Moby Dick--the book as a whole

[Laurel]

This thread is for discussion of anything and everything about Moby-Dick, with no fear of spoilers.

[Laurel]

I've been saving Clifton Fadiman's essay until we finished reading Moby-Dick.

Moby Dick
Clifton Fadiman, A Party of One, pp. 136-144

SOME THIRTY-ODD YEARS ago, on May 18, 1921, Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes, then eighty, in a letter to his lifelong friend,
Sir Frederick Pollock, wrote: "Did I mention 'Moby Dick/ by
Herman Melville? I remember him in my youth. It seemed to
me a great book as ten years later may some of George
Borrow's things, possibly influenced by him but I should
think a much greater man. It shook me up a good deal. It is
wonderful already that a book published in 1851 doesn't seem
thin now. Hawthorne did when last I read 'The Scarlet Let-
ter/ Not so 'Moby Dick/ "

Holmes, a man given to wide and impartial decisions, made
no judicial error here. By common consent but, interest-
ingly enough, a consent given only during the last three
decades Moby Dick is one of the great books of the world.
It does not "seem thin now" any more than in the early
twenties it seemed thin to the lucky Balboas and Columbuses
who then rediscovered its Pacific rhythms and Atlantic rages.

A minor proof of its greatness lies in the circumstance
(always true of masterpieces) that, while there seems noth-
ing new to say about it, we are forever trying our hands at
further commentary. In the case of a minor work, no matter
how interesting, critics sooner or later, happily, have their
say, the river of annotation dribbles off, and the position of
the work is more or less firmly established. But men and
women will always attempt the seemingly impossible task of
writing something new about Shakespeare and Dante and
Melville. That is, of course, because the meaning of a good
minor work is clear and single, whereas the meaning of a
great major work is multiplex.

The greatest books rise from a profound level of wonder
and terror, a level common to all humanity in all times and
climes, but a level so deep that we are only at moments aware
of it, and none of us can ever glimpse it whole. From time to
time a man Cervantes or Dostoevski or Melville lets down
into this deep well the glorious, pitiful bucket of his genius,
and he brings up a book, and then we read it, and dimly we
sense its source, and know that source to be something pro-
found and permanent in the human imagination. The mys-
terious liquid drawn from this well is never crystalline.
Rather does each man, looking into it, see mirrored a different
set of images, reflections, points of light, and layers of
shadow. Most great books are overlaid like a palimpsest with
the meanings that men at various times have assigned to
them.

Moby Dick is, among other things, a book about Evil. Mel-
ville, with his characteristic irony, said of it, "I have written
a wicked book and feel as spotless as the lamb/' At no time
in his life was Melville ever notably happy. At thirty-two,
when he sat down to the composition of his masterpiece, he
was notably miserable, a sick, worried, and not too happily
married man. Some of the poison of his personal life was un-
doubtedly discharged, veiled in symbols, into the book. But
if this were the only impulse behind Moby Dick, it would be
but a subjective work of the second order, like Childe Harold.
Melville's despair was metaphysical as well as personal; his
awareness of evil goes beyond his own constricted circum-
stances. His book is not a lament but a vision.

Yet we must not lose ourselves in generalities, but remem-
ber always the kind of man Melville was--a magnificent
Gloomy Gus, unquestionably ill at ease in his time and place,
a romantic metaphysician whose affinities were with the
Elizabethans rather than with his nineteenth-century contem-
poraries. He was by nature a solitary, not a half-and-half
solitary like Thoreau, but a simon-pure one, akin to an Early
Christian ascetic. It must have been hard living with Mel-
ville. Perhaps such men as he should be excused from the
amenities of ordinary intercourse.

He was not a "literary man" in the sleek professional sense.
His work was forced out of him; it is a kind of overflow of
his vast interior silence. "Seldom have I known any profound
being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced
to stammer out something by way of getting a living." Again
he says, "This whole book is but a draught nay, but the
draught of a draught."

A pessimism as profound as Melville's, if it is not patho-
logical--and his is not--can exist only in a man who, what-
ever his gifts, does not possess that of humor. There is much
pessimism in Shakespeare but with it goes a certain sweet-
ness, a kind of radiance. His bad men Macbeth, lago may
be irretrievable, but the world itself is not irretrievable. This
sense of balance comes from the fact that Shakespeare has
humor, even in the plays of his later period. Melville had
little. For proof, reread Chapter 100, a labored, shrill, and
inept attempt at laughter. Perhaps I should qualify these
strictures, for there is a kind of vast, grinning, unjolly, sar-
donic humor in him at times Ishmael's first encounter with
Queequeg is an example. But this humor is bilious, not san-
guine, and has little power to uplift the heart.

We say that Moby Dick is a book about Evil; and so it is.
It is the nearest thing we have to an unchristian ( though not
an antichristian) epic. But to believe in Evil's reality is not to
espouse it. Ahab knows that Good exists in the world,
he even has his own moments of softening of the heart, but
at bottom he is mesmerized by the negative and disastrous.
He cannot turn his mind away from Moby Dick.

The relationship between Ahab and the White Whale
forms the central line of the story. Superficially this relation-
ship is the same as that which animates any number of bloody
Elizabethan tragedies of revenge. Ahab's leg has been torn
off by Moby Dick; therefore he hates the whale; he pursues
it to the death; and is dragged down, in the very middle of
his vengeance, to his own destruction: a sufficiently familiar
pattern. But any grown-up reader of Moby Dick senses at
once that this pattern is a mere blind, a concession to the
brute fact that at bottom we still have no better way of por-
traying the storms of the soul than by means of physical
action.

The subsurface meaning of the Ahab-Moby Dick relation-
ship is that the two are one. Moby Dick is a monster thrash-
ing about in the Pacific of Ahab's brain. It is as much a part
of him as his leg of ivory. The struggle that takes place on the
vast marine or at the ends of a hundred harpoons is but Mel-
ville's method of exteriorizing the combat in the arena of
Ahab's own chiaroscuro spirit.

"The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac in-
carnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep
men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a
heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has
been from the beginning: to whose dominion even the modern
Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient
Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; Ahab
did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously
transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted
himself, all mutilated, against it. 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." [MD ch. 41]

Like his cousins, Faust and Hamlet, Ahab is a divided man,
at odds with his own mortality, at odds with all the grief in
the world, at odds with his own incapacity to enjoy the
world's fair show, and therewith be content. The whole com-
plex narrative of Moby Dick with all its cetology and its di-
gressions, is but the cunningly disguised soliloquy of a man
in direst pain, pain which can cease only with suicide. And
suicide is the true end of Moby Dick, the whale and the man,
being one, turning upon each other simultaneously. There
are certain men who are artists in suicide, who carve out for
themselves over many years careers which have as their goal
self-destruction. Ahab is such a man, and all his adventures,
rages, conversations, soliloquies are but the joists and floor-
ings of an immense structure of self -ruin.

If there is one grand type of character Melville knows to
the last fiber and droplet of blood, it is the type dedicated to
disaster. This dedication is a convoluted thing, never direct,
never simple. Hamlet needs five acts and hundreds of lines of
anguished poetry to achieve it. Ahab, in whom self-punish-
ment is a complex art, cannot kill himself save in a round-
about manner, through the instrumentality of the White
Whale. If there were no Moby Dick, it would be necessary
for Ahab to invent one. In a sense, he is an invention, a white
floating cancer in Ahab's own mind.

In the same way, to make sure that he will never deviate
from this road, however curving, to disaster, Ahab strips
himself of all associations that might waylay him into joy.
He throws away his pipe in fury because it might bring him
pleasure. Gifted, as he bitterly reflects, "with the high per-
ception," he lacks "the low, enjoying power; damned, most
subtly and most malignantly; damned in the midst of Para-
dise," Just why he lacks "the low, enjoying power" Melville
never tells us. He presents us with a fixed type; the causes of
its fixity do not concern him. To give a certain surface ron-
dure of motivation to Ahab's pessimism, he offers us the
amputated leg. But we are not taken in by it; we know that
this lightning-seared soul was deep in hell even in the days
when he stood upon two feet of living bone. Moby Dick is a
pretext, or, as Melville would say, a symbol.

Why do his men fear Ahab? Compare their emotion with
that felt by the sailors toward Wolf Larsen in The Sea Wolf.
In Jack London's novel the men are afraid of Larsen, another
man, another creature; and therefore their fear is overcome-
able. But no one on the Pequod, however brave he be, can
overcome his fear of Ahab, because the fear is seated in
himself. His Ahab-fear is a fear of himself, or rather of the pit
of blackness, the central dark mother lode of despair which
every man at times knows to be within him. But we are afraid
to confess this primordial horror. When we come upon one
who, like Ahab, does confess it, exulting in his confession, we
shrink back, as if we had looked in the mirror and beheld
there the horrid head of Gorgon. It is this self-fear that ex-
plains Ahab's unholy domination of his crew. It explains, too,
the desperate joy with which the men pursue Moby Dick,
as if they felt that, by killing the monster, they could exorcise
the fear and dispel with their puny harpoons the gathered
and oppressive malice of the world.

Moby Dick is a myth of Evil and Tragedy, as the Christian
epic is a myth of Good and Salvation. "Both the ancestry and
posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity
of Joy," ponders Ahab; and this central brooding conviction
threads every page of the story, even when it seems most con-
cerned with trypots, harpoons, and sperm oil.

The note is struck in the very opening sentence surely
the most magical first sentence in literature: "Call me Ish-
mael." Who is Ishmael? He is the narrator, but he is also
Ahab (as all the characters of the book are partly Ahab)
and he is also you and I, considered as eternal outcasts,
which we are, the experience of birth being in a sense the
casting-off of the moorings that attach us quite literally to
mankind. The Pequod seems crowded with souls. Indeed it
is a microcosm, with its philosophers, its men of action, its
lunatics, its African savages and Poly

[Laurel]

Here's that last paragraph again, and the rest of the essay:

The note is struck in the very opening sentence surely
the most magical first sentence in literature: "Call me Ish-
mael." Who is Ishmael? He is the narrator, but he is also
Ahab (as all the characters of the book are partly Ahab)
and he is also you and I, considered as eternal outcasts,
which we are, the experience of birth being in a sense the
casting-off of the moorings that attach us quite literally to
mankind. The Pequod seems crowded with souls. Indeed it
is a microcosm, with its philosophers, its men of action, its
lunatics, its African savages and Polynesian cannibals. Yet,
for all the shapes that man its boats or hoist its sails, the
Pequod is a heaving hell of lonely and grief-touched souls,
whose solitudes are gathered up and made manifest in the
figure of Ahab. In a thousand ways Melville re-enforces this
idea. He makes his devil-ship set sail on the day of the Na-
tivity. "We gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly
plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic." Was ever voyage
so morbidly begun, was ever theme so clearly announced?

The equivalences of the book are not allegorically plain,
as in The Pilgrim's Progress, for Melville does not have Bun-
yan's simple Protestant certitude. They waver, shadow-like,
at times emerging into the world of reality, at times descend-
ing into the underworld of myth. For instance, Fedallah and
his Malays do not merely "represent" the evil spirits conjured
up by Ahab's necromantic power. They are in truth these
very spirits, akin to the fantastic figures with which Goethe
peopled his Walpurgisnacht. Yet at the same time they fulfill
a solid and specific function aboard the Pequod. They are at
one and the same time part of a whaling cruise and of Hell. It
is this extraordinary ambiguity that gives Moby Dick its
special murky atmosphere, and which may have been re-
sponsible for the lack of understanding that was its portion
for so many years.

Yet there should have been no misunderstanding, for Mel-
ville in a dozen passages reiterates that his story is not to be
taken literally. The symbolism is not simple, no mere system
of correspondences. It is rather the subtle atmosphere the
whole story breathes. It is not imposed ( except occasionally,
and then the effect is creaky). "All visible objects," says
Ahab, "are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event in
the living act, the undoubted deed there, some unknown
but still reasoning thing puts forth the moulding of its fea-
tures from behind the unreasoning mask."

The poet is one, it has been said, who sees resemblances.
Then Melville must be all poet, for he sees little else, the
world being for him a shadow-show, a whale line but
the halter round all men's necks, the very earth itself but the
"insular Tahiti," in the soul of men, encompassed by the "ap-
palling ocean" of "the horrors of the half-known life." "O
Nature, and O Soul of man!" cries Ahab, "how far beyond
all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom
stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in
mind."

This vivid sense of an extra, invisible dimension of all
things can produce great poetry, as in Blake and Donne and
Vaughan, and it can produce prose so charged with feeling
that it is difficult to distinguish it from Shakespeare as in
Moby Dick. This sense, too, makes it possible for Melville's
alembicating mind to mix such seeming incongruities as
angels and spermaceti, and distill an essence of beauty.

Finally, Moby Dick is America's most unparochial great
book, less delivered over to a time and place than the work
of even our freest minds, Emerson and Whitman. It is con-
ceived on a vast scale, it shakes hands with prairie seas and
great distances, it invades with its conquistador prose "the
remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world." It has
towering faults of taste, it is often willful and obscure, but it
will remain America's unarguable contribution to world lit-
erature, so many-leveled is it, so wide-ranging in that nether
world which is the defiant but secretly terror-stricken soul of
man, alone, and appalled by his aloneness.

[Roger]

I will boldly declare that I was disappointed by this book. The final chapters are gripping and unforgettable, but they are also ridiculous. The ponderous portents pile on to the point of parody. The Delight points out the ominous coffin lifebuoy. Sharks nip only at Ahab's boat. Sea birds circle like ravens. What's next? The birds arrange themselves to spell out "Ahab's a gonner"! Ahab pours himself a bowl of Alpha-Bits and it reads "whale bait"!

And the feckless co-dependent crew inexplicably continues to abet Ahab's madness, to their own destruction. Stubb and Starbuck, instead of setting the crew to work to save the ship, or at least getting them into boats, stand at the rail and wring their hands and speechify. Tashtego can think of nothing better to do than literally nail the flag to the mast as she founders. What kind of sailors are these? And how can Ishmael hear those speeches when he's swimming for his life, far enough away to be out of the suction? None of this makes sense.

Then what happened to Pip and Queequeg? Apparently they drown, anonymously and most unsatisfactorily, after we have come to know them, Pip no doubt sitting quietly in Ahab's cabin as the water rises around him.

After this heavy and ponderous book, so full of unsubtle symbolism and so lacking in sense, I can well imagine that people welcomed the straightforward storytelling of Samual Clemens.

[[deleted user]]

Laurele quoted: Moby Dick is, among other things, a book about Evil. "

You liked this essay on Moby Dick. I was wondering if you, like the author of the essay, sensed any Evil?

I just didn't. I read commentary that identified Moby Dick as Evil. That didn't ring true for me. I read commentary tat identified Moby Dick as God. I didn't really relate to that view either.

[[deleted user]]

Chapter 129, "The Cabin"

The title suggests to me that this is a core aspect of Ahab. I was taken with the concern he showed for Pip.

"Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now."

He fears that Pip will dissuade him from him purpose, "If thou speakest tus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in him."

And noteworthy how much Pip cares about Ahab. "I stand in his air."

[[deleted user]]

Chapter 132, "The Symphony"

I'm rather puzzled by the chapter title. Possibly called that due to the harmony/the balance in the chapter??

Ahab's shadow sinking into the sea...and sinking more as "he strove to pierce the profundity"

Ahab seems to be trying to think clearly, rationally, and the shadows are leaving his life,


Were this a modern movie, there would likely be symphonic music playing, cueing us that all might yet be well...

"...the stepmother world, so long cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck...she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless...

[and] Ahab dropped a tear into the sea"

Ahab seems to be looking back, examining his life...

and I think this could be a turning point...Ahab could re-affirm his love of life and call off his irrational pursuit of Moby Dick....unless he's simply saying "good bye to all that"

""aye, aye! what a forty year's fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been!"

Perhaps Ahab will call off the chase.

"God! God! God! crack my heart!"

This is not the Ahab we've seen throughout the book thus far.

And Ahab swears now not by Moby Dick, but by what is dear to him now, "By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone"

A man who's spent all but 3 of the past 40 years at sea...how precious to him must be the green land...* not having much time spent in the home with his family, how precious must have been the bright hearth-stone...

And Starbuck, loving Ahab, voices his plea:

**"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! {let us home to our families, me to my Mary*" [and the sea trip is almost done]

But damnation, and the music ominously changes,

"Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil"

And Fedallah is close.

*The green land and the reference to Starbuck's Mary...particularly in a chapter with a music-related title...and poignancy, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSajFn... I linked this version, because Ahab is still seemingly not free of his obsession.

**Moby Dick came out prior to the Civil War, prior to the assassination of President Lincoln...prior to Walt Whitman writing,

"Oh, Captain, my Captain"

http://www.bartleby.com/142/193.html

[Thomas]

Adelle wrote: "Laurele quoted: Moby Dick is, among other things, a book about Evil. "

You liked this essay on Moby Dick. I was wondering if you, like the author of the essay, sensed any Evil?

I just d..."

I was thinking of this the other night, reading over the comments on "The Musket," and how Starbuck cannot really articulate a solid justification for murdering Ahab. Ahab hasn't done anything, up to that point, to deserve such a fate. Similarly, Fedallah is portrayed as Ahab's shadow, and is described at every turn as something malevolent. But he too hasn't actually done anything "evil." Nor has Moby Dick -- he's a whale. Can a whale form evil intent? Is acting in self-defense evil?

Evil in this book, as far as I can tell, is in the mind of the beholder. Ahab's obsession is the focal point of everything "evil", but even this obsession is not in itself evil -- it is only his obsession to the extent that it jeopardizes the safety of his crew that can be called evil. But it's a kind of negligence, a blindness -- can this be called evil?

[[deleted user]]

Chapter 133, "The Chase--The First Day"

three things from this chapter.

(1) Ahab's is in the water, just keeping afloat, and Fedallah, "Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed him".....He seems inhuman.

(2) Ahab is "dragged into Stubb's boat"... "Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out of ravines."

That sentence moved me. Is the cause that he's over 60, in the cold ocean water at night? that he's physically spent? that Moby Dick has escaped him once again? .... the lifelong accumulation of loneliness or torment of his soul?

(3) How well Ahab knew his men! How MOTIVATED the men will be..First, Ahab keeps the doubloon....disappointing the crew...and the crew chastises themselves....for they were NOT sharp enough to spot the whale first....but Ahab gives them the chance to redeem themselves in their own eyes and fill their pockets..."if on that day I shall again raise him [Moby Dick}, then ten times [the value of the doubloon] shall be divided among all of ye!"

[[deleted user]]

Roger wrote: "I will boldly declare that I was disappointed by this book. The final chapters are gripping and unforgettable, but they are also ridiculous. The ponderous portents pile on to the point of parody...."

And I thought, "What a GREAT book!" (Hope to return to this post eventually.)

[[deleted user]]

Thomas wrote: "Adelle wrote: "Laurele quoted: Moby Dick is, among other things, a book about Evil. "

You liked this essay on Moby Dick. I was wondering if you, like the author of the essay, sensed any Evil? ..."

So I had to google, "What is evil?"

Naturally, wikipedia had something to say.

"Evil is the intention or effect of causing harm or destruction[citation needed], usually specifically from the perception of deliberately violating some moral code."

Ahab did want to cause destruction...to Moby Dick. Sure he's a whaler... Is motivation important? Had he killed and processed MD would the oil be tainted or burn less brightly? Would Ahab's action been "evil" nonetheless based simply on his motivation?

Wiki also says that from a Western perspective, "Evil is that which is not good. The Bible defines evil as the condition of being alone (the "not good" of Gen. 2:18). In this sense, evil may be seen as that which goes against, or is outside of society, both in terms of values and actions."

mmmmm. Personally, I'm Western and I've never thought that to be the definition of evil....but Ahab might fit into that category.


Wiki goes on, "Benedict de Spinoza said that the difference between good and evil is merely one of personal inclinations: 'So everyone, by the highest right of Nature, judges what is good and what is evil, considers his own advantage according to his own temperament... '"

Well, Ahab's personal inclination was to chase Moby Dick...and he got the crew to agree...So, according to Spinoza's definition, I'm thinking, Ahab was not evil.


Wiki also had Carl Jung's definition. " Jung, in his book Answer to Job and elsewhere, depicted evil as the "dark side of God". People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others."

Oooh, I liked that bit about shadows---as there were shadows aplenty in Moby Dick. and projection---see "The Whiteness of the Whale".

[Audrey]

Roger: "And the feckless co-dependent crew inexplicably continues to abet Ahab's madness, to their own destruction."

This touches on what, to me, is one of the more interesting questions raised by Moby Dick: Up to what point is the crew simply doing its duty (obeying orders), and at what point does it become part of the problem? And I do think that the crew eventually becomes part of the problem--Starbuck being the most culpable, because he's the only one who really realized what was going on. I think this is what Melville was foreshadowing in the quote about him which Adelle quoted on the last thread [I'd post a link, but I don't know how]. I didn't feel I could really respond there without talking about the ending.

Say what you will about his motivations in the musket scene, Starbuck predicted exactly what was going to happen--with pretty chilling accuracy. But he didn't stop it. He let it happen. This is where I think it gets interesting: as soon as you say that he should have stopped it (and I am inclined to think he at least should have tried a little harder), you have to ask yourself how.

He goes through two possible options while he's holding the musket. He could kill Ahab, or he could lead a mutiny. Both options were very much discounted in the last thread, because Ahab hadn't actually done anything wrong, yet. Moreover, I'm inclined to think he could never have mustered enough of a following to pull off a mutiny. Ahab has too much psychological pull.

Starbuck does make a couple of failed attempts at persuasion. Could he have been more persistent? Perhaps. It seems Ahab has great respect for Starbuck, and I'm convinced that Starbuck and Pip were the only people with even a shadow of a hope of reclaiming him. But I'm inclined to think Ahab is unpersuadable.

Which leaves Starbuck with only one more option (that I can think of): passive resistance a la Bartleby the Scrivener.
Ahab: Stand by to sway me up!
Starbuck: I would prefer not to, sir.
But would this tactic really accomplish anything, apart from annoying Ahab? It might make Starbuck himself less complicit, but it wouldn't change the basic outline of events.

Maybe I'm taking this too far, but the dilemma puts me in mind of the eternal question conscientious people must always be asking themselves. How do you follow your conscience in seemingly doomed situations? I think most of us are inclined to do as Starbuck does--watch in dismayed semi-silence and try to avoid being too deeply complicit. But surely there's a more effective approach.

[Audrey]

As regards evil, I didn't really get a sense of evil, either. What I got was a very strong sense of impending doom. Ahab's pursuit of Moby Dick in spite of all indications that it was blasphemous could easily count as being evil on some level. However, my personal sense of evil doesn't allow me to count human pride and monomania as truly evil. Misguided, yes. Sinful, I can put myself in that mindset. Evil--it's a stretch.

[[deleted user]]

Thanks for the Fadiman essay Laurele. I've never read anything by him, but this gives me some understanding of why he was considered such an important critic in his day.

Comments in this thread are, very interestingly, focusing on "Evil." Fadiman does too. But before he does he says something else that really struck me:

The greatest books rise from a profound level of wonder and terror, a level common to all humanity in all times and climes, but a level so deep that we are only at moments aware of it, and none of us can ever glimpse it whole.

Perhaps Moby Dick is evil--at least symbolically. But this is hard for me to accept. He is, after all, just an animal acting instinctively.

Perhaps Ahab is evil--he does, after all, lead his ship to its destruction and the crew to their deaths.

But I go back to the "wonder and terror" that "none of us ever glimpse whole." What is it that Ahab knows? And does this knowledge compel him to act as he does?

[Audrey]

Personally, I don't think Ahab has knowledge, exactly. What he has is a deep and near-complete experience of the "wonder and terror."

I see Ahab as the embodiment of that irrational part of us that wants to fight the tragedy in our lives, even when we know it doesn't make any difference. A purely rational man responds to dismemberment as did the captain of the Samuel Enderby. He can't help having lost the one limb, but he's not stupid enough to risk another. But how many of us are able to deal with crises in that way? We may know that hunting Moby Dick won't bring back the lost leg, but we can't help thinking that it'll make us feel better, somehow. I think this is what makes him so compelling, despite the fact that we can tell from the beginning that he's doomed. Melville makes absolutely no secret of this (rather tending, as Roger points out, to beat us over the head with it). We know that his pride, his need to be in control, and his desire to fight his fate are the things that doom him. Yet, somehow, we don't care. It's those very qualities that fascinate us, and even, in some instances, make us admire him.

[Roger]

Moby Dick (the whale, not the book) is not Evil, but Malice. Evil requires moral fault, of which Moby is incapable, being a beast (or a fish). But the malice is perfectly understandable, since is is directed at those who would destroy himself and his race. And Ahab is Obsession. He seems to me a sort of Nietzschean uebermensch, indulging his Will to Power in a quest for revenge, though he knows it's destructive.

[[deleted user]]

Audrey wrote: "As regards evil, I didn't really get a sense of evil, either. What I got was a very strong sense of impending doom. ..."

Yes. Impending doom.

[[deleted user]]

Zeke wrote: "Thanks for the Fadiman essay Laurele. I've never read anything by him, but this gives me some understanding of why he was considered such an important critic in his day.

Comments in this thread ar..."

Like Zeke, I had meant to post a thank you for the Fadiman essay...and then I got side-tracked. But after finishing MD, I really did find it that there were so VERY many different takes on the book. And since there are connections here on Classics, intriguing to find which interpretations appeal to the various readers here.

[[deleted user]]

Audrey wrote: "Starbuck does make a couple of failed attempts at persuasion. Could he have been more persistent? Perhaps. It seems Ahab has great respect for Starbuck, and I'm convinced that Starbuck and Pip were the only people with even a shadow of a hope of reclaiming him. But I'm inclined to think Ahab is unpersuadable."

..."

Were it not that by the near end of the book we already know there will be death and destruction----there being, as Audrey wrote, a strong sense of impending doom...I had felt that in Chapter 134, "The Chase, The Second Day," that there had again been a time when Ahab might have waivered.

Boats have been smashed. Ahab has lost his leg---again. And the Parsee is missing. And Ahab is showing some confusion....How can the Parsee be gone....what about the prophecy??? "What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry."

I'm aware that by the end of that paragraph, that Ahab is giving orders again to continue the hunt. But there seemed to me a slight chance here for Ahab to be persuaded to reconsider.

My take is that had Starbuck here offered rational arguments as to why Ahab should re-evaluate the wisdom of the chase, or had Starbuck again brought up emotional arguments touching on the lives of the loved ones back in Nantucket, that he might---just might---have made some headway.

But Starbuck goes down that same old path he always goes down. Ahab is for ever Ahab, and I suppose Starbuck is forever Starbuck. Starbuck spouts religion. "Great God!....worse than devil's madness...the evil shadow gone....Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"

Ahab has this entire voyage had no inclination to bend to God. {Edit: or at least not bending to God in the conventional sense.}
I go back to Bill's observation early in the discussion. Ahab is after that white whale almost as an act of defiance against God.

So when Starbuck starts sounding like a religious tract, Ahab becomes but firm in his opposition.

It seems, too, that Ahab distains Starbuck's reasoning because it's "mechanical." I've noticed that over and over throughout the book, that Ahab puts down the men, and especially Starbuck, for being "mechanical."


From one perspective, the voyage represents Ahab trying NOT to be mechanical...Ahab has chosen --- or believes he has chosen --- his own goal, and he's in charge of his life. Back in chapter 109, "But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander"

[[deleted user]]

What an incredible final chapter. Ahab noticing what a lovely morning it was..."a new-made world"...

Loved the passage, "Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood; -- and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb, Starbuck. I am old; -- shake hands with me, man."
Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.


Stubb: "...cherries! cherries! cherries!" I shall always give a thought now to Stubb on the Pequod when I eat cherries. I hope to remember to savor life...and the small, sweet things in life, such as cherries.


And then the horror: "Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume. How dreadful must that sound have been.

"Great God, where is the ship?" !!!!

[[deleted user]]

“to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee” (587).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPsox...

Edit: I should identify this for those who might not remember the movie or who never saw the movie. From "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" (actor, Ricardo Montebaln ??spelling??).

[Everyman]

Laurele wrote: "This thread is for discussion of anything and everything about Moby-Dick, with no fear of spoilers."

Oops. Thanks, Laurel. I don't know why I spaced out posting this week, but things have been happening here and it slipped right by. Thanks for being more on the ball than I was!

[Thomas]

Zeke wrote: "But I go back to the "wonder and terror" that "none of us ever glimpse whole." What is it that Ahab knows? And does this knowledge compel him to act as he does?

."

I don't think it's so much what Ahab knows as what he doesn't know because his immoderate passion obscures his ability to see. What he "knows" is his own interior -- like his "ideal man" with a skylight that illuminates inwards, but cannot see out. Moby Dick has insulted his pride, and he is so fixated on the insult that everyday normal reality is no longer visible to him. In the end he is pure spirit with no regard for the world around him, not even his own body, and this proves to be his destruction.

[[deleted user]]

And now for something completely different. Well, a very different take on Moby Dick.

From Paul Brodtkorb, Jr., "Others: The Basic Relation"

Delight is to him...who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. [Father Mapple, Ch 9]

Though, like Ahab's, Father Mapple's God is known to his chiefly by His rod, He is clearly a different God from Ahab's; OR, so Ahab might argue, He is the same God, but Mapple has failed to draw the correct conclusions about His nature from what Mapple has himself experienced of that God, as distinct from the stories of Him Mapple has read.

To grant the Ahabian argument at least hypothetical status is illuminating, for then the behavior in relation to God that Mapple advocates is (granting Ahab his kind of God) seen to be Ahab's behavior; and it is the behavior of a saint. [my emphasis].

It is true that Father Mapple's sermon defines the religious hero in a way which some have held to be inconsistent, but his definiation may alternatively be understood as figuring an existential parable: the story of Jonah demonstrates that religious man must subordinate his own desires to God's will--"if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves"; yet the religious man also, somehow, "stand with his own inexorable self."

... from the outside and from the normal, ethical viewpoint, a saint may look like a self-willed madman; while subjectively, he may be obeying God. His intensity of insane selfhood may be the sign of God-possession. ....

...[as in] the religious category of TRIAL, exemplifed by the Judaic stories of Abraham and Job."

[Abraham would have been condemned by Starbuck.]

Ahab speaks of his conscience being the keel of the ship. Broktkorb writes, "God may speak in the voice of conscience, too, at least according to the Quakers, and Ahab is a Quaker....

....that the ethical context is not the only one in the book against which to set Ahab is suggested, first, by Ishmael's writing this kind of book about Ahab at all. If Ahab were clearly and only a madman, there would be no point in presenting him as a kind of hero, metaphorically as well as literally ABOVE other men ... 'a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans"...

As it is, when Ahab speaks with the full force of Melville's power of words, there is no judging him; his madness becomes like Lear's, transcending itself along with the situation and personality. Why give Ahab such power? ... Why defind madness as 'heaven's sense'; why say that Ahab has 'a crucifixion in his face' (ch 28); note that in his titanic nightmares 'he sleeps with clenched hand; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms' (ch 44)?

...the terms, and te evaluations implied, belong to Ishmael, who, whether he fully means it or not, does present Ahab as a kind of religious hero....

To all such presentational evidence may be added the many well-known passages that in relative degrees of directness tend to justify Ahab. There is the passage that advocates the value of glorious death in the service of high and dangerous truths:

'Know ye, now, Bulkinton? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspires to cast her upon the treacherous, slavish shore?

... so, better it is to perish in that howling infinite, then be ingloriously deashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! (ch 21)"


Me...in typing up Father's Mapple sermon, "Delight is to him....." I was suddenly reminded that in chapter 131, The Pequod met The Delight.

A warning of what the cost might be should one strive to be an individual looking for one's own truths, fully focused on achieving one's own goals, one who "ever stands forth his own inexorable self... who gives no quarter in the truth" ?

[[deleted user]]

Audrey wrote: " but the dilemma puts me in mind of the eternal question conscientious people must always be asking themselves. How do you follow your conscience in seemingly doomed situations? I think most of us are inclined to do as Starbuck does--watch in dismayed semi-silence and try to avoid being too deeply complicit..."

I think that's pretty sound.

[Thomas]

Adelle wrote: "... from the outside and from the normal, ethical viewpoint, a saint may look like a self-willed madman; while subjectively, he may be obeying God. His intensity of insane selfhood may be the sign of God-possession. ...."

I guess the difference between a saint and a madman is that a saint sacrifices himself for a greater good, or at least in acknowledgement of that greater good, whereas a madman (like Ahab) has no ground to stand on. He thinks he does -- he thinks he can strike beyond the mask -- but in reality, he cannot. The implication is that there is nothing beyond the mask at all. There is no ground to stand on.

I wonder at this point if Melville doesn't set up Ahab as a "religious hero" in order to criticize religion, or any form of idealism for that matter. Even if Ahab's obsession isn't taken to be religious in nature, it is still fervently idealistic. I wonder if this isn't what he meant when he called MD a "wicked book." One could argue that denying the existence of ideals, or showing belief in them to be dangerously delusional, is very wicked indeed.

On the other hand, there is Starbuck.

[Everyman]

Adelle wrote: "Laurele quoted: Moby Dick is, among other things, a book about Evil. "

You liked this essay on Moby Dick. I was wondering if you, like the author of the essay, sensed any Evil?

I just d..."

I agree with you I didn't, either. Your post was early in the discussion, and I see there are a number of posts I haven't gotten to yet, so maybe somebody downstream will support that idea and I will change my mind, but like you, when I first read that in the essay I thought "really? I didn't see that."

[Everyman]

Adelle wrote: "Roger wrote: "I will boldly declare that I was disappointed by this book. ...."

And I thought, "What a GREAT book!" (Hope to return to this post eventually.)"

I want to hear more of this discussion. I'm torn. There were times, most of them early on but also in the last chapters, when I thought "this is great stuff." there were times, particularly when the whaling aspects went on and on, when I thought "if I weren't reading this for the group, I would move on to something worth my time." In the end, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Which is unusual for me.

[Everyman]

Audrey wrote: "Roger: "And the feckless co-dependent crew inexplicably continues to abet Ahab's madness, to their own destruction."

This touches on what, to me, is one of the more interesting questions raised by Moby Dick: Up to what point is the crew simply doing its duty (obeying orders), and at what point does it become part of the problem?."

I don't know much about co-dependency, but I'm familiar with the broad concept, and it seems to some extent to perhaps fit here. We have people who probably know a lot more about the syndrome than I do who could tell me whether I'm on to something or whether I'm misunderstanding the whole concept.

[Everyman]

Zeke wrote: "Thanks for the Fadiman essay Laurele. I've never read anything by him, but this gives me some understanding of why he was considered such an important critic in his day.."

Off topic, but I suggest that you might want to look at other of his writing. I don't always agree with him, but I always find him stimulating.

[Roger]

For the record, I actually liked the digressions on whaling. They provided an interesting respite from all the pomposity. However, inserting them in the last few chapters (e.g. the factoid that a boat will routinely pick up a wrecked boat's crew and carry on with the chase) is an odd interruption in the pace of the story.

[Everyman]

Roger wrote: "For the record, I actually liked the digressions on whaling. They provided an interesting respite from all the pomposity. However, inserting them in the last few chapters (e.g. the factoid that a..."

I didn't mind some of them. But for me, at least, they became way too much. As my wife says, TMI. (For the uninitiated, that's Too Much Information.)

I did like the chapter on whiteness a lot, for one example.

[Everyman]

Prof. Arnold Weinstein, in his Teaching Company lecture series Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature discusses Moby Dick in two lectures. Now that we're done the book I listened to the first lecture, and here are some random notes I took, for what they're worth. If any of this brings up any thoughts in your minds, have at it.


Melville's is a very melting pot, democratic in that sense, society. People from all over, all sorts of cultures, living and working closely together cooped up in a ship together for years at a time. They are true seamen – men of the sea, not of the land, spending far more time at sea than with their feet on dry land.

Written before the Civil War, in a period (the 1850s) called the American Renaissance. Starting in about 1830, Emerson was calling for an indigenous American literature; most of the literature up to that time had really followed the European models of literature. Then suddenly, within a period of a few years in the early 1850s, came Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, The Scarlet Letter, and Walden, all distinctly different from the forms and patterns of European literature, all American not only in theme but in their very character and essence.

Notice that Ishmael goes to sea when he finds himself stopping in front of coffin warehouses or joining funeral processions. There’s a degree of depresssion there, but also the notion that the sea is somehow healing (my comment: not for any of the Pequod crew other than him!), something that returns him to life.

Weinstein makes special note of the remark when Ishmael meets Queequeg, “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

When Ishamel is connected to Queequeg as he descends into the whale, Melville expands into a metaphysical discourse on human interrelatedness, how we are all interdependent on each other.

Another example of taking a simple situation and turning it into philosophy comes in the discussion of fast fish and loose fish. There is a kind of spiritual philosophical muscularity in Melville.

Petroleum was only discovered in 1859, 8 years after the book was written (cf. Bryson At Home). At the time, whales were the oil wells of the age.

Whales are an image of the human soul, living in the deep, unplumbed, unfathomable, the book suggests the arduous, exciting trip necessary to understand the human soul. One analogy of the book is between the depths of the sea and the depths of the soul, and the depths of human thinking. “...all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea ...” The sea represents everything that is beyond the surface world. This is a book about plumbing, in the sense of sounding the depths. Chapter 58: “For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return! “

Chapter 87: “But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still 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.” The quest is to go through the tornadoed Atlantic (remember the opening of coffin warehouses and funerals) to the place of peace within.

Semiotic – doubloon is classic semiotic symbol – it’s worth what you think it’s worth, like all money. It is the sounding board, or trampoline, from which the characters go into their particular visions.

Pip is Ahab’s alter-ego, gone mad from his plunge into the sea and seeing the foot of God, but mad in a whole different way from Ahab.

The richest and most prophetic chapter is “The Whiteness of the Whale,” Melville dismantles all the meanings we have given to whiteness over the history of man – it’s all semiotics, all just what we have put into these colors, there’s nothing intrinsic about them. Where Melville ultimately goes is that whiteness is nothing, nullity, “Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?"

I'll try to listen to Part 2 over the weekend. Also, Moby Dick is discussed in two other Teaching Company courses I have which I'll get to as soon as I can. (My son and his girlfriend will be visiting next week, so I won't have as much time for listening (my current mode of reading) and posting as I usually do.)

[[deleted user]]

Thomas wrote: re post 24/"I guess the difference between a saint and a madman is that a saint sacrifices himself for a greater good, or at least in acknowledgement of that greater good

.."

I actually disagree. Yes, in everyday terms, we do sometimes refer to people who sacrifice for a greater good as saints, as in, "She's does so much for everyone. She's a saint."

But in a religious sense, I don't believe that defines a saint. Such a person is simply one who sacrifices for others.

After all, if you're a religious person, you know that God didn't put you here to necessarily help other people. You could help other people all day long and that won't get you any closer to God. Your responsibility is to find salvation for yourself.

I could be mistaken, but I think there have been saints who simply sat in the desert and tried to concentrate on God. And from a worldy point of view, if one had been closely associated with a saint like Peter one's earthly life would probably have been one of poverty and persecution...the greater good in the long run, but not an earthly life one would really hope for.

No, a saint, I believe, is someone holy, someone with his focus on God, someone who believes he is doing God's will.


Granted, Ahab as a saint didn't jump immediately to my mind either!!! Still, that essay resonated with me. So...

Now, we can't see the state of Ahab's soul, so we can't address that point. Maybe the madness, maybe the lightening/like scar or birthmark are signs that he's been touched by God??? But the 2nd point, focus on God, I think Ahab might be said to meet that qualification in a round about way..IF in his delirious state Ahab had indeed grasped onto God's challenge to Job, (catch thee a whale and then you maybe you can complain to me), then, Ahab might be said to focused indirectly on God in a conscious sense (consciously he's focused on Moby Dick), but directly focused on God subconsciously (as subconsciously he always knows that he's going after the whale so that he can talk to God).

And if God DID talk to Ahab when he was delirious, and IF Ahab heard God challenge him to catch Moby Dick, then Ahab IS doing God's will.

So MAYBE...

[[deleted user]]

Thomas wrote: "I wonder at this point if Melville doesn't set up Ahab as a "religious hero" in order to criticize religion,

I think that's an excellent point. Even when I look at MD on a religious level (and I look at MD from 2 or three different angles), I, too, have thought that Melville might be critizing religion. I certainly thought he was critizing pro forma/by-the-book/thoughtless religion.


or any form of idealism for that matter.

Oh, no, I felt Melville was honoring idealism...It was that core of idealism---that willingness AND CAPABILITY in Ahab to sacrifice so much to stay true to what he believed...and I would say believed ideally--- that made the men, I think, hold him in awe. Interesting that we see that aspect so differently.


Even if Ahab's obsession isn't taken to be religious in nature, it is still fervently idealistic. I wonder if this isn't what he meant when he called MD a "wicked book." One could argue that denying the existence of ideals, or showing belief in them to be dangerously delusional, is very wicked indeed..."

Oh, sadness....I had checked out a book called "Call Me Ishmael" ... and there was a chapter in there on why Melville had (very probably) written thusly to Hawthorne...but I only scanned that chapter quick like...and have now returned that book to the library. Sadness.

[[deleted user]]

Everyman wrote: "Adelle wrote:

And I thought, "What a GREAT book!" ..."

What helped me, personally, discover this to be a great book was the scheduling. The reading pace was slow enough that I could read a little---and then process for a few days. Most chapters weren't pull-along chapters. But most chapters were surprisingly short. There was always an opportune spot to stop. So I never had to push past the point of pleasurable reading.

And then there was Ahab.

I loved Ahab, "valiantly facing everything out to the last." Others, on whale voyages or on the voyage of life itself, might be lulled into listless, vacant, unconsciousness, "that at last he loses his identity," but not Ahab....Ahab is forever Ahab, a man not given to societal niceties, or polite tete`-a-tete´s. (Two, after all, is not a prime number.) Also, Ahab reminded me quite a bit of my dad.

I found a number of the characters delightful reading. A good bit of the writing was wonderfully done. "Let Ahab beware of Ahab."

I was really, really, taken with the symbolism. Really.

And then there was Ahab.

Also, I found it stimulating the way the book would force forward questions. "The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board ..." Ah! What might the REAL reason be? Etc. I simply ran across that example first.

The attribution of actions to chance or fate or self-determination in the book was fascinating: "And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow" (345); "...the Fates put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage" (21); "But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander" (490) and Ahab commands the boats to be lowered and commands the sails to be set.

I came to look forward to contemplating the chapter titles for significance and pondering the chapter-closing paragraphs for meaning. Often they were worth the weight of the all that was written betwixt and between.

And I did, at long last, find a psychological-type study of Moby Dick: Melville's Moby Dick: A Jungian Commentary by Edward F. Edinger and it provided, I thought, some wonderful insights---if you're into that sort of thing---which I am.

One pretty sound indicator of a good book is that it stays with you, and I was going to sleep thinking about Ahab, and waking up thinking about Ahab, and Ahab frequently turned up when I was washing the dishes.

I sympathized with Ahab. "Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels." And so much of what Ahab feels is grey, darkness...and yet the man manages to stow that under and keep going...and he doesn't ever choose the easy, less emotionally painful..."look to windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter."

I LOVED the scene towards the end of the book in which he, almost like a lover, is walking the ship one last time..."Good-bye, good-bye old mast-head!"

...and later....the absolute anguish of the man...you can almost hear the heartbreak in his voice...my heart was breaking along with his..."I see: the ship! the ship! .... Will ye not save my ship?" (585). "Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief!"



The man lived for me.

[[deleted user]]

Everyman wrote: the book suggests the arduous, exciting trip necessary to understand the human soul.

Yes!

[Thomas]

Adelle wrote: "But in a religious sense, I don't believe that defines a saint. Such a person is simply one who sacrifices for others.

After all, if you're a religious person, you know that God didn't put you here to necessarily help other people. You could help other people all day long and that won't get you any closer to God. Your responsibility is to find salvation for yourself.
"

I guess Ahab doesn't really strike me as a contemplative person... but assuming that he believes that God has challenged him to kill Moby Dick, this is not a solitary meditation on God. This is active engagement with the world, not unlike religious extremists today who believe they have been called to destroy their enemies. These people may in fact believe they are saints acting in the name of God, as Ahab might, but I really don't think they are. What is interesting to me that Melville shows in this way how close "sainthood" (if that's what it is) is to madness.

[[deleted user]]

Thomas wrote: "Adelle wrote: "But in a religious sense, I don't believe that defines a saint. Such a person is simply one who sacrifices for others.

After all, if you're a religious person, you know that God did..."

Firstly, hello, all. I haven't been following because I'm rereading Moby-Dick on my own time. I've read it before, though, obviously, and am going to jump in now.

I am immensely fascinated and endlessly stunned and impressed by this one of the greatest and least appreciated of all the works of literature ever written. But I am going to propose a slight shift in gears here, as I do not think this has been discussed yet:

Melville is almost always called a Romantic author, mostly because of the time in which he wrote and because of his association with and reverence for Hawthorne. I would contend, however, that Melville's writing is not very Romantic at all. I don't want to distort anyone's responses by expressing my own justifications just yet, so I will simply say what I have and ask what you all think about it. Is Melville really a Romantic?

[Thomas]

Adelle wrote: "Oh, no, I felt Melville was honoring idealism...It was that core of idealism---that willingness AND CAPABILITY in Ahab to sacrifice so much to stay true to what he believed...and I would say believed ideally--- that made the men, I think, hold him in awe. Interesting that we see that aspect so differently. "

But it isn't merely incidental that Ahab's idealism results in his total destruction, is it?

[Thomas]

Roger wrote: "I will boldly declare that I was disappointed by this book. The final chapters are gripping and unforgettable, but they are also ridiculous. The ponderous portents pile on to the point of parody...."

I wasn't really disappointed with the book, but it is certainly not without its flaws either. Melville sacrifices realism for symbolism and mood (I read somewhere that he was inspired by Hawthorne to do this) and the result is an overwrought sloppy mess of a book. But it has so much heart and moments of such profound glorious insanity that the incongruities and incontinuities didn't really bother me. It's also very funny, at least in the first third.

[Rhonda]

While I found the Fadiman article fascinating, it was most interesting when he said Ahab, in whom self-punishment is a complex art, cannot kill himself save in a roundabout manner, through the instrumentality of the White Whale. If there were no Moby Dick, it would be necessary for Ahab to invent one. In a sense, he is an invention, a white floating cancer in Ahab's own mind.
While Fadiman's suggestion, and perhaps Melville's intent, was to show how complex and entirely twisted a man's soul can become, perhaps this goes beyond the mere invention of a form of Pascal's wager. Earlier Fadiman suggests that Melville's pessimism nears the pathological,but it does not achieve it. I tend to disagree, if only according to Fadiman's own description. Moreover, I suggest that Melville would hasten to agree, understanding that the bond between man and hellish things is more passionately committed than it is reasonably considered..
While I have not had the time to follow along with much of the running commentary, I cannot recall if anyone mentioned what Melville himself said in a letter to Hawthorne: Shall I send you a fin of the Whale by way of a specimen mouthful? The tail is not yet cooked -- though the hell-fire in which the whole book is broiled might not unreasonably have cooked it all ere this. This is the book's motto (the secret one), -- Ego non baptiso te in nomine -- but make out the rest yourself.
While Melville has taken great liberties with the Biblical characters, he certainly seems to have captured the sense of Ahab's obsessive character. I interpret this character as perhaps not an inherent evil but one which has subordinated itself over a long period to his pride.. and the damage thereto, represented by the loss of his leg. The one ship's captain of the Samuel Enderby who has lost an arm to the whale is surprised at Ahab's desire for revenge. This suggests that Ahab's revenge is unjust. Most certainly it contains no atom of sainthood.
Still, it seems clearer that most of these characters have been transmogrified in such an environment as to remove any distinct storybook character (as some unfortunately refer to Bible stories) from them, allowing us a close-up with more than all the warts. As Ahab of the Bible is his own undoing, condemning himself through the worship of a false god, so does even the pagan Fedallah understand what the necessary conclusion of this revenge must become.
Whatever evil exists here, it is most certainly an abiding spiritual evil which seems to emanate by what Melville insists is the necessity of damaged pride. It is perhaps most interesting to understand the recognition by Elijah of just how soulless some of these characters are, including the narrator. Still rather than alarming, this is a matter which Melville accepts with overwhelming ease. This again underscores a pessimism which I do indeed find pathological.
I have tried for years to see this as a great book and it still eludes me. Perhaps this is because I have been close to the actual stripping of the flesh of a dead whale, the smell of which was only the second most horrible thing I have ever smelled. Not long ago I watched the Gregory Peck film and was sickened by all the blood in the water. Still, it is the book's long monologues which are its saving grace and, for me, both the long discourses on whaling and the somewhat fantastic conclusion which make it an unpleasant read. Indeed, I have every one of Melville's works and I have yet to get through the others. I suppose that it is not Melville's insistence of realism in life as being so incredibly dark as it is his insistence on the inevitability that life seems manifested with this darkness. While I can never deny that this darkness exists in man, I do not find this an exemplary depiction of anything which I find illuminating.

[[deleted user]]

Thomas wrote regarding how close sainthood and madness can be.."

An excellent point. Actually, the author I was quoting from had written a paragragh or two along the same lines. That the Church has to look at some cases for years to make a determination: saint? Or madman?

[Everyman]

Logan wrote: "I don't want to distort anyone's responses by expressing my own justifications just yet, so I will simply say what I have and ask what you all think about it. Is Melville really a Romantic?
"

I'm never really clear what people mean when they talk about an author as being a Romantic. At my college, we never had any lit-crit courses, we just read the books, so I didn't get all the definitions and categorizations down. How are you using the term?

[Rosemary]

Roger wrote: "I will boldly declare that I was disappointed by this book. The final chapters are gripping and unforgettable, but they are also ridiculous. The ponderous portents pile on to the point of parody. The Delight points out the ominous coffin lifebuoy. Sharks nip only at Ahab's boat. Sea birds circle like ravens. What's next? The birds arrange themselves to spell out "Ahab's a gonner"! Ahab pours himself a bowl of Alpha-Bits and it reads "whale bait"! "

This made me laugh, because it's quite true- it couldn't have been more heavy-handed if God himself had rolled back the clouds a la Monty Python and said, "AHAB! YOU ARE DOOOOOOOMED!"

But the effect it had on me was quite different, like a Shakespearean tragedy when you just want to SHAKE those characters ("Come ON, Romeo, she's NOT DEAD!" and you're wincing and seeing all the ways that they COULD escape even as they inevitable trundle towards their doom. If it was entirely unalterable then it wouldn't be so tragic . . .

[Rosemary]

Adelle wrote: "I was wondering if you, like the author of the essay, sensed any Evil? "

Hmmm, I didn't think any of the characters in the book were evil, including Moby Dick himself. I thought the book said an enormous amount about how humans perceive evil, though.

[Rosemary]

Thomas wrote: "Evil in this book, as far as I can tell, is in the mind of the beholder."

Yes, that, exactly. Thanks, Thomas.

[Rosemary]

Everyman wrote: "Whales are an image of the human soul, living in the deep, unplumbed, unfathomable, the book suggests the arduous, exciting trip necessary to understand the human soul. One analogy of the book is between the depths of the sea and the depths of the soul, and the depths of human thinking."

Mm, I like that a lot. I think I liked the book so much because it gave me a handle to contemplate my own soul's obsessions. I loved Ahab as a character because half of the time I wished I was more like him, and the other half I was relieved that I wasn't . . .

[Rosemary]

Adelle wrote: "I loved Ahab, "valiantly facing everything out to the last." Others, on whale voyages or on the voyage of life itself, might be lulled into listless, vacant, unconsciousness, "that at last he loses his identity," but not Ahab....Ahab is forever Ahab"

Oh, yes. This ties a little into the conversation about saintliness earlier. I don't really think Ahab is a saint, but one of Thomas Merton's ideas for sainthood is that involves being totally and utterly yourself . . . and Ahab certainly is that.

[Rosemary]

I was awfully fond of this book. It dragged a little for me in the latter half (until the final few chapters!) but I honestly loved the over the top symbolism and the philosophical digressions and the way that I could project myself so easily into Ahab and Starbuck both.

I couldn't find the exact post where Audrey says it, but I agree that Starbuck could stand in for the struggle of conscience in all of us when faced with apparently implacable forces. How far does one go to follow one's conscience? Ahab goes too far; Starbuck arguably goes not far enough. Or doesn't he?

I'm not being super insightful today, I realize. I just finished yesterday and don't have it all straight in my head yet.