Moby-Dick discussion
Weekly Discussions (Moby-Dick)
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Welcome Rae, your comments add more dimension to the novel. I like that you have read it going on 10 times. Perhaps I will tackle it again in the near future. All these comments certainly bring the book alive. I don't think anyone brought that quote up of Melville's to Hawthorn. Melville wrote to Hawthorne that he'd 'written a wicked book but feel spotless as a lamb.
I think Melville called the book "wicked" because, as I've written elsewhere, is that cannibals come off better than Christians, and whales perhaps best of all, and it is through the rainbow in the whale's spout which Melville treats as a kind sign of the divine, at least expressed through the creation of the whale, rather than man as "a man-making animal" when he suggests, dripping with irony, we shouldn't be to critical of Stubbs for passing Pip by.I don't think Moby-Dick is an image of God but more of a spectacular bit of God's creation.
I don't think Moby-Dick the novel, or Moby Dick, the whale, are a 'spectacular bit of God's creation.' I don't think the idea of a Christian God really enters in to it. I agree that there is some social commentary when Melville has Ishmael remark that cannibals are better than Christians but not in all ways. He's giving each of them their share of social mishaps as when Queequeg sits down on the rump of the rigger, or when Ishmael remarks of what 'unholy flesh' Queequeg's ingested. Melville as a storyteller spares no one, not even the Pequod's conscience, Starbuck, when he has Ishmael say that even Starbuck balks sometimes by being too careful (with the exception of going after a whale in a squall). As far as Moby Dick the whale is concerned, I don't think he's divine, godly or evil. He is as Starbuck says, 'A dumb brute' acting on instinct. Virtually the only one on board the Pequod who believes Moby Dick to be more than a whale is Ahab. The whale is mean, but to give him human qualities, to view him as some sort of demi-god, I disagree with.
I don't know for sure because the letter I read that had Melville's quote of a 'wicked' didn't exactly detail why he said it, but my sense is that it's got more to do with things than just his treatments of cannibals and Christians. The humor can't be called godly. It can be somewhat crass (The Cassock). The novel itself, story and style are unusual. The sense of the unusual may be what Melville meant when he used the word 'wicked.'
I don't know for sure because the letter I read that had Melville's quote of a 'wicked' didn't exactly detail why he said it, but my sense is that it's got more to do with things than just his treatments of cannibals and Christians. The humor can't be called godly. It can be somewhat crass (The Cassock). The novel itself, story and style are unusual. The sense of the unusual may be what Melville meant when he used the word 'wicked.'
I didn't say the "Christian God" nor that Melville was conventionally pious. But the question of the existence of God was one Melville struggled with, unable to make a decision and unable to leave the question alone, at least according to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne.Ishamael does not remark that cannibals are better than Christians -- but cannibals consistently come off the better although Melville does have some fun with Queequeg. But the cannibals are never guilty in the book of anything as brutal as deciding to pass Pip by -- which gets Ishmael's blackly ironic comment that we shouldn't be too hard on Stubbs because man is a "money-making animal."
On the other hand, this is Melville on the whale:
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see it—glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For, d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.
Melville, Herman; Tanner, Tony (1998-03-05). Moby Dick (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 335). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
It is, I think, the closest we have in the book to Melville's intuition of the divine -- which is probably why he used the word "wicked" -- because the book if read carefully, does suggest the farther we get from civilized man, the closer we get to God. That is, if there is a god at all. :-)
Hi. Interesting comments, although I don't agree with them all they are valid.
I didn't specifically mean you Bill, when I commented on the Christian God. That concept had been brought up before by others.
I've read the novel carefully several times, even the Oxford edition and its introduction. What I've discovered by reading ten different editions which have different introductions (as well as reading criticism for years)is that a novel can be interpreted in any way by anyone, which doesn't make them invalid, just different. I prefer trying to read a novel without bringing anything to it, and of course, don't always succeed. My focus is to read the story as it is within itself and not try to second guess what they author may or may not have intended. In most cases we just don't know. I want the story to stand on its own merits of beauty and power without making it to be other than what it is.
I didn't specifically mean you Bill, when I commented on the Christian God. That concept had been brought up before by others.
I've read the novel carefully several times, even the Oxford edition and its introduction. What I've discovered by reading ten different editions which have different introductions (as well as reading criticism for years)is that a novel can be interpreted in any way by anyone, which doesn't make them invalid, just different. I prefer trying to read a novel without bringing anything to it, and of course, don't always succeed. My focus is to read the story as it is within itself and not try to second guess what they author may or may not have intended. In most cases we just don't know. I want the story to stand on its own merits of beauty and power without making it to be other than what it is.
I think one of the most intense scenes is when Ahab baptizes his newly made harpoon to the devil by using the blood of the 'three pagan harpooneers.' Powerful.
His arrogance showed with the chapter on the lodestone when he said that 'Ahab is lord over the level lodestone.' He may have been insane but the man was brilliant in manipulating his crew, even poor, Starbuck.