Meville and Domination

Revision of Melville’s take on We, Civilized Folk: http://pitt-crit-reading.blogspot.com/2011/02/melvilles-take-on-we-civilized-folk.html (2/26/2011).

What is dominance? Is it a lack of freedom, or more commonly accepted, the opposite of liberty? Well, according to Hobbes, Liberty is the absence of opposition (1651). That logic creates the familiar idea that dominance is the existence of compliance – the mass’s compliance. So, liberty and justice for all then, right? Justice distributed by a court system founded on the very same government that has told us to “live and die rationally and productively…business must go on” (Marcuse 1964). – I digress.

More to the point, Hobbes defines Dominion as “the [authority] of possession” (1651). Marcuse defines dominance in advanced civilizations as a dependence on economic and market laws (1964). There is a continued and perverse presence of domination in all of Melville’s books – the portrayal of which paints a horrifying picture of how we’ve lost our humanity to the goals of society. Furthermore, it is the savages and cannibals of the old world that are liberated, not us – not the one-dimensional society. Melville could never simply state anything as straightforward as that, but it’s in there.

Typee, chapter three; a militant take-over by the French Navy on the small island, Nukuheva, demonstrates the use of force that Western powers have become known for, “Four heavy, doublebanked frigates and three corvettes to frighten a parcel of naked heathen into subjection! Sixty-eight pounders to demolish huts of cocoanut boughs, and Congreve rockets to set on fire a few canoe sheds!” (1846). Like most Eurpean/American Imperialists of the era, this Francaise army brandishes firepower capable of destroying its target ten times over. What is going on here? Carnally, French expansion has set its rocket-sights on an ignorant tribe that’s armed to their filed teeth – with spears. Let’s suppose that this powder keg erupts into violence. The blatant one-sidedness permits an assumption that the navy will win and the soldiers will celebrate their “victory”. They celebrate, not because their country has just amassed millions of francs in exports from the ensuing resource binge of the island, they celebrate because they faced and withstood the perpetuated danger that their government has assigned them; tomorrow they will press inland to further that assignment and make France richer, bigger, and better (Marcuse). They will callously rape, kill, and loot the indigenous just because they were told so. That’s progress. You know where else you can find progress? Eliot does:

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet (1922).

Progress breeds greed. To get more Loose­-Fish one must throw his barbed harpoon into whatever thing he wants; achieve dominance. This lust is the push behind the French militants that plan on sacking Typee. Lust for dominance (and a failure to attain it) was the motive for such atrocities “committed by Capt. David Porter and his men from the U.S. frigate Essex who some years earlier attempted unsuccessfully to subjugate the Typees” (Adler 1981). En route – in retreat – the invaders “[set] fire to every house and temple” on their way back to the sea (Typee). Ahab handles rejection/resistance much the same way.

To include The Pequod in this set of ideas, it is important to understand that militancy and force, while a forefront theme in Typee and Marcuse, it is not the only way in which Melville portrays Dominion. “War imagery characterizes not only these scenes of battle with [Moby Dick] but all portrayals of ship and crew; roles and relationships; of goals, machinery, and methods” (Adler 1981). A scene that truly draws lines in the sands and defines relationships is Ahab’s humiliation of Stubbs. Whalers, being “chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways”, do not typically stand for such things as “Below to thy nighty grave; where such as ye sleep between shroud, to use ye to the filling one at last. – Down, dog, and kennel!’” (Melville 1851). Without a hint of exaggeration, I would say the blast of that demand equals the firepower of all the war ships of the Marine Francaise. Ahab exerts a mental advantage over the uneducated and submissive members of the crew and uses to this his ends. Just as with the French’s exploitation of a weaker, less advanced tribe, Melville develops a theme that with great power is a great tendency to abuse it. The goal of implementing dominance is of course, an end. It’s of no surprise that the crew is subjected to mental annihilation in the face of the peg-legged Xerxes and then become the soldiers to which he will wage his doomed war with. “This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing” (Marcuse 1964). As Marcuse enters, we have to wonder whose side Ahab is on – the machine’s or his own. It is quite clear that Starbuck (given his name presumably from the great whaling family) represents capitalism, which aligns him with the owners of the ship and profiteering. Having said that, Ahab and Starbuck clash quite often, most importantly when Ahab exposes his true intentions for the voyage. So Ahab is on his own side and in complete control, separated from economic pressures, and supported by a willing (though coerced) mass. He is a the “conqueror and martial commander”; he is the warlord; he is every bit a madman, but he is dominant (Adler 1981).

There were no kings or captains or cities in Nukuheva. There was no corruption and there was no crime. The opportunity cost – I, too, fall prey to the system’s economic mindset – of progress: peace.

“Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendship of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass anything of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe. If truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the social condition of the Typees? So pure and upright were they in all the relations of life, that entering their valley, as I did, under the most erroneous impressions of their character, I was soon led to exclaim in amazement: 'Are these the ferocious savages, the blood-thirsty cannibals of whom I have heard such frightful tales! They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence, and who repeat every night that beautiful prayer breathed first by the lips of the divine and gentle Jesus.'”

Excerpt from Typee 1846

Melville is adamant about showing us the raw passion that those called savages have kept while we toil away all such feeling to the wind. Queequeg is a constant source of praise and admiration of Ishmael – whom speaks truth as the story’s narrator. “There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits” (Melville 1851). I go out on a limb when I perceive the symbolism of an entire aspect of all his works, but Melville envies the tribes of Nukuheva, Queeqeq, and Babo. Their state of mind and soul is the ideal state. Ishmael, amid the chaos and death, is saved by his lover’s coffin after transcribing the religious mapping of Queeqeg’s people onto the entirety of his own body. And I alone am escaped to tell thee (Job 1:15). Ishmael has been saved by divinity and bares a message of what good is left in the world – but more pressing, how fast it is being destroyed by the ever-spreading tide of a “comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom”; the like of which does not stop at submission; it presses on until it attains complete dominance. The people of what we call third-world countries are the lucky ones. They are not subject to the oppression that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is fueled by. It is interesting to note that Melville makes his admiration and curiosity quite obvious:

“To all appearance there were no courts of law or equity. There was no municipal police for the purpose of apprehending vagrants and disorderly characters. In short, there were no legal provisions whatever for the well-being and conservation of society, the enlightened end of civilized legislation. And yet everything went on in the valley with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in Christendom. How are we to explain this enigma? These islanders were heathens! savages! ay, cannibals! and how came they without the aid of established law, to exhibit, in so eminent a degree, that social order which is the greatest blessing and highest pride of the social state?”

Excerpt from Typee 1846

This utopia is something Melville and Marcuse both show considerable interest in, but Hobbes makes one his brilliant and logic connections when he says, “Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: no Law, no Injustice” (1651). I think the most sad aspect of the differences between those dominated by the imperialistic military/political forces of advancing nations across the globe and those that are working in the cogs of those machines, is “consciousness of servitude” that Marcuse makes note of (1964). The essence of the idea is this: one cannot escape from something that they unaware of. The people of Nukuheva; they were free; their way of life was that of perfect harmony. When that is crushed and burned, the pain and loss, not only to survivors, but to world; for some of this dwindling good is lost; this is a permanent loss. Queeqeg was living for the prevention of this tragedy, being “actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians” as to save his people, like the Czar Peter (Melville 1851).

It is truly a shame that the power the machine has been building and exerting is so strong. While Marcuse and Melville offer escapes from this things we call life, the truth is, the system gets stronger the more we perpetuate it. Things don’t get better. I'll see you at work tomorrow.

“The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”

-Thomas Hobbes

Melville, Herman. Typee: A Romance of the South Sea (eBook). The Project Gutenberg.

< http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1900/1900-h/1900-h.htm#2HCH0007>

Melvill, Herman. Moby Dick or the Whale. New York, New York: Crown Publishers. 1987.

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press: 1964.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1651.

Adler, Joyce. War in Melville’s Imagination. New York: New York University Press, 1981

Melville the Founding Father

Revision of: Christian or Else http://pitt-crit-reading.blogspot.com/2011/02/christian-or-else.html

In Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, there are many different themes and ideas scattered throughout the 135 chapters. Melville himself sprinkled in his own thoughts about society and the world from the beginning. One of the most interesting ideas Melville was trying to convey in Moby-Dick was majority is not greater than minority; not in the sense of numbers because by definition the majority would have more but by ideas, reason, and being a man. He did this by using stereotypical majority and minority characters and situations such as Father Maple, Captain Ahab, Queequeg, the blacks, and Ishmael. Also, he did not stop developing this idea of equality between the people at Moby-Dick. In his later works like Benito Cereno, which I will talk about later, the concept is continued. Melville does all of this to show that a man that is white is no greater than a black, a pagan, or an alien for that matter. What matters is what is on the inside and Melville does a great job of showing this throughout the novel.

The first instance that there is a comparison between a majority and minority comes with the church encounters that Ishmael runs into while staying in New Bedford. In the chapter “The Carpet-Bag”, Ishmael wonders into a church and he describes it as such. “It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Trophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a Negro church; and the preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there,” (Melville 11). It can be noted that Negro is a term used with a negative connotation of the minority and is used to do just that in Ishmael’s narrations. The scene is only a paragraph in the entire story and can be easily overlooked because at the moment that it appears in the novel it seems almost irrelevant. Melville did not import this paragraph for no reason though. He wanted the reader to compare it to the white church that Ishmael attends before the ship leaves for its voyage. Ray Browne wrote a book called Melville’s Drive to Humanism, and in this book he says that the chapter “The Chapel” gives information that can strongly be used in a comparison between black and white churches by Melville. Browne starts off by saying that in the white church only a few attend, while in the black one there seemed to be much more. Continuing, in the white church the people sat away from each other to isolate their grief, while the blacks shared their troubles as a whole (Browne 48). This is a prime example of a major theme in Moby-Dick; unity vs. isolation. The blacks are clearly the minority in the novel and at the time in history. The interesting thing Melville does is making the minority portraying the minority, blacks, as equal to or even stronger than the whites. This goes against conventional stereotypical thinking where even the lowest of whites are considered superior to blacks. The “Negros” in their black church act as one and in essence are a unit. I think Melville was trying to close the gap between the races. Him showing and saying that they are a unit is an example of how the majority can have less strength than they believe.

In a related topic Melville uses Father Maple to further compare the two systems of studying religion. “Maple comes in alone, not having used any man-made means of traveling in the storm. To have used such a conveyance would have been an admission by Maple that he had to depend upon his fellowman. As soon as he enters, he isolates himself from the congregation by climbing up to his crows-nest of a pulpit…The pulpit leads the world…The pulpit is the forward part of the ship as it plows through the sea and life. It travels blindly and unchanging (Browne 49). As Browne said Maple comes in and instantly isolates himself from the group or the common people. This shows how Father Maple considers himself and is probably considered by the people as greater than them. He stands above them at the pulpit almost signifying that he is closer to God than his followers. The majority is continually undermined by Melville. I think he does so that it can clearly be scene that the majority, the whites, don’t have the only way to worship and may not be the strongest. He wants the comparison to be made and thought about. Along those same lines, Browne last sentence in the quote, “It travels blindly and unchanging,” refers to the comparison of the pulpit being the front of a boat. This is in-turn comparing Father Maple and Captain Ahab. Both men are white and consider themselves above the common man and have a special bond with God. Although there bonds are very different they both are the leaders of a majority group; leading the white church is Maple and the vessel is Ahab. Having the power to control people, both of these men lead blindly and the majority follows. Melville saw this as another fault in the majority thinking of being superior. If the minority didn’t follow the teachings or orders of one man does that make them inferior? I don’t think so and neither does Melville. Strong support for this claim comes from the character Queequeg and his Pagan ways.

Queequeg is introduced in the chapter “The Spouter-Inn” with a description by the landlord to Ishmael about his new sleeping partner. He is a cannibal harpooner and the landlord said Queequeg was out so late because he selling human heads. Of course Ishmael belonging to the group of white people was frightened by the landlord’s description of this man and he even tried to sleep in the lobby where it was too cold and uncomfortable. So, Ishmael decides he wants the room and Queequeg was still not there. Before Ishmael could fall asleep, in walk a tan skinned man with tattooing all over his body. After a shouting match that left Ishmael calling for the landlord to come and save his life, Ishmael had a major revelation. “I stood looking at him for a moment. For all his tattooing he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this I have been making about, thought to myself – the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian (Melville 26). At this moment Ishmael has come to terms with what I consider Melville’s major theme. Even though Ishmael is a Christian and Queequeg is a Pagan, Melville wants us to see that Ishmael can see through the outside coverings of a stereotype. Melville has some fun with the situation saying that Ishmael would rather sleep with the Pagan over a drunken Christian. This is humerous but it also has some truth behind it. Melville closes the chapter with Ishmael saying, “I turned in, and never slept better in my life” (Melville 27). This is because he came to terms with the fact that even though Queequeg was in a minority group that is normally looked down upon by the white majority, he is a person just like himself. This doesn’t seem like earth shattering news but the time period and setting must be considered. This novel is based in a time where white men were looking to travel the world and expand America. And if that meant taking over an island of natives, it probably happened. I mean anyone that had a different skin color was looked as inferior by the whites and Melville did not agree with this thinking.

Looking back to the idea of unity vs. isolation, I earlier associated the majority white with isolation and the black minority with unity. Melville makes this idea present again in the chapter “The Counterpane”. This chapter takes place the morning after Queequeg and Ishmael first slept in the same bed. Ishmael wakes up with a, “pagan arm thrown round,” says Browne. He tries to get out but the cannibal hugs him as though, “naught but death should part”. This is the symbolism of the death of prejudice that came from the sleeping partners the night before. Also, it can be considered the being of a unity between the two. Later Melville describes them as married, a loving pair. This shatters the traditional thinking of society. Ishmael doesn’t let his prejudice get the better of him and in doing so I believe is taking his ideas from Melville’s direct feelings. The two form a brotherhood regardless of their skin and that is how it should be.

In the chapter “A Bosom Friend” Queequeg is found by Ishmael in the lobby after both attended the chapel separately. This is a good example of both isolation of the whites and how I believe Melville thought of religion. First, before I stated how the sleeping partners are on good terms it just shows how actually isolated the white church is seeing as Queequeg and Ishmael both attended but they did not arrive, sit, or leave together. At this point I feel that this was the underlying message while my point is going to come from when Ishmael finds Queequeg in the lobby of the Inn. Ishmael is narrating and he compares Queequeg to George Washington and talks about Queequeg as a philosopher. This got me thinking and because of this comparison that Ishmael makes I am going to make the comparison between Melville and another of our founding fathers; Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was the third President of the United States and I see, all be it might be a stretch, him and Melville having similar views on major ideologies. Thomas Jefferson was considered a Deist for his religious beliefs. I’m not saying that Melville was a Deist but I do think that Melville would entertain the idea. Jefferson opposed the corruption of Christianity but not Jesus himself. He believed in the freedom of the mind and this is a main reason that America gives its citizens the freedom of religion (Capper 208). My comparison of Melville and Jefferson comes from their equal ability to think outside the box. They both had the innate ability to not be influenced by the majority or the safe answers. They did not have anything against Christianity, but then again then didn’t have anything against any religion and that is what made both of them great. Pushing the boundaries of our society to better the people was the goal of both icons; while one was a politician and the other an author I see multiple similarities between the two.

Browne says that Melville is actually critiquing religion. “Melville snaps at the Christian religion – and indeed all such religions – by remarking on those people whose loved ones died at sea: What deadly voids and unbidden fidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the being who have placelessly perished without a grave” (Browne 48). He quotes Melville, “But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.” He says that this is a gloomy outlook on religion and is a critique of it as well. I have to disagree with the analysis done by Browne. Melville is not as much critiquing religion as much as the corruption of religion. Like before with Father Maple and him leading blindly I feel that Melville does not look down upon faith but more upon the thought of being a sheep following the shepard. A person should have the ability to make their own decisions about what faith they have and how they follow it. This is represented with Queequeg’s God Yojo. Although it seems to Ishmael as just a small, wooden idol at first, majority white thought, as the story continues Ishmael opens his mind and even joins Queequeg in one of his ceremonies. This in my eyes is Melville saying something like it is okay to be different as long as it makes you happy. Your religion does not make you superior, inferior, and have anything to do with social rank, or at least it shouldn’t. Neither should the color of your skin or where you grew up. All of these are things I think Melville was trying to convey to the reader.

My last example of how Melville believed that the majority group is not better than the minority. The short story Melville wrote Benito Cereno is a great example of this theme. “In one language, and as with one voice, all poured out a common tale of suffering” (Melville Benito). This is a quote from Benito Cereno as Delano is boarding the ship. The message here is crystal clear seeing as the members on the ship were all different shapes and colors. The point was that color does not matter. Babo is a black and he portrayed by Melville as being mentally superior then the white man. All men are created equal is a line I could see Melville living by. This phrase goes back to Thomas Jefferson and his writing of the Declaration of Independence. When Jefferson was making this country free or Melville was writing a whaling novel the idea that majority did not equal superiority was present in both their minds and helped shaped America what it is today. Without this type of thinking slavery would still be here today, and with Melville at my side I want to say thank God it’s not.

Browne, Ray B. Melville’s Drive to Humanism. Purdue Research Foundation. 1971.

Capper, Charles and Hollinger, David A. The American Intellectual Tradition. Oxford University Press. 2011

Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. Dover Publications, Inc. New York. 1990.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. Penguin Books. 2003.

The Prophet Elijah

Revision of "Elijah as Truth," http://pitt-crit-reading.blogspot.com/2011/03/elijah-as-truth.html

In the bible, Elijah and Ahab come into frequent (yet discrete) conflict. Ahab is the most evil of the kings of Israel, guided by greed and deceit (such as in his pursuit of the greatest vineyard after acquiring another through murder). In the bible, Elijah sends his prophecy of the fate of Ahab, whose “blood will be drunk by the same dogs who drank the blood of Naboth” (Glover 456). In Nahum M. Waldman’s article “Ahab in Bible and Talmud” — in which he compares Ahab’s role in context of the bible versus archaeology — he states that Abab “unlawfully deprives Naboth of his ancestral vineyard and his life” (42). Elijah’s prophesy links Ahab to his evil conduct and anticipates his gruesome death. Based upon their biblical roles, Melville’s manipulation of the relationship between Captain Ahab and Elijah in Moby Dick creates the depiction of Elijah as the learned prophet who forces his prophecy upon the Pequod; he is ominously present throughout the entire text through this shared prophecy.

Elijah’s literal presence in the novel is brief; he enters in the earlier chapters when he lurks behind Ishmael and Queequeg as they walk down the street, sends them his warnings and disappears for the rest of the novel. However, according to Neil Glover’s article “Elijah versus the Narrative of Elijah,” “Elijah is a troublesome subject, but his existence is less problematic than his disappearance” (454). Following his disappearance, Elijah’s significance expands and universally affects (and afflicts) the ship. There are two sections that mention Elijah’s name after the prophecy, both of which evoke Captain Ahab’s mysterious reign. The first is directly before Ahab’s first appearance upon the deck; he has remained hidden from the sailors below deck since before the Pequod set sail, “Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of” (Melville Ch. 28). His “subtle energy” mirrors the biblical Elijah. Ishmael mistakenly attributes his speech to a sense of evil, but it is the pervading truth that lurks beneath the superficial “incoherences” that demands his remembrance. He may not invite it, but the ominous feel of Ahab’s ship calls to Ishmael’s intuitive speculation and search for reason aboard a ship of deceit.

The second occurrence comes after Fedallah and his group — whom Ahab had hidden from the sailors — make their first ascension to the upper decks, “Though the affair still left abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah” (Melville Ch. 48). Ahab runs his ship with the authority of the king. His blatent secrecy in keeping the Arab’s hidden demonstrates a darker authority over the ship. Ishmael is not only questioning his faith in Ahab, he is trying to determine the significance of Elijah’s “hintings.”

The “hintings,” however, are not trivial or purposeless; they are Elijah’s prophecy. At their last encounter, in which the Ishmael continues to note Elijah’s mysterious peculiarity — with a defensive tone he had earlier remarked, “You can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him” — Elijah asks whether Ishmael noticed “anything looking like men going aboard,” then remarks,

“See if you can find 'em now, will ye?

"Find who?"

"Morning to ye! morning to ye!" he rejoined, again moving off. "Oh! I was going to warn ye against—but never mind, never mind—it's all one, all in the family too;—sharp frost this morning, ain't it? Good-bye to ye. Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it's before the Grand Jury."

This is Elijah’s prophecy, despite its enigmatic subtlety. In the Old Testament, as Glover notes, “Elijah speaks…without the need for divine warrant or authentication. He establishes no credentials…he is simply the man who speaks” (Glover 452). This parallels Moby Dick’s Elijah, and causes Ishmael’s weariness to believe him. Yet, his words resonate, subjected “to greater scrutiny than those of any other…character” (Glover 455). Elijah does not clearly speak the words of death to Ishmael, but the ambiguity and his sarcastic reflection when he references the “Grand Jury” intimates an omen. If Elijah’s disappearance is problematic, here it suggests death.

When Ishmael first hears about Ahab upon inquiring about the whaling expedition, Captain Peleg attempts to instill intimidation, yet foster trust. His result is a stream of contradicting, exaggerated and vague statements about who the captain is. “He's a queer man, Captain Ahab—so some think—but a good one...a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; HE'S AHAB, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!” (Melville Ch. 16). This description alludes to Ahab’s duplicity; he is part homicidal, ungodly savage, and part god-like crowned king. He is ferocious and demanding, and is able to undermine the authority of the other two captains. This is reflective of the story of Naboth mentioned in my introduction. Ahab overtakes the Naboth’s vineyards for Jezebel and in idolatrous worship of Baal (Waldman 44). The “abhorrent” act mirrors Ahab’s reign over the Pequod. The ship is like the vineyard in that she does not completely belong to him, yet he rules over her as a king in pursuit and worship of his own idol, the white whale.

Waldman’s article also introduces the view of Ahab as a respected “successful” military leader (41). His troops respect their king, just as the sailors respect their captain. Elijah’s first “diabolical incoherence” described the force of his command, but invokes skepticism of the reasons for it, and whether the captain deserves the faith of his trusting sailors. “But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that's the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did” (Melville Ch. 19). The questions remain unanswered as Ishmael boards the ship, so he is left to ponder their significance. The inception of Ahab’s evil path into the storm of his idol lurks; it is responsible for that ominous tone aboard. Yet Ishmael and the sailors stand behind Ahab in his pursuit, joining in on the idolatrous obsession, supporting Ahab’s worship. Just as Elijah’s prophecy condemns Ahab in the Old Testament, it condemns Captain Ahab to his fate; it condemns his blood to be licked by the mouth of Moby Dick.

Because Captain Ahab maintains such definite ties to the biblical Ahab, his evil-doings must summon some divine justice. This is the role of Elijah. He imparts his wisdom of Ahab upon Ishmael, who carries his seemingly “incoherent” messages and the prophecy aboard the ship. As the mystery of Ahab unfolds, the problem of Elijah’s disappearance grows and the prophecy becomes real. Moby Dick’s Elijah and the Old Testament’s Elijah are the same; Elijah is the prophet sent to condemn the evil of the king, whose reign of a vessel is ruled by his obsessive worship of the white whale is his fatal sin.

Moby-Dick and Bacon

revision to moby dick essay 1

The inclusion of the “extracts” portion in Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” is a seemingly odd way to preface a novel. However as with many other instances in “Moby-Dick,” Melville is directing the reader in a particular direction for which they should analyze the text.

One of the most contentious points surrounding the novel is the meaning or symbolic relevance of Moby-Dick. The entire extracts portion is dedicated to various and differing quotes about whales, almost as if Melville anticipated the numerous interpretations possible.

The painting that Ishmael encounters in the third chapter sums up the ambiguity of the novel. The enormous potential for interpretation was even illustrated in the text of the novel.

“But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant.” (Melville 12-13)

An interesting quote is included from Lord Bacon, whose philosophies would have intrigued Melville to say the least.

“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan,” is quoted as Bacon’s version of the psalms.

Similar to Ahab’s view of Moby-Dick, Bacon understands “the leviathan,” as a tormentor of the seas. Ahab called Moby-Dick an evil accursed white whale (Melville 36). In class, the symbolism of Moby-Dick was discussed. For every character Moby-Dick had a different meaning.

The fact that the quote is taken from the philosopher Lord Bacon is worth analysis. Francis Bacon is regarded as the father of “Empiricism,”¹ the idea that all knowledge derives from sensory experience. Thus his interpretation of the leviathan would presumably be derived from some kind of experience.

This works for Ahab as well, whose idea of Moby-Dick is wholly empirical. We learn that the whale has essentially destroyed Ahab’s life, effectively castrating him as well as taking one of his legs. An interesting reading of Moby Dick can arise from this.

Melville’s inclusion of the extracts seems to lend to the chaos surrounding Moby-Dick’s meaning. In Bacon’s quote, the idea is presented that the whale is an antagonist of the seas. One of the points that was presented in class was chapter 54 “The Town ho Story,” in which Ishmael relays a story of Moby-Dick’s ostensible god-like nature. In swallowing up Radney, the argument was made that Moby-Dick was some sort of enforcer of good.

The fact that Ishmael is relaying this story of populist uprising to a group of Peruvian noblemen was perceived as some sort of underhanded jab at the higher classes. However, the final quote of the chapter falls more in line with Bacon’s idea of the whale.

“For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.” (Melville 54)

Melville also makes the point that the seas are an inherently chaotic place. The image of the self-consuming shark served as a symbol of the seas innate cannibalism. Moby-Dick seems to be a continuation along this same thread. As an inhabitant of the tumultuous seas, Moby Dick is a product of its environment and thus an inherent tormentor.

Melville’s choice of Bacon’s version of the psalms is significant. The original text in which the leviathan is mentioned is Psalm 104 which merely describes it as yet another sea-creature.

“…There the ships go; You formed this leviathan with which to sport. They all look to You with hope, to give their food in its time.” (Psalm 104)

Bacon’s version casts a significantly more disparaging light on the animal, in order to cement its tumultuous nature.

The rationale behind this creates yet another question about Moby-Dick’s meaning. Melville seems to be very concerned with epistemology throughout the novel. The inclusion of a quote from Lord Bacon, the father of empiricism, serves as a illustration of various methods of human understanding.

Ahab’s empirical understanding of the whale drives him to perceive it as evil, yet on the same token, Ishmael’s lack of understanding of the whale makes it seem ostensibly divine. This is a stark juxtaposition of ideas about knowledge.

In many ways, Melville is making a case against the manner in which Americans view knowledge, perhaps empirically. Ishmael’s acceptance of Quequeg could even be an example of this. Whereas the preconceived notions about the “uncivilized,” are based on what has been witnessed, Ishmael instead delves deeper into attempting to understand him.

[1] www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm

The Evils of Religion

Revision to blog entry 4: http://pitt-crit-reading.blogspot.com/2011/02/melvilles-quest.html

Author Herman Melville was raised within a family steeped in Calvinist tradition and was experienced in a variety of Christian denominations by the time he reached adulthood, but was decidedly ambivalent in terms of his own religious beliefs (Pardes 12). It was perhaps this series of subtle changes in his beliefs that ultimately caused Melville to become slightly disillusioned with the constricting tenets of such a doctrine and made him a veritable religious nomad. As a good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne once stated of the author, it wasn’t that Melville was anti-religious but rather that “he can neither believe nor be comfortable in his unbelief…and, I think, [he] never will rest until he gets a hold of a definite belief,” (Elliot 168). Due to this indecisiveness Melville rarely spoke of his beliefs but this is not to say that his opinions are unknown; he instead projected his curiosities and criticisms onto the pages of his books so that “readers and critics must continue to rely to a large extent upon the words of the characters and narrators…for insights regarding…his religious beliefs,” (170). Melville’s Moby Dick is perhaps the paramount example of this translation of curiosity into fiction, whereby the author uses the troubled Captain Ahab to exemplify his darker and more malicious inner-wonderings, his vital criticisms of the Christian faith in which he was raised.

Essential to the critiques of Christianity in Moby Dick is the understanding that Melville portrays the whale simultaneously as God and Devil, mapping the progression of madness he feels is inevitable for a follower of the faith. Regarded at first as an object of ultimate mystery and reverence, the whale rapidly becomes the sole fixation of his follower thereby rendering him mad in his quest to “master what lies beyond possession” (Pardes 170). In this way, Melville views the influence of religion as an ultimately negative force that takes advantage of us at our most vulnerable and only serves to become increasingly evil the more we subject ourselves to its power. Melville then projects this opinion into the plot of his novel, having Captain Ahab himself progress down this line of insanity in his quest for the all-powerful Moby Dick.

Much as Melville viewed the objective of “attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-13) as an impossible yet desired feat, so too did whalers regard the capture of the great White Whale. While those members of the Pequod not as “wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways” (Melville 225), metaphorically as religious, as Ahab held reverence for the whale but with an understanding that “it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air” (282) and that “there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like” (283). Ahab though, in his monomaniacal obsession to capture Moby Dick sees only the goal and not the maddening and impossible means by which he must achieve it. What Melville criticizes here is his opined root of the evils in Christianity; that it forces its most devout followers and believers to direct all of their resources, much as Ahab “yield[ed] up all his thoughts and fancies” (174), to attaining what is unattainable.

But there is much to be said about the fact that not all of the whalers aboard the Pequod fell victim to the same demented fate as Ahab. In Melville’s eyes it is not the objective of attaining Christ that makes Christianity evil in principle but rather its ability to exploit the vulnerable, those most in need of a purpose. Paradoxically it is the most compelling aspect of religion, its ability to “save”, that finally destroys those who seek it out. Though not much of Ahab’s past is known Melville details that he did indeed have a wife in Nantucket, leading us to conclude that he must have led some semblance of a normal life at one point or another. But like so many people of faith, Ahab finds himself vulnerable an in crisis after the loss of his leg and thereby turns to his “religion of rowing” (233) to aid in filling the void of this blow. What makes Ahab so vulnerable though to the clutches of religious madness is not the loss of his leg but the second injury he sustained at sea that severed his last ties to any life apart from his quest for Moby Dick. Critic Robert Zoellner speaks of this incident and the subsequent consequences by arguing that “Moby Dick indirectly struck at the most vital point of a relationship, which is the primary influence of [Ahab’s] old age” (92). Subjected time and time again to the cruelties of his life and now completely exiled from what must have been his last remnants of hope, Ahab found salvation in the one thing that promised to provide him with purpose. It is at this hour of extreme susceptibility that Melville feels religion begins to convert itself into a maladaptive habit.

When we utilize our religion as our paramount source of guidance and purpose, Melville feels that it is something by which we become possessed as if by the devil. Ahab is described, at times, in cursed and bewitched terms more than a few times throughout Moby Dick as even crewmembers like Ishmael speculate the possibility by stating “this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror” (Melville 174). Melville seems to say that the more religious we are, the madder we become.

A secondary and almost as potent evil of religion in Melville’s view are the politics by which they are governed. The promotion of false “messengers” of the word of god in this sense only serves to further corrupt the already consumed minds of the desperate followers, giving them false hope that attainment of their goal is near, driving them further insane when they yet again fail their quests. At times, Ahab comes to represent these religious leaders by driving the rest of his crew into believing what he preaches so “that at times his hate seemed almost theirs” (197). Ishmael admits to succumbing to Ahab’s powerful authority when he states “I must resign myself into the hands of him who steered the boat” (242), yielding him now just as susceptible to the poisoning nature of religion as Ahab after his tragedy. To Melville these leaders take with them not only those inherently vulnerable to the necessity for guidance, but also innocent minds which have no choice but to abide by their proclamations. This becomes especially relevant when considering the context in which Melville composed Moby Dick, a nation dominated by the Christian faith, not yet immune to it by the contradictions of science; in Melville’s time religion was indeed a spiritual and political force. They acted politically on the nation in a very similar manner to the structure of a whaling vessel, corrupt in their power so that leaders like Ahab “who believe [they have] the knowledge of good and evil…may act for the rest of [their] society” despite the falsity of their promises (Elliot 191). The potency of this power is evident in Melville’s language surrounding Ahab at his most crooked when speaking to even the most usually headstrong member of the crew “Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain” (Melville 183).

But these leaders also suffer, they are more alone in their divine purpose than even the most loyal follower, and are in fact even madder than the rest of us. Ahab struggles with maintaining his isolation in much the way that Melville assumes a priest must suffer with his vow of solitude and abstinence. Opportunity for salvation from his monomania arises in the form of Pip and his devotion to the captain but Ahab pushes him away “because he fears that the…boy’s devotion will cure his madness” (Zoellner 100). Ahab knows that he is being driven insane by his quest for he has come close enough to completing it to know that success will be impossible without death as the final solution, but he nevertheless perseveres for fear that giving it up will render him more hopeless and vulnerable than before. Though Ahab certainly does not exemplify the author himself he comes to completely embody and complete Melville’s paradoxical argument of god becoming devil. Though he may have joined the whaling career with some form of respect for the creature, Ahab becomes increasingly frustrated and angered by his failed attempts to capture him so that “all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick” (Melville 160). What is most maddening about Ahab’s situation is that in search for a solution or an answer he turns to the very being that denied him fulfillment and caused him so much pain in the first place, an irony which can only mean that Melville determines that god is perhaps the root and cause of evil rather than the savior from it.

The evidence of Melville’s frustration with and criticisms of the power and evils of religion is overwhelming in the reading of Moby Dick, especially with a focus centered on the troubled Captain Ahab. Though it is unfair to determine that this is Melville’s singular and final view on religion (as he never did articulate this in direct writing), Moby Dick certainly explores the more dark and grim ponderings of the author. Upon examination of the actions and attitudes of Ahab, we find clues to the once silenced religious opinions of Herman Melville which undoubtedly aid in the reading of the novel as a whole and provide a platform for the reader to evaluate his own religious standpoint.

Elliot, Emory. ""Wandering To-and-Fro"" A Historical Guide to Herman Melville. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. 167-202.

Jones, Alexander. The Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1966.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.

Pardes, Ilana. Melville's Bibles. Los Angeles: University of California, 2008.

Zoellner, Robert. The Salt-Sea Mastadon. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973.