please just get eaten by a whale immediately

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I’ve already done a Melville bio, so I’m skipping it this time around. If you’re curious, you can check it out in this previous entry. However, some things are important In 1839, Melville took a job as a cabin boy for passage to Liverpool, which kindled a passion for the sea. In 1841, he sailed on a whaling ship called the Acushnet through the South Seas. This journey lasted 18 months and provided the (obnoxiously obsessive) details and factual basis for Moby Dick. (He eventually jumped ship, interestingly enough.)

In Moby Dick, we read the story of Ishmael, a disaffected youth who takes a job on a whaling ship in order to see the world and satisfy a need for adventure. He is hired upon the Pequod, captained by Captain Ahab, and he starts his world on the high seas. Once aboard, though, he and the other men discover that this isn’t an average whaling trip or an average whaling ship; they have all been hired not for a whale hunt, but for THE whale hunt — they will be hunting Moby Dick, the White Whale. Ahab is all-consumed by this quest, which is borne out of vengeance because Moby Dick had taken Ahab’s leg in their last encounter. The book is really about Ahab’s obsession and the way he neglects all other things; one man drowns, his favourite cabin boy is driven insane, he stops caring about the oil and other products salvaged from the whales, and when a vessel called the Rachel comes in search of aide (the Captain’s son is missing and requests the Pequod’s help in its quest), he rejects their appeal for assistance. In the end, they do find the whale, but the encounter with Moby Dick is too much for the Pequod and the ship is lost. Ishmael is the only survivor, and he is rescued (ironically enough) by the Rachel.

I find a couple of things interesting to note about the book, although on the whole I have to say that (a) I didn’t enjoy it and (b) I don’t think I really get it. With that out of the way, I can muse a little of some things of note. The first is the question of the overall message of the text; in my humble opinion, I believe the book to be about the danger of obsession and the ludicrousness of devoting yourself to only one single (potentially fleeting) thing. The question the reader is faced with while reading the crazy drive of Ahab is this: if he caught and killed Moby Dick, what would he do next? The unifocus leads him to risk the lives of, and eventually kill, his entire crew. There is no sense of admiration for the captain’s goal, but instead a fear of his madness. However, that there is fear for his obsession, and the negative light in which it is portrayed, is ironic to me given the obsessive quality of the novel’s narrative itself. Page after page of obsessive and minute detail is basically what this novel is made of; the plot is secondary to these details. So what is the purpose of that? I wonder if it doesn’t reinforce the notion of missing the forrest for the trees. The novel is so infuriating in its attention to detail. Are we meant to feel the frustration of the ship’s crew as our own frustration mounts as we read? Is this our own experience with the pain caused by obsession? That’s just one idea floating through my head, but here’s the thing — I need to have a reason for why this book is so goddamn painful, which suggests that I may be reaching too far. But it’s worth a wonder.

I also kind of think Moby Dick, in his horrific whiteness, makes reference perhaps to that horrible Puritan God of the earlier American literatures. Moby Dick’s ability to take lives and change futures, and the way in which the crew members’ fate is so wrapped up in the actions of him, point this out to me. Moreso, however, is the fact that Moby Dick remains unseen for so long, yet throughout it all he remains a terrifying force, again shaping the futures of everyone around him. Yet when Ahab asks the other ships, they either (a) deny knowledge, (b) suggest that Moby Dick does not exist, or (c) explain a fleeting vision of the whale. Ahab is the only one, it seems, able to tango with the whale. Does that place him as a Puritan follower, as the only real believer in Moby Dick? These are empty ramblings, in a way, but I think the impact of Melville’s colonial family history weighs on this story through the influence of Puritanism.

I also wonder how much the futile quest for Moby Dick is symbolic of the pointlessness of war. I only suggest this because this book was written in the immediately pre-Civil War era, and also the only crew member who vocally opposes the quest for Moby Dick is Starbuck, which we are told repeatedly through the text is a Quaker name (Quakers having been conscientious objectors throughout their history, and especially vocally in the lead-up to the Civil War).

Of course, all of this feels no little bit ludicrous given that Ishmael veritably begs us to not turn his story into a “hideous and intolerable allegory.” What is an English student to do when told not to read into something? Why, we dig harder and faster and deeper, of course. I kind of feel like Moby Dick is MY Moby Dick. I’ll never get to the bottom of it, and I’ll always wonder how much deeper I could have gotten into the guts of this text. But for now, I will accept that there is only so far I can get in my revising for a comprehensive exam, and put my experience with the white wale aside for now.

Call me Ishmael.