Author Archives: Jesmond Phimmachack

Learning to Read through a Painting: A Reflection in Essay Form

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I’ve read particularly long books before. In my pre-college years, I have read books that are hundreds of pages long–even book series like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. But out of all the long novels I’ve read during teenhood and early adulthood, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a special case.

When I picked this book up from the bookstore on the first week of class, I didn’t know what to expect. At first, I thought this would be another book to just read and be done with it. But as soon as I flipped to its table of contents, my jaw (figuratively) dropped: one hundred thirty-five chapters across 600 or so pages. I stopped partway through chapter 1 during my first attempts at reading this because my brain was constantly being overloaded with all the words I was seeing at once on every page, and I just couldn’t find the motivation to continue. I eventually made it to chapter 2 on my latest attempt, but I couldn’t get past the third chapter on my own. This book humbled me. It is only when it took four weeks of pre-reading discussions and priming that I finally pushed myself to continue reading past the first chapters. Reading together made a huge difference.

According to Philip Hoare, Moby-Dick isn’t anything close to a novel, much less a book. Rather, it’s “more an act of transference, of ideas and evocations hung around the vast and unknowable shape of the whale, an extended musing on the strange meeting of human history of natural history,” (Hoare) and I’d have to agree with him on that. By describing Moby-Dick as an “act of transference,” he calls into question the process of what makes a literary text a “novel.” If Melville didn’t intend for Moby-Dick to be read as a “novel,” then why are we being asked to read it? Why were we reading it? That’s when I realized something.

As we read Melville’s book, Melville makes us read (close-read) certain objects littered across his vast sea of words as if they were books of their own. He dissects them piece by piece and examines each part as a framework for how to close read. You may have skimmed over most of the chapters since the book is so big and wordy that it’d function as a doorstop, but there are some passages in these chapters that do seem important, are they not?

And now I share my realization in this reflection with you all, after having read the whale of whales: Moby-Dick is, essentially, a guide to reading, and Melville is teaching us to read. By reading the whale, we close read with Melville so that we can think beyond the medium, building meaning in certain aspects to make the inscrutable “scrutable”. Reading helps us build the analytical and critical thinking skills that we need to become better readers.

For the sake of brevity and time, I will be focusing on one of these objects, which is the Spouter-Inn painting at the beginning of Chapter 3. It’s the end of the semester, so it’s only fitting that I come full circle and return to the one chapter that I would’ve continued to struggle on if it weren’t for the help of others who have also struggled with this book. Without further ado, let the reading begin.

The Reading

Sailing through the first two chapters, we find ourselves in the Spouter-Inn in Chapter 3, where we are greeted with a sight of a mysterious painting:

On one side hung a very large oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. (Melville 13)

A few questions I asked myself while reading the first few paragraphs of this chapter were, “why the second-person perspective? Why are we the ones looking at the painting, and not Ishmael? Why does this painting matter?” To answer these questions, the second-person perspective is a way for Melville to address the readers in a way that makes them feel like they are a part of the story. By using the word “you” numerous times within the opening paragraphs, Melville inserts the reader into the story as a character alongside Ishmael, allowing us (the readers) to see/feel with the reader-character with regard to the painting and taking Ishmael’s place. This painting, according to Melville, requires “diligent study and a series of systematic visits” to understand its purpose, emphasizing the importance of close reading.

Diligent study and systematic visits require people to devote their time to study a particular subject of interest multiple times over multiple days, and the same applies to close reading. When we close read, we don’t just read the text; we actually stop to think about the meaning of a passage/picture that we want to analyze, then explain how it connects to the bigger picture. Sometimes, it can even take us multiple days to understand why that passage/picture serves a purpose. To read something is to read it like a book. In this paragraph, our reader-character has stopped to analyze this “so thoroughly besmoked, and every defaced” painting, adding to the growing number of studies and visits taken to it. As it turns out, this painting has been read many times before, as Melville implies in the “systematic visits to it” and “careful inquiry of the neighbors” who attempted to analyze it. It is only through reading that we could “arrive at an understanding of its purpose.”

It should be noted that we do not know what this painting looks like. There are no illustrations of this painting in the book—in fact, there are no illustrations in the book at all, meaning we can only rely on Melville’s descriptions as reference for the things we want to analyze. Even though Melville has placed us within the story with his usage of “you,” we (the readers) can only rely on our imagination to envision the painting’s composition through our reader-character’s (and by extension Ishmael’s) eyes. Reading something involves seeing it with our eyes, but how do we know how “besmoked” and “defaced” this painting is if we (the readers) cannot see it from our own eyes?

The Reading of the Reading

As we continue into the second paragraph, Melville describes our supposed feelings toward this painting in excruciating detail, and here we are presented with one of the first instances of reading:

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst.” (Melville 13-14)

This is a beautiful introduction to the process of reading, and a beautiful description of the painting that we are closely reading. In this paragraph, Melville directs the reader’s gaze to the “long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast,” allowing us to visualize some of the elements of the painting without the need for an explicit description or an illustration. This leaves the painting open to interpretation, and reading involves making interpretations to make something make sense. Melville uses adjectives like “boggy, soggy, squitchy” to invoke emotion within the reader and their reader-character. Imageless yet mysterious, there is no other way to describe the painting without the use of neologisms. As Hoare points out, Melville writes these made-up words—“boggy, soggy, squitchy”—“as if [he] were frustrated by language itself, and strove to burst out of its confines.” (Hoare) This one painting frustrates Melville, the reader-character with how indescribable it is, and the reader with all these made-up terms. Even though we can’t physically see the painting, Melville makes us imagine how we’d feel when we see it in person.

There is something about the painting that captivates the reader, and Melville continues making up words to figure out what it could possibly picture: “Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.” (Melville 14) These “deceptive ideas” come from the brainstorming we do while close reading, especially when it concerns something that is either open to interpretation or has no meaning. When we read something, we use reference points like the “portentous something” to guide ourselves toward a more “correct” interpretation. At this point, we (the character and reader) are still not quite sure about what the painting could possibly mean, since we don’t have all the details and can only use the “portentous something” to guide us. With limited details, we are forced to use the more important details to fill in gaps during our analysis.

But after two long paragraphs of diligently studying this painting and wondering what it could possibly represent, Melville gives us an answer; or, at least, his answer:

“In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.” (Melville 14)

In the end, despite the many interpretations and racing thoughts that you have with this painting, you will ultimately realize that the “portentous something” in the painting that you were “diligent[ly] study[ing]” and making “a series of systematic visits” to is the great whale, crashing onto a ship, likely taking the ship down with it. According to the general consensus, the “many aged persons” that have read the painting before you, these are the last moments of a whaling ship before it is hunted by the hunted. Although this interpretation isn’t quite perfect, as implied in the phrase “the artist’s design seemed this,” it is about as close as it can get to the artist’s intentions.

And that, my friends, is reading.

Concluding Thoughts

Moby-Dick, as well as this class, taught me a lot about close reading, and I wanted to put it to the test on one of my then-least favorite chapters of Act I. I never thought that I would be able to close read at this level before, and I’m really glad that I chose this class to develop this skill with my classmates. Sure, it seemed really scary at first since it involved having to actually read the text and push our interpretations toward a larger idea; sure, we have to write a lot and expect a grade for completion and content; that’s the point. This class is supposed to put your reading and writing skills to the test. It’s an ECL (English & Comparative Literature) class, after all.

While Moby-Dick may not be considered a novel in the traditional sense, it can be interpreted as a book about anything. It can be an “act of transference” (Hoare), about whiteness, history, American capitalism, slavery, solitude, the ocean—heck, it can even be about nothing at all. Moby-Dick is a book that reads how you want to read it. For me, Moby-Dick is a book about learning to close read. And after 135 chapters, it was very much worth it.

P.S. Phew! I haven’t pushed myself to write this much since 508W. Two thousand words about the first three paragraphs of the third chapter. Final essays can really get you going.

By the way, have you noticed that the start of this essay is so long that it has taken multiple paragraphs just to get to the point? It’s almost as if it is refusing to start, just like Moby-Dick! That’s how you know how influential that book is.

Now that we’ve finished, I think it’s time for a month-long rest. Happy reading, and have a great break, y’all. You deserve it. I do hope I get to see some of you again in the AI literature class next semester.

Works Cited

Hoare, Philip. “What ‘Moby-Dick’ Means to Me”. The New Yorker, 3 November 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-moby-dick-means-to-me. Accessed 16 December 2025.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Edited by Andrew Delbanco and Tom Quirk, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003.

ECL 522 final thoughts

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Wandering in this library of letters forming words forming sentences, reading Moby-Dick as a class has helped me improve my close-reading and critical thinking skills. It’s interesting to see the different perspectives people have with this novel, and I enjoyed hearing how people interpreted the text in an effort to uncover its larger meaning. The socratic format of this class has definitely facilitated my understanding of the book since I now know that there are other people who struggle on big books as much as I do when reading alone.

My final takeaway for this class is that close-reading can help us think beyond the medium, even if said medium is a smorgasbord of unrelated concepts vomited from the author’s mind. If you think about it, close-reading is merely psychoanalysis in book form. We take apart a passage to reveal its hidden, often larger meaning, then use our interpretations to help understand our world. Not only that, close-reading can also be a form of art, as seen in the adaptations of Moby-Dick from last week. The medium is a place where we can share our interpretations with other people, which encourages them to share their own interpretations about a work to others and build upon our existing knowledge.

I may be here again for the AI literature class next semester, and I am looking forward to apply what I’ve learned this class for that class as well. Until then, happy reading and good luck on your final!

Final project proposal

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As I’ve stated during the asynchronous peer review, my final project won’t be anything too special; it’s more-or-less going to be a reflection essay on my experience reading (close-reading) and learning from Moby-Dick; in other words, what Moby-Dick means to me. My essay will be less formal than the ones I’ve already written for this class. I could focus on the painting in chapter 3, the phrenology of the whale in chapter 79, the doubloon in Chapter 99, and/or the musket in chapter 123 and explain how Melville uses these chapters to teach the reader to read. The book acts like a guide to reading; by reading the whale, Melville makes us read other whales that he hunted for us so that we can think beyond the book and be more aware of the social issues that remain prevalent today.

The requirements for the final project are a thesis statement (which I have a draft of and am still refining), close-reading of the text (a skill we’ve developed), and an engagement with at least two scholary sources (using evidence to support our argument which we have been doing throughout our time in SDSU) with a page requirement of 6-8 pages (or 3-4 for a close-reading of your creative artwork). Since the final requires two scholarly sources, I could try to look for the ones that dive into these chapters in Moby-Dick or similarly deal with close-reading in regards to this book. I could also use Emerson’s American Scholar as one source since it also deals with reading.

Week 14

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What you still need to learn/do for your final project

Where do I even start?

I haven’t done this much close reading in a long while, and my skills are still a bit rusty. Sometimes when it comes to writing essays, my brain will come up with words I want to type out, but it falls flat when I actually have to type them out. I’m still not really good at close reading or analyzing a passage since I usually default to just summarizing it instead of actually reading and coming up with interpretations for it. I’m also not good at explaining why a particular passage is relevant since I’m kind of out of touch with current events, which makes it hard for me to explain a passage’s significance if I’m not well-informed in the subject that I want to talk about. I also have to reread some of the “important” passages that we did/didn’t go over in class, since this semester went by so fast that I couldn’t find enough time to read the book.

So yeah, I still have a lot to learn. That being said, I’m exhausted from reading this whale of a book, and I can safely say that we all deserve a break for finishing this behemoth. You all have read the book, and you have read the whale. Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Essay #2: Water, Our Mother

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Chapter 87 of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is an action-packed chapter in which the Pequod stumbles upon a vast pod of sperm whales. As the Pequod is dragged into the center of the pod, there is a break in the action: they are taken into a serene lake, and the crew pauses their whaling odyssey to take in the scenery and displays of nature. Pods of whales circle them as if they were in the eye of the storm; cows and calves greet them from the land; smaller whales swim close to the ship, allowing themselves to be pet by the crew, after which Ishmael writes:

“But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers … even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. (Melville 423-4)

Notably, Moby-Dick rarely features women throughout the novel, yet Melville makes no attempt to avoid discussing them. Instead, he incorporates them into the story through the use of motherly language, as shown in the passage above. Through his use of motherly imagery surrounding the lake in Chapter 87 of Moby-Dick, Melville connects humans and their origins with the water, portraying the sea as the mother of life both above and below. He argues that whales have evolved alongside human beings and are to be viewed as actual living beings rather than just commodities.

In the first sentence, Melville frames the terrestrial and the aquatic as two vastly different worlds, yet somehow very much alike. By juxtaposing the “wondrous world upon the surface” with the “still stranger world,” he establishes a connection between land and water, and humans with the sea (423). In the “wondrous,” terrestrial world, its air is what allows humans and air-breathing animals to thrive and explore it. As for the world beneath the watery surface, it houses many species of fish and other sea creatures, including whales. Unlike the terrestrial world, there is no air, which makes it difficult for humans and land animals to explore the deeper parts of it.

Despite its inaccessibility, Melville directs the readers’ attention “over the side” of the Pequod beneath the water’s surface, illustrating how this “still stranger world” below is not just tangible, but observable. It is tangible in that humans and other living creatures on land can interact with sea creatures just as they would with other beings that live on land, as demonstrated with the crew petting the whales near their ship (423). It is observable in that the water’s surface acts as a window to the underwater world, allowing the reader to see below the surface from above to watch the “nursing mothers of the whales” pass below the ship. Melville, then, shows that even though land and sea are different worlds with different compositions, they are both similar in that there is life above as well as below the surface.

As the crew “gaze[s] over the side” of the Pequod, the reader is drawn towards “the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that … seemed shortly to become mothers.” (423) Melville invokes the theme of motherhood through the metaphor he employs here, reinforcing the connection between human and sea. He describes the whale mothers as the “nursing mothers” of the sea, breastfeeding their newborns in their “watery vaults … to become mothers” in a similar vein to human mothers raising their young to become responsible adults. Melville places the human within the whale, giving them value as actual living beings trying to live their lives rather than as commodities for the whaling industry. He suggests that the whales (which Ishmael and the crew have been hunting) have lives that are just as valuable as a human’s life.

Melville continues the metaphor: “…even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.” (423-4) The imagery of the young whales looking towards the sailors is analogous to older generations looking at younger generations and watching them evolve while younger generations look up to their ancestors to try to be like them. In this case, the “young of these whales”–who stayed in the water for millions of years and did not evolve–are the older generation, and the humans–the ones who did evolve to live on land–are the newer generation.

By clarifying that the young whales were looking towards the sailors and not at them, “as if [they] were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight,” (423) Melville again gives the whales human-like qualities. The “new-born” whales are looking in the direction of the sailors, but they are unable to make out their human shapes, so they are only able to see the humans as another piece of seaweed. In human infants, their eyesight has not yet fully developed and it takes some time for their brains to fully process the environment throughout their first years. They are only able to see a few feet in front of them, perceiving humans and objects only as vague figures from afar, much like the “Gulfweed” the young whales perceive the sailors as. Like human children on land, It takes time for whale children to figure out their surroundings in the ocean and fully make out the shapes that are observing them.

This exchange between the two beings from two different worlds overall is symbolic of the interconnectedness between the humans and the whales. The “mothers”, nursing their children, “also seemed quietly eyeing [the sailors],” (424) which relates back to the scene’s interpretation as two generations looking after each other as previously mentioned. The use of the word “mother” implies that there have been countless generations of whales dating back hundreds, if not millions of years. These mother whales, and those that “seemed shortly to become mothers,” were quietly eyeing humans and other terrestrial beings evolving alongside them, producing offspring so that their generation could live on through them. And if we go back in time, it further implies that those who have evolved to survive on land came from their sea-born ancestors, who have always wondered what it was like outside the water.

This fleeting moment of calm in an otherwise action-filled chapter allows the reader to breathe, enabling them to see whales outside the context of the whaling industry. In the eye of the storm where there is calm, the captivating sight of the “serene lake” in which the Pequod finds herself in allows the crew to see the whales as who they really are: living beings passed through generation to generation, giving birth to soon-to-be mothers and fathers. Herman Melville reveals, in the Great Armada, that whales and humans have been watching over each other for many generations, and they have evolved in much the same way. And it all leads back to the Ocean herself: humans and whales birthed by the Ocean, the Ocean is our mother, and she is quietly eyeing us.

Week 12: Starbuck reads the musket

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We’re finally near the end of our journey. It took us twelve weeks and a few off days, but reading and discussing Moby-Dick as a class has really paid off. Our destination is on the horizon.

The second half of Chapter 123 has Starbuck sneak into the cabin and stumble upon a musket. It’s a long paragraph, but a part of it that stood out to me is found in the middle of page 559: “But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?—Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this instant—put aside, that crime would not be his.” (Melville 559)

Remember that conversation Starbuck had with Captain Ahab back in Chapter 109 that escalated into Ahab pointing his musket at Starbuck and telling him off? It’s the same musket; “the very musket that [Ahab] pointed at [Starbuck]” (558), and he is reading it just like how Stubb read the doubloon in chapter 99, ruminating on it and contemplating its goods and bads. And it makes me wonder: why is he choosing to read the same musket that he was threatened with by this “crazed old man?”

The musket reading, in essence, is not just a critique on Ahab’s monomaniacal personality, but it also serves as a commentary on power disparities in the social hierarchy: those at the top are harder to take down. Because Ahab is at the top of the hierarchy, Starbuck fears that if the captain were to sink the Pequod with everyone on board, “that crime would not be his.” Even if it makes him “the wilful murderer of thirty men and more,” his name would be cleared rather quickly since he is a very wealthy and powerful (and tyrannical) captain.

A side note: I also think this passage is reflective of today’s American government. We have a 34-time convicted felon president who controls all three branches of government, but despite all he has done, he is somehow still able to win re-election and continue his tyranny. His supporters follow him blindly, and even if he committed a crime or broke a law during his presidency, he would only receive a slap on the wrist because of “presidential immunity.”

It baffles me how people would still support such a president when it’s clear that he is unfit to take on that role. Like Ahab, he is a crazed old man tamely suffered to drag a whole country down to doom with him.

Week 11: A bright Black

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Written at a time where American slavery is at its heyday, it should be no surprise that we continue to see themes of race in Chapter 93 of Moby-Dick. In the third paragraph of the chapter, we see Melville compare Pip and Dough-Boy to black and white ponies “of equal developments” respectively, but he continues to extend the metaphor onto Pip but not Dough-Boy. Why is that?

“Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe … I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king’s cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life’s peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness…” (Melville 450-451)

Melville continues to bring special attention to the Black figure in this passage, speaking of their “brilliancy” and “lustrous ebony” as a reminder that Black people are human beings. They are subject to the hardships of capitalism as white people, but since this is the 1850s, they suffer a disproportionate amount with white people being a contributing factor to their suffering. Not even free Black people were safe, since they were not considered citizens of the United States at the time and therefore were not given constitutional protections or rights, even more so in capitalism.

Melville also highlights the unhappiness of Black workers after they are assimilated into a capitalist society. Pip comes from a tribe whose culture gives him a “pleasant, genial, jolly brightness,” but the “panic-striking business” in which he was “entrapped” had blurred that “brightness.” Melville’s repetition of “brightness” here demonstrates how assimilating into a new culture and letting go of old ways can actually lead to one being worse off. Ironically, despite Pip living a happy life in his tribe, with “finer, freer relish than any other race,” he sought off work in the United States because he thought he would be happier if he had more. In a Fast-Fish/Loose-Fish society, where the only way to be successful is by “having more” of something, does it really make you happy in the end? Or does it snuff out the “brightness” you once had and lead you onto a path of darkness?

Week 10: Honey and spermaceti

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After reading chapter 78, one part that stuck out to me was its ending paragraph where, after Tashtego is rescued by Queequeg from the head of the sperm whale, Ishmael imagines what dying in it would feel like:

“Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti … Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. (Melville 377)

I thought this paragraph was interesting because even though we see this attempt at romanticizing death by drowning “in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti,” Melville also compares it to dying in honey. The mention of the honey-hunter can also be an allegory for greed: Melville reminds us that men have sought out precious things in the hopes that they’d grow more powerful if they have more of it, but what happens if you end up having too much of one thing?

Melville uses the unlikely scenario of the honey hunter and the tree’s honey trove as an example of how this desire for material wealth can result in one’s demise. In the passage above, the honey-hunter discovered the honey trove, but after “leaning too far over, [the honey] sucked him in, so that he died embalmed.” (Melville 377) Like spermaceti, honey is a sweet, viscous substance that is nearly impossible to swim in due to its viscosity, and it can certainly “smother” a person should they fall into it. Despite this, it is often sought out for its health benefits, just like how spermaceti is sought out for its versatility and high selling price.

The irony of it is that we tend to search for valuable things could place us higher in the social hierarchy, yet we don’t even realize its potential dangers because we typically only see it in small amounts. Spermaceti is like honey; sweet and harmless in small amounts, but suffocating and dangerous when there’s a pool’s worth of it. As demonstrated with Tashtego and the honey hunter falling into a pool of spermaceti and honey respectively, greed can often lead to a precious, “delicious death.”

Essay #1: On rumors and isolation

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When it comes to rumors, people often go out of their way to exaggerate or downplay the situation at hand. These rumors do not have to come from land or be about anything that’s on land; there are rumors circulating in and about the ocean as well. We have to ask ourselves this: are these rumors actually true? How bad is it compared to what is really happening? In Moby Dick, Herman Melville asks us to consider the accuracy of these rumors while drawing attention to the effects of the ocean on the mind. In open water, isolation can shape the mind and make us naĩve to such assumptions.

In chapter 41, Ishmael learns of the white whale Captain Ahab and his crew are going to hunt, but he goes to great lengths to ruminate on the rumors spread by the whalemen that paint the whale as this fierce and formidable foe. Regarding the rumors, he writes:

“…not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events … but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there.” (Melville 195)

This is a very meaty passage, but it highlights an important difference between how rumors spread over the ocean and how they spread on land, or in his words, “terra firma.” The ocean takes up much more space on Earth than on land, and it is much more sparse. Because of its openness, there are less people who can verify these “wild” and “fabulous” rumors, since they are mostly grounded on personal experiences. Without anyone nearby to back up (or refute) their claims in this isolatory environment, these rumors are allowed to run rampant.

There is something “supernatural” about the whale that whalemen constantly make rumors about, yet there is seemingly no one in the ocean who can stop these rumors from spreading. The White Whale is a very large creature, and it would take a lot of harpoons to take it down. Its size, along with the many “deaths” it has caused, instills a great terror among those who have encountered it, including those who were exposed to the rumors and have yet to encounter it. The whaling industry, as Melville notes, basks “in the wonderfulness and feafulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there.”

Why is it, then, that we come to accept these “wonderful” and “fearful” rumors? Why do we welcome them even if we know that they come from some crazy whalemen who know whales no better than we do? Continuing in chapter 41, Ishmael answers these questions:

“Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.” (Melville 195-196)

This implies that in a more isolated space, people find comfort in these rumors, acting like a sort of coping mechanism for them. Melville uses the motherly comparison in the phrase “to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth” to illustrate the malleability of the mind–about how our minds are constantly preoccupied with the ocean’s vastness. This vastness is the “influence” to the mind; we are isolated, and without anyone to talk to, this isolation makes us submissive. Our mind made malleable, we are willing to accept any “wonderful,” “fearful” rumors that we come across “in such remotest waters.”

In conclusion, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is a novel that ruminates on isolation and how our minds are shaped by the ocean. Chapter 41 gives us a taste of the rumors fishermen spread throughout the ocean, then shows us how we eventually give in to these rumors. All alone in the ocean, its openness is all you can think about. Eventually, it makes you submissive, ready to accept the rumors and spread them to anyone nearby.

Week 8: The prisoner and the wall

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So we finally meet Captain Ahab, the “ungodly, god-like” captain of the Pequod with an intimidating, fearsome aura. As it turns out, Ahab has a vengeance-filled obsession over the titular whale Moby Dick, a whale who bit off his leg. In chapter 36, there is one part of his speech that stood out to me.

After his shipmates ask Ahab why he is seeking vengeance on one particular whale for taking his leg, Ahab replies, “All visible objects, man, 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 mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond.” (Melville 178)

I found this part of his speech interesting because Ahab is trying to tell us that humans tend to fixate on something in the hopes of a reward if they “strike through” it. The more we try to find something valuable in what we desire, the more obsessed we are over it. Too much obsession, however, can end up hurting us.

A prisoner is to a wall as Ahab is to Moby Dick. Much like how a prisoner obsesses over freedom so they break through the wall to find what they’re looking for, Ahab’s desire for revenge is what makes him obsess over Moby Dick. The whale acts like a wall to him because it is still somewhere in the ocean, and he feels taunted by its continued existence. He thinks there is “naught beyond” hunting Moby Dick for a couple of reasons: if the whole reason he is going out to sea is to hunt down one whale that so tormented him, despite there being other whales to hunt, it would not “fetch [him] much in [their] Nantucket market]” as Starbuck points out (Melville 177). Even worse, the whaling voyage might lead to his entire crew dying before they successfully hunt down Moby Dick.

I think this goes to show how unhealthily obsessed Captain Ahab is over Moby Dick, but it also shows us how excessive obsession can blind us from pursuing our real desires. Ahab was once (and still is) a great whaler, but his obsession over Moby Dick has turned him away from the joys of whaling. His lust for revenge has consumed him; no longer is he the same person he once was, his one goal is to hunt down the one monster that took his leg–even if it means dying in the end.