Author Archives: Sophia Fugazzotto

Death by Spermaceti

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One part of the reading for this week that I took interest with was the end of Cistern and Buckets. This whole chapter was action packed, detailed, a jump from the lull of Melville’s technical and historical chapters. Although Tashtego is saved by Queequeg (in a midwifery way), Melville still fantasizes about an alternate reality where this rebirth did not occur. “Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it has been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can be readily recalled” (p.377). This feels like a romanticization of death, one that contrasts strongly with the death of the whales in subsequent chapters. These deaths are violent, painful, pitiful, and blood baths, covered in red. Tashtego’s death, comparatively, would have been covered in white–the color of purity, honor, fear, existentialism. And maybe that is exactly what being smothered in this white would represent, the honor of dying in the whaling industry, of dying in a masculine way, yet also the fear and existentialism that comes with death, of the unknown of what follows when the biological functions cease. 

The language used in this passage is light for such a heavy topic. “Precious”, “daintiest”, “sweeter”, romanticize this death as if it is something to be desired. This romanticization is only possible because Ishmael (and other crew) would not have witnessed this death, would not have witnessed Tashtego’ fright and slow drowning in the spermaceti. When spared the details of seeing what happens, it is easy to romanticize the results–as Melville often argues about the landsmen who reap the rewards of the whaling industry with none of the suffering. 

This idea of Tashtego’s death is calm, slow, peaceful, unlike the thrashing the whales undergo. We can draw metaphors here to how we think about nature and animals in a hierarchical fashion, underneath us and allowed to suffer in death. Or we can draw a metaphor for slavery, for how the whales are allowed to die as slaves are, while the humans will die these white, painless, precious deaths. 

Essay 1: The Obsessive Ahab

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Ahab begins as a character enshrouded in mystery, as Ishmael only receives tidbits of foreboding information. As Ahab comes into the spotlight, his obsession with the whale and revenge become apparent, and he remains stuck in the past. Chapter after chapter painstakingly highlights Ahab’s obsession, as he spends every waking hour dwelling on Moby Dick. Melville’s creation of Ahab calls into question what being human versus being alive means, and what it means when someone who is just alive is put in a position of power. 

Chapter forty-one, although titled “Moby Dick”, is not truly about the whale. The focus remains on Ahab, and his cold obsession toward the whale. It is this ever-consuming, fatal fixation that swallows Ahab wholly. His inability to let go of it takes away from all other aspects of his life; it is all he talks about and thinks about. Ahab becomes something less than human in this obsession. Melville writes “Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepening contracted… so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument… Ahab… did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object” (p. 201). Ahab’s obsession becomes something more; madness, insanity. He is unable to focus on anything but the whale. He becomes a zombie, alive but with only one goal in mind: to kill Moby Dick. 

Melville, interestingly, describes madness as “a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form” (p. 201). Although Melville’s metaphors are often complex and abstract, feline seems a rather out of place adjective in the description of madness. There are possible implications to this choice. Feline, as in feminine and female, a gender historically assumed to be the ones consumed by madness. Paired with cunning, this adjective carries a rather negative connotation around women–the missing piece in this book. Rarely is anyone feminine mentioned, and to bring this adjective in around madness reflects opinions of the time in which this was written. Feline, too, could simply mean like a cat. Perhaps Melville simply is nodding toward the unpredictability of cats, and their ability to become something more subtle. Melville creates a hint of danger with this metaphor, as something more subtle could be in wait. With this, Ahab would become less than human and closer to animals in his madness. Animals in this book are regarded as less than human, as sources of income and something to hunt.

With these words, Melville shapes a character who is no longer human, as he compares Ahab to an instrument: “…not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument” (p. 201). No longer an agent of free will, Ahab is controlled by his obsession. Yet, his obsession is his own, creating a paradox centered around his lack of free will. An instrument is usually used by another to execute a task, yet there is no one puppeteering Ahab. This is a key component of his madness. He is the instrument, yet also the musician. It is also important to note the previous sentence, about Ahab’s completely preserved intellect. With this, a lack of humanity is found in those who are intellectual, but cannot think freely for themselves, which is what Ahab has become. To be human is to think critically, independently, to be an agent of oneself. Melville challenges conceptions with this sentence which makes a clear comparison. 

This calls into question what it means to be human. Although Melville acknowledges Ahab is alive, the “living instrument”, his lack of consciousness and perspective makes him not human, animalistic, the whale, driven only by obsessive anger and desire.  Melville further separates Ahab from us with the words “Ahab… did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object” (p. 201). Instead of describing him as a potent human, Melville chooses to categorize him as an object. With this, Ahab slips further and further away from our grasp. He is superhuman, yet no longer human at all. In addition, Melville chooses powerful language for this description: “a thousand fold” and “more potency” are both descriptives that imply great power and strength. Ahab, the captain of the ship, is in a position of power, and although the ship is claimed to be a representation of democracy, Ahab remains the stoic leader. Melville also describes Ahab as “any one reasonable object”, showing the range of this power. His use of the word ‘reasonable’ also implies that Ahab once held a sane mind that was lost at sea after the incident. 

In a political landscape questioning citizenship and who is considered human, this representation of Ahab is important. In a position of power, Ahab is the captain, yet he does not consider any of those below him, and is only driven by his own desires.  An unelected, assigned leader, Ahab is superior to all of them yet not one of them. With Melville’s construction of an instrument, Ahab is solely a vessel, controlled by a rogue part of his mind. In the terrestrial parallel, who is considered human is being contested, and Ahab becomes a metaphor for both those in power and those not in power. He is the captain, making all of the decisions, thinking of only himself. Yet he is also considered less than human by Melville, only an instrument to be used.

Week 8: Vengeance

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What stuck with me from this week’s reading was a quote from Starbuck in The Quarter Deck. During Ahab’s obsessive rampage about Moby Dick, Starbuck says: “‘Vengeance on a dumb brute!… that simply smote these from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous’” (p. 178). This idea has been mentioned before in the book and in our class, but it is touched upon again. The innocence of nature, and to what extent these beings are innocent. 

I always find this debate to be particularly interesting because it calls into question what level of consciousness animals possess when juxtaposed to us, humans. What level of moral compass do we expect from these beings, and can we judge them the same way we judge humans? This quote by Starbucks says we can’t, that animals like whales are simply acting upon instinct and not from a place of bad intention or harm. While I can’t speak on whales, I would like to bring up the idea of dolphins. Seemingly harmless and playful, anyone who has done some research on them knows their intentions and interactions with others in the ocean are often harmful and malicious, ranging from getting high off other animals and purposeful assault. 

Another way I want to analyze this quote is from the idea of vengeance, regardless of the “dumb thing” being the source of harm. This calls into question the idea of revenge, and whether that is even something one should take, whether the one who harmed did it on purpose or not. Is that not stooping to that low level, especially one of physical harm? Ahab is the captain of this boat, and should one want to be led by one who engages in petty vengeance? Who might hold a grudge on the ship for a small transgression? 

Week 7: The boat

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One part of the reading this week I wanted to bring into our discussions was part of the description of the boat in Chapter 16. The narrator ends the description with “A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that” (p.78). I can see why this boat might be described as melancholy, with all the ruins of past trophies decorating her, yet I cannot understand the second line; that all noble things are touched with melancholy. Why is this statement made? Is the implication of this that one must be touched with melancholy to be noble, or that everything noble happens to have this melancholy? Why can something not simply be noble, without this melancholy. And what is melancholy? Simply sadness, or must there also be a level of destruction associated with creation? My mind, of course, drifts back to the letters, and Melville’s outright worship of Hawthorne. Is there a melancholy he feels in the noble Hawthorne? Or what else does Melville find makes something noble, besides melancholy? Does he figure that many greatly built crafts have some sort of ‘tragic’ backstory to be made, as this whaling ship has obviously purged many a whale to make its decor? 

I also found the amount of other cultures and countries being brought into the description of this boat interesting. For someone who has spent so much time viewing most of the world through Christian glasses, Ishmael suddenly mentions France, Egypt, Siberia, Japan, and Ethiopia. Perhaps induced by the sight of this boat, and the possibility of traveling with it, or that he sees this boat as a foreign entity. One important thing to note here is that when talking about Western countries he mentions kings and churches, and when he mentions Ethiopia, he uses the word ‘barbaric’. For how much description of the boat he gives, he seems unconstrained by one way of describing it–even calling the boat a cannibal with the teeth fashioned as decor.

Week 6: A False Idol

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One passage I want to examine from the reading this week is at the end of Chapter 10. Melville writes: “How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is this worship? Thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth–pagans and all included–can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood?”

I initially found interest in this passage because of the switch to third person–the narrator speaks to himself, Ishmael, perhaps as a way of dissociating from the situation at hand or separating himself from it. However, after writing this quote out, I am now seeing the use of ‘wood’ and ‘worship’ with Queepueg. What I find interesting in this sexually charged paragraph is the use of a religious idol to represent this relationship. Ishamel, or whoever the narrator is, feels as if he is betraying his identity as a Christian (his identity as a heterosexual?), and feels worshipping a false idol is wrong. Yet he justifies this worship of another idol, saying “could possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood?”. With this and his switch to the third person, he pulls himself away from the moral qualm faced and makes his actions seem small in comparison to all of the world, as if he can tuck himself away from God. Ishamel continues on this need to justify: “But what is worship?–to do the will of God–that is worship. And what is the will of God?–to do my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me–that is the will of God.” This continuous internal dialogue drives a point of obsession, almost in an OCD way as Ishmael continues to justify his actions. I think we can also look at this in a different lens, in one of interpretation and translation. How we choose to understand something, whether religious text, foreign languages, or even Moby Dick is this subjective experience influenced by so many different things. Ishmael here is choosing to interpret God’s will in a way that serves himself. This is not necessarily right or wrong and I have no opinion either way, besides that it is to serve his current situation. This is something we all do, not in a religious sense, but to push through life, there has to be a justification for the things we do that we may find moral qualm with.  

Week 5: Chapter 3

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What I found most interesting from the reading this week was the contents of chapter three. Ishmael’s borderline obsession with this ‘roommate’ seems to elude the rest of the contents of the novel. I haven’t read Moby Dick before, but the idea of obsession seems to be a common theme from what I’ve heard. Take, for instance, this line: “I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for sometime” (p.23). Ishmael’s curiosity shines through on this page (or perhaps Melville’s), as the page takes on a run-on about this new character. His mind runs amuck, making assumptions about this new character and wanting to discover who he is. This type of mind-running is fairly normal, but this feels obsessive in the way it takes up a whole chapter, consuming Ishmael’s mind. What is he hoping for?

Another thing on my mind while reading this chapter was the letters from Melville to Hawthorne. That was good context to have before reading this. Many lines from this chapter felt very… suggestive. Ishmael’s fear of sharing a bed with this strange man could be interpreted as projection, or simply the social context of sharing a bed with a man. From page 23 as well, Melville writes “It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.” Although this appears to be about honesty, I have my doubts. This seems to refer more to who someone is, as opposed to how they look, and put in the context of these men sharing a bed… just reminded me of the letters. This does go into what we talked about in class, as Moby Dick is often seen as the great American novel, masculine, man’s quest, etc but this beginning chapter seems to already delve into a psychological battle on many levels – obsession, sexuality, trust. 

Extra Credit: Steve Mentz’s Visit in the DHC

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I attended the Steve Mentz talk in the Digital Humanities Center this past week. One point of conversation I found particularly interesting during this discussion was about the use of language when it comes to the internet. For instance, “surfing” the internet. “Flow” of data. I had never thought about how those words interact with technology and the idea of impermanence that comes with that language. The idea of surfing the internet makes it seem like we are just passing by, and the water (data) we touch will float away, with us leaving no trace of our existence. But, like the ocean, we are leaving a trace, something permanent rubbed into the surface that will sink to the bottom (think of the trash scattered on the ocean floor, invisible to the naked eye but long lasting evidence). Although I reckon impossible, I wonder how changing these terms might change our ideas on data and perhaps open our eyes to how insecure and public all of this data is. Perhaps if we used “walking the internet”, or “stomping through”. With these terracentric terms, we start to think about footprints (take digital footprint), and how those stick. I personally have literally no clue how these underground cables work or the cloud, but they kept getting mentioned during this talk (and the one during our class), and I’m wondering how they can even manage to support the amount of data we are constantly sending back and forth across the globe?

EC: 5 Questions for Steve Mentz

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  • How do you think social media influences the idea our culture holds of water?
  • What differences and similarities do you see on views of the water across countries?
  • Where is your favorite place you’ve swum?
  • If you had to choose one place to live, anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
  • What is something you wish everyone knew about the ocean?

Week 4: Idea of the Workforce to Cultural Imagination

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One part of the reading that stuck out to me this week was the idea that as the sea becomes less relevant to the workforce, it becomes bigger in the cultural imagination. This is such a transition of thought, and maybe why we have more environmental awareness about the ocean. Instead of using the ocean as something for profit and to sustain ourselves, it becomes a cultural idea, and as it becomes personified, we feel more reason to protect it. As we create this cultural idea/fact that the ocean is alive, we can also see this idea of it being helpless, and want to protect it. Similar to a puppy, maybe. 

Gillis brought up this idea of the growing cultural imagination in the context of how the humanities shape our knowledge of the ocean. Right now, I think the ocean is such a signifier of wealth. Real estate properties are higher by the ocean, and it is considered a luxury to be able to go to the beach. I don’t know if this holds true everywhere, though. In Japan, not all of the coast was as valued as living in a big city, like Tokyo. I would be interested in exploring what differences there might be in the value of the ocean in the US versus Japan. In California, anywhere on the coast is expensive and valuable, but I went to plenty of coastlines in Japan that weren’t populated or seemingly expensive. How we view something and the cultural value we place on it is simply that.

I also think it should be noted that our idea of the ocean in the cultural imagination is so limited. When we think of going to the ocean, it is simply to go to the seashore, maybe dip our bodies in for a few minutes. When the ocean was more relevant to the workforce, thoughts of the ocean must’ve been so different. I doubt many thought of white sandy beaches; rather ports with large ships and months of journey. 

Week 3: What Moby Dick Means to Me

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What I found interesting in the reading this week was from What Moby Dick Means To Me. The concept of it being whatever you want it to be opens the door for projection and transference, in my opinion. I started the book, and the introduction presents similar ideas of taking the book as you want it, and that it isn’t and shouldn’t be forced into a box. I think this is an interesting way of looking at literature, a way that isn’t traditionally taught in schools, especially middle/high school. In my experience, teachers invite you to look at the book with a critical viewpoint, but they keep the idea that there’s a certain motif or central theme in the book that should be recognized. Whereas Moby Dick seems to go against that and invites this personal transference. As a psychology major, I find this interesting. Projection has such negative connotations around it nowadays, yet it is such an insightful tool and can have a positive impact when used the right way. 

Another way to look at this idea of projection is how it might change over time. This article also mentioned the book being used as a religious item in a time of religious uncertainty. How can we use this book now, and will we only use it in what is lacking or can we learn to use it as a tool for overall growth? This also reminds me of a lot of constitutional debates, and how what was written hundreds of years ago should be applied and interpreted nowadays. I have discussed this topic in many classes, and there’s never a straight forward conclusion because of all the different interpretations with their biases. 

I am excited to see all the different emotions and memories that Moby Dick evokes for people in the class. I believe a big part of who we are is shaped by experience; and how we perceive art such as literary text is deeply influenced by these experiences. I also think that looking at this book with different perspectives from different people in the class will allow for more open-mindedness toward ideas and interpretations.