novel of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
yorker
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.