“I came to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance” (177)
Ahab is very hungry; he is hungry for revenge, which is hilarious because he thinks he will find “Moby Dick,” but he won’t. He might find a big white whale, but he isn’t going to find thee whale. It shows how this isn’t business for Ahab, it’s a personal trip. He isn’t here to make friends or family; this is his lifeline, finding Moby Dick to have his revenge. He is too hungry, he is a dictator, he is mean and so rude to everyone but himself but when it comes down to it, he needs the shipmates help, because of his legacy, he think he deserves this hierarchy. Everyone is sacred of him including Ishmael, even if doesn’t say it. instead of Ahad leading and being apart of a team, he is by himself, he has changed the mission and has bribed the crew to gain “trust”. Ahad is overly obsessed with finding and killing Moby dick, its pathetic. Ishmael is the only one who can see it, to me, sees how Ahad isn’t a nobel leader but a whale king. I guess not all things nobel are melancholy.
As I open my book to chapter 34, The Cabin Table (after reading and learning more information on whales than I ever wanted or expected), I thought to myself, “Here we go again, an overdescriptive nonsensical chapter of the dining arrangements on the Pequod.” I was wrong. I don’t like being wrong, but this was a rare occasion.
“Back when I was in the Navy…” Yes, it’s story time. On a navy ship, enlisted and officers are separated when it comes to meal hours. The officers dine in a more ceremonious manner and with luxurious dining utensils and china. I use the word luxurious lightly, but when you’re an enlisted person eating off a plastic tray that has separate compartments for your entrees and sides, the thought of having a ceramic soup bowl does feel a tad opulent. In the officer’s ward room, the lower-ranking person may sit at the table without asking if they are the first to arrive. If there’s a higher-ranking person at that table and a lower-ranking person arrives, they must receive permission to sit by that higher-ranking official. If the lower-ranking person were to finish their meal first, they must ask the highest-ranking individual there to be excused. If the highest ranking person arrives (the captain), they have a designated chair they sit in, and the atmosphere in the room immediately becomes erect with utmost posture and well-behaved manners that a southern mother would even appreciate. While reading this chapter I could understand and feel the intense aura and presence that Ahab is giving off.
“But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.” The family table is the American symbol of open conversation, where a group gathers to just “let it all out.” Ahab is borne out by his actions. He is there to do a job and not there to be social or experience joy. The last joy he had was in his tobacco pipe that he threw out to sea because even that was too much of a conundrum for his monomania. Ahab has such power in his silence that it’s deafening to the crew around him. Ahab is a master of his ship, and his leadership and implicit power are not once reinforced. It is known without a shadow of a doubt that the standard Ahab has set up. Ahab is not there to run a successful crew and ship; he already has well-trained personnel to do that for him. Ahabs’ internal strife is what keeps him going.
Back to my Navy story, sometimes, and this isn’t often allowed, some Navy officers would slip down to the mess decks, where we enlisted peasants eat, to enjoy a meal. They, too, would rather be peeling the eggshell of a hard-boiled egg instead of walking on one. In the mess decks, just like the harpooners, is where the heart of the ship is. This is the area where all those petty social games are played, and a little bit of stress and anxiety can somehow vanish for a quarter of an hour. Just like in the Pequod, this is where cultures come together or clash, but lessons are learned, friendships are formed, and values are established. That’s one of the beauties of being a sailor. If I had a ship, I would title her USS Carrabba’s because when you’re here, you’re family.
p.s. I know that last line was cheesy, but I couldn’t “pasta” up the opportunity.
p.s.s. and yes I did catch that grape directly in my mouth. Fruits must be washed before ingesting.
In Chapter 36, The Quarter-Deck, it is noticeable to the reader that Ahab is blindly seeking revenge against Moby Dick for the loss of his leg. I use the word “blindly” in a broad manner, not just referring to Ahab’s dismissal of danger and death of himself while seeking out Moby Dick, but also for that of his crew. As Ahad gathers the crew around in a sort of sacrificial toast, the text reads, “…the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on their head in the trail of this bison; but alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian” (179)
Thinking realistically, wolves are keen and expert hunters, reflecting Ahab and the crew’s years of experience as whalers and harpooners. However, blinded by the bloodthirsty revenge to kill Moby Dick, Ahab is set to fall into the hands of the very thing he seeks out, or the inhabitants that live alongside them. While the rest of the crew blindly submits to Ahab’s orders to hunt down and kill Moby Dick, Starbuck is the only character who noticeably resists Ahab’s vengeful and problematic proposal. But, like the loyalty of a pack of wolves following their leader in a hunt, Starbuck submits to the will of his captain, allowing for the safety of himself and his crewmates to be jeopardized for the sake of bloodthirsty vengeance.
In Chapter 34 of Moby-Dick, Melville uses silence not as absence, but as dominance. Ahab doesn’t speak during dinner, and yet his authority is louder than any command. That silence is the command.
He eats alone, served by a steward who moves with “noiseless obedience.” There’s no conversation, no eye contact, not even acknowledgement. Ahab doesn’t have to assert control. His very presence makes everyone else smaller. The mates don’t even eat together; they come in one by one, in strict order of rank, as if the dining table is a throne room.
Starbuck, who’s supposed to be the morally grounded one, barely touches his food and eats like he’s afraid to make a sound. Stubb tries to crack jokes to break the tension, but the scene swallows his usual humor. Flask just shovels food in and gets out. No one relaxes. No one questions the system.
Melville isn’t just showing us a weird shipboard routine. He’s making a point: Ahab’s control over the crew doesn’t come from barking orders. It’s built into when they eat, how they sit, and how they act when he’s not even in the room anymore.
It’s no coincidence that the dining structure mirrors naval hierarchy, but Melville pushes it further. This isn’t discipline for the sake of order, it’s discipline for the sake of a man’s will. Ahab’s silence speaks volumes. It’s the sound of authority taken for granted, never challenged, and made holy through habit.
In short: the scariest part of Ahab isn’t what he says. It’s that he doesn’t need to say anything at all.
In this passage, the speaker laments the loss of joy and spiritual vitality he once felt in nature’s rhythms-the sunrise that used to inspire him and the sunset that once brought peace. Now, even beauty feels like torment because he can no longer experience it fully. Melville uses intense contrasts (“sunrise nobly spurred me… sunset soothed”) and emotional diction (“damned… malignantly… anguish”) to dramatize the speaker’s inner despair. The biblical tone of “Paradise” heightens the tragedy of feeling exiled from divine or natural grace. This moment reveals a crisis of perception and faith: the speaker’s “high perception” has become a curse, making him aware of beauty but unable to enjoy it. It underscores one of Moby-Dick’s central themes-the torment of human consciousness that seeks transcendence but fir isolation instead.
The following quote stood out to me this week. It is describing the Pequod, as Ishmael sees it for the first time. “A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.” This quote stood out to me in particular because of it’s contrast, essentially using antonyms to describe the Pequod. It ultimately reflects one of the many themes reflected within the novel about human ambition.
Our ambition, or drive to do something noble, is completely inseparable from the melancholy. Striving for greatness always involves sacrifice, isolation, or the awareness of our own limits. For example, on a whaling ship sailors were stuck with the same group of men for months and months at a time – a great sacrifice for the adventure and supposed riches that awaited them upon their arrival back home. Glory and riches are “noble”. But doing the same thing, day after day, with the same people, only occasionally being interrupted is melancholy. In a way, the ship being both noble and melancholy represents what life looks like on it. Great in the eyes of society and the sailors themselves, but rather tedious most days.
Because ultimately to achieve greatness, we often must first make habits. Building a habit is melancholy and tedious, at times. But in order to achieve our goals, whether big or small, we must have them.Also, a lot of time, we, as humans, do not know our own limits. For instance, Ahab has worked so hard in this industry that he lost a leg, and potentially his sanity, as he constantly obsesses over killing the “white whale”.
Long story short, like the ship itself, the sailor’s within embody the paradox of human ambition: the idea that our pursuit of something grand and meaningful is always accompanied by struggle, weariness, loss, and a million other sacrifices.
Setting: I’m writing this blog post on a Sunday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles at The Conrad hotel on the “larboard” side of the 27-story hotel, while my date preps for the Dua Lipa concert he’s taking me to for my 33rd birthday. Still, before I go, I relayed to him, I MUST post a blog post before my professor castrates me since I have not posted in two weeks. I have a supportive reason behind my lack of posting, but I know that won’t get me out of the harsh reality of getting a big fat goose egg (0) on the weekly assignments, but you can’t cry over spilled milk, so here we go.
Plot: As I read the assigned reading for the week, I still couldn’t stop thinking about Chapter 9, “The Sermon.” For me, this is the climax and foreshadowing of the entire novel. I’m not sure if anyone has written about this exact chapter, and if they did, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn because Frank, this chapter is so relevant to what is going on in this sad, depressive state we call America. Farther Mapple is the equivalent of the pitiful human being we name Mike Johnson. Let’s begin, shall we? {insert the biblical story of Jonah and the whale} Jonah repents and is not begging for forgiveness. Still, confirmation of the life lived, and therefore whatever fate God (the whale) gives him shall be justified, regardless of personal opinion. If you sin, you have to repent. You have to apologize and ask for forgiveness, even knowing that some horrible fate may await you. This is one of the sins that Jonah commits; he defies God and then, on the ship in the storm, refuses to repent. That is why he’s swallowed up and taken to the depths of the ocean, until he finally admits his wrongdoing. And then, even from those same abyssal depths, God hears his plea and has mercy upon him.
“Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands pressed upon me.” (p.53) Oh, so Mr. Mike Johnson, you think just like Mr Mapple, you’re holier than thou? It’s this use of religion to pray/prey upon the souls of those just willing and wanting to do good. The exact moral of this sermon is that our fate is predestined, and if God wants to consume you in the form of a whale, you must let him because your life is just that. A stepping stone for the rich and powerful to prosper. The chosen ones, as they call themselves. Mr Mapple diminishes the character of Jonah for the well-being of himself and those who would benefit from the prosperous tale. Because of Jonah’s ultimate martyrdom, he is seen as a beloved saint. Looks like Jonah and Charlie Kirk will have a lot to talk about when or if they meet.
I’ll leave you with some incomparable words from the “give us nothing” queen of Dua Lipa,
“I be like, “Ooh, it’s amusin'” You think I’m gonna fall for an illusion.”
I would like to argue that Ishmael has become hypocritical in accepting religion as the book progresses. Ishmael states numerous times over, “I have no objection to any person’s religion…so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also” (94). With this, the reader would assume that as his and Queequeg’s relationship and bond progress over the course of the novel, Ishmael would become more accepting of the differences between his religion and others. But, directly following the quote above, Ishmael states, “But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic…makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him” (94).
All of this turmoil within Ishmael began because of Queequeg’s day of fasting – Ramadan. And because of Ishmael’s lack of understanding of how Queequeg goes about Ramadan (kneeling in silence for a day with no food), he chooses to argue with Queequeg and attempt to get him to stop (you could arguably call this a conversion of some sort, if not to Christianity, then away from his own religious practices). It is hypocritical to reiterate throughout the novel how we should remove certain prejudices from our ways of thinking, especially regarding different religions, and even more so concerning that Ishmael is letting his ignorance feed into his fear of losing Queequeg. One could argue that, based on ignorance and prejudice, the likelihood of losing Queequeg is even stronger by those means than by any other. The novel seemingly contradicts different comparable topics: comparing men as one thing alongside the complete opposite, or writing so that their speech does not reflect their internal monologue or thoughts.
I believe this to be hypocritical; while it could be seen as a reflection of Ishmael’s concern for Queequeg’s well-being, this moment in the novel directly reveals the boundaries between Ishmael’s radical openness towards different religious practices and the difference between mental/intellectual acceptance of these practices and Ishmael’s practical interaction with them.
” When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for signing, he turned to me and said, “I guess, Quohog, there don’t know how to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or make thy mark?” But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper plan an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so that through Captain Peleg’s obstinate mistake touching his appellative, it stood something like this.”
In this passage, Herman Melville reveals Queequeg’s quiet dignity and intelligence through an act that others might misread as primitive. Queequeg, the South Sea Islander, is mocked by Captain Peleg for supposedly being illiterate. What: When asked to sign the ship’s papers, Queequeg calmly takes the pen and reproduces the tattooed symbol from his arm—his unique mark of identity. This moment argues that literacy and civilization are not the same as intelligence or self-knowledge. Melville uses this scene to challenge Western assumptions of superiority by showing that Queequeg’s “mark” carries just as much meaning as a written name. His symbol becomes a form of self-representation that bridges body and culture, proving that communication and authority extend beyond language. Ultimately, the scene invites readers to question who defines “civilization” and to recognize dignity in difference.
