Author Archives: Ashley Sims

Absolutism

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Melville continues to blatantly critique religion as we move through the exposition and finally on to the Pequod. Melville is not against religion but clearly sees a fundamental problem in the way it is practiced, the absolutism. There is so much religion to unpack, I don’t think I can narrow it down to a specific quote. What I have noticed is that Ishmael’s/Melville’s view on religion meanders in and out of Melville’s other messages outlined in Moby Dick. Melville critiques the absolute hero. Numerous celebrated classic novels depict heroes who possess a strong moral compass and are essentially unquestioned*. We are led to believe in an absolute preeminence in these protagonists. Like he does with religion, Melville teaches us to question this absolutism: “all mortal greatness is but disease.” (82) he claims as he explains the peculiarity of the Quaker whalers of Nantucket. Greatness is tied to morbidness because traditionally to become a great hero requires bloodshed. And to shed blood requires a moral compass with more directions for an arrow to point than just good vs evil. Religion is wrapped up in this lesson because it is the peaceful, practicing Quakers who are the most sanguinary whalers, “a man’s religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.” (83) In our muddled society absolutism is not practical. One cannot fully heed religion when monetary gains are essential for survival. This is a modern concept for humanity in a newly industrialized world. Humans can no longer peacefully farm, trade, worship, repeat. They need money, they need land, and they need whale oil.

Queequeg as whale, as hero, as protagonist, as shepherd of the ocean embodies the questionable hero. Melville presents a hero who is not esteemed for religion, upbringing, or social class, but for the contents of his character, his heart and the skillset he demonstrates.  

*This leads me to believe this is the reason The Sermon includes the retelling of Jonah being questioned as he attempts to ship. And then again on page 79 Ishmael is questioned by Peleg and it is very reminiscent of the Sermon chapter.

*It also makes sense why Frankenstein and Moby Dick are compared to each other. It is not just the vivid imagery, the adventure, or the monstrosity but the grayness of morality that each of these novels lay out for us.

The Sermon

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The story of Jonah is one that is well known, especially in the 19th century. An account that could stand to have a passing mention and a reader will know what his author his alluding to. Melville begins Moby Dick with hints of criticism towards Christianity. So, why does he spend a chapter not only retelling, but expanding on the story of Jonah? In his revitalization, Melville adds dimension to the point of view of the story, from Jonah onto his shipmates. The trade of shipping and the crew members are given life. Life in a story that’s important to this novel. Maybe Moby Dick is its own fantastical recount of Jonah. Giving a voice of reason to the captain and crew gives the whaling industry character. By showing the shippers’ outlook readers can sympathize with them. They can see how sin affects others. “Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent.” The crew knows Jonah is guilty of something, yet they still let him on board. It all comes down to money. Another theme that Melville seems to have touched on a couple of times already. “Now Jonah’s captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime an any way, but whose cupidity only exposes it only in the penniless. In this world sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas a virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.” Another commentary on the joy of money. The autonomy of money. The sin of money. Another commentary that resonates with the corruption of the present.

It is notable that this sermon is preceded by a chapter that focuses on watery graves. Is that chapter foreshadowing? Or just flaunting the realities Ishmael faces. “But faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.”  Like a jackal, an opportunistic feeder, faith grasps at those in desperation. Like someone who has been swallowed by a whale.

Also, just a quote that I love: “Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.

This is the World

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Herman Melville instantly responds to Emerson’s call for a great American scholar in the first chapter of Moby Dick as he digs into prominent issues of 1850 America. Page six serves up the word slave on a silver platter. The most controversial issue in American history. An issue that caused more strife than we face today (so far). This is not a novel to escape the world. This is the world. And Melville forces the reader to face it as he says: “Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that.” (6) One can only imagine the pause this would warrant on an 1850s audience. Hmm that’s right who aint a slave… maybe there is a place for compromise on this ripe issue of slavery, they might think to themselves. But Melville hastily shuts any of these thoughts down with his fervent talk of money. He goes on: “But being paid, – what compares with it? The urbane activity with which man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!” (6-7) One may feel like a slave at work but must remember the pay day. And why does getting paid feel so marvelous? Because money creates autonomy. Autonomy is humanity. What is so interesting about Melville’s analysis is his conclusion that a monied man cannot enter heaven. Slaves, whose justification for being enslaved is being seen as less than human, cannot enter heaven, monied men cannot enter heaven. So, who is it that is going to heaven? Furthermore, Melville centralizes American issues in the bill of fate that Ishmael draws up:

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.

“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.

“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.” (7)

“Grand contested election for presidency” What a statement. A familiar one. The president in power during the writing and publication of this book was one Millard Fillmore. A vice president who was inaugurated after the death of president Zachary Taylor. Fillmore undermined Taylor when he signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act. An act that forced northerners to return slaves to the south, inciting the use of military force if necessary. Fillmore postponed the Civil War by ten years. But greatly increased tensions between the North and the South as well as his unpopularity. In the very first chapter of this 800-page, 135-chapter book, Melville confronts a nation. This is a beginning for America’s greatest novel.

Realistic Representations in Blue Humanities

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As our environmental policies regress under a regime which declines to accept the harpooning of our planet, it is more necessary than ever to pay attention to the blue humanities. But, as policies shift, so too must the aim of blue humanities. As captivating as it is, it is time to stop romanticizing the sea. It is no longer a scene that unveils “pristine nature” in contrast to the industrialized land we inhabit. Industrialization has meandered its way into the ocean, into the water. Steve Mentz uses Aristotle’s conceptualization of poetics to help define his term: “Poetics of planetary water”. In this concept, Aristotle explains poetics as “a system of representations”. Mentz is drawn to the notion that “poetics combines pleasure and pain” in regard to water that both “allure and threaten human bodies”. Mentz furthers Aristotle’s claim that “though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them”, as a parallel of the enchanting, yet dangerous relationship we have had with the ocean throughout human history. In blue humanities future, this notion will have to be reversed: Though the ocean, the water, may be a beautiful sight, we must agonize over the most realistic representations of it. The trash ridden, biomagnificated, micro-plastic filled animals that inhabit the bleached, dead, splintering coral of the acidified ocean. We need depictions of a climate changed future. Paintings of risen seas. New York halfway under water. Undiscovered life straining to create ecosystems in the shipwreck that was once Manhattan. Netflix series that delineate a climate fueled apocalypse rather than a zombie or digital one. That is, if we want to see another societal push for eco-change. Mentz coins the phrase “watery criticism” the aims of which “include both describing the complex working of water in our environment and also imagining ways to change our relationships to it.” The immensity and resilience of the ocean conceals hundreds of years of pollution the way small bodied ecosystems cannot. Refocusing the blue humanities to embody all forms of water, captures the deterioration climate change imparts on small ecosystems. Therefore, adapting our attention to all forms of water changes our relationship with it. As much as the blue humanities depends on water, water depends on the blue humanities.

The Greatest American Novel

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In his article “The Blue Humanities” John R Gillis informs us that the blue humanities are a “belated recognition of the close relationship between modern western culture and the sea.” The seascape is nothing more than a backdrop until the nineteenth century. Gillis notes that one of the first novels representing the sea in more than just a utilitarian concept is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. According to Gillis the “metaphysical sophistication” of the novel is what sets it apart. But it is more than just Melville’s allusions of pelagic grandeur that buoys Moby Dick into the blue humanities. It is the centric of whaling. Whaling is humanity’s first glimpse, our first attempt, at conceptualizing oceanography. It sounds like a paradox. Whaling, this egregious act against one of nature’s most majestic oceanic creatures. But, considering Gillis’ assertion of early ocean explorers that “Oceans were explored as a means to reach distant lands, little attention was paid to the waters themselves… they used the sea merely as a highway to get to the next landfall.” One can say whalers were the first voyagers who sought what was within the ocean instead of what was across it. Whaling expeditions that extended years only relied on land as a means to resupply their ships. The ocean became the anchor for whalers, their constant. And knowing these whales, their migration patterns, their feeding grounds, their habits, was arguably humanity’s first dive into marine biology. Specifically, the Nantucket whaling industry, where the Pequod hails from. In 1712 the first documented kill of a sperm whale occurred at the hands of Nantucketer Christopher Hussey. Thus launching an industry of deep-ocean whaling specialized in Nantucket.* The same time Americans began to cast their war upon sperm whales, Europeans were shifting “terror and awe religious folk held for the supernatural to nature itself”. Reshaping the Enlightenment era into the emergence of Romanticism. Gillis mentions a 1712 anecdote by Joseph Addison: “Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects imagination so much as the sea or ocean.” Americans were conquering some of the most fearsome creatures in the world’s most fearsome environment. The centric of whaling not only gives Moby Dick a place in blue humanities, but it hoists it up as America’s greatest novel, honoring the culture and heroes of America’s first past time.

* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/whaling-history-whaling-america/

My thoughts on “The American Scholar”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” is easily established as an inspiring piece. One that incites progress concerning American education and societal advancement during a tumultuous time in American history, the 1830’s. Considering turbulence, many are quick to cite the struggle over slavery and the oncoming civil war. But something else was happening in the United States at the time. In 1830 The Indian Removal act was signed into law by Congress under President Andrew Jackson. Thousands of Native Americans were forcibly removed from their southeastern homelands and made to march the fatal “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. Because of this, I find a tremendous amount of irony in “The American Scholar” regarding Emerson’s beckoning for man to connect with nature. “Ever the wind blows; ever the grass grows… the scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages” (paragraph 10). Emerson poetically asserts that the scholar who recognizes the unimaginable amount of learning to be had in nature is on the path to possess intellect. To engage with the awes of nature is to engage with one’s place in the world and therefore one’s understanding of it. Is not the principle belief held by Native American culture based on recognizing the importance of the intricacies of nature? This cultural significance, the reverence of nature, is what led our WASP settlers to judge these people as barbaric. Native Americans possess this engagement with the spectacle of nature. To make these claims while they are deemed savages and marched to the brink of death is harrowing. Now, I am not here to punish Emerson for the crimes of the United States government, nor place blame on him for this irony. It is most likely that he hardly, if at all, knew what was happening on the Trail of Tears, or any extent of Native American culture. I only aim to uncover a tragic irony. And a paradoxical instance that is assumed by our government. Beholding a white man for arousing intellectual connection with the natural world, while nature revering “savages” are being advanced to their impending doom.

Hey Everyone! I’m Ashley

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I am an English and Comparative Literature major starting my junior year. I just transferred in from Mesa College. Although it is my first year since transferring, it is not my first year at SDSU. Years ago (longer than I care to admit) I attended SDSU fresh out of high school. I dreamed of being a writer. But a lack of self-confidence, combined with the pessimistic attitude of an 18-year-old led me to drop out. Now, after five years of chipping away at an AA in English, I have returned with a sense of optimism and a true desire to learn. In other words, I am SO excited to be here, but we’ll see how I feel in the middle of the semester.

Anyways, a little bit about the non-academic side of my journey, I was born and raised in San Diego. Specifically, the Pacific Beach community. I grew up surfing, playing tons of sports, and just always at the beach. My upbringing has made the ocean like a second home to me, sometimes even a first, and I am tremendously grateful for that. I have recently discovered a passion for doing triathlons, which may be evolving into a love for open water swimming. My last class at Mesa was a Marine Biology class. I wrote a short paper on sperm whales and have become fascinated with them. My dream is to free dive with sperm whales in Dominica. Overall, I am existing in a realm of self-discovery right now and absolutely loving it. Oh, for work, I’m in the restaurant industry. Bartender, server, barista, you name it, I’ve even worked the line. If you’re ever in PB you can usually find me at Kono’s Coffee cart. I’ll make you a pretty good coffee.