE REVEALS

T H E SEARCH FOR SOME CERTAIN S I G N I F I C A N C E

CONCLUSIONS

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Page

2

13

50

1 0 8

143

168

And perhaps, a f t e r a l l , the re i s no sec re t . We i n c l i n e t o th ink t h a t t he Problem of t he Universe i s l i k e the Freemason's mighty s ec re t , so t e r r i b l e t o a l l chi ldren. It tu rns out , a t last, t o cons i s t i n a t r i a n g l e , a mal le t , and an apron,--nothing more! We i n c l i n e t o t h ink t h a t God cannot explain H i s own s e c r e t s , and t h a t He would l i k e a l i t t l e information upon c e r t a i n po in t s Himself.

Herman Melvil le , Le t t e r t o Nathaniel Hawthorne, 16? April? 1851

INTRODUCTION

If excuse is needed for adding a mite to the mountain

of criticism which Moby-Dick has already provoked, it

lies in this--that the sheer volume of work produced

is in itself evidence of a novel so challenging and

fascinating that new readers are continually tempted

to have their say. Moby-Dick is one of those works--

Hamlet is another--which seems to contain a provoking

mystery, which if one could only penetrate to.... The

principle implied in Pip's 'crazy-wittyt statement about

the doubloon--'I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye

7 nnb +haw 1 nnbI--is ~ z e thzf; mzy >e a p , - l i e - t ~ & V V I - ) Y I L Y J & Y Y I I

book itself. But to read the 'hieroglyphicst of so

complex and lavish a work as Moby-Dick is perhaps not

much easier than to decipher the mystery of the Sperm

Whale's brow. 'Read it if you can.' 1

In a curious way, the reader's problem is rather

like that of Ishmael and Ahab. Just as they are plagued

by the thought that there must be 'some certain signifi-

cance' lurking behind the outward appearances of the

external world, so the reader is nagged by the thought

that the novel must have some underlying meaning waiting

to be unlocked if he can only find the key. D. H. Lawrence

said of Moby Dick: 'Of course he is a symbol. Of what?

I doubt if even Melvi l le knew exactly. Tha t ' s the best

of it!' SO perhaps i t i s a migtake t o plunge headlong

a f t e r some c e n t r a l 'Truth ' i n the book l i k e a maddened

whale, which, having i t s eyes a t t he s i d e of i t s head,

cannot see where it i s going. I propose t o work by

ind i r ec t ion , first of a l l considering t h e n a r r a t o r and

h i s methods of t e l l i n g h i s s tory . I a l s o propose t o

examine c lose ly t he language t h a t t he n a r r a t o r uses on

t h e assumption t h a t i n so doing c e r t a i n a t t i t u d e s and

h a b i t s of mind may be revealed t h a t w i l l o f f e r a c lue

t o some f i n a l conclusion about the book. Perhaps we

s h a l l f i n d , too, t h a t the t roubl ing metaphysical problems

wi th which the novel dea l s a r e t o some extent problems

with language.

Br ie f ly , i t i s my t h e s i s t h a t Ishmael i s not only

t h e n a r r a t o r of Moby-Dick but i t s ' c r ea to r ' too. This

i s not t he l o g i c a l absurdity t h a t i t seems f o r , although

t h e r e i s an obvious sense i n which Melvi l le i s the c r ea to r

of t he work, i n so far as he has assigned t o h i s na r r a to r ,

Ishmael, the t a sk of surrogate author, then we may with

propr ie ty r e f e r t o Ishmael as ' c r ea to r1 too. O f course,

t h i s reasoning a r i s e s q u i t e simply out of regarding

author and c rea to r ' a s synonymous. ' However, I regard Ishmael as being the ' c r e a t o r t of t he book i n another

more spec i a l sense. For t he purposes of examining and

and discussing the novel, it is quite reasonable to

make the assumption that, as narrator, Ishmael is

recounting certain events which 'reallythappened to

him--at least this is what he is purporting to do.

The question then becomes, is Ishmael giving a faithful

account of these (hypothetical) events or is he adding

his own inventions and elaborations? It is my contention

that the latter is the case and I propose to examine

the question more fully in Parts I and 11.

There is plenty of precedent, of course, for

regarding Ishmael as the focus of the novel. Walter

Bezanson, in his interesting and suggestive essay

entitled "Moby-Dick: Work of Art;" m y n r 'This ster,vi

this fiction, is not so much about Ahab or the White

I Whale as it is about Ishmael, and I propose that it

is he who is the real center of meaning and the defining

force of the novel. l4 I accept this proposition and

indeed it forms one of the assumptions on which this

thesis is founded and which hopefully it will illustrate.

Bezanson goes on to elaborate his assertion when he'says:

The point becomes clearer when one realizes that in Mbby-~ick there are two Ishmael's, not one. The first Ishmael is the enfolding sensibility of the novel, the hand that writes the tale, the imagination through which all matters of the book pass. He is the narrator. But who then is the other Ishmael? The second Ishmael is not the narrator, not the informing presence, but is the young man of whom, among 0th rs, narrator Ishmael tells us in his story. f

but he guards against too pat a distinction between

'narrator Ishmael ' and 'forecastle Ishmael by saying that although ' the function of the two Ishmael's is clear ... it would be a mistake to separate them too far temperament , 6 think Bezanson's distinction

is useful because it clarifies our view of the narrator

and also emphasizes the fact that the narrative is +

retrospective, which has certain consequences as I

propose later to show.

More recently, in Melville's Thematics of Form - -, published in 1968, Edgar A. Dryden has taken up the

investigation of Melville's narrators. Dryden says:

For the K ~ l v i l l e i = nzr re tc r rcezcr;. is ~2 imaginative act which makes the present a moment of creative understanding of a past adventure that was experienced initially as an unintelligible and frightening chaos of sensations. At time of writing--often years after the original experience--the mature writer fictionalizes his earlier experience in an attempt to define its truth or meaning to himself and to his reader, It is the creative remembering in the present which gives meaning to the past.7

In this passage Dryden exp*sses very well the view

on which I had decided to operate before reading his

book and I quote him for emphasis rather than to

acknowledge a prior indebtedness. However, I question

his assertion that the'past adventure' was 'experienced

initially as an unintelligible and frightening chaos

of sensations.' In fact it is impossible to state

definitely what was 'actually' the case during the

narrator's experiencing of the events because the events

themselves cannot be separated from the narrator's

highly subjective account of them. As Dryden himself

says, 'the mature writer fictionalizes.' But again the

retrospective nature of the narrative is emphasized as

well as the creative function of the narrator and all

this is most relevant to my discussion of Ishmael . Paul Brodtkorb, Jr., in Ishmael's White World,

also makes the narrator of Moby-Dick the centre of his

attention. In the Introduction to his book Brodtkorb

announces his intentions thus:

The first step in interpreting such a book [ M O ~ -Dick] would seem to be to fix the dimen- slons --T- o its phenomena. This I shall try to do by means of a descriptive analysis of the Ishmaelean consciousness; a cogsciousness which we, as readers, cannot escape. o

I, too, propose to explore Ishmael's consciousness,

though often in different directions from Brodtkorb,

for I shall be concerned to show how it is manifested

in Ishmael's artistic and creative endeavours.

Another work which it is appropriate for me to

acknowledge here is James Guetti's - The Limits - of Netaphor. Guetti also assumes that it is through Ishmael that

Moby-Dick may most profitably be approached. In the

chapter entitled #'The Languages of Moby-Dick," he dis-

cusses, as the title indicates, the various kinds of

languages used by the narrator.' Although, as later

discussion will reveal, I do not agree with all of

Guetti Is conclusions, I found his method of approach

congenial and a confirmation of my own. I hope, there-

fore, that through a close examination of Ishmaelgs

use of language, I can provide some illuminating

readings of the text, which in itself will offer at

least a partial justification for the method.

Because the examination of the language in particular

requires the setting up of a number of categories to be

dealt with at varying lengths, 1 could not see the

thesis in terms of an appropriate number of 'chapters.I

Accordingly, I have taken a statement of Ishmaelgs as

my guide--'There are some enterprises in which a care-

ful disorderliness is the true method.@ Following

this Introduction, the thesis is divided into four

parts, which lack the internal coherence of chapters,

but within which are clustered related topics under

separate headings. Adhering to the organic principle,

I trust that the thesis will yield its meaning through

the juxtaposition of its constituent elements and its

development from Part to Part.

However, before proceeding to this plan, I wish

to make some remarks about the relationship between

Melville and his narrator. Investigating Ishmael and

talking about his methods of narration and regarding him

as the creator of Moby-Dick can be of great critical

value for one is able to approach the book entirely upon

its own terms treating it as a unified, fully developed

world in itself, functioning according to (hopefully)

discoverable laws. But there is a suppressed assumption

in all this, which is that Melville is a great writer who

is fully capable of bringing such a world into being com-

plete with narrator. One can then reject as misguided

and unsophisticated such views as Marcus Cunliffels in

tne Penguin, The Literature of the United States, where - -- these comments are to be found:

It is as though Melville finds Ishmael a nuisance. For twenty-eight chapters he relates the story. Then for three chapters (beginning with 'Enter Ahab; to Him, stubbl) it is clearly not Ishmaells story--he can- not be aware of the soliloquies of others- and though the novel reverts to Ishmael's narration, it frequently dispenses with him. Melville, it would appear, is undecided who is--so to speak--in charge of he book, or what kind of book it is to be.' d

Clearly Cunliffe is not aware of Ishmael's creative

role, which accounts for the soliloquies, nor does he

detect Ishmael's consciousness and sensibility throughout

the entire book and not least in those scenes where

Ishmael as a character is not present. What Cunliffe

regards as defects can be referred back to the narrator's

method and thus assimilated into the novel. As Brodtkorb

usefully says:

There is, first of all, no necessity to blame Melville for the book's inconsistencies, because most of them are storyteller~s mistakes, and Ishmael is pervasively characterized as a story- teller; the mistakes, therefore, with only mini- mal good will on our part, might be understood as his, and their meaning explored in that context .I1

Nevertheless, it would be absurd to excuse any or all

defects a book might have simply because it possesses

a first-person narrator. If a book is tedious, ill-

written and trivial it makes nonsense to say 'well,

it's appropriate to the kind of person the narrator is.'

Finally the author must accept responsibility. So, as

I say, underlying the discussion is the assumption that

Melville knows what he is about, and that if, for

example, Ishmael is sometimes tiresomely longwinded,

or if he recounts something that logically he could

not know, we can, nevertheless, seek a narrative

justification for these apparent defects.

A qualifying point that needs to be made is that

although examination of the narrator in the way I have

suggested is a valuable organizing principle for the

purposes of studying and understanding Moby-Dick,

also has some limitations as a method. The reader who

approaches the book in this way is restricted to the

particular world which the narrator inhabits, although

he knows that the author has created other worlds and

other narrators (still, 'restricted1 is perhaps the

wrong word to use in the case of Moby-Dick). The reader

is aware that the author encompasses the narrator and

indeed everything in the book but, as it were, suspends

his knowledge because of the usefulness of the method.

However, anything emerging from this thesis which indi-

cat es the richness, complexity, and fascination of

Moby-Dick should be taken,if only indirectly, as right-

fully a tribute to Melville.

In considering this relationship of author to

narrator, Bezanson asked: 'But this Ishmael is only

Melville under another name, is he not? 'I2 1t is

tempting to ansrver I1yesl1, especially when one detects

similarities between Ishmael's jocular, ironic tone,

which is so evident in Moby-Dick, and the tone of some

of Melvillels letters. Moreover, Melville has assigned

to Ishmael his ovm time and date of writing and critics

are fond of pointing out autobiographical tidbits and

noting comments (such as those referring to money)

which seem surely to be Melville's own. However, I

agree with Bezanson when he says:

My suggestion is t h a t we r e s i s t any one-to-one equation of Melvil le and Ishmael. Even t h e "Melville-Ishmaeln phrase, which one encounters i n c r i - t i c a l discussions, though presumably gran t ing a d i s t i n c t i o n between auto- biography and f i c t i o n , would seem t o be only a more i n s i s t e n t confusion of the point a t s take unless t he phrase i s defined t o mean,gither Melvi l le o r Ishmael, not both.

Autobiographical d e t a i l s have no spec i a l s ign i f icance

as autobiography and may be ignored un less they v i o l a t e

Ishmael 's character and c rea te , as it were, a secondary

na r r a to r . Again Brodtkorb dea l s he lpfu l ly with t he

mat ter when claims t h a t ,

... i f we a s s e r t t h a t at any point Melvi l le r a t h e r than Ishmael i s speaking, we a r e pos i t ing a second " f i c t i ona l t1 na r r a to r . For the I of any wri t ing, even autobiography, i s necessar i ly f i c t i o n a l , i n the sense t h a t i t i s a l imi ted , s e l e c t i v e abs t rac t ion from the t o t a l s e l f of r e a l i t y . We a r e pos i t ing a second f i c t i o n a l n a r r a t o r ca l l ed llMelvillell whom we do not need unless , i n good f a i t h , we have t r i e d and f a i l e d t o account f o r t he a p p a r e n t l ~ Melvillean voice i n terms of "Ishmael. l1 4

Furthermore, if one is , indeed, looking f o r Melvi l le i n

Moby-Dick, then doubtless one can f i nd him i n Ahab a s

wel l as Ishmael but t h i s i s an undertaking which

requ i res t a c t and care even i n biographical , l e t alone,

c r i t i c a l s tud ies . A s Bezanson a l s o says, amplifying

a point touched on by Brodtkorb above: ' , . . in the

process of composition, even when the artist knowingly

begins with h i s own experience, t he re a r e c r u c i a l i n t e r -

ventions between t h e a c t t h a t w a s experience and the

re-enactment t h a t i s girt--intrusions of time, of inten-

t i o n , and espec ia l ly of form, t o name only a few. 1 1 5

However, I th ink it i s appropr ia te t o comment on

t h e usefulness of t he n a r r a t o r t o Melvil le , f o r through

Ishmael he can recount the saga of t he whale and explore

problems of meaning and t r u t h without seeming t o commit

himself t o a s ing le point of view. Third-person na r r a t i on

of Moby-Dick would requ i re a g r e a t e r degree of apparent

and doubt, e spec ia l ly if the author i s concerned t o present

a process, an a c t i v i t y of mind, as I th ink Melvil le is.

So perhaps Ishmael i s Melv i l l e ' s probe. He i s s e t i n

motion and given coherence through pressure of t he

au tho r ' s mind but i n t he very process of c rea t ion acquires

h i s own independence, It i s then t o an examination of

t h i s independent, se l f -sus ta in ing na r r a to r , within t he

context of the world t h a t he c r ea t e s and inhab i t s , t h a t

we must now turn .

PART I

ISHMAEL A S CREATOR

Every reader of Moby-Dick can and will want to enlarge and subtilize the multiple attributes of Ishmael.

Walter E. Bezanson

The Retrospective View

The first sentence of Moby-Dick has come in for some

critical attention--Charles Olson took it for the

title of his study of ~elville'~ and Paul Brodtkorb

has pointed out that the narrator does not say his ,

name is Ishmael but merely tells the reader to call

him that. l7 However, the second sentence is worth

some consideration too. Apart from drawing attention

to Ishmael's rootlessness and lack of money, it im-

mediately emphasizes the retrospective character of

the narrative--'Some years ago,' says Ishmael. It

is interesting that not only does Ishmael apparently

wisn to conceainis : r e a l ! name 'uui he a i s o Cues n o i

wish to locate the exact time in the past when the

events he is about to narrate took place. He adds,

'never mind how long precisely.' By these acts of

concealment Ishmael is preserving a certain freedom

from his own past history (about which he tells us

little) and from the demands of strict chronology.

By refusing to set a precise time for the events

Ishmael provides himself with some latitude to

elaborate, embroider and invent--in a word to create.

Still, it should be noted that from internal

evidence some time limits can be set for the events.

In 'The Fountain' chapter Ishmael records the time of

writing down to the second--'fifteen and a quarter

minutes past one o'clock p.m. of this sixteenth day

of December, A. D. 1850. 118 Earlier, in the qhapter

entitled 'The Chapel,' he records the dates he has

seen on some tombstones and although he warns the

reader that he does 'not pretend to quote,' the latest

date given, December 31st, 1839, at least tentatively

establishes a time limit for us unless we assume that he

deliberately set the dates forward. If Ishmael is

looking back from December 1850 to events which oc-

curred after December 1839, then his comment 'Some

years ago1 is an appropriate one, for the phrase w o i ~ l d

not be as suitable to events that had taken place in

the far distant past.

Again, it is interesting that Ishmael should not

be reluctar@t to give a precise date to the time of

writing when he is generally vague about the passage

of time so far as the recording of events is concerned.

We know that the voyage began at Christmas and that

Ahab intended to be on the Line for the whaling season

the following Christmas so the events all fall within

a twelve-month period. However, within this time scale

Ishmael tends to make remarks like 'Some days elapsed1

(p. 111 ) or 'Days, weeks passed' (P. 199). Of course,

as Ishmael tells us, a strict schedule was not impor-

tant to a whaling ship which would cruise back and

forth quite slowly over the hunting grounds. Still,

Ishmaells concealment concerning the time of events

serves to emphasize the imaginative nature of the

narrative he is creating. He requires a freedom that

a too scrupulously documentary approach would deny

him.

The retrospective view is therefore inextricably

bound up with Ishmael's role as creator and indeed is

perhaps the main determining characteristic of the

narrative. Ishmael is looking back at a completed

set of events and is attempting to make sense of them

and to give meaning to them. He says that he cannot

tell why 'those stage managers, the Fates' put him

down for 'this shabby part of a whaling voyage1 but

he goes on, 'though I cannot tell why this was exactly;

yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think

I can see a little into the springs and motives which

being cunningly presented to me under various disgul.ses,

induced me to set about performing the part I did,... I

(p. 16, my underlining). It is also Significant that

Ishmael sees himself as having played a role (also

implied in his assumption of the name ~shmael), a role

which he will with hindsight create for the reader.

His concern with the dramatic is very apparent, not

only in this concept of role playing, but also in

the dramatic devices and rhetoric that he uses.

Ishmael does not survive the final catastrophe

which overwhelms the Pequod because of any special

virtue that he acquires during the voyage. His sur-

vival is fortuitous but having occurred becomes the

vital factor in the learning and experiencing process

that helps to shape the retrospective narrative.

This process was no doubt begun in childhood at the

untender hands of his stepmother (where, in a sense,

he first became the orphan the

find) and it continues through

of the voyage. There is great

Rachel was later to

all the vicissitudes

emphasis in the narra-

tive on the accidents common to the whaling industry,

and on the response of the characters to them--Ahab

received an intolerable injury from Moby Dick, Pip

goes mad after being spilled out of a boat and tempo-

rarily abandoned, Queequeg twice rescues men from

drowning, Starbuck's carefulness is frequently alluded

to--and Ishmael's own attitudes are shaped by these

confrontations with human mortality. The evidence

is to be found first of all in the great number of

accidents Ishmael has chosen to record, but also more

directly in such episodes as the stranding of his boat

overnight, which prompts him to talk humorously about

making his will. Ishmael's jocularity in this scene

is a means of learning to cope with disaster and danger.

Out of Ishmael's responses to the vicissitudes of his

life, and particularly to the dangers on board the

Pequod, and most particularly to his survival after

the sinking of the ship, come the attitudes and the

characteristic tone of the narrator, which find retro-

spective expression in the novel. Ishmael does not

survive because of what he has learned, he learns

because of what he has survived.

Ishmael s Magnification of Theme

At times, as he tells us, Ishmael had a very meta-

physical appreciation of his situation, and in looking

back to the events in which he participated he wishes

to assign some powerful meaning to them. In order to

do so he has to engage in a little 'stage-managing1

himself. There are a number of direct comments in

the book (as well as other indirect evidence) touching

on Ishmael's magnification of his material. In 'The

Fossil Whale1 chapter, Ishmael jocularly discusses his

approach:

One of ten hears of wr i t e r s t h a t r i s e and swell with t h e i r sub jec t , though i t may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, wr i t ing of t h i s Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands i n t o placard c a p i t a l s . Give me a condor 's q u i l l ! Give me Vesuviusl c r a t e r f o r an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For i n the mere a c t of penning my thoughts of t h i s Leviathan, they weary me, and make me f a i n t with t h e i r outreaching comprehensive- ness of sweep, as i f t o include the whole c i r c l e of t he sciences, and a l l t h e generat ions o f whales, and men, and mastodons, pa s t , present , and t o come, with a l l the revolving panoramas o f empire on ea r th , and throughout the whole universe, not excluding i t s suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, i s the v i r t u e of a l a r g e and l i b e r a l theme! We expand t o i t s bulk.

t he sentence beginning 'For i n the mere act . . ., 1 humorously i l l u s t r a t e the point t h a t Ishmael i s

t r y i n g t o make. I n t h i s p a r t i c u h r case, of course,

Ishmael 's theme i s the whale. and he takes h i s cue

from 'Levia than 's ' immense s i z e . A s he says, 'From

h i s mighty bulk the whale a f fords a most congenial

theme whereon t o enlarge, amplify, and general ly ex-

p a t i a t e ' (p . 378). And expa t ia te Ishmael c e r t a i n l y

does, adducing a l l kinds o f ce to log ica l l o r e , so t h a t

i t seems a s i f he has overlooked no reference, however

small, which w i l l help t o amplify h i s mighty theme.

However, i t i s not so le ly the whale theme t h a t

Ishmael seeks t o magnify but the whale himself, as

well . I an McTaggart Cowan, i n The Mammals o f B r i t i s h - - Columbia, t e l l s u s t h a t male sperm whales a r e ' r a r e l y

longer than 60 f e e t 1 i n l eng th while the females a r e

' r a r e l y longer than 38 f e e t . ' I 9 Ishmael, on the other

hand, has them growing up t o eighty and n ine ty f e e t

long, I n t he chapter 'Measurement of the Whale's

Skeleton1 he r e f e r s t o 'a Sperm Whale of t he l a r g e s t

magnitudet (not t h a t h i s 'chirography1 r e a l l y does

expand i n t o 'placard c a p i t a l s 1 ! ) as being 'between

eighty-five and n ine ty f e e t i n l eng th and f u r t h e r

claims t h a t , 'In length , the Sperm Whale's skeletcn st

Tranque measured seventy-two f e e t ; so t h a t when f u l l y

invested and extended i n l i f e , he must have been n ine ty

f e e t long' (p. 377). I n 'C is te rn and Bucket1 Ishmael

s e t s down a leng th of ' e ighty f e e t f o r a good s ized

whale1 and, s i g n i f i c a n t l y , a l s o notes t h a t the head of

a sperm whale 'embraces one t h i r d of the whole l eng th

of the c rea ture (p. 287).

Well, one may say, perhaps sperm whales grew bigger

i n t he nineteenth century, and perhaps being s o ruth-

l e s s l y hunted i n the twentieth they have l i t t l e oppor-

t u n i t y t o a t t a i n t h e i r f u l l length. There doesn ' t

seem t o be any evidence t o support t h i s view; but more

importantly for our purposes, Ishmaelts figures can

be shown to be suspect by a close examination of his

own evidence. His claim that the head of a sperm whale

comprises one third of its total length is accurate and

is confirmed by contemporary authorities .** Accordingly, when Ishmael says of the skeleton at Tranque that its

tskull and jaw comprised some twenty feett (P. 377), by

simple arithmetic we can see, that even allowing for

some extension in life, the whale would have been closer

to the sixty feet claimed by McTaggart Cowan for sperm

whales than the ninety feet claimed by Ishmael in this

particular instance.

Throughout Moby-Dick Ishmael displays a preoccu-

pation with size, as if he expects his theme to become

more weighty and bulkya1 by being surrounded with objects

of great magnitude. A clue to his particular intention

in managing the facts about the length of the sperm

whale can be found in the 'Cetologyt chapter where he

claims that the sperm whale 'is, without doubt the

largest inhabitant of the globet (p. 120). In fact,

the sperm whale is about the same size as the Greenland

or right whale, which Ishmael rather despises, and

smaller than the fin-back, which Ishmael says is

no bigger than the right whale. Because of its speed

the blue whale was not hunted until powered whale boats

were developed, so perhaps Ishmael can be forgiven f o r

not howing t h a t i t , i n f a c t , i s the l a r g e s t inhab i tan t

of the globe. However, as Scoresby w a s one of h i s

sources, he should c e r t a i n l y have known more about the

razor-back which Scoresby claims grows t o one hundred

f e e t i n length. Four pages a r e devoted by Scoresby

t o t he razor-back, which he maintains ' i s the l a r g e s t

animal of the whale t r i b e ; and, probably, the most

powerful and bulky of created beings. t 22 Ishmael,

then, i s being more than disingenuous when he says of

the razor-back: *Let him go. I know l i t t l e more of him,

nor does anybody e l s e t (p. 123) .23 It seems t h a t

Ishmael i s t ry ing t o conceal, o r a t l e a s t b lu r , t he

f a c t t h a t severa l species of whalebone o r baleen whales,

l i k e the fin-back and the razor-back which he regards

as being i n f e r i o r t o the sperm whale ( r i g h t l y i n some

r e s p e c t s ) , a r e r a t h e r inconveniently l a r g e r i n s i z e ,

and t h a t even the r i g h t whale ( a l so a baleen whale)

i s about as big. Unfortunately Ishmael ts misrepresenta-

t i o n s l ack consistency. For example, it is evident

t h a t he had t o know of the extreme s i z e of some whale- - bone whales from an examination of h i s own t E x t r a c t s t

where he quotes S ibba ld t s F i f e and Kinross: 'Several

whales have come i n upon t h i s coast ( ~ i f e ) . Anno 1652, one eighty f e e t i n length of the whale-bone kind came

ingeeel (p. 5 ) - As in so many other cases, Ishmael

gives his own game away, Because the sperm whale

constitutes part of his great theme he wishes to make

it pre-eminent among living creatures, but even while

he misrepresents he simultaneously alerts the reader

to what he is doing. In this way the self-consciously

created and subjective nature of the narrative is again

emphasized. As we shall see again later, Ishmael is

often disrespectful towards mere facts--he is seeking

not so much the truth of fact but truth of impression

and feeling. He feels that the sperm whale ought to

be the largest living creature so he strives to make

it so, but the inconsistencies indicate the lack of

real conviction with which he does so, for although

subjective truths may to him be the most important

kind he knows that they are nevertheless suspect,

partial, incomplete, or distorted.

However, Ishmael also has other important themes

to amplify--most sigrdficantly the whole account of

Ahab and his desperate metaphysical struggle with the

malignant forces of the universe that he believes

embodied in Moby Dick, In another of those frequent

and usually revealing references to his narrative

method, Ishmael reveals Ahab in a new light when he

remarks :

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trap- pings and housings are denied me. (p, 130)

Ishmael is being disingenuous, of course, for he

borrows 'majestical trappings,' rhetorically at least,

for Ahab when he wishes to build up the image of his

'poor old whale-hunter.' Only sixteen pages prior to

the passage just quoted Ishmael refers to Ahab in very

different terms:

In o l d Horse, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones [his ivory stool], without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khm of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab. (p.114)

Of course, the association of Ahab with the trappings

of ancient kings,is made in Ishmael's mind--he 'bethinks1

him of that royalty, There is a great deal more of this

rhetorical building up of Ahab and I propose to examine

the question in some detail in Part 11. For the moment

all I wish to emphasize is, again, Ishmael's creative

activity--when he refers to Ahab as 'my Captaint he

is being accurate in more senses than one. The imagi-

native nature of Ishmaelts creation is indicated in

some further words which are attached to those lines

above quoted from p. 130: 'Oh, Ahab! what shall be

grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the

skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the

unbodied air! Notice that Ishmael says 'what shall be - grand1--not what was or what is. He is making a - - promise to the reader (rather than to Ahab) about the

creative effort he will undertake. Ahabts grandeur

is not given, Ishmael must look for it in the skies,

in the deep and in the 'unbodied air,' that is, in

hi=: frrsgication, =d t h e i i i i p i l ~ a i i v r r is tnat tne reality

of Ahab was somehow otherwise.

However, if Ahab is to be a 'Khan of the plank, and

a king of the sea' he needs a suitable setting and a

cast of supporting characters and these too must be

built up in the same way. And so we find that again

Ishmael discusses his creative task openly with the

reader. The 'Specksynderl chapter in which 1shmael

makes reference to Ahab as a 'poor old whale-hunter'

connects back to the two 'Knights and Squirest 'chap.ters

where Ishmael discusses the Pequodts officers ('The

Specksynderl resumes with these words, 'Concerning

the officers of the whale-craft...'). In the first

of the 'Khights and Squires1 chapters these lines occur,

and again they refer to method:

If, then to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mourn- ful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that work- man's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, . . . (pp . 104-5)

Again the implication is that the reality Ishmael

experienced was something other and distinctly less

'grandt than the creative, ficticczlixcd S C C G G E . ~ he

later gives of it. Thus, in two connected chapters,

Ishmael briefly draws back the veil and discourses

on his method, using somewhat similar romantic imagery

in both cases--'skies,' 'unbodied air,' 'ethereal light,'

and 'rainbow1--in order to give expression to his

creative and imaginative endeavours. The assumption

left for the reader to make is that Ishmael is working

to 'exalt' his commonplace materials. At this point it

is tempting to ask then what were Ahab and the crew

'really1 like? --were they really 'meanest mariners1?--

and without too much difficulty one could start asking

absurd questions of the 'how many children had Lady

Macbeth?' kind. I confess that I investigated the

possibility of establishing some conjectural 'factst

about events and characters on which Ishmael Imust have1

based his later account, but soon gave up the attempt,

It might seem safe to assert that Ahab must have been

a remarkable and impressive man, a 'natural genius1

(as Ishmael called him) at the very least and one whom

it might very well have been appropriate to magnify

into tragic dimensions, Consider the verdict of so many

other characters besides Ishmael and consider, too,

Ahabls own demonic actions, forging his harpoon in

blood and defying the elements themselves. And yet

I don't think it is necessary or productive to follow

up this line of investigation. It is impossible at any

given moment to isolate some hypothetical 'real1 events

and 'actual1 characters from Ishmaells presentation of

them, especially bearing in mind that Ishmael controls

all the material in the book and there is often good

reason to question his truthfulness and be suspicious

of the language he uses. What is important is to realize

that Ishmael simultaneously presents contrary views of

characters and events, with the clear indication that

one view is magnified or inflated for purposes of his

own, while the reality is somewhat more commonplace,

though it is impossible to assert in just what precise

respect. Ahab is probably called crazy nearly as often

as he is called (or implied as being) great. Yet to

say that Ahab is treally' a grim but crazy old

Nantucket sea-captain is to be absurdly reductionist

and denies the very real power with which Ishmael

presents him. The point to focus on is not the extent

to which Ahab is really otherwise than he is presented,

but the fact that he is a creation of the narrator. The

meaning of the book will not be revealed by looking for

some other supposed nature for Ahab but at the motives

of the narrator in so building up his demonic character.

I have already suggested that one of Ishmael's motives

was, having continually confronted danger and imminent

death, to treat the metaphysical questions that forcibly

presented themselves to him in these circumstances in

a suitably lofty and powerful manner. I think he had

other reasons connected with this first one, but dis-

cussion of them properly belongs to Part 111.

There has been some ambiguity in the use I have

been making of the word 'creativet in regard to Ishmael.

Partly it has been intended to signify that Ishmael-

is a 'creator,' but it is also appropriate to describe

his active, enquiring, imaginative and productive mind.

In the next three sections I wish to consider these

characteristic attributes more closely.

Ishmael I s Enquiring Mind

Ishmael's curiosity, his intense spirit of enquiry

and thirst to know, are among his most persistent and - important habits of mind. Indeed one could say that

without them there could be no book for much of it,

in fact, is a record of Ishmaells wrestlings with the

obscure, the mysterious and the undecipherable. I use

the word 'wrestling1 with deliberation for Ishmael is

no passive observer or detached recorder of men, objects

and events--he is always intensely involved with what

he contemplates.

The entire book is, of course, the best evidence

one could adduce to illustrate the point being made

but some few fragments must suffice. Ishmael's curiosity

is established early on as he makes his way among strange

places and faces in New Bedford and Nantucket. Here we

need suspect no discrepancy between what the character

once was and what the narrator is. The most significant

element of continuity between the young Ishmael snd the

later narrator is surely this same curiosity. When

Ishmael entered the Spouter-Inn, the first thing he

noted was an old oil painting so thoroughly begrimed

and defaced that it was almost undecipherable. Ishmael's

efforts to make sense of the picture constitute a model

of his method of enquiry. 'It was,' he says, 'only by

diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it,

and careful enquiry of the neighbours, that you could

any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose, (p, 20).

Before arriving at any conclusion about the picture

Ishmael has to engage in 'much and earnest contemplation,

and oft repeated ponderingsl which lead to the formu-

lation of his 'final theory. ' Here we discover Ishmael using his eyes--he is always wanting to see--but obser- - vation is never enough and must always be accompanied

contemplation, an activity of mind, before some

conclusion can be reached. And it is significant that

Ishmael canorily form a theory about what the picture

illustrates, although one might expect an evidently

representational painting above all things to yield

simple visual examinat i on. But no, in his inter-

pretation Ishmael must take into account 'the aggregated

opinions of many aged persons1--in other words to arrive

at understanding he engages not only in observation &"", 04 K ~ m y and contemplation but also research. p ~ , w s s

I t \\

Later on in the 'Spouter-Inn1 chapter there is kL4

a long episode devoted to Ishmael's surreptitious

observation of his strange roommate who, of course,

turns out to be the amiable Queequeg. However, before

the introductions are made, Ishmael finds himself both

fascinated and afraid of the strange harpooner:

I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely non- plussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. (p. 2 9 )

Ignorance produces fear and fear prevents the investi-

gation and understanding that will dispel f ear--this

is Ishmael's dilemma and it is one that he must con-

&: ----- 1 ? - - - - - - - - - . - c u r u t t l l y u v e ~ x u i i l e . A i ihe e rd 02 *~oomings; he says, '--I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still

be social with it--would they let me--since it is well

to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the

place one lodges in.' The reference to lodging makes

it very appropriate to consider this passage in con-

junction with the one previously quoted. Although

'the place one lodges in' refers metaphorically to the

whole world and not specifically to the Spouter-Inn,

yet the latter is part of the world too. If Ishmael

is to be 'social1 with horrors, be it a 'head-peddling

purple rascal1 at dead of night or a white whale in

which he

if he is

imminent

can see tnaught,,.but the deadliest illt;

to overcome fear and bear up in the face of

danger; if he is to come to terms with the

fundamental problems of human existence, then he must

continually endeavour to know and to understand, In

Moby-Dick Ishmael begins with simple mysteries like

the picture and Queequeg's identity but he soon proceeds

to more profound ones, After signing the papers and

becoming a member of the Pequodts crew Ishmael decides

that he wants to - see Captain Ahab on the grounds that when taking ship lit is always as well to have a look

at [the Captain] before irrevocably committing yourself

into his handst (p. 76). But he is disappointed, for

Ahab keeps close inside his house, and so Ishmael leaves

the ship experiencing a mixture of emotions, some of

which he can't exactly describe, together with, as

he says, 'impatience at what seemed like mystery in

him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then.' As

events move forward so the mysteries deepen and enlarge

until the central mystery--the nature of the universe

and rnants place in it--informs the whole book. Critics

have complained that Ishmael as a character disappears

leaving the story to some other narrator. However,

Ishmael's later method of enquiry is essentially the

same as that of Ishmael the character and establishes

an obvious link between them. Ishmael does not dis-

appear from the narrative, he writes himself more

deeply into it so that the more commonplace problems

which the character confronts within the context of .

the novel are superceded by the problems which the

narrator still faces and which the novel itself is an I

attempt to come to grips with. However, I propose to

examine the narrator's later methods of enquiry

separately under the next heading.

Ishmael's Researches

Although it is correct to emphasize the continuity

#....I- 1 a# .17 -...a -47 -a+L. -a- ..a *--.. :...-- L - A ...-- - -L ---- A-- V I V U V & V V & C U L U V I IIIG U Z A V U U V A G A A Y U A A J UC b V V C C A A G l L U l Q G b C 1

and narrator some significant differences in the state

of their knowledge and experience must also be noted.

When Ishmael signs on to sail with the Pequod he has

had no previous experience of whaling and is most

ignorant about it. His naivete is revealed by the

practical joke that the landlord of the Spouter-Inn

plays on him in persuading him to share Queequegls

room without explanation of who his bed-companion is

to be. The fact that the landlord regards him as a

suitable butt for his joke is in itself significant.

Ishmael insists to the landlord, 'I1m not green,'

although after receiving the landlord's explanation

about Queequeg he finally says naively: 'This account

cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and

showed that the landlord, after all, had no idea of

fooling me' (p. 26). He is amazed when Queequeg uses

his harpoon for a razor2%ut adds: 'Afterwards I wondered

less at this operation when I came to know of what

fine steel the head of a harpoon is made' (p. 35).

Later Peleg is able to make fun of Ishmael's expressed

desire to go whaling in order to see the world by

instructing him to look out to sea, that being the

portion of the world that whalers chiefly see while

cruising about the globe. So Ishmael indeed has need

of Queequeg as friend and companion for as he frankly

confesses, 'besides the affection I now felt for

Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooner, and as

such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one,

who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of

whaling' (pp. 57-8).

Nevertheless, shortly after the point in the narra-

tive where the Pequod plunges 'like fate into the lone . ,

Atlantic ( 'Merry Christmas, p. 97) Ishmael, although

still a novice according to the chronology of events,

turns advocate and discourses learnedly on whaling.

He says at the beginning of 'The Advocate8:

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.

In this passage we are involved once again with the

retrospective narration. Ishmael's 'now1 refers to

a point in the narration and not to the time of the

events. The narrator's retrospective view of his

'green1 and inexperienced self is accompanied by the

fruits of the research and investigation which he has

done in the intervening years between the sinking of

the Pequod and his time of writing.

Edgar Dryden in discussing Ishmael's researches,

notes that 'his investigations...from the beginning,

are literary rather than scientific. t 2 5 In 'The Decanter1

Ishmael refers to his 'numerous fish-documents1 and

adds: 'Nor have I been at all sparing of historical

whale research, when it has seemed needed1 (p. 371).

Indeed he claims to have swum through libraries.

'Etymology' and 'Extracts1 which preface the text

are a kind of model of Ishmael's research technique.

In the former he sets out all the ways he knows of

naming the whale (trying to name it into being, so

to speak) and in the latter he.seeks to provide, as he

says, 'a glancing bird's eye view of what has been

promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of

Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including

our ownf (p. 2). In other words he amasses information

and comment on the whale (~promiscuouslyf is his word) 1 7 f u i z b ~ Zo

in the hope that out of a welter of material the figure ~ , d - ~ ~ ,&i fL *

of the whale itself will emerge in comprehensible fashion. V ~ : , , ~ , C .

Ishmael projects onto the 'poor devil' of a 'sub-sub-

librariant his own methods of investigation. Perhaps

this is another of Ishmael's roles for he too has 'gone

through the long V a t 5 cans anrl street-st2llg cf t h e e ~ r t h ,

picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could

anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profanef

(p. 2). In fact, Ishmael ransacks his whale sources

in search of some clue that will unlock the mystery of

the undecipherable Leviathan. The task is a hopeless

one for mere human knowledge is hard put to explain the

mysteries of the visible, natural world, of which whales

are the mightiest symbols, and is quite inadequate to

explain the mysteries of the invisible, spiritual world.

Ishmael is immensely concerned about the validity of

the statements he makes and the sources he refers to,

to the extent of undermining the reader's confidence in

what he says. In his introduction to the 'Extracts,'

Ishmael actually warns the reader against accepting

too readily the whale research he sets before us:

'Therefore you must not, in every case at least,

take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however

authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel

cetology' (p. 2).

The warning has some point, especially as at least

one of the whale statements has been tampered with.

A quotation from Scoresby alleges that 'Sometimes the

whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,

cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of

three or four miles1 (p. 8). Actually Scoresby wrote

'two or three miles126 and not three or four. I take

this to be another example of Ishmael's desire to mag-

nify the theme of the whale. What it also indicates

is that the reader must treat Ishmaells researches

with some caution and even scepticism. Just as in his

presentation of Ahab and the crew Ishmael simultaneously

suggests that the reality was somehow otherwise, so..in

the presentation of his researches about whaling he also

simultaneously suggests that the reality is unapproachable

and undiscoverable. However, I wish to reserve further

discussion of this point until later. Here I simply

want to draw attention to the fact that, count,

thirty-four chapters of Moby-Dick are devoted by Ishmael

tothe superadding of facts, information, research,

historical and literary material and so on, besides

all the similar material added to a greater or lesser

extent to the other chapters, 27 This material is a

product of Ishmael's own intellectual activity, much

of it subsequent to the voyage of the Pequod and there-

fore an addition to the narrative suggested by the events

themselves, Ishmael is as much a 'creator' in this as

in the elaboration of the events and characters pre-

viously discussed,

Ishmael's Imaginative Sensibility

In the Spouter-Inn, apart from the painting already

referred to, Ishmael discovered also a 'heathenish array

of monstrous clubs and spears' (p, 21). His response

to one of these weapons, as it is recorded, reveals

the impressionable and suggestible nature of Ishmael's

mind: 'You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what

monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone

a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying

implement,' This is but an early example of a per-

sistent trait exhibited both by the young Ishmael in

the narrative and the later Ishmael responsible for

the narrative. Ahab, in particular, had a profound

effect on the young Ishmael: '...what had been revealed

to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild

vagueness of painfulness concerning him' (p. 77).

So 'powerfully' did the 'whole grim aspect of Ahabt

affect him that, when taking the oath to hunt down

Moby Dick, Ishmael says:

... and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathe- tical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. (p. 155)-

The passionate nature of Ishmael's response to Ahab

is measured by his use of the word 'wild' twice in

the passages quoted above. Ishmael possesses that

Romantic faculty referred to by M. H. Abrams in his

discussion of Shelley's idea of a 'sympathetic imagina-

tion by which man puts himself "in the place of another

and of many others."' 28 Inevitably any discussion of

Ishmael's imagination will recall the Romantic theory

made current in the first half of the nineteenth century

by Shelley among others but particularly by Coleridge,

of course. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to

make any detailed analysis of how these theories are

reflected in Moby-Dick. However, in 'The Whiteness

of the Whale' chapter, Ishmael himself makes reference

to the imagination so perhaps some few words on the

subject are in order. In this chapter, character and

narrator are again directly linked. Ishmael records

that 'It was the whiteness of the whale that above

all things appalled met (p. 163), and then, as narra-

tor, goes on to try to indicate the source of the horror

of whiteness on impressionable minds, although he regards

the whole question as fundamentally beyond analysis,

Moreover, Ishmael makes clear the highly subjective nature

of the whole problem, for individuals respond to the

sense impressions of the world according to their own

sensibilities. Imagination is necessary for one indi-

vidual to be in s_vmgathetic qrrnrd with =ctheris r c q x ~ s s .

As Ishmael says, '..,in a matter like this [the problem

of whiteness], subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without

imagination no man can follow another into these hallsf

( p * 167).

Although Ishmael tends to use the terms 'imagination1

and lfancy1 interchangeably, he does apparently see some

distinction between them (but not a Coleridgean one),

as when he says: '...to choose a wholly unsubstantial

instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading

the old fairy tales of Central Europe,,.' (p. 167).

The term lfancyl seems to be applied here to the responses

to imaginary objects, while 'imagination1 is reserved

for objects having a real existence in the world.

Despite some inconsistency in Ishmael's usage,

therefore, his overall view seems to be that imagination

is that subjective quality which permits an individual

to respond powerfully to the appearances of the external

world, as well as to the imaginary constructions of the

mind, such as fairy tales. There is a strong implication

that Ishmael regards the ordinary run of men as essen-

tially unimaginative and therefore incapable of this

response:

I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is t h e r e zugCt of terror in those appearances whose awful- ness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon,... (p. 168)

In this account, Ishmael's is clearly the 'other mind1

that perceives the terror. Indeed, so much so that

he is anxious to refute a charge (which he himself

raises) that in his response to whiteness he is surren-

dering to a 'hypo.'

I think that in the receptivity of Ishmael's

imagination is to be found one of the mainsprings of

his creative activity. Coleridge said that, 'Events

and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery

of the external world, are like light, and air, and

moisture, to the seed of the Mind, which would else

rot and perish. 129 So Ishmael's spirit was stirred and

his mind brought into activity by the events of the

Pequod's fateful voyage and through his imagination

he was moved from response ultimately to the desire

to re-create.

Ishmael and the Organic Process

The metaphor of organic growth contained in the quota-

tion from Coleridge above is also very relevant to

Ishmael's creative method. The quotation continues:

'In all processes of mental e v n l v - t i c ~ the cbjects cf

the senses must stimulate the Mind; and the Mind must

in turn assimilate and digest the food which it thus

receives from without. I 30 Or, to quote Abram's gloss

on this statement, 'In Coleridge's organic theory,

images of sense become merely materials on which the

mind feeds--materials which quite lose their identity

in being assimilated to a new whole. 31 The under-

lining is mine because I wished to draw attention to

a general proposition which supports the particular

view of Moby-Dick I have put forward--namely that

Ishmael has creatively transformed the characters and

events that were originally presented to him.

However, Coleridge's theory of the organic imagi-

nation also usefully accounts for how Ishmael is able

to control the mass of diverse material which Moby-Dick

contains. 32 Like Coleridgels poet, Ishmael 'diffuses

a tone and spirit of unity' and through the 'esemplasticl

power of imagination shapes his material into one ac-

cording to a principle of growth analogous to that in

living things. 33 In a well-known passage Ishmael impli-

citly acknowledges his debt to the organic theory:

'Out of the t m k , the branches grow; out of them, the

twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chaptersf

(p. 246). Walter Bezanson, no doubt taking his cue

from F. 0. ~atthiessen, has discussed the organic struc-

ture of hloby-Dick at some length, noting for example

the relationships between groups of chapters like 'The

Chapel,' 'The Pulpit1 and 'The Sermon,' and the fact

that 'in each case a killing provokes either a chapter

sequence or a chapter cluster of cetological lore

growing out of the circumstances of the particular

killing!34 However, I don't intend to cover this .

ground again in detail but rather would refer to what

Bezanson somewhat floridly calls 'the organic mind-world

of Ishmael whose sensibility rhythmically agitates the

flux of experience ' 35--this, says Bezanson, is the

dynamic of Moby-Dick. In other words, the true focus

of the novel is not the events supposedly taking place

in the external world, but the active, shaping mind

that controls and re-creates them as it controls and

re-creates all the material it acquires. Moreover,

the comments on method in the novel, of which a number

have already been quoted, are not mere digressions or

irrelevancies but evidence of a mind contemplating

its own activity in the very moment of creation. So

although the book may grow according to what appear

to be natural laws, the self-conscious artist-narrator,

Ishmael, is nevertheless very much in charge of the

whole process. This emphasis on the importance of the

narrator's activity of mind also helps to account for

the disappearance of Ishmael the character. What could

be more 'natural' than for a narrator to begin his

account with his own physical actions (to get going,

as it were) and then through a process of growth and

change in the creative act itself, to gradually phase

them out as his mental operations become more and more

important to his artistic purpose?

Before concluding Part 1,1 wish to comment on

some other aspects of Ishmael's active, creative mind

--not as central, perhaps, but significant, I think,

nevertheless. The first of these introduces a topic

which will be dealt with more fully in its implications

45

in Part 111. Here I simply wish to take note of:

Ishmael ' s Analogizing Mind

In his essay 'Nature1 Emerson articulated in very pure

form the transcendentali~t~~ position with regard to

the relationship between language, nature, and spirit:

1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols

of particular spiritual fact 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. %

In Emerson's view, 'man is an analogist, and studies

relations in all objects. 138 Emerson would have found

confirmation for this view if he had ever met the crew

of the Pequod, who are all, with the exception of the

astonishingly unimaginative Flask, given to analogising.

Even Stubb, who carefully cultivates his unthinking

attitude behind the terrific smokescreen of his pipe,

is not immune to reasoning from analogy and symbol.

As he says in 'The Doubloon' chapter: 'Pity if there is

nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders1

(p. 361). Ahab, of course, is the most notorious trans-

cendentalist in this respect. Emerson says, 'Every

natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every

appearance in nature corresponds to some state of mind1 39

--to which Ahab utters his assent: '0 Nature, and 0 soul

of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked

analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in

matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mindt (p. 264).

This belief is the philosophical basis for Ahab's

quest, for to him Moby Dick is a monstrous .(literally

and figuratively) natural symbol.

Ishmael, like the rest, is also an analogizer

(but with some significant differences). A n example

of Ishmael's analogizing is his disquisition on Free Will

and Necessity in 'The Matmaker.' His account of 'fast-fish*

and 'loose-fish' also gives rise to analogizing, and

moralizing too (this is usually the next step).

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too? (p. 334)

As well as illustrating Ishmael's analogizing tendencies,

this passage also reveals his habit of speaking directly

I to the reader. He does not often say 'you, reader'

but nevertheless much of Moby-Dick consists of a direct

communication between Ishmael and the reader, mediated

by the narrative. The relationship between the narrator

and the author and between the narrator and his created

characters have already been considered, but it is this

relationship between narrator and reader which is really

at the heart of the book. If Moby-Dick is not simply

about Ahab and the Pequod, then neither is it simply

about Ishmael, but rather it is about how Ishmael's

consciousness impinges itself upon the reader through

his use of language and tone, the offspring of language.

This is a truism, of course--every narrator establishes

a relationship with his reader--but it is particularly

important to bear in mind with Moby-Dick in order to

preserve a proper view of the novel.

However, to return to the subject of this section,

another characteristic habit--his frequent punning and

verbal play, A n early example occurs in his response

to Bildad's humbug about 'the seven hundred and seventy-

seventht lay when Ishmael's remuneration is being consi-

dered.:

, indeed, thought I, and such' a lay! the seven hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed,...

(p. 74, Ishmael ' s emphasis)

A well-known example of Ishmael's punning is the phallic

48

joke contained in his use of the word 'archbishoprick'

in 'The Cassock' chapter dealing with the curious grab

of the mincer. I see both the analogizing and the

punning as persistent traits of an exceptionally active

mind which is continually working over the materials

presented to it, The point may seem obvious but it

again serves to emphasize the importance for the novel

of what is going on in Ishmael's mind. Again it is

a question of focus. Both punning and analogizing

depend upon the ability to perceive correspondences--

the pun is not a low form of wit at all but requires

the ability to make connections among things (and words)

discrete. For Ishmael, both activities are a kind of

creative play whereby he tests their ability to yield

insights. In this respect the analogizing is much

the more important activity since it bears directly

on one of the fundamental problems dealt with by the

novel--which is, how can men acquire certain knowledge

about the world they inhabit?

It is of great significance, therefore, that

Ishmael's analogizing carries with it an implicit

criticism ofthe activity. I propose to examine this

matter in Part 111, however, For the moment I wish

to recapitulate briefly the aims of Part I.

I have tried to show that Ishmael is creative both

in the sense of being the 'creatort of Moby-Dick through

the elaboration and magnification of characters and

events, and also in the sense of having an active and

imaginative mind. Such conclusions both illustrate and

follow from the premises outlined in the Introduction

and therefore they only help to clear the ground a little

further. The next stage in the ground clearing is to

proceed to an examination of certain aspects of Ishmael's

use of language. Some hints have already been given of

the way in which Ishmael, while saying one thing, can

simultaneously suggest its opposite. However, apart

frnm the e x q l i e i t ind icg- t iws cf this i-en-~ncy that

we have already looked at, there are other equally

important indications implicit in the language itself.

It is to this matter, and others, that I now wish to

turn.

PART I1

WHAT ISHMAF,LIS LANGUAGE REVEALS

I11f you're wr i t ing a book about a whaling expedition," s a i d my good f r i end the senior whaling inspector , I1don1t t e l l t he exact t ru th . If you do, nobody ashore w i l l bel ieve you, and nobody i n the whaling world w i l l recognize you as a whaleman; f o r no whaleman author ever has t o l d t he exact t r u t h s ince Herman Melville - s e t t he standard of whaling mendacity."

R. B. Robertson, O f Whales and Men - --

Par t I1 i s founded first of a l l on the obvious facC

tha t i t i s i n the language of the novel tha t the a c t i v i t y

of Ishmael's mind i s manifested and secondly on the

assumption tha t the language w i l l have embedded i n i t

tokens, a s i t were, of Ishmael's a t t i tudes , preoccu-

pations and problems. Many of these tokens w i l l be

implici t i n the language, although, a s I sha l l t r y t o

show, Ishmael frequently makes h i s concerns exp l i c i t

too. The language i s therefore a l l of a piece, inner

and outer meanings being complementary.

Again i n Par t I1 separate but re la ted topics a re

clustered together under t h e i r respective headings.

They a l l have t o do with how Ishmael controls h i s

material and most t r y t o show the subt le ty and com-

plexi ty of h i s use of language, especially where he

holds opposite meanings i n suspension i n the language.

To t h i s extent Par t I1 moves closer t o the problems

of meaning. Ishrnaelts language i s treacherous, it

seems t o me,and i t s tone often puzzling or disturbing.

The reader must beware. S t i l l , a s Ishmael says, 'we

can hypothesize, even i f we cannot prove and establ ish. '

.

The Language of Equivocation

In -----, The Wake of the Gods Bruce Franklin, noting the 'double negatives, the passive voice, involuted syntax,

and ... hesitant wording' of a typically equivocal passage from Moby-Dick, says, 'If this asserts anything

positively, it asserts positive doubt. 140 Such a

paradoxical statement is quite suitable to describe a

persistent effect of Ishmael's language. Numerous

examples of his equivocation are to be found through-

out the book but one or two must serve as models. At

the beginning of the chapter appropriately entitled

'Surmises,' we find this passage which I quote in full

to show the length to which Ishmael's convoluted,

hesitant language can sometimes run:

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion; never- theless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at . least if this were otherwise there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated

one he hunted, But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him. (pp. 182-3)

In this passage, the subordinate qualifying clauses

and phrases, the use of conditional constructions, and

the double negatives, all announce that here is a narra-

tor who does not claim certain knowledge in human affairs.

Ishmael does not assert his omniscience but writes in

carefully hedged phrases which confess his fallibility.

It is all the more interesting that he should do so

considering what has already been said about his role as

creator. However, just as Ishmaells creative role is a

consequence of the inescapably subjective nature of any

account of men and events, so his qualified language is

an implicit acknowledgement of that same fact. Ishmael

can only present things as (in retrospect) they - seem to him to have been. That 'seem to him1 is important

for it encompasses both the magnification (lcreationl)

of character and theme that we have already examined

and the acknowledgement that the narrative contains

one man's subjective, fallible account.

The word Iseem' occurs in the passage quoted above,

and beyond that it occurs as a kind of refrain through-

out the entire book, in the various different forms of

the verb. 4 1 To illustrate, I quote from a page on which

the word - a p s s - eight times (and four more times on the

following

But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fideli- ty; at least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions might - seem to hint them. (p. 439, emphasis added)

Again the word occurs in a context of other qualified

language and again the effect is to emphasize the narra-

torts subjective and therefore potentially fallible

stance. The word 'seem' is often used in regard to

Ahab, as the two previous quotations indicate. Indeed,

it is the second word used in Ishmael's account of his

first view of Ahab: 'Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-

deck. There seemed no sign of common bodily illness

about him,...' (p. 109). However, Ahab rarely uses the

word himself--he is much too certain about what he knows

to hedge with 'seems.' The word also disappears at

other significant points in the narrative. For example,

it does not occur in Father Mapplels sermon. Like Ahab

the old preacher is much too sure of his own understanding

to qualify his statements. 'Seems' is essentially the

narrator's word and denotes a qualitative difference

between his language and that ascribed to the bther

characters, which, in turn, indicates Ishmael's more

tentative way of apprehending the world. 'Seeming1

is not an attribute of an object but refers to a mode r l " c

of perception pertaining to a subjective consciousness.

Whenever, one says 'seems1 one can, with greater accuracy

and point, say 'seems to me' as, in fact, Ishmael often

does. To refer back for a moment to a point made in

the Introduction, the use of 'seems1 also underlines

the indispensability to Melville of a first-person narra-

tor. The word would be inappropriate if used extensively

by a third-person narrator, who is commonly expx%ed t ~ !

possess a greater degree of omniscience--a degree of

omniscience that Melville in fact does not want to

invest in any kind of narrator.

The effect of Ishmael's equivocation is to make

language do double duty. He is able to suggest certain

interpretations of motivations and events while simul-

taneously calling them in question by means of the '

hedging and doubt-laden language that he uses. This

too may be described as an activity of Ishmael's mind

embedded in and revealed through his language. What

we have here is a process by which Ishmael, implicitly

at any rate, tests the limits of his own knowledge and

understanding. There are many passages in the book,

most notably, of course, the descriptive action passages,

where Ishmaells language is direct, bold and assertive.

However, there are also many passages where he retreats ,I b<c 4 =

into the kind of tortuous prose already quoted, and &< C-

where he has a kind of nagging awareness of the dif- ic i ~ : - 17--5 Cs %-.cc.

ficulty of making definite statements, particularly

in matters of human motivation and behaviour. The

equivocal language surrounds Ahab, as we have seen,

but it envelops Moby Dick too, and pervades the chapter

which bears his name.

It is hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered? at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them; to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick. (p. 155)

This is one of the 'wilder suggestions about Moby Dick1

which, as Franklin remarks, 'although they prove ex-

tremely important to understanding the book are qua-

lified and equivocated even more. t 4 2 Franklin claims,

justly I think, that 'This equivocation lies at the

heart of Moby-Dick, partly because the heart of Moby

Dick is the central mystery in a world of mysteries. 4 3

Ishmael is thus able to exploit the superstitious rumours

about Moby Dick for their full suggestive value while

at the same time undermining them by equivocation.

However, there are other very important kinds of

equivocal language which Ishmael uses. For example,

some significant ambiguities can be found even in pas-

sages where he appears to be making assertive statements.

(One of the difficulties in approaching Moby-Dick is

that much of the language requires the same kind of

detailed attention that one would give to a dozen lines

of poetry.) This point can be illustrated by reference

to a well-known passage from 'The Doubloont chapter:

'And some certain significance lurks in all things,

else all things arelittle worth, and the round world

itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cart-

load, as they do hills about Boston, to fill. up some

morass in the Milky Wayt (p. 358). At first glance

this appears to be a piece of Emersonian transcenden-

talism; however, the circularity of the argument should

also be noted. It is necessary to assume the thing

to be proved in order to make the assertion. The world

is an 'empty cipher' unless there is 'some certain

significancet in all things. True. Or rather a truism.

What Ishmael is saying is that there is no significance

in things unless things have some significance. Yet,

as we have already seen and will further see, a great

part of Moby-Dick is devoted to showing the uncertainty

of knowledge, understanding and 'significance.' There

is even an ambiguity in the word 'certain' for although

it can mean 'established as true' and 'placed beyond

doubt,' it can also mean 'indefinite in the sense of

not being specifically named' and 'undefined as to

kind, number, quantity, duration, etc . '44~he outcome of these considerations is that Ishmael's statement

has an import quite contrary to its ostensible one.

It provides another example of how he can say one thing

and simultaneously convey its opposite, and I think it

is noteworthy that this particular example concerns a

statement dealing with the 'significance' of the world

and therefore of human knowledge and existence.

A further example of Ishmaelean ambiguity, also

having to do with the problem of human knowledge, occurs

as the narrator with deep irony considers the story of

Jonah as history:

Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that. (pp. 306-7)

Apparently Ishmael is asking us to believe that the

stories about Hercules and Arion are true, an even-

tuality so inherently unlikely as to alert the reader

to the possibilities of ambiguity. In fact there is

a very pleasant double ambiguity in the last line.

On one reading, Ishmael could be saying that of course

the traditions could not be any the less factual than - they are, considering that they are not factual at all,

so it is hardly surprising that the scepticism of the

unorthodox made no difference. Or he could also be

saying that the doubts of the sceptics did not mean

that the traditions themselves were not facts--indeed

they persisted in spite of the doubters.

A passage such as this contains a complex of elements,

therefore. The theme deals with problems of knowledge

and belief, which so concern the narrator, but the

ostensible meaning of the passage must be re-considered

in light of the pervasive irony and the ambiguity which

bring about a reversal of meaning. Irony is one of

Ishmael's most distinctive modes of expression and

being, in itself, a form of equivocation deserves some

examination at this point. The pervasive ironical tone

of the novel is central to both method and meaning. As

Lawrance Thompson maintains,,the total meaning of /

Moby-Dick is 'shaped and controlled and illuminated...

by means of sustained irony. 45 Conventional meanings

are satirized, he says, within the larger context that

controls them. For Thompson, the larger context is

presumably Melville's Quarrel With God, which indicates

to me that he has not read clearly the message that the

irony has to offer. Paul Brodtkorbt has, I think, read

the message more clearly and more rigorously when he

refers to,

... the problematics of Ishmaelean irony, wherein no firm standpoint is offered the reader, and his wishes tend to be projected into the material to providea one, the reader thereby being forced to become part of what he reads. Such irony reflects--just as the implicit rationale of lying does--the atti- tude of a man who knows he does not know. It is iile attitude of negatlve intellectual freedom that allows all standpoints to be playfully adopted for the moment. Committed to nothing, the Ishmaelean ironist can mock- ingly play with as a result of which everything is eerily tinged with the color of mere possibilityg$is ironies, like his lies, are 6

I think, however, that Ishmael is committed to some- - thing--for one, his irony, indeed his whole negative

methodology which is finally assimilated into the

ultimate commitment which is the artistic endeavour

that produced the book. The language of Moby-Dick is

indeed treacherous and the persistently ironical tone

should alert the reader to the possibility that at

any given point in the novel the ostensible meaning

is being reversed or negated or undermined. Once we

understand this we must then trust the narrator's

untrustworthiness, for his self-critical method and

constant challenge to his own material are evidence

of an exceptional honesty of mind, Ironically, however,

Ishmael's honesty of mind is not always accompanied by

strict accuracy as the next section reveals.

Ishmael's Truthfulness

Ishmael's creative role has already been sufficiently

discussed. However, a particular consequence of it is

of interest here, If Ishmael is indeed, as he hints,

magnifying and elaborating his themes, adding invention

to obsemrstinn an3 F~tprpret~ti~~, it Y ; G C ~ ~ z c t 5e

surprising to find him concerned about the validity and

believability of his statements. And, in fact, this is

precisely the case.

Again illustrations abound, but the chapter entitled

'The Affidavit' is of particular interest. The Century - Dictionary defines an affidavit as 'a written declaration

upon oath; a statement of facts in writing signed by

the affiant, and sworn to or confirmed by a declaration

before a notary public, a magistrate, or other authorized

officer,' We may assume, therefore, that in this chapter

Ishmael is attesting to the accuracy of the facts he is

placing before us. Indeed, the first two paragraphs

are specifically concerned with the problem of believa-

bility. In the first, he refers back to the previous

chapter in which he has discussed the migratory beha-

viour of whales and says, '...but the leading matter

of it requires to be still further and more familiarly

enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood,

and moreover to take away any incredulity which a

profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in

some minds, as to the natural veracity of the main point

of this affairt (p. 175). In view of this concern with

veracity it is all the more surprising that 'The Affida-

vit' should therefore contain a glaring error of fact.

Ishmael refers to a harpooner who goes ashore in Africa

and in his wanderings in the interior of that: c w t i z ~ e s %

encounters among other things tigers, which are exclu-

sively Asiatic beasts and are unknown elsewhere outside

of zoos and circuses. Of course, the reference to tigers

may simply be an oversight, but even this would cause

one to question the reliability of a narrator who would

commit a schoolboy howler in a chapter where the facts

have, as it were, been attested to under oath. On the

other hand, the reference may be the result of a studied

carelessness on Ishmael's part--a hint to the reader

not to take this matter of truthfulness too seriously.

It isn't possible to build on this point with any

certainty. Fortunately, however, the language of the

chapter offers us some further clues.

In the long third paragraph Ishmael recounts

examples of whales which were struck, escaped, and

later were struck again and killed by the same har-

pooner. The passage is too long to quote in full

but I will extract from it the strangely insistent

language with which the narrator tries to convince

the reader of the truth of what he is saying:

I have personally known three instances where a whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and after an interval (in one instance of three years), has again been struck by the same hand, and slain; ... In the instance where three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I think it may have been some- +L,;wn mnmn 4.t.lr.n .LLrr-L- -, 3 v u r r + 6 ruvs G U A A c u A U A A a U 0 r I say 1, ayseJ..L , have known three instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; .... In the three-year instance, it so fell out that I was in the boat both times,,...I say three years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no good ground to impeach.

Note the repetitions of 'three instancest and 'three

yearst and '1 personally' and 'I say 1' and so on.

It seems to me that the nagging insistence of the

language rather causes the reader to question Ishmael's

believability than making him assent to it readily,

Ishmael seems to go out of his way to stake his integrity

on the validity of the facts recounted, Yet it is in

precisely this passage that the reference to tigers in

Africa occurs!

Ishmael hints freely at

narrative of the point he is

chances of meeting up with a

in the oceans of the world.

the importance to his

trying to make about the

particular whale somewhere

'The Chart1 chapter, which

first deals with this problem, is, says Ishmael, 'as

important a one as will be found in this volume' (p, 175).

If it is not possible to hunt down one particular whale

then Ahabls quest is ludicrous. Similarly, in regard

to the other point Ishmael is anxious to establish, if

a whale can't sink a ship (or never has done so) then

the catastrophe is also far-fetched. In this 'Affidavit1

chapter Ishmael says:

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe, . For this is one of tho~disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error, (p, 177)

Incidentally, this passage contains one of the more

direct examples of the foreshadowing references which

Ishmael plants in the narrative, Note, too, the remark

about the necessity of bolstering the truth which

enlarges the context and universalizes the narrator's

problem. However, Ishmael continues:

So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable alle- gory. (PO 177)

The merely symbolic is anathema to Ishmael. It is from

visible, verifiable events that his meaning must spring.

Yet even before the question of meaning can be considered

he has this problem of simply establishing the facts.

f t f rAe 3 ~ ~ 2 pcss ib le to sqjzraf e ~ - ~ t is :

from what is 'fictiont concerning Moby Dick than it is

to separate out what Ahab was 'really' like from Ishmaelts

presentation of him-and I don't intend to try. What

is more important here is that Ishmael fears that

he won't be believed and therefore attempts desperately

to establish his credibility but in such an insistent

way as to draw the reader's attention to the problem

he is seeking to overcome. For Ishmael, trying to

establish the facts becomes a kind of self-defeating

activity and raises doubts about the possibility of

establishing the truth of anything.

It i s not only the reader who questions Ishmael's

t ruthfulness , however. Don Sebastian, a f t e r hearing

the wild and violent s tory of the Town-Ho, asks of i t s

nar ra tor , Ishmael: 'Then I entreat you, t e l l me i f t o

the best of your own convictions, t h i s your s tory i s

i n substance r e a l l y true? ... Did you get it from an unquestionable source?' (p. 224) . Ishmael, again

sens i t ive t o any expression o f doubt about h i s veraci ty ,

c a l l s f o r a Bible so t h a t t h i s time he may l i t e r a l l y

swear an oath a t t e s t i n g t o the accuracy of the f a c t s

recounted. This oath he backs by claims t o have person-

a l l y ve r i f i ed the story:

Sc he ly , me IJ,ezi:cn, =d c;n zy h o i ~ o r , i i ~ e s tory I have t o l d ye, gentlemen, i s i n sub- stance and i t s great items, t rue. I know i t t o be t rue ; it happened on t h i s ba l l ; I t rod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with S t e e l k i l t s ince the death of Radney. (p. 224)

Ishmael's last statement r e c a l l s s imilar statements

from 'The Aff idavi t ' where he seeks t o ver i fy infor-

mation by appeals t o h i s first-hand knowledge of events.

After t e l l i n g the s tory of the sinking of the Essex

by a sperm whale he says: 'I have seen Owen Chase,

who was chief mate of the Essex a t the time o f the

tragedy; I have read h i s pla in and f a i t h f u l nar ra t ive ;

I have conversed with h i s son; and a l l t h i s within a

few miles of the scene of the catastrophet (pp. 178-9).

In order to substantiate a reference to Langsdorffls

Voyages Ishmael claims to be related to the captain

of the ship concerned--Captain D'Wolf, that is: $1 have

the honor of being a nephew of his. I have particularly

questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff.

He substantiates every wordt (p. 180). In each case

the form of Ishmael's statements is similar--it is

short and direct and contains repetition of the word

I . Out of context and alone, the statements are

frank, open and believable. In context and in relation

to each other, the statements again testify to Ishmaelts

extreme sensitivity concerning his veracity, Again and

again he tries to anticipate the reader's disbelief but

in so doing raises the questions he is apparently

seeking to quell. Nor does Ishmael help his case when,

in calling for a Bible to swear to the truth of the

Town-Hots story, he jocularly says, 'may I also beg

that you will be particular in procuring the largest

sized Evangelists you cant (p. 224). This is not t.he

only occasion on which Ishmael seems to think that

sheer size is persuasive, This idea is implicit in

what he says about magnifying the theme of the whale

(already quoted). Indeed, he says that when dealing

with Leviathan:

Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me. (p. 379)

Dictionaries are commonly used for purposes of verifica-

tion but the reader may be forgiven for doubting whether

the size of the volume or of its author has much to do

with the matter, any more than the size of a Bible is

significant for its meaning and content. A collateral .LL --. -1-A ---1- 2 u u v u e u c W L L L C ~ iilese speculations produce 1s to wonder

whether the size of the sperm whale itself, which as

we have seen is exaggerated, is as germane to his theme

as Ishmael would have us believe.

In view of the personal reliance which Ishmael

requires the reader to place in him regarding the truth

of events, it is hardly reassuring to find in 'The

Fossil Whale' chapter, that he presents his 'credentials'

as a geologist, 'by stating that in my miscellaneous

time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger

of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars,

and cisterns of all sortst (p. 379) . Again, Ishmaelts

comments do not necessarily invalidate the information

he subsequently supplies, but they do draw attention to

the difficulty of validating facts. 'What is truth?'

jesting Ishmael seems to be saying,

Thus far we have been dealing with material of a

factual nature concerning particular events and particu-

lar kinds of physical information about whales--the

kind of material, that is, that should be most readily

subject to verification. However, Ishmael, being well

versed in myth, is also concerned to present us with

some less verifiable kinds of information. 'The

Honor and Glory of Whaling' he says that his 'researchest

have uncovered many associations between whaling and the

'great demi-gods and heroest and 'prophetst of antiq-

uity (p. 304). Ishmael bolsters his findings with

such comments 'and let no man doubt this Arki t e

story' (p. 304), and 'placed before the strict and

piercing truth ,..' (p. 3Q5). Yet the reasoning with which he establishes his connections, though cast in

a pseudo-logical form, presumably in order to convince

the reader, is in fact deliberately absurd. Ishmael

claims St. George as a whaleman on the ground that it

would have been much more glorious for him to have done

battle with 'the great monster of the deep' rather than

with 'a crawling reptile of the land' ( p a 305) BY

similar specious reasoning Hercules is claimed for the

honor-role of whaling: '.., at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whalef (p, 306). Although, in

this chapter, Ishmael makes remarks touching on the

believability of his statements and although the

pseudo-logical form apparently carries with it an

effort at validation, yet he is not nearly so concerned

here about whether he will be believed. With regard to

the statements from 'The Affidavit,' Ishmael seemed

to fear that he would not be believed but wanted to be.

In such chapters as 'The Honor and Glory of Whaling'

and 'Jonah Historically Regardedt Ishmael does not

expect to be believed but does not care, Much of

Moby-Dick deals with the problem of acquiring and

establishing certain knowledge and with the various

methods available for so doing. In the passages quoted

in this section, Ishmael conveys the difficulty of

establishing the validity of factual information and

the absurdity of trying to establish the validity of

myth and legend. . .

However, Ishmael's difficulties do not rest

simply with the problem of convincing the reader that

he is telling the truth, for there is a further problem

inherent in much of the very material that he is dealing

with, and it is this matter that I wish to consider next,

Ishmael's Communication Problem

In his discussion of Fedallah, who in himself contains

one of the impenetrable mysteries of the book, Ishmael

refers to 'earth's primal generations, when the memory

of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all

men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed

each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and

the moon why they were created and to what endt (p. 199).

Although the problems articulated in this passage (again

problems of knowledge and understanding), doubtless in

these modern days find a more sophisticated expression,

they nevertheless lie at the heart of Moby-Dick. They

constitute its metaphysical centre. There are a number

of key words to be considered in this section--'phantom,t

used in the quotation above, is one of them. Because

the world is unsourced, because the ground of existence

cannot be verified, the world and man8s existence in

it become unreal like a phantom--or, as - The Century Dictionary defines phantom, 'appearance merely; illusion;

unreality; fancy; delusion; deception; deceit.' Ishmael

has a continual apprehension of the world as mere deceit-

ful appearance, as the chapter on 'The Whiteness of the

Whale8 makes clear when he says that 'all deified Nature

absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements

cover nothing but the charnel-house withint (pa 170).

The aptly named 'Gilderv chapter, with its suggestion

of an outward, alluring veneer, is also devoted to this

idea. The problem is to penetrate to the reality which

lies behind the appearance, if indeed reality there be.

On the third page of his narrative Ishmael invites us

to ponder the meaning of the story of Narcissus,

.,.who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

(p , 14, my underlining)

-- narcissus did not understand that the image he saw was himself and so he died because he tried to grasp the

ungraspable. Similarly, many men do not understand

that what they perceive in the universe are reflections

of themselves, constructs of their own subjectivities.

Ahab does not understand this and so he dies too.

There is a remarkable coherence and consistency

in the metaphor that Ishmael is using. Just prior to

the passage quoted above, he tells us that 'meditation

and water are wedded for evert (p. 13). So 'all rivers

and oceans' invite the speculation which conjures up

the 'ungraspable phantom.' Ishmael himself goes to

sea and out of his speculation creates an embodiment

of the phantom (if such a thing is possible?)--the

White Whale himself. Moby Dick, like the image of

Narcissus, is the ungraspable phantom in the water.

This association is suggested in the 'Whiteness'

chapter, 'nor even in our superstitions do we fail to

throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms' (p. 166),

in the chapter on the whale's spout, which recalls

Ishmael's reference to the Narcissus myth in its title,

'The Fountain,' and in 'The Spirit-Spout' where Ishmael

recounts the sailors' superstitious fears that Moby Dick

himself was responsible for 'this flitting apparition'

the 'unnearable spout' (p. 201). More specifically

the connection is also made in the 'Moby Dick' chapter,

by the references to sperm whales as 'apparitions' and

to Moby Dick's supernatural attributes. Finally, there

is the curious, oblique, foreshadowing reference to

Moby Dick at the end of the first chapter, where Ishmael

says, 'two and two there floated into my inmost soul,

endless processions of the whale, and, midmost of them

all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the

airt (p. 16).

I do not propose Moby Dick as the 'ungraspable

phantom1 in order to settle any argument about what he

signifies. He can be different things to different

people both within the novel and without. And this is

really the point--associating the White Whale with

.Ishmael's use of the Narcissus myth emphasizes the

essentially subjective way in which the various images

of Noby Dick are produced. Because he is ungraspable

all that we can know of his attributes and powers and

significance is created out of speculations prompted

by superstitions fear and imaginative dread, Man, as

Enzerson says, is essentially and always an analogist

and the language of the 'Moby Dick' chapter, where

Ishmael ascribes many of the beliefs about the White

Whale to the notorious superstitiousness of sailors,

re-emphasizes this point.

However, Moby Dick is not merely ungraspable in

his attributes and in his significance, in his symbolic

form, so to speak, but also in his physical form. The

whale is literally as well as metaphorically unknowable.

And this, of course, constitutes the heart of Ishmael's

problem--how to speak about the unspeakable, Ishmael

is at some pains to point out how erroneous are the

current representations of whales known to him and he

concludes that 'there is no earthly [note the ambiguity]

finding out precisely what the whale really looks

(p. 228). In regard to the whale's spout, Ishmael

'no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at

head' (p. 312). The head of the whale is a

blind wall,' its brow is unreadable to 'unlettered'

way of

like

says 9

' on this

' dead,

Ishmael for the whale 'like all things that are mighty,

wears a false brow to the common worldt (p. 293). Again

the phantom. Not only may he not be read, neither may

he be heard for he maintains 'his pyramidical silence.'

Of the whale's tail Ishmael remarks, 'I deplore my

inability to express it' (p. 317) and summing up he says:

Dissect him how I may, then, I go but skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face. (p. 318)

Ishmael, then, has the impossible task of trying to

express the inexpressible. The most that he can do is,

as he says, to 'hypothesize' even if he 'cannot prove

and establish' (p. 313). Not surprisingly he also tries

to meet the difficulty by taking inexpressibility for

his theme, as some of the passages already quoted indi-

cate. This theme is denoted by certain key words of

which Ishmael makes extensive use. 'Seem' which signi-

fies the presence of the fallible, subjective observer

has already been dealt with. Others are 'hint' which

indicates the oblique way in which meaning is often

presented; 'perhaps' which is the fallible narrator's

common qualifying word; 'speechless' and 'unspeakablef

which imply the impossibility of communication; 'name-

less' which indicates the impossibility of identification;

'unaccountable' which conveys the difficulty of explana-

tion; and 'mystic' which is used to denote the incompre-

hensible, To illustrate something of Ishmael's use of

these words I will quote a short passage arbitrarily and

out of context: 'Though neither knows where lie the name-

less things of which the mystic sign gives forth such

hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those

things must exist' (p. 169). Apart from illustrating

certain aspects of his use of language, this statement

also reveals Ishmael's apparent wish to believe in

realities that lie behind the shifting, deceptive

appearances of the world. Yet he cannot say that these

'nameless things' - do exist, but that for him they must -- - exist, which suggests that the will to believe has to

assert itself in the face of the incomprehensible,

But, as we shall see, Ishmael cannot long sustain the

will to believe for his scepticism is all pervasive . . . and undermines fixed position.

James Guetti, in - The Limits of Metaphor, discusses - Ishmael's communication problem at some length. As he

sees it, .the problem is to render in language what he

describes as the 'ineffable. 146 For Guetti, the

suggestion of an 'ineffable' reality in Moby-Dick

depends upon the recognition of the insufficiency of

language but is communicated largely by means of this

insufficiency. Ishmael, he claims, exploits special

and artificial kinds of language that draw attention

to the limitations of such language and so communicate

in both a positive and a negative way. 47 Guetti diagnoses

Ishmaelts problem accurately and he is quite right to

lay such emphasis on the function of special languages

in Moby-Dick. However, although his arguments are

sophisticated and full of insight, he takes them one

step too far, I think. He says that the failure of

all the languages in Moby-Dick to yield insight into the

nature of the ineffable, together with Ahab's failure

to achieve the 'ultimate perception,' constitute the

success of the novel, 48 And further that the very

evidence of impenetrability itself suggests a 'vague \

significance. 149 But to equate the failure of the

languages with the success of the novel is to mix

categories, while saying, as he does, that the ineffable

is impenetrable is true but tautological. To go beyond

that and say that there is significance in the ineffable

because of its impenetrability is perverse and illogical,

As Wittgenstein said in the Tractatus, 'Whereof one

cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. I 5 O However,

Wittgenstein was speaking philosophically rather than

artistically and fortunately for us Ishmael did not

remain silent or we should not have the book. It seems

to me that Guetti has confused two factors. Man has, in

Ishmael's words, 'intuitions of things heavenly,' or to

reverse the field, and again in Ishmael's words, man

has an 'instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the

world.' I take intuition and instinct to be synonymous

in these cases (intuition in the sense of 'instinctive

knowledge,' - The Century Dictionary) so the problem is to match the intuitions of the ineffable with verifiable

knowledge and information taken from man's observation

of the world. Here is the dilemma. Man is stuck with

intuitions for which he cannot find an adequate language,

and a world which will yield only to the most superficial

kind of analysis, and with no ascertainable correspon-

dence between the two. One can try to bridge the gap

by sheer force of will and be destroyed like Ahab or

make art out of the dilemma like Ishmael. But unfortu-

nately neither the presence of the intuitions themselves,

however desirable they may be, nor the existence of an

inscrutable universe, however tantalizing, is evidence

of a reality beyond these things themselves. And if

impenetrability suggests significance it is only because

some men will have it so, which brings us back to

subjectivities again. No more than any other man c a n

Ishmael find a solution to the 'Problem of the Universe,'

and he is obliged to wrestle unavailingly with the task

of presenting and discussing it, However, if he cannot

solve the problem he can learn to live with it and at

least out of his labours achieve an artistic success.

Having dealt in these first three sections of Part

I1 with related topics all having to do, in a sense,

with the problem of verification, I propose now to turn

to other less related but nevertheless important aspects

of the language of Moby-Dick, I have already referred

in Part I to Ishmaells hints about the magnification of

his material; I now want to look to the language itself

for further evidence of a rhetorical building up of

character and theme,

The Rhetorical Magnification of Ahab

It has already been suggested that part of Ishmael's

method is to set forth opposed ideas simultaneously. . ,

Therefore, together with the building up of Ahab con- I

tained in, 'For a Khan of the plank, and'a king of the

sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab' (p. l l 4 ) ,

there is also an undermining process at work in the

suggestion that he is 'really' only a 'poor old whale-

hunter.' But as well as in the language used about

Ahab, this building up and undermining process can

also be seen in the language used Ahab. In order

to create a character of sufficiently grand and tragic

stature to match his theme, Ishmael turned for help to

a fully developed, potent and evocative rhetoric, already

existing, that carried with it many of the lofty and

tragical associations that he wanted, So not only does

Ishmael borrow tmajestical trappings' for Ahab, he

borrows a rhetoric for him too.

Much has already been said by critics about Ahabts

Sheespearean language. Lewis Mumford and F. 0,

Matthiessen, among others, have noted that sometimes

Ahab even speaks in what is basically blank verse: 51

I leave a white and turbid wake; Pale waters, paler cheeks, whereter I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm My track; let them; but first I pass. (p. 146)

It has become customary to refer, as indeed does Ishmael,

to Ahabts soliloquies. Much fascinating evidence of

the Shakespearean influence on Moby-Dick has also been

presented by Charles Olson in Call Me Ishmael, so the -- point has been amply made5*and to establish the con-

nection further seems needless. H"owever, two points

are worth noting here. The first is that the charac-

teristic use by Ahab of what Ishmael calls the 'stately

dramatic, thee and thou of the Quaker idiomt (p, 711, - - is a genuine linguistic survival that fits very well

with the narrator's revival of Shakespearean rhetoric.

Secondly, it isn't only Ahab who uses the Shakespearean

language, for Ishmael uses it, too, occasionally, as

when he refers to young whales 'prematurely cut off in

the warm flush and May of life' (p, 303) which picks

up from Macbethts'way of lifet which is 'falltn into

the sere, the yellow leaf. '53 This point serves to

reinforce the assumption--already made and underlying

this whole section--that Ishmael is the 'creator' of \

Ahab and therefore is responsible for his language. 1

I Furthermore, on this view, we don't need to ask how

Ishmael could possibly know what Ahab was saying during

his soliloquies, anymore than we need to ask how he

managed to get down Father Mapple's sermon verbatim,

for it is Ishmael who puts the words into the mouths f

of his characters.

However, although Ishmael uses the Shakespearean

rhetoric with undeniable power, creating a literally

terrific stature for Ahab, we must not overlook those

effects which run in the opposite direction. Ahab's

ear-likeS4 qualities are evident in his defiance of the elements contained in an appropriately short,

dramatic, Shakespearean chapter that has a stage

direction for a title--'The Deck Towards the End of

the First Night Watcht:

Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud, Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time, What a hooroosh aloft there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine, (p, 419)

And yet it seems to me that, although impressive, such

passages reveal the consciously 'created' nature of

Ahab and tend to work against the effect ostensibly

desired. There is, in fact, something absurd about

Ahab's rhetoric. He is rhetorical in the pejorative

sense of the word; he protests too much. This may sound

like mere assertion on my part--one reader's response--

Qowever, there is some direct evidence in the text to

support this view. For example, in the 'Quarter-deck'

chapter, when Ahab is arousing the crew for the hunting

of loby Dick, he cries:

''Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round;' it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; . , , (P. 143)

Ishmael's moose simile completely deflates Ahabls

ranting, or rather shows up the ranting for what it is.

;I

The responses of tarb buck^^ and Stubb to Ahab in this scene are rather revealing. Starbuck is chary of the

evidences of excess in his captain: 'To be enraged with

a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemoust (p. 144 ) .

But it is Stubb, who is not usually presented as being

at all perceptive, who realizes that there is a false

note in Ahab when he whispers, IHe smites his chest,,..

what's that for? methinks it rings most vast, but

hollowt (p, 1 4 4 ) ~ 'Vast but hollow1 sums up Ahab and

his rhetoric in three words.

It is impossible to discuss the rhetoric, however,

without reference to the dramatic aspects and devices

of Moby-Dick, as all the comments about Shakespearean

influence suggest. These dramatic devices are not mere

appendages but are integral knd deserve separate treat-

ment.

Ishmael the Dramatist

As with the Shakespearean influences, the dramatic aspects

of Moby-Dick hardly need to be emphasized here, so

apparent are they. The soliloquies, the Shakespearean

echoes themselves, the 'stage directions1 used as chapter

titles, such as 'Enter Ahab; to him Stubb,' the cutting

from scene to scene, all testify to thispoint. The

'Midnight, Forecastlet chapter is given a completely

i

dramatic rendering with dialogue assigned to a cast

of dramatis personae. Charles Olson called this chapter

'balletic' but it might be more accurate to call it a

masque. 56 It is partly, at least, an entertainment,

with singing and dancing, and could very readily be

staged as such. Noreover, it is stylized to a large

extent, with a few lines being assigned to a cross-section

of the Pequod's crew, representing more than a dozen

different nationalities, none of whom speak with any

significant indication appropriate dialect or

accent, In that sense the scene or chapter is highly

unrealistic, which again serves to emphasize the conscious-

ly and openly 'creative' activity of the narrator.

It is precisely this conscious attempt by the

narrator to cast his material into dramatic that

makes the form so integral to Moby-Dick. Ishmael does

try to retire behind the facade of an objective and

realistic account of events, nor does he try to pretend

that it is the events themselves that control the narra-

tive. the contrary, it is clear that it is the narra-

tor who controls all the material of the novel by means

of the dramatic devices and forms that he employs, Of

course, the narrator has other important ways of control-

ling his material but the dramatic method is particularly

appropriate given the nature of the material he is

presenting and the view of Ahab's character, especially,

that he wishes to set before us. The dramatic form fits

very well the Ahab rhetoric we have already examined.

Therefore, although superficially the dramatic forms,

as manifested in the unrealistic 'Midnight, Porecastle'

chapter particularly, may seem artificial and imposed

on the narrative, they are nevertheless most appropriate

to the material that they control.

However, there is still another sense in which

the dramatic rendering of character and events is of

fundamental importance to the narrative. Ishmael does

not merely present a dramatized view of Ahab and his

actions, he presents Ahab as being self-dramatizin~.

This point can be linked very directly to the discus-

sion in which I claimed that Ahabfs rhetoric was

excessive and overblown. The soliloquies show Ahab

dramatizing himself to himself: 'I leave a white and

turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, whereir I

sail' (p. 146), while many of the other scenes in which

he appears reveal him dramatizing himself to the crew.

Ahab initiates several ritualistic, and therefore, in

a sense, dramatic performances--the swearing of the

oath, 'Death to Moby Dick,' his defiance of the light-

ning in 'The Candles' chapter and the forging of his

harpoon, to mention only three. By such performances

Ahab gains and maintains a moral ascendancy over his

crew so that he may bend them to his purpose. Early

on in 'The Quarter-Deckt chapter we see him using his

dramatic arts:

When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not un- like the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bul- warks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from his stand-point; and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:-

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

(p. 141)

It is difficult to tell from this passage alone whether

Ahab is aware of the arts he is employing--the narrator's

use of the word 'unmindful' might suggest that he is

not, though the glance he darts at the crew could

indicate that he is checking to see what effect his

performance is having. Nevertheless, the summoning

of the crew only to ignore them, the pacing up and down,

the 'half-slouched hat1 and the 'vehement pause' all

reveal a dramatic projection of self, whether conscious

or not. Doubtless many men in command of others, use

such methods but in Ahab the tendency is most marked,

indeed exaggerated. I have already noted that Ishmael

sees himself as having played a role during his voyage

aboard the Pequod, so it is doubly interesting to see

him presenting Ahab as a role-player too. If this

point needs additional support it can be found by

direct appeal to the narrator's comments. In 'The

Specksynderl chapter, Ishmael notes that Ahab sometimes

addressed the crew 'in unusual terms' but further notes

that he also 'masked himself' behind the forms and usages

of the sea. In other words, Ahab was accustomed to

dissembling and playing a role. More importantly for

our present purposes, however, Ishmael then goes on to

say this of the 'irresistible dictatorship' that Ahab

established:

For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. (p. 129)

Ahabls capacity for self-dramatization constitutes one

of the most potent of his external arts. During the

fashioning of a new compass to replace the one whose

poles were reversed by the electrical storm, Ahab again

seeks to impress his crew: 'Then going through some

small strange motions with it [the iron rod]--whether

indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely

intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain

- he called for linen thread;...' (p. 425). And later he cries 'Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord

of the level loadstone! ' and the crew mastered again, slink away. Only the pagan harpooners are unimpressed

by Ahabts performances but their savage hearts are his

anyway. It is the Christian members of the crew who,

despite the moral and spiritual assurances of their

religion, are undone by fear of Ahab.

According to Ishmael (again in 'The Specksyndert

chapter) it is just such 'paltry and baset arts that

keep 'God's true princes of the &pire from the world's

hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air

can give, to those men who become famous more through

their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful * of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted

superiority over the dead level of the mass* (p. 129).

Thus the narrator's own comment again supports the double

view we have of Ahab as being something less than what

he at times appears to be. We have seen how his stature

is undermined by the very rhetoric that builds it up.

Here Ishmael is saying that Ahab betrays himself, that

his dominating stature is also undermined and flawed

by the very 'arts and entrenchments' that he employs

to create it, of which the rhetoric is but one manifes-

tation.

However, Ahab is not alone in his self-dramatizing

tendencies. Father Mapple also shares them. These

two have already been linked by their certainties

through the examination of the word 'seems,' which

neither of them care to qualify their language with.

Now they are linked again by the arts they employ to

predominate over their fellow men, Father Mapple stands

as indomitably as Ahab on the deck of his pulpit ship

to win over his congregation of 'shipmates.' When he

pulls up the rope ladder (described as a 'contrivance')

behind him into the pulpit, Ishmael is provoked to

various reflections. His analogising tendoncg f i n z l l y

prevails and he claims to perceive spiritual signifi-

cances in Father Mapple's action, but a very different

thought crosses his mind when he says ironically:

'Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for

sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him

of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage'

(p. 43). Apart from the irony, simply uttering the

thought, even to dismiss it, raises a doubt about

Father Mapple in the reader's mind, Moreover, Ishmael's

presentation of the old preacher, reveals similar devices

to those used by Ahab--gestures, pauses, and silences

among them:

He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed beeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. (p. 44)

At the end of the sermon he takes a final curtain,

as it were: 'He said no more, but slowly waving a

benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so

remained, kneeling, till all the people had departed,

and he was left alone in the placet (p. 51). Father

Mapplets nautical rhetoric, applied to the story of

Jonah, is impressive like Ahab's but it too is some-

what ~ h l _ r r 6 , The e l r z S c r ~ t i o z s on iile Conan story,

the continual addressing of the congregation as 'ship-

mates', the very certainty of the language itself,

denote an intrusive ego which again tends to undermine

what is professed. Of course, what Father Mapple

professes is a rigid Christianity apparently the complete

opposite of Ahab's Satanic creed. Yet Father Mapple

shows some of Ahab's willingness for violence in con-

ferring 'delight' on him who 'kills, bums, and destroys

all sint (p. 51). The sceptical Ishmael presents them

both in their certainties as impressive, even awe-

inspiring, but simultaneously absurd actors in self-

dramatizing roles. The implication is that neither

of them despite, or perhaps because of, his certainties

has any real clue to the dilemma of human existence,

The drama, then, is intrinsically important to

Moby-Dick, providing not only a structural but also a

metaphorical framework for the novel, Men are seen as

actors in their own subjective, self-created, self-

creating dramas, Their actions and speeches and

gestures may in some cases overawe and impress but they

contain no solution to the ultimate problems, which are

seen to be still inscrutable and ungraspable. Within

the sceptical context of the novel the certainties of

Ahab and Father Mapple cannot help but seem absurd even

if, at the same time, heroic or steadfast, And finally

what fatally compromises them is that consciously or

unconsciously, they must - act their roles, To do so, in this context, is by implication to admit a pretense

of knowledge, an illusion of truth, both of which in

fact are hollow, Ahab at times seems to have some

awareness of the arts and contrivances that he uses,

but only Ishmael is fully conscious both of his role-

playing and of its implications. Whereas Ahab and

Father Mapple both employ their histrionic abilities

for their own immediate purposes, Ishmael sees his

own role-playing as an inescapable consequence of the

larger existential situation in which he finds himself.

It operates at the deepest level and therefore does

not require the theatrical flourishes that win converts

and influence people. Ishmael defines his own role

by adopting the name of the Biblical outcast and by

references to his 'splintered heartt and 'maddened

handt (p, 5 3 ) , although outwardly there is really nothing

in the book to support this view of him. The important

thing is to understand that this is the role for which

Ishmael feels he has been cast, based on his own inner

sense of himself. And, in fact, in an inward and in-

direct rather than literal and overt way, his role of

outcast does have some substance. His persistent

jocularity, for example, is evidence of a role-playing

designed to cope with the desperate situations in which

he finds himself, as the next section seeks to make

clear.

I shmael s Humour

In'The Hyenat chapter Ishmael records a scene in which,

after having spent a miserable, dangerous night adrift

in an open boat, he approaches Queequeg, Stubb and Flask

in turn and enquires with mock gravity whether this

sort of thing is usual in the whale fishery. On being

told that it is, he goes off to make his will, saying

'Queequeg,.,.corne along, you shall be my lawyer, executor,

arid legatee8 (p. 196). Queequeg is, of course, illiterate.

Beneath the humour one senses a real seriousness here.

Ishmael himself says that 'After the ceremony [of making

the will]..., I felt all the easier.' He compares him-

self to Lazarus after his resurrection, saying: 'I

survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in

my chestf (p. 197). This line contains some significant

ambiguities--the first three words foreshadow the final

catastrophe, while the chest can be taken to refer to

Ishmael's own person as well as to the trunk containing

his belongings. Merely making a will denotes a readiness

to face the prospect of death but Ishmael has done more,

1 for he has reached an inward acceptance of his mortality,

signified by the jocularity which outstares 'death and

destruction.' His humour has an intrinsic self-awareness

that constitutes a saving grace. It is the kind of

humour that is a token of high seriousness--without

being any the less entertaining for that.

The 'Hyena' chapter is suitably named after the

savage carnivore with its mad laughter. The hyena is

a nocturnal animal and therefore habitually inhabits

the dark side of the earth. Moreover, it allegedly

has a 'propensity for robbing graves,' according to

The _I Century Dictionary, and this too seems appropriate

in the context. At the beginning of the chapter, which,

as Edward Rosenberry points out,57 is of major impor-

tance for an understanding of Ishmael's humorous

attitudes, we find this passage:

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. (p. 195)

Ahab would find such a perception intolerable but

Ishmaelcannot only see the joke but can take it,

too, and is not dispirited. As he says, 'the man

that has anything bountifully laughable, about him,

thinkfbr' (p. 3 5 ) , which is a hint to the reader about

Ishmael's own character. This ability to %ake a joke'

can be seen in the jests which Ishmael records at his

own expense. A notable example is the practical joke

played on him by the landlord of the Spouter-Inn, but

more significant even than that are the examples of . ,

Ishmaelts own self-humour. He can make as .well as

record jokes at his own expense. For example, he reveals

himself to be comically and incorrigibly long-winded.

The landlord of the Spouter-Inn after being harangued

at some length by Ishmael, replies tWell,...that's a

purty long sermon for a chap that rips a little now

and thent (p, 26). In 'The Hyenat chapter itself,

Ishmael says to Flask with humorous pomposity: 'Will

you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this

fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own

back pulling himself back-foremast into death's jaws,"

and Flask replies, *Gantt you twist that smaller?'

(p. 196). I suppose there is a double joke here with

Flask chiding Ishmael for a pomposity he is affecting.

Examples such as these are evidence of a humorous

view of world and self that, as Rosenberry has noted

amounts to a kind of philosophical principle, 58

Ishmael himself refers to 'that odd sort of wayward

mood' that 'comes over a man only in some time of

extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of

his earnestness, so that what just before might have

seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a

part of the general joket (p. 195). It is just this

'free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy'

which helps Ishmael to maintain his equilibrium and

his good spirits, and which reveals his sanity and

resilience of mind. He has a mind which converts all

its materials, even the most painful, into humour so

that he is able to confront the most unpleasant facts

and to retain a full awareness of his situation, 59

His humour is,therefore, much more serviceable to him

than 'the inflexible levity of Stubbt or 'the inflexible

irreverence of Ahabt--to quote Rosenberry. 60 ~n early

example of it may be seen in the bitter jest he makes

about his stepmother, who frequently whipped him. On

the occasion he

banished him to

Unable to stand

1 shmael pleaded

recalls, however, his stepmother had

his bedroom instead, for sixteen hours!

the inactivity and solitude the young

for a slippering instead, but as he

says,'she was the best and most conscientious of step-

mothers, and back I had to go to my roomt (p. 33). Here

surely we find the origin of the later Ishmael who felt

himself to be an outcast. In assuming this outcastts

role he also assumed the style of wry, ironic humour

well suited to coping with painful and disturbing memories.

I do not mean to imply a deliberate and calculated role-

playing by Ishmael--he behaved as he had to. But having

conceived of himself as playing a role, the humour, and

particularly the self-humour, becomes a kind of monitoring

device which provides a constant measurement of Ishmael's

self-awareness, self-irony, and consciousness of role.

As I indicated at the end of the previous section, I

think much of Ishmael's humour is fundamentally existen-

tial. It is one of the basic human resources which

enables him to endure and bear up in an inscrutable

world, at best indifferent, and removed from any

transcendental hope. Ishmael fulfills the essential

existentialist requirement that he be conscious of the

situation he is in and like Sisyphus, in Camus' re-

telling of the myth, he can even be happy.

Ishmael's humorous language also has other important

and artistic functions to perform. It is used by him

very skillfully, often in the form of irony and satire,

to control and qualify his material, particularly the

non-narrative material. We can see in Ishmael's satire

the same challenge to method and material that his use

of irony contains. For example, in his references to

'Captain Sleet' (p. 137) and 'Fritz Swackhammer' (p. 371)

and through his parodies of a pedantic style, Ishmael

sziably satirizes one of his most authoritative sources,

Scoresby. In 'The Honor and Glory of Whaling,' the

satirical tone derides men's myth-making and legend-

creating tendencies even while Ishmael is engaged in the

same activity~himself. Irony and satire are two of the

sharpest of the cutting-in tools with which Ishmael

lays open the folly of human pretensions to knowledge . .

and understanding. Still, I think it is to the narra-

tor's incorrigible long-windedness and clownishness

that we can ascribe the presence of so much non-narrative

natter. As in the Extracts, so in the text, he insists

on including everything he has ever read or heard about

98

whales and the whale-fishery. As Guetti says,

'He surrounds the elements of the story with special

or technical languages, with superstitious reports,

allusions, and with figures of great imaginative inten-

sity.bl Now, quite simply, if this mass of material

were presented in a solemn and didactic manner it would

be intolerably wearisome to the reader, 62 Presented

in a humorous, satirical or ironical way the material

is acceptable and enjoyable to the reader. This last

point is obvious enough, I suppose; however, Ishmael's

humour accomplishes some less obvious purposes too,

As with some of the other forms of language examined,

Ishmael's humorous, ironical language is used to under-

mine the material presented, in the very act of presen-

tation, As we have noted, in 'The Honor and Glory of

Whaling' chapter, the narrator is able to introduce

all kinds of mythological and legendary material to

surround his theme, while the tone is subtly under-

ming. In this way the theme of whaling is built up

and magnified but simultaneously undercut. In the

'Cetology' chapter Ishmael comically classifies whales

according to book sizes, while in discussing the nature

of the whale he says, 'Be it known that, waiving all

argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that

the whale is a fish and call upon holy Jonah to back

me' (p. 119), and this after citing a mass of learned

99

authorities, So much for science and scientific

classification.

Ishmael's humour, then, is an integral part both

of his character and of his method of writing. It is

fundamental to his existential attitude to life as well

as to his ironically sceptical approach to the problems

of human knowledge and understanding, Necessarily,

therefore, his humour is also integral to the artistic

expression of his attitudes as they are to be found in

the novel. However, while stressing the artistic and

philosophical functions of the narrator's humour and

noting the ironical character of much of it, we should

not overlook the fact that sheer exuberance can account

for a good deal of the humour, too. The bawdy jokes,

for example, are evidence of a mind that possesses

a strongly Rabelaisian strain. Still, Ishmael does,

at times, straighten his face and speak to the reader

in direct, thoughtful passages which do not carry a

burden of humour and irony, and it is to these that I

now turn.

Ishmael's Reflective Language

Remembering the sharp, satirical edge to Ishmael's

mind, it is hard to picture him as the 'dreamy meditative

man' that he refers to in 'The Mast-head' chapter. But

100

there are many facets to his mind, as I have tried to

show, and from time to time he does indulge in a medita-

tive and reflective language. For Ishmael, the mast-head

possesses the solitude and 'thought-engendering altitude'

conducive to meditation. Moreover the mast-head also

commands a wide and unobstructed view of those waters

which Ishmael says are forever 'wedded' to meditation.

He admits candidly that 'with the problem of the universe

revolving' in him he kept but 'sorry guard' (p. 139) at

his lonely look-out post.

Nevertheless, in spite of its thought-provoking

influences, Ishmael's reflective excursions do not take

place at the mast-head but rather during quiet, temporary

interludes in the bustling activity of the ship. For

example, it was on a 'cloudy, sultry afternoon1 when

the seamen were 'lazily lounging about the decks' that

Ishmael yielded to the 'incantation of reveryt in the

air, while he and Queequeg were 'mildly employed1

weaving a sword-mat for their boat.

. . ... I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates....This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable

threads....this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance--aye, chance, free will, and necessity --no wise incompatible--all interweavingly working together. (p. 185)

No doubt the thought of this passage is compatible

with Ishmael's earlier sense of being directed by those

police-officers, the Fates, not forgetting, too, the

independence manifested by his enquiring mind and his

determination to confront danger and death with a

resilient spirit. And yet I think we should not build

too much on such passages. It seems to me there is

something glib about the language Ishmael uses here.

The repetition of 'seemed' and 'thought I' emphasize

that these reflections are subjective responses to a

temporary mood. Paul Brodtkorb, who has pointed out the

extent to which Ishmaells attitudes and observations

are dependent on mood, says of this passage:

The harmonious loom is the appearance of an extraordinary moment. If it is to be an accurate metaphor of the over-all working of causality, at the very least the peaceful complacency in which it is founded must be destroyed; and in the next moment exactly that happens, as the I1preludingtt atmosphere is fulfilled when whales are sighted and the "ball of free willtt drops out of the self-sufficient mechanics pattern as well as out of Ishmael's hand. k3

Peaceful, harmonious interludes are a rarity of the

Pequod and there is a feeling of artificiality about

them which is enhanced by the sudden intrusion of the

call to action. Ishmael knows that the mind never runs

so freely as when the body is performing some unexacting,

mechanica1,physical activity in pleasant, preferably

warm, surroundings. However, in these cases, the danger

is that the thought will take on something of a pleasant

mechanical nature, too.

The loom metaphor reappears later, in 'The Gilder1

chapter, in another passage of Ishmael's reflections

undertaken in response to very similar circumstances.

The Pequod is on the Japanese cruising grounds, the

weather is 'mild' and 'pleasant' and Ishmael says:

at 9 x h t k ~ ! ~ , 7;n,kr = 6ktiteG Siai; aiioat all day upon smooth slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like heath-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and bril- liancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it;,., (p. 405)

Here again the warm, pleasant weather (the sun has

'abated' its customary power) and the gentle, mechanical

rocking of the boat produces a dreamy 'mystic' mood,

But again there is the suggestion that such moods are

not to be trusted for they deceive the unwary by con-

cealing the true nature of the world. And here again

the deceptive, meditative calm weather is abruptly

shattered for 'in these resplendant Japanese seas the

mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the

Typhoont (p. 413). So the calm 'Gildert chapter is

quickly followed by the violence of 'The Candlesot

Nevertheless, Ishmael regrets the passing of these

quiet interludes (and here the loom reappears):

Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. (p. 406)

and so proceeds to a curious passage of reflection:

There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the I n s t : FEXIQO: -through infancyts unconscious spell, boy- hood's thoughtless faith, adolescencet doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.

Here Ishmael seems to be saying that the growth of

consciousness necessarily implies the growth of ques-

tioning and doubt and that belief is childish. Yet

doubt is an adolescent trait, and being 'the common

doomt is hardly desirable. Only 'manhood's pondering

repose of Ift seems, by the language to receive any

endorsement by the narrator (we recall his frequent use

of the conditional tense) but even here there is no

real repose but only an endless circular route through

childish belief to adult hypotheses. Ishmael seems

sceptical even about scepticism and his view of the

human situation is a bleak one which the gentle language

induced by the memory of calm ocean cannot quite con-

ceal, Like the 'tiger heart1 beneath the brilliant

ocean's skin, the menace shows through, Ishmael asks:

Where lies the final harbour, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundlingls father hidden?

and his answer follows in gentle melancholy and pessimism:

Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it, (p. 406)

The inscrutability of the world remains--there are no

answers to its riddle this side of the grave. Again,

the thought of the passage is compatible with that

revealed in our examination of other kinds of language

in the novel, but again we have to note that the par-

ticular tone of the passage arises out of the narrator's

memory of a particular mood and a particular occasion.

These reflective passages are useful in that they

may offer direct statements to elucidate attitudes and

thoughts implicit elsewhere in the narrator's language.

However, no one of them should' be regarded as an ultimate '

key to the novel. They always have to be set in their

own special backgrounds and considered against the wider

context of the narrator's other languages.

Expending some amiable satire, Ishmael himself

gives warning against taking too seriously the 'romantic,

melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with

the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in

tar and blubbert ( p , 139). More significantly he also

warns against those very moods, already discussed, in

which the meditative thoughts arise:

... ,but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thought, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading man- kind and nature;,.. (p. 140)

This passage not only argues against transcendentalism

but it also provides a qualification to the meditation

and water theme which underlies the whole book. By

all means let the ocean induce speculations in the

thoughtful man but let him also retain his separate

' identity--the world and the individual are two not one.

To merge with the external world is to try and solve

the problem it poses by becoming a part of that which

one cannot understand. By entering into the mystery

the need to understand it disappears. Only the separate

individual consciousness which perceives the world as

other has this itch to probe and learn. But even if

this endeavour is doomed to failure the other way must

be rejected for to merge is to destroy the self, and

therefore to sell short one's humanity. Thus we find

Ishmael offering words of caution about the very state

into which he is occasionally tempted. Again we find

a self-critical gloss by the narrator which tends to

undermine or qualify what he has said elsewhere.

In summing up this examination of Ishmael's

language I would say that it is the persistent under-

mining effect in the language which should be especially

noted. Ishmael's problem of how to know the unknowable

and speak about the unspeakable is revealed in the

language, but the thoroughgoing scepticism which the

problem induces in him extends to the language in which . . he seeks to convey it and.understand it, so that, finally,

the capacity of language itself to tackle the problem

'is questioned. The implications of this point for an

understanding of the novel are considerable. As I have

already noted, for Guetti, the failure of Ishmael's

languages constitutes the success of the book for it

is by the very inadequacy of language to comprehend

the ineffable that the existence of the ineffable is

confirmed. I, too, think that the necessary failure

of Ishmael's languages constitutes an ultimate success

for the book but in a rather different fashion. It is

this point and others that I now propose to consider.

PART I11

THE SEARCH FOR SOME CERTAIN SIGNIFICANCE

Quest ion. Mow many p a r t s a r e t h e r e i n a Sacrament?

Answer. There a r e two p a r t s i n a Sacrament: t h e outward v i s i b l e s i g n , and t h e inward s p i r i t u a l grace.

A Catechism

Why, ever s i n c e Adam, who has g o t t o t h e meaning of J 1 .- uutl gr-eai ctiiegory---the world?

Herman Melv i l l e , L e t t e r t o Nathanie l Hawthorne, Nov. 17, 1851

But what p lays t h e mischief with t h e t r u t h i s t h a t men w i l l i n s i s t upon t h e u n i v e r s a l a p p l i c a t i o n of a temporary f e e l i n g o r opinion.

Herman Melv i l l e , L e t t e r t o Nathaniel Hawthorne, June I ? , 1851

When Ishmael says rather desperately that 'some certain

significance lurks in all things, else all things are

little worth, and the round world but an empty cipher1

he is uttering a thought to which Ahab would readily

have given assent. As Guetti says, 'Ahabts doctrine

of masks, if we may call it that, resembles Ishmaelts

in its assertion of a split universe, of a disparity

between the apparent and the real..,, '64 To Ahab,

'All visible objects...are but as pasteboard maskst

behind which hides 'some unknown but still reasoning

thingt (p. 144). It is the unknown, 'that inscrutable

thing,' that he chiefly hates because it maddens and

torments him. I suppose that, as Matthiessen suggests,

we can trace back to Plat0 the transcendentalist utter-

ances of both Ahab and Ishmael. 65 But whereas Ahab

chooses a 'fiery hunt1 with harpoon and line to pierce

the mask, to launch a missile across the intolerable

gap between the appearances of the world and the suspected

reality that lies beyond, Ishmael chooses the way of

the artist and intellectual. Apart from dealing with

the problems and questions raised by Ahab's way, Ishmael

also considers many of the existing methods by which

men have sought to comprehend the world they live in.

They may take the form of institutions, observances

and systems of thought and they include in Moby-Dick,

religion, ritual, science, philosophy, myth, symbolism

and analogy, and intuition, Explicitly, or more often

implicitly, Ishmael comments on the ability of all of

them to yield knowledge and understanding of the nature

of the world, His conclusions are pessimistic.

Religion

A good deal of Ishmaelean satire and irony are expended

in swipes at religion and the religious, from the portrait

of the hypocritical Bildad--'Don't whale it too much

'a Lord's days, men; but don't miss a fair chance either,

that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts' (p. 96)--to the

n.. - - -.- - - gentle mocking of Psther [email protected] ~ n d h i s EeA-CXo uu=Gyuc6 also offers Ishmael some excellent opportunities to poke

fun at conventional religion and its observances, He,

too, attended Pather Mapplets sermon, but as Ishmael

dryly notes, 'he left the Chapel before the benediction

some timet (p. 51). When Ishmael returned to the Spouter-

Inn he found Queequeg whittling away at the nose of his

little idol, Yojo, literally shaping his own deity, in

fact. Later Ishmael is invited to join in the worship

of Yojo in &I episode that follows ironically close on

the heels of his Christian devotions, Ishmael is thus

able to indulge in a passage of humorous irony and

typically specious reasoning.

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? ...But what is worship?--to do the will of God--that is worship. And what is the will of God--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salaamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.

Having done a 'wicked1 thing Ishmael goes to bed feeling

'spotless as the 1amb.I 66 The tone and attitude revealed

in this passage can most accurately be described as

irreverent, I suppose. No wonder krert Duyckinck,

in his review of Moby-Dick, rather pompously said:

'We do not like to see what, under any view, must be

to the world the most sacred associations of life vio-

lated and defaced.' Doubtless Duyckinck would also not

have been deceived by Ishmael's ironic disclaimer at

the beginning of the following passage in which he com-

prehensively attacks both the absurdity and the

servility as well as the grandiose claims of religious

observances and institutions, and covertly launches

an assault on Christianity in particular:

... I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toadstool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who, with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account sf the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name, (p, 78)

ironically tending his respect to all 'obligations'

indiscriminately (note the sting in 'never mind how

comical') Ishmael conveys his actual respect for none,

However, there is a further irony which follows

the episode with Queequeg and Yojo, At the Nantucket

inn, the Try Pots, Queequeg retreats into his 'Ramadan,

or Fasting and Humiliation,' as Ishmael calls it. At

first Ishmael, with his tolerant good-nature, is content

to 'let him be' but as the Ramadan goes on and on he

becomes alarmed enough to break down the door of Queequeg's

room, Ishmael's tolerance is strained by evidence of

excess in others, He says:

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion

becomes r e a l l y f r a n t i c ; when i t i s a pos i t i ve torment t o him; and, i n f i n e , makes t h i s ea r th of ours an uncomfortable inn t o lodge i n ; then I th ink i t high time t o take t h a t individual as ide and argue the point with him. (p. 81)

So long as a man's r e l i g i o n i s a kind of harmless

eccen t r i c i t y Ishmael has no objections--indeed he

w i l l join him i n it--but as soon as t h a t r e l i g i o n begins

t o be a s s e r t i v e and make excessive demands on i t s

devotees then f o r Ishmael i t becomes ' s t a r k nonsense.'

And so the r e l i g i o s i t y of Queequeg i s shown t o be as

f o o l i s h as the r e l i g i o s i t y of Father Mapple, and indeed

t h e r e l i g i o u s i n t e n s i t y of Ahab.

Ishmael 's a t t i t u d e i s no t , I th ink, born ~ u t of

contempt f o r the problems which a l l r e l i g i o n s attempt

t o grapple with--he i s thoroughly f a m i l i a r with man's

metaphysical predicament. Rather h i s mockery i s d i rec ted

a t the pretensions of r e l i g i o n s i n t h e i r claims t o be

r e p o s i t o r i e s of u l t imate t r u t h , and a t the unwholesome

zea l a t tendant on such claims. If r e l i g i o n has no answers

then t r e a t i t l i g h t l y f o r comfort 's sake if f o r no other .

Ishmael, i n attempting t o 'argue the po in t ' with Quee-

queg, de l ive r s a potted h i s to ry of r e l i g i o n i n which

he t r i e s t o show the f o l l y of p e n i t e n t i a l observances.

' I t o l d him, t o o , ' says Ishmael, ' t h a t he being i n o ther

th ings such an extremely sens ib le and sagacious savage,

i t pained me, very much pained me, t o see him now so

deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of

his1 (p. 81). The tone here, as in the whole passage

from which it comes, is as much a product of IshmaelDs

mockery of his former earnestness as of Queequeg's

religious zeal. The later Ishmael has good reason to

know that men are not easily diverted from their folly

in these matters. Queequeg is not to be diverted either,

of course, and with delightful irony Ishmael records

Queequegts response to his exhortations: 'He looked at

me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion,

as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible

young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical

pagan piety1 (p. 82). Ishmael is as much a heathen

to Queequeg as he would have been to Father Mapple.

Although ostensibly in 'The Ramadan1 chapter it is

Queequegls religion that is under examination, references

to Lent as well as to Ramadan itself, and Ishmaelts

history of religion indicate that a wider context is

being aimed at. Under cover of concern for pagan folly,

Ishmael can take pot shots at Christian folly too.

Ritual

There is, of course, a strongly ritualistic element in

the religious observances referred to in the previous

section. Father Mapplels sermon and Queequegls mani-

p~lations with Yojo contain obvious examples and enough

has already been said to indicate that Ishmael presents

these rituals in a mocking and satiric light. However,

there are other ritualistic ceremonies enacted or

described in Moby-Dick, and indeed it is partly because

of their numbers that I include ritual in this present

group. Chiefly, however, I include ritual because of

its function as a ceremonial embodiment and visible

manifestation of analogical meaning and significance.

Or, in religious terms, the outward visible sign of

an inward spiritual grace, as the Prayer Book says of

sacraments.

It would be tiresome to list all the examples of

ritual in the novel. However, some powerful and obvious

ones will occur to any reader--the oath-taking ceremony

in 'The Quarter-deckt chapter, the forging of Ahab's

harpoon with the assistance of the black arts, as well

as his defiance of the thunderbolts in 'The Candles'

chapter. It is no coincidence that all three examples

involve Ahab. His flair for the theatrical has already

been discussed, and as rituals contain a substantial

dramatic element, it is not surprising to find Ahab

exploiting them to help him acquire his ascendancy over /

his crew. However, Ahab's rituals are not merely stage

devices. Although he does indeed exploit them, their

recurrence also signifies that Ahab has essentially

a sacramental attitude to life, of which his doctrine

of masks is a natural part. In 'The Candlest chapter

he cries to the corpusants:

Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. (p. 416)

Everywhere ~hab sees outward visible signs but instead

of the inward spiritual grace finds only torment. His

torment may be observed again in the perverted sacrament

of baptism he enacted to temper his harpoon, when he

'deliriously howled,' the incanteticn, 'Egs na. % s p t i ~ ~ ,

etc,' (p. 404). But as the narrator's words 'deliriously

howledt indicate, the theatricality of Ahabts performances

cannot be overlooked. Ishmael, we recall, says ironically

that he has respect for everyone's religious obligations

'never mind how comicalt and his satiric hand has indeed

fatally introduced a 'comical' touch to Ahabts extra-

vagant rituals. The rhetoric which follows Ahabts

speech quoted above is very revealing:

No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe'er I came; whencesoe'er I

go; yet while personality 1 royal rights.

I earthly live, the queenly ives in me, and feels her (P. 417)

The insistent alliteration--note the fts, the sts,

the p's, the m's, the 1's and the r's--signal an

absurd excess in Ahab. His rituals are overplayed and

hollow; they bring out the charlatanism in hab, of

which he has a generous measure.

So Ahab's sound and fury as well as the various

religious rituals, in the end signify nothing. However,

as a parting shot from Ishmael's capacious locker I

would like to refer to an account of a seemingly trivial

ritual that took place outside the main events of the

narrative. In the 'Wheelbarrow' chapter Ishmael records

a story told him by Queequeg about his sister's marriage.

At the marriage feast, according to Queequeg, the High

Priest opened the proceedings 'by the immemorial cere-

mony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated

and consecrating fingers into the bowlg (p. 59). A

visiting sea captain attending the wedding notices this

action, and 'thinking himself--being Captain of a ship

--as having plain precedence over a mere island King,

especially in the King's own house--the Captain coolly

proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl.' And,

said Queequeg, 'Didn't our people laugh?' The story

is prompted originally by the incident with the wheel-

barrow which revealed Queequegts ignorance of a parti-

cular aspect of American life. What it signifies is

that one man's ceremonial libation may be another mants

finger bowl. Just as there is an individual subjectivity

in interpreting the signs and portents in the world, so

there is a kind of cultural relativity with regard to

rituals and ceremonies. A ritual can have only a

localized meaning and may signify nothing to one who

does not already share the meaning collectively assigned

to it. So ritual, too, cannot yield the ultimate truths

that men seek.

Science

A sure way, one would think, of learning something

significant about the nature of the world would be by

recourse to scientific method--rigorous enquiry, proper

classification and controlled experimentation. Ishmael

does indeed dabble with scientific method but in a

typically sceptical and satirical manner. His most

sustained attempt at scientific, or perhaps more accurate-

ly, pseudo-scientific enquiry occurs in the 'Cetology8

chapter--its very title is curt, business-like, scientif-

ic. Ishmaelts early comments in the chapter are

similarly brisk and to the point: 'It is some systema-

tized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that

I would fain put before you1 (p. 116). 'Listen to

what the best and latest authorities have laid down1

(p. 1 1 ) But at once he also begins to qualify his

intention by pointing out the difficulty of his task,

He quotes learned authorities to establish the confused

state of cetological studies and adds his own personal

disclaimers: 'I promise nothing complete.... I shall

not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the

various species...' (p. 118). But still, in spite of

all the hedging and qualification, Ishmael observes

the proprieties of scientific enquiry, only to shatter

them the moment he considers his first problem (is the

whale a fish?). He says, 'Be it known that, waiving

all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that

the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back

me' ( p a 1 1 9 ) ~ Again, so much for scientific method

and the painstaking enquiries of learned authorities!

Discussion gives way to assertion. Next follows the

classification of whales according to book sizes which

takes Ishmael the whole distance from his deceptively

business-like beginning into outright satire on scientific

method and classification.

The satire originates, I believe, in Ishmaelis

awareness that any system of classification is by its

very nature arbitrary and limited. He says: I...any

human thing supposed to be complete must for that very

reason infallibly be faultyt (p. 118). Even the re-

doubtable Century Dictionary says that 'a genus has no

natural, much less necessary, definition, its meaning

being at best a matter of expert opinion.' This being

the case why should not a bibliographical system of

classification for whales be as good as any other (if

size is the criterion being considered, it really is not

a bad system!)? Indeed, given the highly literary nature

of most of Ishmael's researches it is, in a sense, a

very appropriate system for him to use, Moreover, to

a layman, Ishmael's suspicion of classification based

on minute distinctions might seem well founded. As he

says, 'It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most

inconclusive differences, that some departments of

natural history become so repellingly intricatet (p. 121)

and clearly he regards cetology as being in this cate-

gory. However, I don't really want to make out a case

for Ishmaelts system. It is sufficient that the biblio-

graphical system satirically draws attention to the . ,

arbitrary nature of classification and the specialized

and limited kind of knowledge that the scientific method

For further evidence of Ishmael's view of scientific

method we can note the interesting fact that this chapter

On cetology is one of the most jocular chapters in the

book. It contains, among others, two phallic jokes

on the subject of horns, 67 and a carelessness of tone

and attitude that reveals a lack of respect for the

classificatory method. 'Where any name happens to be

vague or inexpressive, 1 shall say so, and suggest

another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish,... So,

call him the Hyena Whale, if you please' ( p , 124).

Lawrance Thompson,who regards all concern for whaling

in Moby-Dick as allegorically some form of God-concern

and who would read 'theology' for 'cetology,' takes

Ishmaells disrespectful tone as being evidence of

Melville's quarrel with God. 68 This idea, though

interesting, seems to me perverse because it ignores

the plainer meaning of the chapter--the attack on class-

ification--which is supportable by reference to the

text, Even if the plain meaning is also admitted, to

perceive theology in cetology's place is to regard the

book with Thompsonb eyes rather than Ishmael's. To say

that concern for whaling is God-concern is an unsup-

portable intuition which ignores the evidence of the

book itself, Ishmael's concern, as I have tried to

show, is with how one can know and with what one c a n - know. To construe a quarrel with God must assume some

prior belief in and supposed knowledge of the deity, but

this is conspicuously lacking in Moby-Dick with its

tortuous, equivocal language and sceptical tone.

Ishmael is not even prepared to concede to science the

ability to yield important truths about the nature of

the world. What science can do is limited to the world

of appearances and finally is insignifica~t --in fact

it cannot even comprehend the whale. And if men cannot

know'the whale whom they have seen, how can they know

God whom they havenot seen? To this extent I will admit

Thompson's proposition, although to 'God' we could add

other transcendentalist terms like 'spirit' or 'ultimate

reality' or 'invisible realm' or some such.

However, before moving on to new categories, it is

worth noting that Ishmael himself carries out some

practical first-hand scientific research (or so he says)

in addition to his secondary researches into other men's

work. For example, in the chapter entitled 'A Bower

in the Arsacides' where he introduces the question of

the sperm whale's anatomy, Ishmael intimates that he has

actually dissected a small cub sperm whale, although,

suspiciously, he doesn't actually say so, quite. Instead

he asks rhetorically: 'Think you I let that chance go,

without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and

breaking the seal and reading a11 the contents of that

young cub? (p. 373) . Knowing Ishmael s enquiring mind

no doubt we reply 'no,@yet it is curious that he does

not then present us with the results of his anatomical

dissections, Moreover, what follows is not reassuring.

Ishmael offers as his 'exact knowledge of the bones of

the leviathan in their gigantic, full grown developments

(p, 373) the results of his alleged measurement of a

sperm whale skeleton which the people of Tranque had

assembled and used as a place of worship (here is more

God-concern!), Once more Ishmael has a curious fear

that he will not be believed. He says rather defensive-

ly, even truculently, 'but first, be it recorded, that,

in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied

measurement I please. Because there are skeleton

authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy'

(p, 375). Yet in referring to these authorities he

uses phrases like 'they tell met and '1 have heard,'

which means that they are by no means unequivocally

established, Furthermore Ishmael undercuts the whole

business of scientific measurement with a whimsical

passage which again raises doubts about his verac1.t~:

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page

for a poem I was then composing--at least, what untattooed parts might remain--I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale. (p. 376)

It seems that one function of Ishmael's scepticism

is to induce scepticism in the reader also! In this

case the reader's scepticism is well founded for, as

I indicated in the section on Ishmael's magnification

of his theme, the valuable statistics that he claims he

so painstakingly had tattooed on his arm are considerably

exaggerated. Therefore some, at least, of Ishmael's

scientific observations fail the test that all such

observations must pass--the appeal to verification.

cavalier as his approach to other modes of human know-

ledge. He says of 'physiognomyt that it, 'like every

other human science, is but a passing fablet (p. 292).

But in the quest for truth no possibility should be

ignored so let us move on.

Philosophy

Ishmael's flirtation with transcendentalist views has

already been noted in the comparison of his thought

with Ahab's. However, most often the thrust of his

mind is sceptical. More accurately, perhaps, he is

tempted by a transcendentalist interpretation of the

problem of existence--something - must lie beyond--but it is accompanied by the pervasive scepticism that his

actual experience and observation of the world induce

in him. Again we find opposites being held simultane-

ously in Ishmael's mind,

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Ishmael

directs his irony against Plato who fathered the

transcendentalist theory by his assertion that there is

an invisible, ultimate world of ideal forms, of which

the objects and appearances of this world are but dim

and imperfect copies. After recounting Tashtego's

astonishing rescue from the sperm whale's head, Ishmael

says, 'how many, think ye, have likewise fallen into

Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?' (p, 290),

Ishmael himself resists the sweet allurements of Plato

although the philosophical problem that besets him is

in essence a Platonic one, In his exegesis of Platots

theory of ideas in the History - of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell says: 'Thus we arrive at the conclusion

that opinion is of the world presented to the senses,

whereas knowledge is of a super-sensible eternal world. I 69

Ishmaells equivocal, qualified language, and his con-

tinual use of 'seems,' all confine him to this realm

of opinion, which is partial and fallible. The super-

sensible realm of infallible knowledge is forever

elusive. Ishmael's stance remains obstinately this-

worldly and, however much an other-worldly solution

may tempt him, he cannot quite bring himself to trust

it,

IshmaePss position can be further defined by

Russellls comments on Plato, however. In Platols

view, according to Russell, opinion must be of what

both is and is not.

But how is this possible? The answer is that particular things always partake of opposite characters: what is beautiful is also, in some respects, ugly; what is just is, in some respects, unjust, and so on. All particular sensible objects, so Plato contends, have this contradictory charac- ter.. . , '/u

As we have had occasion to note frequently, Iqhmael

is accustomed to perceiving his world in terms of

opposites which he holds simultaneously in the same

context. This mode of perception belongs to the realm

of contingencies and subjectivities--in short of opinion,

and again places Ishmael on the this-worldly side .of

Platds argument.

In 'The Decanter' chapter Ishmael attaches, in a

parody of Scoresby, a list of whale-ship provisions

allegedly found in a 'Low Dutch' treatise on the commerce

of Holland. However, the joke is at Platols expense

as well as Scoresbyts for Ishmael adds: 'At the time,

I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all

this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound

thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of

a transcendental and Platonic appli~ation;...~ (p. 372).

The irony is unmistakable and there is more than a hint

that transcendental and Platonic philosophizing produces

indigestion. This same metaphor occurs earlier in

' A Bosom Friendt where Ishmael comments satirically

that, 'so soon as I hear that such or such a man gives

himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like

the dyspeptic old woman, he must have nbroken his

digestert1' (p. 53). Rather than the mental flatulence

brought about by self-conscious philosophizing, Ishmael

prefers the unconscious, unaffected, 'naturalt philo-

sophy of Queequeg, in whose simplicity he perceives

a true wisdom. As he says, 'perhaps, to be true philo- /

sophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living

or so striving' (p. 52). If a man adheres to systems

of philosophy he will find himself tugged back and

forth by contending schools. The recollection of the

whale heads suspended on each side of the Pequod provokes

this thought in Ishmael:

... when on one side you hoist in Lockets head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kantts and you come back

again; but in very poor plight. Thus some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunderheads over- board, and then you will float light and right. (p. 277)

Inescapably, the conclusion is that philosophy

offers no insight into the 'problem of the universe.'

Its rival systems are so much useless dead weight

that rob a man of his freedom of thought and natural

simplicity. Like religion and science, philosophy

generates stipulative definitions and explanations of

material and spiritual things and because stipulative

therefore also restrictive and incomplete. Better to

stag open to all possibilities, free and buoyant. Or,

to change the image, one's soul must be free to soar

like the 'Catskill eaglet which, buoyed up on the

currents of the air, 'cansilike dive down into the black-

est gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisi-

ble in the sunny spaces' (p. 355). /

Having considered some of the grand systems which

men employ in their search for a way to acquire and

enclose knowledge and truth, I now propose to turn to

some other less systematic, less disciplined but never-

theless significant and persistent methods. These are

myth, symbol and analogy, and intuition.

Myth

In all the discussions of Moby-Dick no more dangerous

topic exists than myth. In the twinkling of an eye

the novel may be transformed into 'an Egyptian myth

incarnate 071 and Ahab may become Prometheus or Faust

or Job or Satan and so on. I don't propose to investi-

gate.these associations, which undoubtedly are in the

book--I merely wish to insist on their relative rather

than their absolute value. To say that Ahab is Osiris

is to say at least as much about Ishmael's way of

perceiving him as it does about Ahab himself, and maybe

more. I have already examined the way in which Ishmael

'creates' Ahab, and among the materials that he uses

is myth. Ishmael, the former school-teacher, the

researcher, is a man of wide reading and active mind.

He has, as I shall shortly indicate more fully, an

analogizing mind which works by seeking out comparisons

and correspondences,'and in myth he finds a fertile and

potent source of them. . , Ishmael is always seeking to reify. In his efforts

to give substance to the values he perceives in his

experience of Ahab and the White Whale, as well as to

the facts themselves, he draws upon the sum total of

his own knowledge of the world and its contents including

myth and legend, But as earlier discussions have tried

to show, Ishmael is well aware of the dangers and dif-

ficulties of trying to express what is essentially

inexpressible and of seeking to give shape and meaning

to one subjective and fallible view of events. He has

no choice but use the materials which the world supplies,

so he does indeed draw upon Egyptian references (among

many others) to build his theme, as 'The Sphynxl chapter

and Ahabas 'Egyptian1 heart and Moby Dick's pyramidical

hump testify. However, it would be a mistake to over-

look the characteristic irreverence of a line like this:

'It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians

upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see

the mummies of thosecreatures in their huge bake-houses

the pyramidst (p. 14). As the earlier discussion of

Ishmael's language indicated, his typical method is to

undercut that which he most confidently puts forward.

The whole of 'The Honor and Glory of Whaling1 constitutes

a satire on %his business of mythological reference.

There, by far-fetched allusions and absurd logic, Ishmael

tries to appropriate a mixed bag of mythological and

legendary heroes for the greater glory of the whaling

industry. 'Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and

Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but

the whaleman's can head off like that?' (p. 306). In

fact, while he exploits the mythological value of the

references, he is also drawing attention to the forced

nature of such associations. If the human mind perceives

a correspondence human ingenuity will do its best to

substantiate it.

Ishmael does not simply make use of myth, however,

he also creates it, partly out of existing myths and

partly by his own creative effort. Such is the imaginative

force and vigour of language with which the narrative

is presented,and so powerful are the associations woven

round them, that Ahab and the White Whale achieve a

status that makes them, in a sense, independent of the

work that gave them life. 72 Their mythic status transmits

Ishmael% theme to us most powerfully even while, at the

same time, he cannot forebear to reveal the limitations

of the myth-making activity. On the other hand, Bruce

Franklin is of the opinion that 'ridicule of other myths

has ofter been mistaken for an identification of the

whale with the ridiculed mythic gods g73 and he postulates

instead a Iserious central myth 174 which he claims is

intensified by the comic parallels. But my point is

that it is not so much the myths that are ridiculed but

mythologising. 'The Honor and Glory of Whaling1 ridicules

the activity of mind which continually seeks to make

mythic associations and correspondences. Moby Dick,

of course, acquires his mythic status through the

I

activity of mind of Ishmael, Ahab, and the superstitious

crew of the Pequod. As Franklin himself says, 'because

Ahab succeeds in defining him [Moby Dick] psychologically,

metaphysically, and morally as the Dragon, the Leviathan,

the Typhon, the whale becomes in mythic fact that great

demon. t75 But Ahabts rnythologising can be seen as absurd,

mistaken, and arbitrary when considered in the light of

Ishmael's obviously ludicrous mythologising in 'The Honor

and Glory of Whaling.' This chapter alerts us to the

folly and the danger involved as it undermines the

mythologising process which produces the myth of the

White Whale. John Seelye sees all the whaling material,

mythological or otherwise, as having this same under-

mining effect. As he rightly observes: '...the cetology

chapters act to negate the validity of Ahabls hunt....

This direction is mock heroic, mock epical, and qualifies

the validity of Ahabts heroic character and theepical

nature of his quest. t76 These comments apply particular- /

ly, I think, to the 'Honor and Glory of Whalingt chapter,

which conveys to us that Ishmael, as narrator, is well

aware of the folly of mythologising, for he knows that

it has led Ahab through wilful and arbitrary defini-

tions to destruction. 'Again the retrospective view is

important.

However, the reader must beware, too. If mytho-

logising cannot solve the riddle of the whale, and if

laying arbitrary definitions on him is foolish and

dangerous, then the mythologising critic should take

the hint. Moby-Dick illustrates that, in their quest

for %significance,' men are incorrigible myth-makers;

but, as Ishmael's satire makes clear, one should not

confuse the need for or the satisfaction to be gained

from the activity with the actual possibility of

securing real insight into the mysteries of the world.

Symbol and Analogy

I link symbol and analogy in this section not indeed

because I consider them as identical but because both

arise from the same process of mind that perceives

meaning and significance in what is given in the external

world. The difference between them lies in this, that

the perceiver must do more work and engage perhaps in

extended reflection to derive meaning from a Symbol,

'whereas with an analogy both sides of the equation are

given, as it were, and therefore the process of reflection

is much simplified.

I take it as axiomatic that Moby-Dick is fundamen-

tally a symbolist work, and the text for this view is,

of course, Charles Feidelson's Symbolism - and American

Literature, Feidelson says of Melville that,

He postulated a world where Ifmatter and mind.,,~nite,~ where "fact and fancy, half- way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.If He was concerned with what he called llsignificancell--lfthings infinite in the finite; and dualities in wnitiesetl He was drawn to the Ifdeeper meanings19f Hawthorne5 tales and to the #'deeper and deeper and unspeakable meanings8I sf ~olomon,77

This passage describes that search for 'some certain

significance' which I take to be the motive underlying

the various kinds of intellectual activity and belief

that I have dealt with in Part 111, Feidelson perhaps

too easily ascribes to Melville the words and thoughts

the symbolist approach very clearly. He also quotes,

as a statement of Melville's aesthetic doctrine, the

well-known letter to Sophia Hawthorne:

But, then, since you, with your spirit- ualizing nature, see more things than other people, and by the same process, refine all you see, so that they are not the same things that other people see, but things which while you think you but humbly discover them, you do in fact create them for yourself--therefore, upon the whole, I do not so much marvel at your expressions concerning Moby Dick, At any rate, your allusion to the "Spirit Spoutw first showed to me that there was a subtle significance in that thing--but I did not, in that case, mean it. I had some vague idea while writing it, that the whole book was susceptible of an allegoric construction, & also that parts of it were--but the speciality

of many of the particular subordinate allego- ries, were first revealed to me, after reading Mr Hawthorne's letter, which, without citing any particular examples, yet intimated the part-&-parcel allegoricalness of the whole. 78

The letter reveals, as Feidelson points out, that

sMelville regarded the book as a body of potential

meaning, and for him there was nothing binding in

his own preconceptions. However, the ideas expressed

in the letter are capable of further extension into the

book. It is a nicely ironic point that the first sentence

quoted above could, with the exception of the word

'humbly,' as well be addressed to Ahab as to Sophia

Hawthorne. The letter supports what the book repeatedly

emphasizes, that the symbolic vision is essentially

subjective and individual. Ahab has a 'spiritualizing

nature' (albeit an infernal one); he sees more than

other men and what he sees are decidedly not the same

things as Starbuck or Stubb or Flask or Ishmael; he

too, in fact, creates these things (read Moby Dick as

demon here), so indeed the reader should not 'much . , marvelt at Ahab's 'expressions concerning Moby Dick.'

The problem implicit here is obvious--what validity

can be assigned to one man's subjective, symbolic vision

of the world? As Feidelson says, though he does not real-

ly apply the point closely to Moby-Dick, 'the theme of

the book is an unresolved question--doubly unresolved,

since the question is precisely the validity of the

method, 80 The question, in other words, is not,

simply, what is the meaning of the universe, but also

what use are the methods we employ to try to discover

that meaning?

It is my contention that the book shows that all

methods fail, indeed must fail for by definition the

question is unanswerable, the problem ungraspable,

In Moby-Dick, the symbolist method is no exception for

it leads Ahab precipitately to his doom. It can be

linked to the philosophical dualism traceable to Plato

and to the mythologizing tendency, discussed previously,

both of which are satirized by Ishmael, Nor does the

symbolist method itself escape Ishmael's ironic glance,

I have already referred to the equivocation in the

well-known words from 'The Doubloon' chapter: 'And some

certain significance lurks in all things, else all - things are little worth,....' (emphasis added). The

reader's confidence in the existence of 'some certain

significance' is not increased by the widely diverging

interpretations subsequently given of the symbols on

the doubloon. The interpretations in fact correspond

to the individual personalities making the assessment,

Ahab runs to his usual absurd excess: 'The firm tower,

that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous,

the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab;

all are Ahab' (p. 359), but then restates the whole

problem in succinct terms, 'and this round gold is but

the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's

glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his

own mysterious self.' The symbolist method cannot pene-

trate the mysteries of the world but throws men back on

their own resources.

What I have been saying about symbolising also

applies to the extensive analogising which goes on in

Moby-Dick. Ishmael's analogising mind seeks to illuminate

character and event by a complex system of corresponden-

ces. However, the analogising yields no more than the

symbolising and at times it is suspiciously facile, as

if Ishmael is acknowledging the limitations of the method

even as his mind runs on with it. When he is roped to

Queequeg while the latter is over the side attaching

the blubber-hook, Ishmael reflects upon his situation:

And yet still further pondering--while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and the ship, which would threaten to jam him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills you die. (p. 271)

The tone here is suspect, the clauses in apposition

add a touch of pomposity which betrays the fundamental

lack of seriousness of the thought, which seems too

easily produced. Similarly, the lengthy analogising

reflections of the 'Fast-Fish and Loose-Fisht chapter

also possess a humorously pompous facility:

But ploughed up to the primary rock of the matter the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in the above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence ; for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two props to stand on. (p. 333)

Admittedly the tone of this passage can in part be

accounted for by Ishmael's irony at the expense of an

unjust legal system. Still, again we find the subor-

dinate clauses and the 'I say' where the long-winded

Ishmael draws breath to complete his sentence, as well

as a too neat and comprehensive solution to a complex

question. Analogising can yield insights only about

externals--the deeper problems remain unplumbed. In

this, symbolising and analogising are no different from

the other methods considered which similarly can deal

only with externals, appearances and superficialities

( a t l e a s t i n terms of the ul t imate problem put forward),

Is there then no instrument with which t o probe the

mystery? Yes, there i s one, but i t , too, i s f a t a l l y

flawed, as we s h a l l see.

I n t u i t i o n

'The Fountaint chapter , a f t e r some hypothesizing on the

na ture of the whale's spout, concludes with t h i s re f lec -

t i o n which a r i s e s c h a r a c t e r i s t i c a l l y out of t he mater ia l

t h a t has gone before:

/

And so, through a l l the th i ck mists of the dim doubts i n my mind, divine i n t u i t i o n s now and then shoot, enkindling m y fog with a heavenly ray. And f o r t h i s I thank God; f o r a l l have doubts; many deny; but doubts o r denia ls , few along with them, have i n t u i t i o n s . Doubts of a l l th ings ear th ly , and i n t u i t i o n s of some things heavenly; t h i s combination makes n e i t h e r bel iever nor i n f i d e l , but makes a m a n who regards them both with equal eye.

The fundamental problem i s again r e s t a t ed i n t h i s

passage, On the one hand i s the world which w i l l

y i e l d t o only the most supe r f i c i a l sc ru t iny and ana lys i s ,

but on the other the i n t u i t i o n t h a t something l i e s

beyond, Ishmael 's i n t u i t i o n s a r e of ' th ings heavenlyt

and he thanks God f o r them, unl ike Ahab who i s enraged

by h i s i n t u i t i o n s of an implacable malice and h o s t i l i t y .

But it is in the nature of intuition as a kind of

instinctive knowledge, that it may not be subject to

verification. In fact, neither Ishmael nor Ahab can

turn to the world to bear out their intuitions, Never-

theless, where Ishmael is content to rest with the

intuition itself, Ahab is determined to act upon it

even though it is not constant and he sometimes suspects

that 'there's naught beyond1 (p. 144). Moreover, as

Ishmael says, although many doubt few men have intuitions

--they are a special gift to any individual who possesses

them, and we find ourselves, therefore, back in a subjec-

tive world where one man's intuition may look like mad-

ness to another. And indeed Ahab does appear mad to

Ishmael as he must to anyone who does not share his

intuition. To us he seems doubly mad in his insistence

on trying to act upon his intuition, though in fact he

is simply acting according to his own logic within the

limits of his own particular perception, But to attempt

to act on an intangible apprehension of an inscrutable

force must fail and does and Ahab's death is the measure

of his failure.

Ishmael and Ahab are not alone in their intuitions,

however. Pip, left behind in the sea by Stubb, figurative-

ly and literally plunges into the ocean that more than

anything typifies the immense, lonely, inscrutable world.

141

Ishmael says of him:

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though, Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heart- less, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs, He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. (p. 347)

J 1 ms6? Well, y e s =d ~~--int.iritf 8 ~ s of spLriiuai t , r l i rg s

are ambiguous in this respect. As Ishmael says, 'man's

insanity is heaven's sense1 but that in itself is an

intuitive remark based on an immediate perception rather

than a supportable position. So the ambiguity remains.

Intuition holds no certain, communicable knowledge but

only the unverifiable wisdom that men are liable to call

insane.

Ishmael, then, displays a profound scepticism,

indeed disrespect, towards the systems of thought

and belief and the methods of enquiry that men have

created in order to explain the world and their un-

accountable presence in it. At best the systems and

Pip's vision or intuition of the foundation of the earth

is so private, so essentially incommunicable that when

he tries to utter it he is regarded as mad. But is he

methods can yield only a limited and fragmentary know-

ledge about the appearances of the world; at worst they

encumber men with useless dogmas that can do nothing to

appease their sense of a profounder reality. Appearance

or reality?--what is true?--what is actually the case?

--what is the explanation for these phenomena?--these

are questions that continually plague Ishmael. It is

difficult enough for him to provide answers even in

respect of the world of appearances to which he does

have access, impossible when dealing with the problems

of ultimate meaning and significance. In the next and

final Part I propose to examine some of the consequences

of thisstate of affairs for Ishmael and Ahab, and for

Melville, too.

PART IV

CONCLUSIONS

Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. Ishmael, p. 313

To state the matter briefly, if ponderously, there is

an epistemological problem underlying the whole of

Moby-Dick. Ishmael is continually concerned with the

question of what it is possible to have certain know-

ledge about. The answer, implicit in his equivocation,

irony, satire, and pervasive scepticism, is that there

is little indeed that a man can be sure of. Such an

answer, while failing to meet one problem, creates

another--an ontological problem. What, in a world lacking

all certainties, may be the state of a mants being?--what

his existential situation? These are the questions.

Ishmael and Ahab: The Existential Situation

Ishmael and Ahab have much in common. They both perceive

what Ishmael refers to in his discussion of the carpenter

as 'the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible

/ world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes,

still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though

you dig foundations for cathedralst (p. 388). Both have

intuitions of something lying behind the stolid fade

of the world, and both are aware of the subjective nature

of the meanings men derive from the world. Indeed, as I

noted earlier, it is Ahab who, in 'The Doubloont chapter,

articulates the problem of subjectivity most succinctly

when he talks of the 'globe, which, like a magician's

glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back

his own mysterious self' (p. 359). In a world where so

little that is certain is given to a man he has only his

resources of self to fall back on. More than that, under

such circumstances there is a continual threat to the

self--a man must struggle to preserve his identity in

the face of the lack meaning that always seems about

to overwhelm him. Moby-Dick contains a record of Ahab's

struggle to overwh.eh the inscrutable world, which he

feels is nonetheless malicious, before it overwhelms him,

and it - is a record of Ishmael's own struggle to come to grips with meaninglessness.

In - The Divided - Self, an existential study of schizophrenics, R. D. Laing sets up some definitions

which may be of assistance in understanding Ishmael and

Ahab. He refers to what he calls 'primary ontological /

security' using 'ontological,' as he says, as a simple

adverbial or adjectival derivative of 'being.' 81

According to Laing, 'a basically ontologically secure

person will encounter all the hazards of life, social,

ethical, spiritual, biological, from a centrally firm

sense of his own and other people's reality and identity.' 82

A n ontologically insecure person, on the other hand,

will find in the external world a threat to his identity.

If the individual cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy, and identity of himself and others for granted, then he has to become absorbed in contriving ways of trying to be real, of keeping himself or others alive, of preserving his identity, in efforts, as he will often put it, to prevent himself losing his self. What are to most people everyday happenings, which are hardly noticed because they have no special significance, may become deeply significant in so far as they either contribute to the sustenance of the individual's being or threaten him with non-being, Such an individual, for whom the elements of the world are coming to have, or have come to have, a different hierarchy of significance from that of the ordinary person, is beginning, as we say, to 'live in a world of his own,' or has already come to do so, ... External events no longer affect him in the same way as they do others: it is not that they affect him less; on th contrary, frequently they affect him more. 83

I do not wish to commit some egregious reductionist

blunder by writing Ahab off as simply mad, nor do I

think he can be called schizophrenic, though perhaps he

does, to some extent fit Laingls description of the

' schizoid, who 'is not able to experience himself "together withM others or Itat home inu the world, but,

on the contrary, ... experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation;' and moreover 'does not experience

himself as a colnplete person but rather as llsplituin

various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously

linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on. 184

However, my real concern is to use Laingts description

and definitions to illuminate the existential position

of those who like Ahab, and like Ishmael, too, are

faced with an identity crisis brought about by their

particular perceptions of the world. It does seem to

me that Laing's definition of an ontologically insecure

person is suggestive for an understanding of Ahab,

The phrase 'different hierarchy of significance1 is

particularly relevant and the external events involving

Moby Dick certainly affect Ahab much more than anyone

else, Although the crew of the Pequod have superstitious

forebodings about Moby Dick, the significance Ahab

assigns to him, according to Ishmael, is peculiarly his

own:

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick, He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it, (p. 160)

We have seen elsewhere the element of absurdity in Ahab

and here again there is something grotesque, exaggerated,

even paranoid, about Ahabls response to a situation which,

in Ishmael's terms, all men have to face. That more

'ordinaryg responses are possible to Ahab's particular

situation is indicated by the case of Captain Boomer.

He, too, was mutilated by Moby Dick, but for that very

reason he realistically and honestly resolved to keep

clear of him in the future. 'No more White Whales

for me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied

me' (p. 368). Of course, Ahabts conception of Moby Dick

as the representative of the malicious, invisible powers

of the universe is far beyond the imaginative capability

of Captain Boomer, who risks less and therefore suffers

less. Ahab's world is highly subjective and owes little

to the contributions of the rest of the crew whom Ahab

sees merely as the agents of his will. Ahabts self, as

we see it in the novel, is created and held together by

his hatred of the white whale and his lust for revenge,

without which this self could not exist. It is difficult

for the reader imagine Ahab existing different

circumstances. In Melville: - The Ironic Diagram, John Seelye points out how Ahab is frequently associated with

straight lines, which reveals his firmness, fortitude

and unswerving aimsO8* Yet it seems to me there is a

brittle rigidity about Ahab--his firmness and fortitude

are only maintained by a continual effort of will. He

seems incomplete and not fully human (he is at once more

than human and less). Because he cannot bend he must

break.

Ahab has his humanities, however, as the intimate

episodes with Starbuck and Pip testify. Nevertheless,

finally Ahab rejects them both. When Pip pleads to go

with Ahab at the commencement of the final hunt, the

old man replies: 'If thou speakest thus to me much more,

Ahab's purpose keels up in him. I tell thee no; it

cannot bet (p. 436). Ahab cannot surrender his purpose

for to do so would be to surrender the self he has so

painstakingly and agonizingly constructed. A satisfying

human relationship would constitute a threat to this

self and must be denied. In cutting off Pip and Starbuck

Ahab is guilty of what Laing calls 'depersonalization,'

which is a technique for dealing with another person

%hen he becomes too tiresome or,disturbing.' As Laing

says, done no longer allows oneself to be responsive to

his feelings and prepared to regard him and treat /

him as though he had no feelings.' 86 Typically Ahab

does not regard or treat his crew as human beings but

as functionaries of his purpose. Often he is contemptuous

of them as his attitude to Stubb, whom he calls Imechani-

call and addresses as 'dog' on one occasion, indicates.

Significantly Ahab and Ishmael are never recorded as

meeting in a human encounter, although at the end Ishmael

forms part of Ahabts boat crew.

I feel some diffidence in pressing Laing's

definitions too hard upon Ahab (though as he is widely

andfFequently described as 'crazy' perhaps the scruple

is unnecessary). Nevertheless, when Laing describes

the paranoid as feeling 'persecuted by reality itself'

(his emphasis) the relevance to Ahab seems clear.

Interestingly enough Laing says that there are many

images which may be used to reveal ways in which identity

is threatened and among them 'the image of fire recurs

repeatedly.' 'Fire may be the uncertain flickering of

the individual's own inner aliveness. It may be a

destructive alien power which will devastate him. Some

psychotics say in the acute phase that they are on fire,

that their bodies are being burned up. '8? The association

of Ahab with fire is made most powerfully and suggestively

by Ishmael in 'The Chart' where he describes Ahabts

metaphysical anguish saying, /

,,.when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to . leap down among them; when this hell in him- self yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. (p. 174)

That Ishmael regards Ahab's problem as essentially

ontological is made clear by his reference to Ahabts

'spiritual throes' which 'heaved his being up from its

base.! The continual iteration of 'in himf in the

passage above denotes the identity crisis which is

consuming Ahab like a flame and which he hopes to quench

with the blood of Moby Dick. Ishmael even refers to a

chasm opening up in Ahabts self, and it is tempting to

see some kind of a schizophrenic split in him. However,

not surprisingly perhaps, Ishmael encounters some dif-

ficulty and falls into some confusion in attempting to

describe the state of Ahabts being. In a passage which

connects with the one above, Ishmael attempts to account

for the split in Ahab, which it transpires, is only

temporary and occurs in sleep when Ahab is no longer

able to hold his conflicting elements of self together.

Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weak- ness, or fright at his own resolve, were but plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, un- appeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle of soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral.

But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahabts case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and bum, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. (pp. 174-5)

Ishmael is obviously trying to express a sense of Ahabts

defective self and employs traditional categories like

mind and soul in so doing, but assigns some varying

specialized meanings to them, Presumably the 'charac-

terizing mind1 is here the chief agent of identity and

it is this that has gone wrong. 'Soul1 in this context

is not a spiritual entity but the animating, vital prin-

ciple which supplies necessary energy but which in itself

is incapable of determination. However, earlier Ishmael

had claimed that Ahabts madness stemmed from the fact

that 'his torn body and gashed soul bled into one anothert

(p. 160). Here the soul itself is apparently defective

rather than being a healthful principle seeking to escape

the dominating will of the mind, Soul would seem here

to be more or less synonymous with self--the injury and

insult to Ahabts body having produced a like effect on

his self, Moreover, the body-soul dichotomy is re-

introduced by Ahab himself on the second day of the chase

where he says:

Ye see an old man cut down t o the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foo t . ' T i s Ahab--his body's p a r t ; but Ahab's s o u l ' s a centipede, t h a t moves upon a hundred legs . I f e e l s t r a ined , ha l f s tranded, as ropes t h a t tow dismasted fri- ga t e s i n a ga le ; and I may look s o . But e r e I break, y e t l l hear me crack; .. . (p. 459)

Mere again soul seems t o be equivalent t o s e l f (note

a l s o the absurd inappropriateness of Ahabts centipede

metaphor), Furthermore, as Laing says of on%ologically

insecure people, he seems t o f e e l h i s s e l f as ' p a r t i a l l y

divorced from h i s body,' 88 Laing maintains t h a t t he un-

embodied s e l f a c t s as a mere onlooker at a l l t he body ..I - I I dcss zzd engzgEs ir; r;c%hir;g directly i t s e l f . u r l i,rr &ab

t he s i t u a t i o n i s reversed. It i s h i s s e l f t h a t i s pro-

foundly engaged i n an e f f o r t t o a s s e r t and preserve

i t s e l f by taking the offensive agains t a malicious

world symbolized f o r him by Moby Dick, while i t i s h i s

poor old ba t te red body t h a t i s ready t o g ive up. This

f u r t h e r s p l i t i n him i s a l s o evidenced by h i s p e r s i s t e n t

h a b i t of r e f e r r i n g t o himself i n the t h i r d person as

though h i s voice i s somehow detached from himself.

I have probably laboured the point enough, I have

no t been t ry ing t o diagnose mental i l l n e s s i n Ahab but

t o def ine h i s e x i s t e n t i a l s i t ua t ion . However confusing

Ishmael's use of the traditional terminology--mind,

body and soul--may be, it seems clear that he is seeking ,

to convey a profound malaise in Ahabls identity--a

malaise which may be traced back to the epistemological

and ontological problems that are so extensively out-

lined by Ishmael in the book, and with which he too

must contend.

It would be very neat, but only partly true, to

suggest that Ishmael is ontologically secure where Ahab

is insecure. To recall Laing's definition, I think it

is the case, to a large extent, that Ishmael is able

to encounter all the hazards of life from a centrally

firm sense of his own and other people's reality and

identity. There are one or two passages in the book

where Ishmael seeks to articulate a sense of spiritual

well-being at the centre of self, which can be linked

to his claim to have 'intuitions of some things heavenlyt

along with his 'doubts of all things earthly1 (though

it must be admitted that it is his scepticism that is

most in evidence). In 'The Grand Armada' chapter he

says, 'amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I

myself for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while

ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep

down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal

mildness of joy' (p. 326). The 'tornadoed Atlantict

of his being can be associated with Ishmaelts reference

in l A Bosom Friend' to his 'splintered heartt and 'mad-

dened hand,' These aspects of Ishmael are never really

in evidence, but what is important is his feeling of

being an outcast, which thus prompts him to adopt what

seems to him an appropriate name. But even while he

believed himself turned against the 'wolfish world'

the ability to achieve a satisfying human relationship

with Queequeg 'redeemed' him. So later, although he

still has a sense of being beset by the world, an

internal resilience remains. His insistent words, '1 - myself still forever centrally disport in mute calm'

(emphasis added) express his ongoing sense of an in-

violable self. Bearing in mind the treacherous nature

of Ishmael's language and assertions in Moby-Dick,

perhaps we should not accept this claim without

corroboration. The calm itself is 'mute,t is contained . deep within, and therefore cannot be expressed directly,

but I think there is ample indirect evidence of Ishmael's

spiritual balance and health in the humour which pervades

the book. Although sometimes desperate, Ishmael's ever-

flowing well-spring of humour testifies to his essential

resilience of mind, body and spirit.

I have said that Ahab's view of the world and

existence is not really so very different from Ishmael's.

Ahab feels the inscrutability of the world and assumes

that something malignant lies behind it. Although he

says that sometimes he thinks 'there's naught beyond,'

this to him is an intolerable thought which he over-

whelms with his hatred for the White Whale. Ishmael,

too, perceives the inscrutability of the world and

knows that he can never know if there is anything beyond;

the difference between them being that Ishmael can live

with a lack of certain knowledge whereas Ahab cannot

(literally). On the third day of the chase Ahab says,

"ab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels. I 89

This statement underlines the lack of balance in Ahab

--he has no reflective powers capable of withstanding

the torrent of feeling. Ishmael, on the other hand,

is reflective, he does think, and additionally his comic

sense of the absurdity of life is a saving grace, a

safety valve perhaps that Ahab, with his grim jibes, - dismally lacks. Ishmael possesses what Keats called

'Negative Capability,' meaning that he is, in Keats's

words, 'capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, . ,

doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and

90 reason.' Of course, Ishmael is very much concerned

with the uncertainties and mysteries--indeed they form

a good deal of the substance of Noby-Dick--but, as we

have seen, Ishmael regards fact and reason as incapable

of providing an answer to the mysteries of being.

Ishmael's stance has much in common with that of the

modern existentialists. In the face of danger and

death and uncertainty he preserves his identity, keeps

his open independence, and, in a word, survives. Al-

though drawn to Ahab at times, he rejects his savage

faith as he also rejects as inadequate Starbuck's

pallid orthodoxy, Stubb's inane defensive jollity and

Flask's unimaginative indifference to the fundamental

problems.

John Seelye, who noted Ahab's association with

straight lines, also points out that Ishmael is frequently

associated with a circular motion--for example, the

vortex around which he swirls in the final scene or the

circular motion about his calm centre already referred

to. Ishmael perceives life as a flux--the world is

- figuratively fluid as his Pequod world is literally

fluid. In going to sea he symbolically enters the flux,

lives in it, and, as Seelye notes, is the only member

of the crew to make the tround' trip.'' Whereas Ahab

is in a particular (and unhappy) state of being, Ishmael

in the novel is still in process of becoming as the

world of flux also is. In the early chapters, particular-

ly those devoted to his relationship with Queequeg (whom

he at first regards as an 'abominable savage1), we see

Ishmael learning to be less conventional, less pre-

judiced, and more tolerant and more capable of taking

a joke against himself. What Ishmael experiences on

the Pequod is in many ways a learning process, which

subsequently through an artistic process (which is also

organic, as we have seen) is translated imaginatively

and creatively into the book where the process itself

is embodied. Ishmael is able to survive and function

in a world that has no fixed points unlike Ahab who

obstinately sets out to track down one moving point

on the face of the globe and seize it and fix it forever.

However, having said all, it must be noted that

while Ahabls course of action costs him his lifei Ls,h~m,eel

also has to pay a price for the way he chooses to take.

The double view of Ahab that Ishmael presents is perhaps

traceable to his ambivalence about the old man. He

is fascinated by Ahab but also repelled by the alarming

intensity in him. Ishmael tends to shy away from such

intensity as his agitation over Queequegls Ramadan also

indicates. He undoubtedly, as I have tried to show,

regards religious observances as being incapable of

plumbing the mysteries of being but his concern over

Queequeg goes beyond simple belief. Queequegfs trance-

like condition represents a tempwary state of non-being

and Ishmael's agitation and concern stem from the threat

t o the s e l f t h a t he perceives i n it . He i s alarmed

by the attempt a t transcendence revealed i n a s m a l l

way i n Queequeg's Ramadan and i n a grand way by Ahab's

e f f o r t t o confront the powers of the universe. He

s p e c i f i c a l l y warns agains t playing with t he f i r e t h a t

Ahab is so p e r s i s t e n t l y associa ted with:

Look not too long i n the face of the f i r e , 0 m a n ! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back t o the compass; accept the first h i n t of the h i tch ing t i l l e r ; bel ieve not the a r t i f i c i a l f i r e , when i t s redness makes a l l th ings look ghast ly . (p. 354)

o ther words, take chances, go along with th ings

as they a r e , accept the world as it i s and don ' t t r y

t o go beyond it.

Tomorrow, i n the na tu ra l sun, the sk i e s w i l l be br ight ; those who glared l i k e dev i l s i n the forking flames, the morn w i l l show i n far other , a t l e a s t gen t l e r , r e l i e f ; the g lor ious , golden, glad sun, the only t r u e lamp--all o thers but l i a r s ! (p. 354)

Accept the l i g h t t h a t i s given, shun the l u r i d s e l f - . ,

created l i g h t of men l i k e Ahab. I bel ieve t h a t Ishmael 's

alarm based upon the same kind of i d e n t i t y problem

t h a t so inflames Ahab. Early on, i n 'The Mast-head1

chapter , Ishmael cautions agains t the Pan the i s t i c attempt

t o merge with ' a l l -de i f i ed Nature, ' t h a t new source of

religious feeling and hope for men of the nineteenth

century. He also warns, as he does in the first passage

quoted above, against dreaming, that alluring but to him

dangerous loss of consciousness and self.

But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold [at the mast-head] at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists! (p. 140)

Ishmael feels a threat to his own self, to his identity,

in any actual or potential loss of consciousness or

control. He feels the same threat in any abandonment

of self to an intense transcendent vision such as that

possessed by Ahab. Believing that it is impossible to

obtain certain knowledge about the nature of ma,nts

existence Ishmael prefers to accept and cope with the

world as it is. In an earlier discussion we noted the

important function of his humour in helping him to con-

front the dangers and vicissitudes of his life as a

whaleman. Existentially speaking Ishmael's jocular,

ironic, sceptical attitude to life, his own personal

resource, constituteshis philosophy and his religion.

He travels light and stays free and bouyant. As William

Ellery Sedgwick puts it, Ishmael is a loose-fish whereas

Ahab is a fast-fish, having impaled himself on the

exasperating inscrutability of things. '* But Ishmael Is preservation of self is achieved by a calculated accept-

ance of certain limitations. As he says in 'A Squeeze

of the Hand': 'For now,.,. by many prolonged, repeated

experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man

must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit

of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the

intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the

bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country

....I (p. 349). Remembering that the narrative is

retrospective, perhaps the attitude revealed in it is

only realistic, given that Ishmael cane near to drowning

because of Ahabis frantic attempt to strike a blow at

the ungraspable phantom of life. Perhaps, too, it is /

hardly surprising that retrospectively Ishmael should

re-create Ahab to reveal what in Ishmael's terms was his

absurdity and folly . Ishmael betrays some ambivalence about Ahab and it is precisely this that prevents Ahab

from attaining the tragic

have claimed for him.

stature that some

times Ishmael the

critics

character

was drawn to Ahab and clearly Ishmael the narrator is

fascinated and challenged by the enigma that Ahab presents

him with. On the other hand, having undergone a chasten-

ing experience aboard the Pequod, and having lowered his

own conceit of attainable felicity, Ishmael, being in

control of the narrative cannot forebear to bias the

reader's view of his old captain, enhancing the 'cornmon-

sense realism' of his own course while demonstrating the

folly of Ahab's.

And yet there is something more in Ishmael than

mere prudent acceptance of the world. If there were

not one would be tempted to approve Ahab's defiance as

an heroic contrast, and say with Stubb, 'damn me, Ahab,

but thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!'

(p. 413) . But Ahabts defiance is violent and destructive

and kills not only himself but all his crew (but one)

as well. Ishmael, on the other hand, has his own less

grandiose kind of defiance. He sets his personal

creation against the inscrutable Creation which surrounds

him. He does not, however, like Ahab, seek to impose

his own single-minded order on the world. If any kind

of order emerges from his words it is the complex,

shifting, and ambiguous order of simultaneously held

opposites which persistently undermine any single view

of the world and existence. But in the face of ambiguity,

inscrutability, nothingness, Ishmaelts human persistence

and resilience are expressed in the urge to create, to

assert a human value against the indifferent universe.

As this study has tried to show, much of Moby-Dick

acknowledges the inadequacy of systems of thought and

belief, as well as the inadequacy of language itself

to comprehend the 'problem of the universe.' But the

emphasis on negatives should not obscure the positive

value of Ishmaells creative act which takes the limita-

, tions of human knowledge and understanding as its very

materials. Ishmael constructs his own world, explores

it, examines it, and uses it to reveal unflinchingly

the nature of the human situation as he sees it. Moby

Dick serves as a kind of model, fully operating, to

illustrate Nature's impenetrability, and the world of

Ahab and the Pequod, created dramatically and set in

motion by Ishmael, discloses the troublesome questions

concerning the nature of existence, reveals a range

of possible responses to them and also reveals Ishmaells

view of the consequences of those responses. The Pequod I \

is Ishmael's microcosm. The story of Ahab and the White

Whale provokes him to his creative endeavour and there-

after becomes for him an illustration of what he has

come to understand about the world. But apart from

Ishmael's understanding of the existential situation,

what is important is his example. If the world is

irreducible to any single system then one must remain

open to all possibilities and all experiences. Despite,

or perhaps because of, Ishmaells acceptance of limitations

on Yntellectt and 'fancy,' his jocular scepticism,

in the incomprehensible flux of life, is a kind of

gallantry, and his creative activity contains an

assertion of the human values of independence, endurance,

tolerance and humour. Ahab makes war; Ishmael makes

art, Ahab dies in the game; Ishmael lives in it. He I

survives.

Melville

Guetti claims that Ahabts death dissolves the detachment,

the imaginative gap between author and narrator m d that,

in the end, the difference between Melville and IshmaeL

is ,,,,, ".--:--1 93 v r r r j A A w I U . L ~ ~ a ~ Thai, is misconstruing the case, I

think. Clearly the choice of a narrator by any author

is a crucial matter and it would be reasonable to expect

that a special relationship would dev'elop between them.

In the case of Melville and Ishmael the relationship

involves a considerable degree of identification--I

noted in the Introduction that Melville assigns to . ,

Ishmael his own time of writing and that the tone of

many of Ishmael's utterances recalls the tone of letters

written by Melville especially during the period he was

writing Moby-Dick. However, Walter Bezanson's warning

is still valid--we should avoid any 'one-to-one equation'

of Melville with Ishmael. Some, at least, of Ishmael's

characteristics can be accounted for on the grounds that

-they are attributes of a good narrator, among them his

spirit of enquiry and his intense desire to see every-

thing that is going on. These qualities function within

the novel which is Ishmael's domain whereas Melville

functions from outside the novel and in so far as he

transmits qualities and materials from the outside to

the inside they become by that very process different

and independent.

I prefer to think of Ishmael as a probe, a vehicle

for sending back messages from the unknown. When Ishmael

launches himself upon the deep he is undertaking a journey

..a 4 A: --A2 --- 7 - L--- s u v GD c s e a c s u u (ri a r k 6 syrnboiic j for himself but

also on behalf of Melville. If the novel is truly

processive the results of the exploration, in terms of

attitudes held, positions taken, will not be known ahead

of time by the author but will be discovered for him with

the passage of time by his narrator and will be valid

only for the period of time in which the discovery takes

place. If Ishmael learns and changes both as character

and narrator so, too, surely will Melville have done

as author. The matter is further complicated by the

fact that some of the attitudes and positions will be

unconsciously adopted and may be apparent only by a later

reader and not to the author at all. As Melville wrote

to Sophia Hawthorne, he did not 'mean' - the 'subtle signi- ficance8 which she subsequently read into the account of

the Spirit Spout.

In 'Hawthorne and His Mosses' Melville himself

touches on this question of what may be attributable to

an author. He writes:

I bow not what would be the right name to put on the title-page of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than that of Junius,--simply standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding Spirit of all Beauty, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some warranty from the fact, that on a personal IntervLet l l ! n c grcat s-iithor tias ever come up to the idea of his reader.

Thus Melville also seems to envisage that literary /

creation somehow achieves a status independent of the

man who produced it. The author vanishes--all that we

can know is the book. Accordingly, I have chosen to

talk about how the narrator functions on behalf of his

author rather than talking about what the author means

by the book. It is tempting to try to find approval for

Ahab in Melville's comment to Hawthorne about the man

'who, like Russia or the British Empire, declares himself

a sovereign nature (in himself) amid the powers of heaven,

hell, and earthtg4 or to see in Melvillets long period

of domestic oblivion a fulfilment of Ishmael s claim

that it is better to lower or at least shift ones'

sconceit of attainable felicity.' However, though

doubtless Melville worked his own ambivalences into

Moby-Dick, to make assertions about the author's meaning

is to attempt the hazardous task of biography where

assertions are notoriously difficult to substantiate--

biography being but a lightly disguised form of fiction,

At least with a novel the facts are all in, so to speak

--the book is there and may be appealed to in order to

support claims made about character or narrator in contrast

to an author Is life, where in the nature of thinks much

~i- ; t i i i lui L e known ana mueed, where the facts may be very

sketchy, To make sense of Moby-Dick, therefore, one must

turn to Ishmael and examine him in his context--his

responses, his pehaviour, his ambivalences, his language,

his enquiring creative mind, Melville is deus absconditus, - without whom Ishmaelts world could not exist, and to

whom proper homage must be paid, but who cannot now

intervene in his own creation.

FOOTNOTES

'~erman Melville, Moby-Dick, eds . Harrison Hayf ord and Hershel Parker (New York, 1967), p. 293. All subsequent page references within the thesis refer to this text.

h

Z Studies in Classic American Literature (~ew York, 1961), p. 145.

3 1 ~ 1 1 first person narrators are, of course, artists. As one critic has remarked, "this is at once true and taut~logical.~~' Edgar A. Dryden, Melville's Thematics of Form (Baltimore, 1968), p. 27. Dryden's quotation is from Jose~h Hiddel, "F. Scott Fitzaerald. the Jamesian ~nheritance ,- and the orali it^ of ~iction, dlodern Fiction Studies (Winter, 1965-66), 11:335.

41t~oby-~ick: Work of Art1! in Mob -Dick, eds. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker (New &) , p. 655.

8~ew Haven, 1965, p. 3.

'~ew yodk, 1967.

10~armondsworth, 1954, p. 1 1 5.

ll~shmaells White World, p . 5.

"~oby-~ick, eds. Hayford and Parker, p. 659.

13~bid. - 14~shmae11s White World, p. 8.

151VIoby-~ick, eds. Hayford and Parker, p. 659.

16charles Olson, -- Call Me Ishmael (San Francisco, 1947).

17~shmae11s White World, p. 123. 18 A s Manfield and Vincent point out i n the notes

t o t h e i r ed i t i on of h!Ioby-Dick, 1850 w a s t he da te given i n the f i r s t English ed i t i on , whereas the f i r s t American ed i t i on gave the date a s 1851. However, when considering Ishmael as the ' c r ea to r ' of Moby-Dick, e i t h e r da te w i l l do equally well .

1913ritish Columbia, 1965, p. 252.

*'~he Encyclopedia Bri tannica --(Chicago, 1958), V 171-- descr ibes the sperm whale thus: ' s i z e g igan t i c ; head immense, about one-third the t o t a l length . '

'berhaps Ishmael 's concern with s i z e helps t o explain h i s i n t e r e s t i n the bulky Bulkington, whose name has a heavy earthbound r i n g i n s p i t e of h i s honor i f ic t i t l e of ldemi-god.'

p o s s i b i l i t y of confusion between the razor-back and the fin-back perhaps make Ishmael 's remark more expl icable ,

2 4 ~ t i s i n t e r e s t i n g t h a t Queequeg uses h i s harpoon f o r a razor while Ahab uses h i s razors t o make a harpoon,

2 5 ~ e l v i l l e t s Thematics of Form, p. 95 26Sboresby, Vol. 1 , p. 468.

2 7 ~ . E. C. Bruce's ed i t ion , Mob Dick ( s i c ) o r The - White Whale ( s i c ) - by Hermann*elnleT - apparently designed f o r chi ldren, lncludes only narra- t i v e sec t ions of the book and thus manages t o reduce i t from a hundred and th i r ty - f ive chapters t o t h i r t y - e igh t .

28 The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1958), p. 130. - -- 2 9 ~ u o t e d by Abrams i n - The Mirror and the Lamp - - -9 P o 172.

32 Musical metaphors also seem appropriate to the structure of Mob -Dick. Lewis Mmford described it & as a 'symphony --in Herman Melville (New York, 1929), p. 182--but it seems to me that Scholes' definition of the fugue in - The Oxford Companion to Music --(Oxford, 1955), Ninth ed., p .-provides anTqually appropriate analogy: 'The idea seems to be that the opening of a composition of this sort gives the idea of each itvoicefJ as it enters chasing the preceding one, which flies before it.

'All the voices having thus made their appearance with the subject (the portion of the fugue to this point being called its Exposition), they wander off to the discussion of something else, or (more likely) of some motif or motifs already heard. The passage in which this occurs is called an Episode, and one of its functions is to effect a modulation to some related key, in which again the voices (or some of them) enter with the subject.'

33~iographia Li teraria, ed. George Watson (London, 1906), p. 174.

34~oby-~ick, eds. Hayford and Parker, p. 667. 35-- . - l ~ i a p.669. -* 9 36 In American Renaissance (~ew York, 1941), p. 243,

P , 0. Matthiessen discusses the background of American transcendentalism in these terms: 'The tendency of American idealism to see a spiritual significance in every natural fact was far more broadly diffused than trqnscendentalism. Loosely Platonic, it came specific- ally from the common background that lay behind Emerson and Hawthorne, from the Christian habit of mind that saw the hand of God in all manifestations of life, and which, in the intensity of the New England seventeenth century, had gone to the extreme of finding 'remarkable providences' even in the smallest phenomena, tokens of divine displeasure in every capsized dory or runaway cow.' I have quoted his words in place of a discussion of Emersonian transcendentalism, which would have required too long a digression,

37 Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (~ew York, 1943), - P. 343.

38 Ibid -* *

56~all -- Me Ishmael, p. 22. 57~elville and the Comic Spirit (Cambridge, Massa-

chusetts, 1955),p.22.

58~s Rosenberry implies by his comment that lIshrnaelg s laughter is thus a psychological symbol of a philosophic- al acceptancet--ibid ., PO 123.

5 9 ~ am reminded of the narrator of Don Juan--another -- sceptical, satirical, jocular, symbol-doubting narra- tor, allusion hunter, and voyager over strange seas of thought. Byron, of course, was one of Melville's favourite poets.

60~omic Spirit, p. 123.

61~imits - of Metaphor, p. 27. 62~s the Bruce edition in fact suggests!--its blurb

states: 'Many would-be readers have been deterred from the complete work by its lengthy sections on the history and methods of whaling.'

63~shmaelts White World, p. 84.

65 ~ e e quotation in note 36.

66~ike his creator, having written Moby-Dick. See Melville's letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nov. 17, 1851. ' 670ne of Ishmael's jokes refers to the presentation of a narwhale's horn to Queen Elizabeth I. Curiously enough a narwhalels horn was also presented to Queen Elizabeth I1 on her recent visit to northern Canada (but presumably without phallic implication!).

68~elville s Quarrel With God - -9 P o 148.

71~ranklin, Wake --- of the Gods.

7%oby Dick has passed into popular mythology. A whale of the same name appeared in a children's cartoon series on television. Similarly, humorous sketches about Ahabls hunt for the White Whale appeared recently, without background explanation, on 'Laugh-In,' a television comedy show.

7bake, p. 67.

76~elville: - The Ironic Diagram (Evanston, 1970), p. 63. 77~hicago, 1953, p. 176.

78~ated Jan. 8, 1852.

79~pbolism - and American Literature, p. 176. "1 bid 0 , P O 185.

81~armondsworth, 1965, p. 39. Q o ""I bid. - 83~bid., pp. 42-3.

85~ronic Diagram, p. 66. I i

86~ivided Self, p. 46.

89~habt s words recall Horace Walpole ' s comment that life is a tragedy for those who feel, a comedy for those who think.

''~etter to George and Thomas Keats, Dec. 21, 1817.

91~ronic Diagram, p. 66.

92~erman Melvi l le : - The Tragedy of Mind (New York, 19621, p. 120.

9 4 ~ e t t e r t o Hawthorne, Apr i l 16, 1851.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams, M. H. - The Mirror --- and the Lamp. New York, 1953. Bezanson, Walter E. ItMoby-Dick: Work of Art," in

Moby-Dick, eds. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker. New York, 1967, pp. 651-671,

Brodtkorb, Paul, Jr. Ishmaells White World. New Haven, 1965,

Bullen, Frank T . - The Cruise of the Cachalot. Toronto, 1899

--

Century Dictionary. 8 vols. New York, 1904.

'ICeta~ea.~~ Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago, 1958, V, 166-1 74 .

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. Everyman's Library Edition, ed. George Watson, L ~ ~ ~ ~ s , 7 3 C E .

Cowan, Ian McTaggart, and Charles J. Guiguet. The Mammals of British Columbia. British Columbia, 1965. -

Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 195c -

Davis, Merrell R. and William H. Gilman, eds. - The Letters 1

of Herman Melville. New Haven, 1960,

Dryden, Edgar A. Melvillets Thematics of Form. -- Baltimore, 1968.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays, A. S. Barnes & Co. Edition, New York, 1943.

Peidelson, Charles, Jr. Symbolism - and American Literature. Chicago, 1953.

Franklin, H. Bruce. The Wake of the Gods. Stanford, 1963. ---- Guetti, James, - The Limits - of Metaphor. Ithaca, New York,

1967

4 1 ~ check during reading (not a painstaking search, therefore) revealed about three hundred and fifty occurrences of the word throughout the book.

42~he Wake of the Gods, p. 55 . 4%bid.

44~he - Century Dictionary (New York, 1904). 45~elville s Quarrel With -- God (Princeton, 1952),

p. 151.

46~shmae11s White World, p. 136.

47~ew York, 1967, p. 29. 48 Ibid., p. 44.

4 9 ~ bid. - 50~udwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

ondo don, 1922), p . 189.

5 1 ~ s Mumford says, in Herman Melville, p. 181, 'one might garner a whole bookofrfromMoby-~ick.' Matthiessen, in American Renaissance, p. 426, goes a step further and actually sets out the lines from Moby-Dick in blank verse form, as I have copied them.

52~ee especially Part 11, 'Source: Shakespeare.

53~shmael s phrase, of course, reproduces Johnson1 s brilliant emendation, 'May of life.' One wonders whether Melville was familiar with it.

540ne tends to think of Ahab as being, like Lear, immensely old, yet the evidence of the novel is that he is fifty-eight (see p. 443), which makes him younger than Captain Boomer (according to Ishmael's estimate of the latter s age). However, Ahab is old in spirit.

551t is pleasantly appropriate that there is a Starbuck Island, in the Line Islands group, just south of the equator and not remarkably far from where Ahab expected to meet Moby Dick on the 'Line. No doubt Melville would have been aware of this fact.

Howard, Leon. Herman Melville. Berkeley, 1951,

Eaing, R. D, The Divided - Self. Harmondsworth, Middle- sex, 1965,

Lawrence, D. H. Studies - in Classic American Literature. New York, 1961.

Leyda, Jay. The Melville Lo : A Documentary Life of 3 -- Herman ~ n i l l e , 1819-1 91: 2 vols, New York, 1951, Matthiessen, F, 0. American Renaissance. London, 1941.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, eds. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker, New York, 1967.

. , eds, Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent, New York, 1962.

, ed. L. E. C, Bruce, London, 1955.

Metcalf, Eleanor Melville. Herman Melville: Cycle - and Epicycle. Cambridge, Mass., 1953.

Mumford, Lewis. Herman Melville. New York, 1929.

Olson, Charles. -- Call Me Ishmael. San Francisco, 1947. Robertson, R. B. Of Whales and Men, New York, 1954. -- Rosenberry, Edward H. Melvil1.e -- and the Comic Spirit.

Cambridge, Mass,, 1955.

Russell, Bertrand. History - of Western Philosophy, London, 1946.

Scholes, Percy A, The Oxford Companion - to Music. Ninth Edition, ~ondon,l-

Scoresby, Wil,liam, Jr. A n Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History - and Description?fxe Northern Whalez~ishery , 2 vols , ~dinbuGh7820.

Sealts, Merton M., Jr. Melville's Reading: A Check-List of Books Owned and Borrowed. Madison. 7966.

Sedgwick, William Ellery. Herman Melville: - The Tragedy of Mind. New York, 1962. --

Seelye, John. Melville: - The Ironic Diagram. Evanston, 1970

Thompson, Lawrance R. Melville's Quarrel With God. -- Princeton, 1952.

Trilling, Lionel, ed. Selected Letters -- of John Keats. New York, 1951.