Why Read Moby Dick? |
Book discussed: Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
Also mentioned: Genesis attributed to Moses (c.1200 BC), Jonah attributed to Jonah (c.500 BC)
Moby Dick has a reputation. And that reputation depends on who you talk to. American high school students tend to well... prefer square dancing in period costume or juggling with bowling balls. Many adults think Moby Dick must be important for some reason, but when it was assigned in high school, they would rather square dance in period costume or juggle with bowling balls. Sadly, many think watching a film version "counts." The "I saw the movie" line might work with Jaws, but it ain't gonna pass muster for Moby Dick. Here's why.
Moby Dick is a rarity for us Americans. We can brag about alot of things. We have an Earth-shattering concept of freedom of speech; we pulled our enemies of the battlefield after a terrible world war and made them prosperous friends; often we are the first to expand rights and priviledges to very large numbers of people; we are a center of technological, scientific, and medical advances. Yet despite America's many bragging rights, we sometimes have to sheepishly defer to the British when it comes to literary contributions. Not the case with Moby Dick. This is American English as high art. Moby Dick has to be among the most beautiful renditions of the English language. Melville doesn't just describe things. Everything, everything has a profound resonance. Here he is describing the bartender pouring cups at the pub in chapter three: "Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without--within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass--the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling." And that's just about a guy filling glasses. Melville uses his almost other-wordly descriptive power to illustrate hundreds of scenes and episodes. Here he discusses the supernatural power of the White Whale (chapter 43): "No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and half-formed fetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw."
The crew of the ship Pequod are on a doomed errand. Captain Ahab--an illusion to the wicked king of the Old Testament--is on a "monomaniac" mission to find and kill the White Whale, a whale that had taken Ahab's leg in a previous fight. Ahab is thus a man obsessed with revenge. He has one objective, come rain, storm, hell, or highwater: the destruction of the elusive beast. The other officers off the ship are described as follows in chapter 41: "Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask." Starbuck is the antithesis of Ahab. He is a calm, cool, collected Quaker. He holds to high ideals of moral righteousness. In a way, the dynamism between Ahab and Starbuck, highlighted by their extreme emotional and philosophical polarity. Ahab is the madman; Starbuck is the saint. The presence of indigenous islanders on the ship is noteworthy. Moby Dick opens with an intriguing personal transformation. The famous narrator, Ishmael, has an all-too-close for comfort tavern stay with Queequeq, a giant, tattooed harponeer. Queequeq is a native of a distant ocean island. What follows is quite extraordinary: Ishmael, a New Englander, at first overcome with disgust over this "barbarian's" ways, comes to respect the man. He even joins him in honoring his customs and dieties. It should be noted that Melville wrote this ten years before the Civil War, in a time when America was tearing at the seams over all kinds of dividing lines.
"Melville is deep," a retired literature professor once told me. Indeed, Melville is not just trying to spin a yarn or throw out a plot twist. The famous first line, "Call me Ishmael," is an indication of what follows. Ishmael is a reference to the illegitimate child of Abraham in Genesis. He has no set place in the world. The narrator is stating from the outset that he is fatherless, penniless, homeless. Ishmael is an orphan. He sets to sea, because, well, there really is no where else for him to go anyway. Moby Dick is also a retelling of Jonah and the whale, set on a New England whaling ship in the nineteenth century. The characters represent different ways through life, some dark, some divine. Like the Bible, Moby Dick can be read a chapter at a time, here and there, and the meanings change over time. For a youngster, a simplified version of the story might focus around the battle between the whalers and the whale. A young man, on the other hand, might come to identify with Ishmael, the lonely man who is also a wanderer. Later, the focus might shift to Starbuck, the man who must stay the course, hold to his beliefs, and press forward regardless of the obstacles. Or, one might wonder about the nature of the white whale, this elusive beast that man cannot quite capture, the mature reader wondering what exactly Melville was alluding to with the strange creature. Who would have thought: an allegory of biblical proportions, all set on an American whaling ship in nineteenth century. Updated July 2019 Back to the top of the page Return to Front Page