Category Archives: Week 12: Chapters 109-132

Ebb and Flow

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In Chapter 111 on page 525, Melville wrote “The waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly…” It was part of a sentence, but what caught my eye is the word “should.” Why “should”? Why not “will” or “can”? But as I read further, I realized that this explains the inevitability of life itself. It is the only part of the full sentence that sounds rhythmic, like how waves themselves move. The word “unceasingly” simply means “eternal.” In other words, the waves move eternally. Adding the implication, Melville presenting the sea as a symbol of constant motion also becomes how life is in constant motion.

“The waves should rise and fall” suggests the ups and downs of life. It’s basically not normal for an entire lifespan to be completely calm and serene. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be happy. We have emotions so we can experience life like a rollercoaster, or rather a storm in a voyage. Mistakes are made to teach. Failures and setbacks show flaws. You can strive for the calm and serene, but the journey to get there will never be.

“Ebb and flow” suggests a cycle of experiences. Many things can restart, many things can be relived. The most vivid example is the damning fact Moby Dick teaches you how to read after already knowing how to read. The phrase “ebb and flow” shows how life teaches: even with everything you have learned, there’s still thousands more to know.

Why Melville consciously chose “should” and nothing else is because life “should” rise and fall, ebb and flow, as you grow as a person.

The North’s Predicament

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Starbuck has so many chances to stop Ahab on this doomed hunt for Moby Dick. He could have invoked a mutiny, he could have cut his line when Ahab was posted on the mast-head, and he could have shot him with the musket. But Starbuck didn’t do those things, Starbuck the “honest, upright” man of the union hardly recognizes an evil thought when it strikes him. He begins his interior monologue by raising the concept of fairness. “But how fair? Fair for death and doom…” Through Starbuck, Melville explains that fairness does not exist, there is always someone on the other side of it. Starbuck continues on, grappling with the possible murder of Ahab: “But shall this crazed old man… drag a whole ship’s company down.. it would make him the willful murderer of thirty men and more if this ship comes to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm my soul swears this ship will… Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed—” Starbuck’s contemplations when he is handling the musket in chapter 123 is an embodiment of the northern predicament. Is murder justified when it prevents more murder? Is declaring a war that will shed the most ever American blood justified to end the horrors of slavery. We all know the answer to this dilemma, and I doubt there are any rational people who would say the civil war wasn’t worth it. Though how could one know in its looming days. This is why Melville turned his mutiny story into one of doom. If it was a mutiny story, the ship would be saved, everyone would live (well maybe not Ahab) and it would be a happy ending. A happy ending that may not even be equated with American systems. But being made aware of an account, that after a continued lack of intervention, leads to the doom of a perceived nation-state, forces Americans to recognize their current state of affairs. In this case murder justifies murder. If the war on slavery was going to be ignored, this ship we call America was doomed to capsize.

Sense and Insensibility

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Moby Dick is a novel about the insensible, especially that of Ahab in his chase for the whale. His insensibility goes as far as putting his crew and his own life in danger, going against his own human instinct for survival. Melville writes of sensibility in Chapter 121 through a conversation between Stubb and Flask, concluding with a statement about sensibility as a choice, “Why don’t ye be sensible, Flask? It’s easy to be sensible; why don’t ye, then? Any man with half an eye can be sensible.” (pg. 555). By including this very popular sentiment in the backdrop of Ahab’s insensibility, Melville brings into question the irrationality of ration. Humans are not intrinsically born with ‘sensibility’, it is gained through our interactions with established rules of sensibility, of what is right or wrong. Our belief in human sensibility is taken for granted, pointed out by Melville using the voice of Stubb. Sensibility is a human construct, one that gets jumbled at sea away from the established rules on land. The insensible becomes sensible on Ahab’s ship, and because the construct of sensibility is not questioned by the shipmates, they too aid in their own destruction by following in Ahab’s insensibility, believing that those who establish rules must be the most sensible.

Authority goes hand in hand with knowledge, knowledge is knowing what is ‘sensibile’. Stubb refers to being sensible as ‘easy’, easy in adhering to the rules of the establishment. By saying being sensible is ‘easy’, Melville critiques the ease in which humans believe in the rules created by those who get to decide; easy is not having to decide at all, easy is not having to think at all. Melville continues his critique of sensibility with Stubb’s shame of the insensible, that it is somehow in their deficiency that they cannot be sensible, noting that anyone with ‘half an eye’ can easily do this. By specifically referring to the act of seeing what is sensible, there is a reference to the blindness of the masses in seeing the corruption/insensibility that happens right in front of their eyes. Stubb shames Flask by bringing up a deficiency in those who are deemed ‘insensible’, further prompting the cycle of ease in following the establishment rather than being shamed for opening your eyes to what is truly going on. 

Chapter 113: The Forge

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I consider The Forge to be an extremely sad chapter, mainly because my favorite person, Ahab, sounds particularly sad in this chapter. The passage states, “This done, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowing ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it!” (Melville 533). I really like this passage because Melville is using sound to describe the current state of the whole ship. He uses the word ‘hollow’ particularly because the ship feels empty and dark, especially with Ahab’s presence; this adds more meaning to the term, of how Ahab’s mood has been affecting the ship this entire time. The Pequod represents a mass of emptiness, a void where silence brought loneliness into Ahab. The reason why I believe Ahab feels lonely is that he has been distancing himself for quite some time. There is a difference between him and the crew, a social hierarchy where Ahab is on top of it, and the crew is at the very bottom. This explains the distance between them because they could never fit in a different environment when they are already in their own comfort zone. But then Pip’s ‘piteous’ laugh came in, his laugh acts as a reminder to Ahab that he is not alone, and there will always be people around him, whether he accepts them or not. You guys are probably wondering: Why is Pip’s laugh important? This is because Ahab considers this ship to be melancholy, empty, and dark. It reminded Ahab of the memories when he first became a whaleman, and Pip’s pitiful laugh possibly balances out the creepy vibes that the ship is having. His laugh mocked everything that this ship stands for, and Ahab loves it. 

Will To Live

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Queequeg has been my favorite character so far in the book, and not going to lie at the beginning of chapter 110 and the title of it scared me a little. I was definitely preparing myself for the end of Queequeg. Luckily, he was able to push through the fever and continue on. Something that he did that I found quite interesting was the fact that he made the coffin his “sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.” Queequeg set up his clothes with purpose in the coffin that was once going to hold his dead body, this was his way of moving past his near death experience and a reflection of his new found purpose—a reawakening. In traumatic events, the steps of acceptance and change is different for everyone but one way people deal with it is through rearrangement of their space. What was once the routine has changed thus implying for a change in the areas around us. 

To seal the deal of leaving behind what once was, Queequeg, “Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings…copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body.” He left his mark on the coffin, he would not have had the chance to if he had passed, of course. He was once again taking control of the situation, he took control of his fate by deciding he wanted to live, he took control of what was going to be in the coffin instead of him, and took control of what was going to be on the outside of the coffin as well. He graffitied it, showing that he has lived on but left his mark just like when a person marks a tree “(name) was here.” 

This chapter felt very biblical, reminding me of the chapter in which Lazarus was mentioned—the biblical figure who was resurrected by Jesus. Melvilles choice to use Queequeg as the character who would have a near death experience just to “resurrect” was interesting because it shows that regardless of who the “God” is in your life, everyone has someone or something that they believe in and will hold onto them during moments of difficulties. Humans crave for that comfort that will convince us that things will be okay even if they feel like they aren’t, thus pushing us to want to change or push us to live life with purpose. 

Week 12: Ahab and Pip

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Human connection and healing are anchors that Ahab can not afford to entertain in his monomaniac quest to kill the whale. The flowering of a friendship, forged by madness and understanding, between Ahab and Pip, is destroyed when Ahab goes back on his promise to keep Pip close and excuses him from his Cabin.

For a moment, there was what was beginning to be a father-son-like relationship between Ahab and Pip. Gardiner reminds Ahab of his responsibilities, not just to his crew, but to his family, which he has abandoned by going on this dead-end quest. Ahab perhaps closes himself off after this interaction, where he turned down aiding Gardiner in his quest for his son lost at sea, for the pursuit of Moby Dick. It is telling of how important this new father-son relationship has become to Ahab, enough so that Ahab must realize that following this quest must mean the endangerment of his new son. It is powerful enough that Ahab must abandon Pip, although it hurts him to do so: 

“There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like curers like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.”

 Ahab and Pip have endured an injury to the mind and the soul that has been disregarded by all those on crew as madness, but is better known to you and me as mental illness. No one has been able to understand and reach Ahab, but Pip, who is injured further by this abandonment and stripping of his identity, being shown what it is to love and belong to someone. Pip is such a fragile character, and it hurts me, as it does Ahab, to see him suffer this disillusionment. Pip becomes Ahab’s one weakness because he becomes his cure. 

ch 110, my Queequeq

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I obsessed with Queequeq, so this chapter had me a little emotional, for real, I thought we lost our man. Now to my claim and what I see, Melville is pushing us really to view class and structure in America, or even overall, the boat is all over the world, the ocean touches all the continents and the 7 seas blend together, yet we still like to have those hard lines to define what is what, who is who.

“Now, there is the noteworthy difference between savage and civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day.” (524 Melville). Melville is telling us to note this, look at this passage, and take the meaning of the comparison of social class and class structure. What is to be civil and what it means to be a savage, what is even a savage. A savage has more willpower and strength than a civilized man; a civilized man takes 6 months to bounce back, but a savage needs a day. A savage is used to the germs and dirt, as a civil man does not touch dirt. It’s important to note that what society calls a savage is strong, but the ones who call clean men are weak. The idea that the man and savage need to blend, become equal

Loveliness Unfathomable

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In Chapter 114, “The Gilder,” we see a rare moment of faith that momentarily interrupts the darkness that pervades Moby-Dick. Looking out at the calm, sunlit sea, Starbuck softly declares, “Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye! — Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.” The tone here is startlingly romantic, one could even argue, devotional, as Starbuck compares the ocean’s beauty to that of a lover’s gaze. His use of “unfathomable” carries a double meaning, as it refers both to the literal depth of the sea and to its spiritual or emotional mystery, something that cannot be fully understood or measured. By personifying the ocean and addressing it directly, Starbuck acknowledges that it’s a living presence, treating it almost as a divine being. Yet, his language is also defensive or nervous. The command “Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks” reveals a conscious effort to suppress the darker aspects of the sea, as though faith itself requires him to silence what he may or may not know to be true.

When Starbuck says, “Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory,” Melville captures the tension between spiritual idealism and lived experience. Each pair of opposites listed represents conflicting ways of perceiving the world. Fact and memory are the tangible realities of whaling that we can see: blood, death, and brutality. Faith and fancy, on the other hand, belong more to the imagination, an almost inner realm where hope can still survive. The repeated verb “oust” suggests a kind of internal struggle, maybe even violence, as if belief must forcibly remove reality to be able to endure. Starbucks’ plea, then, is not naïve but desperate. He knows exactly what the sea (and humankind) is capable of, yet he chooses to believe in its beauty. This active substitution of replacing knowledge with belief reveals the cost of maintaining faith in an environment shaped by danger and moral corruption.

Melville seems to situate this moment within a broader pattern throughout the novel, where the crew alternates between seeing the sea as a site of terror and transcendence. For Ahab, the ocean mirrors divine indifference and becomes an enemy to be conquered. For Ishmael, it represents a vast, unfixed mystery that draws him toward humility. Starbuck, however, tries to reconcile these opposing views by turning to faith. His insistence that “faith oust fact” is not simply religious but existential because it becomes a survival mechanism for someone trapped between moral conscience and obedience to Ahab’s doomed mission.

The final line, “I look deep down and do believe,” solidifies this tension between perception and truth. The phrase “deep down” implies both introspection as well as descent into the ocean, the self, and the unseen. Melville’s syntax seems very purposeful here. It slows the reader, as if mimicking the steady, deliberate act of belief itself. The simple, emphatic “do believe” reads like a vow. A deliberate act of will against possible despair. Yet there is ambiguity in what he believes. Does Starbuck truly find divinity in the sea, or is his faith a fragile illusion meant to stave off any madness? The line holds both possibilities. To “look deep down” may mean confronting the abyss, acknowledging that faith and destruction coexist in the same depth.

This passage captures Melville’s meditation on the human need to find meaning within a hostile world. Starbuck’s moment of reverence does not erase the ocean’s “kidnapping cannibal ways,” but it does reveal a deeper truth: that belief itself is an act of courage. To see “loveliness unfathomable” in something that is so deeply unknown is to assert that beauty and faith can persist, however tenuously, even amid the knowledge of violence. Melville gives Starbuck this brief vision of transcendence not as comfort, but as contrast. It is a fleeting reminder of how fragile the light of faith can be when set against the vast, indifferent sea, but sometimes it’s exactly what we need.

Blame God

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Reading Starbuck’s last plea to Ahab in “The Symphony” was very disheartening because we know that Ahab couldn’t be swayed from his crusade. Starbuck, the voice of reason, or our symbol for “we the people”, is practically begging to change course back to Nantucket, but his words fall on deaf ears as “Ahab’s glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil” (592). Ahab can’t even bother to look at his first mate during his request, “blighted” by whatever this force is that keeps him on his mission, the “last, cindered apple” of any hopes of salvation now gone from him. We had the first confrontation in the Cabin just last week, but this is the final moment when the captain turns his back on his people, hardly listening to them as he leads the Pequod to their doom. I know it was present throughout the novel, but this scene of Ahab’s final soliloquy before The Chase felt the most like Shakespearean tragedy as we, with Starbuck, just want him to stop, but we know it won’t happen, and can only watch as he broods over his so-called fate, questioning whether he even has any agency or he’s just a puppet of God:

“Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I” (592).

In giving up his agency, claiming that it may just be that God is moving him on this path, Ahab is reassuring himself that this is just the way it has to be. If the great sun that allows us to live doesn’t have control over it’s actions, then why should Ahab’s small heart and brain have any power? So Ahab assigns himself to what he believes to be his fate, despite the consequences it will have for the people he is responsible for. Placing the responsibility on a higher being is a way for him to excuse his actions that he knows will not bear the fruit he wants (where have we seen that before?) Despite the countless warnings and pleas from other ships (and Starbuck) and ill omens and prophecies, Ahab, or rather God, in his eyes, cannot be moved. By assuming divinity, Ahab prevents any alteration towards a better outcome for the nation state of the Pequod, leaving the people “blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair” (593).

The enlightenment of death

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In chapter 110, we readers get a good scare from Melville, because it seems certain that our beloved Queequeg is going to die. I enjoyed this chapter very much, but there was a section in page 520 that especially caught my attention. Melville writes, “But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre…And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity.” Here, Melville presents a new kind of enlightenment, one that comes not from madness like in Pip’s case, but one that arises from proximity to death. For Queequeg, this enlightened state transcended the abstract and was physically visible in his body. Ishmael says that his eyes were getting bigger and gained a “softness of lustre.” The eyes are through which we take in the world around us, and the bigger they are can metaphorically represent a higher awareness and a deeper perspective on life. His eyes also had “lustre,” which is a glow (light) on reflective surfaces. Not only are eyes for taking in information, but some would say they are the window to the soul, and a visible shine on them is representative of an enlightened soul that can’t keep from outwardly reflecting that. Queequeg’s eyes are subsequently compared to “circles on the water,” another reflective surface, exemplifying the outward manifestation of enlightenment; but water isn’t just reflective, it is also a fluid, shifting surface, where marks expand and grow “fuller and fuller,” but also fainter. After all, Queequeg’s expanding eyes and thin body are a tangible sign of decay as much as they are a metaphorical sign of enlightenment. The human body is as impermanent as moving water. But while the body is temporary, the soul is eternal. Ishmael finally compares Queequeg’s expanding but fading eyes to “the rings of Eternity.” As he nears death, in Ishmael’s eyes, Queequeg becomes infinite in spirit. His body will fade away, but his soul, which is accessible through his eyes, becomes eternal. Aside from the spirituality in this scene, we also see Melville once again addressing the question of how we acquire knowledge. As he has shown us before in the book, existence is not exactly fit for certainty, but maybe death is. Melville questions that we can really know anything when we are alive, but in this scene, Queequeg’s expanding eyes and eternal soul display death as a true path to knowledge and revelation. In an ironic turn, when death begins to take the place of life, that is when a being may truly grasp their existence. It seems to be impossible to know anything with certainty, but that changes when we cease to exist. Though a very sad scene of sickness and decay, Melville uses lovely and serene language, giving the reader a sense of peace and almost as a way to dispel fear and restlessness. This is a tranquility that comes from finally understanding that which you could not in life, but the price to pay for that is death.