Category Archives: Week 7: Chapters 5-27

Queequeg’s Ramadan: A Still Ignorant Ishmael

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There is a lot that could be discussed in this week’s writing–as it is a big chunk–however, what I found important to note was Ishmael’s thoughts on this “alien” practice of Queequeg’s.

Traditionally. Ramadan is a focused act of fasting, prayer, and conscious acts of compassion towards others. What we see with Queequeg here though, is fasting and prayer as he sits on his hams in their cold and dark room–his wooden doll “Yojo” on top of his head. Ishmael is aware that Queequeg is practicing this in his room, and initially think of himself right to not disturb his comrade. Although, Ishmael becomes increasingly worried and anxious that maybe his comrade might have had a stroke or been overcome by apoplexy.

What I specifically want to point out is Ishmael’s conflicting ideology of religious practices, despite having “the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in [his] heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshiping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth…bow down before a torso of a deceased landed proprietor…” On the whole, this chapter still presents somewhat of a condescending view towards “half-crazy” practices outside of Ishmael’s experience. On pg. 94, Ishmael is finally able to sit Queequeg down and express that “fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved.” This shows me Ishmael’s still ignorant nature, and more importantly, maybe Melville’s dismissive nature towards practices outside Presbyterian Christianity (dismissive might be too of a strong word to use here).

Captain Ahab through Captain Peleg and Bildad’s perspectives.

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The reason why Ishmael was full of thoughts about Captain Ahab was because the mysteriousness oozing off of Captain Ahab attracts him. At the end of chapter 16, Ishmael was thinking about Captain Ahab after listening to the perspective of his other captains. He thought: “As I walked away…what had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain vagueness and painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the same time, I felt sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don’t know what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him, but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it…Though I felt impatience at what seemed like a mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then.” (Melville 89). This feeling that Ishmael is having is probably not the first time he has ever felt because he had the same curiosity towards Queequeg, and it attracts him to it. In this case, the mysteriousness and vagueness that Captain Ahab gives spike Ishmael’s curiosity. We all know that for the first couple of chapters, Ishmael was keenly reading the room, the background, and its people. Everything that he read, he analyzed to the fullest. I believe that Melville purposefully locked us in Ishmael’s perspective mainly because Melville also wants us to read people’s movements, but through Ishmael. It almost felt like we were Ishmael himself trying to figure out everything that we encountered. The reason why Ishamel was attracted to Captain Ahab’s mysteriousness was because he had not seen Captain Ahab yet and was listening to other captains’ perspectives. Ishmael felt sympathy, sorrow, and awe for Captain Ahab, but at the same time, he was not sure about it, which tells us readers that he does not hand-on know who Captain Ahab really is, and therefore, Ishmael’s thoughts and feelings were not a hundred percent accurate. This is why Ishamel’s thoughts head in different directions while he kept thinking about Captain Ahab. In a way, I really like how we are forced to read people through Ishmael’s perspective because we are also attracted by it, and it makes us ponder the possibilities that this novel offers, and it prompts us to read more about it. Such a fascinating way to write a novel.

An Incomplete Cetology and Humanity

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When I first read this book, I remember skimming through the “Cetology” chapter, disregarding it as one of Ishmael’s many ramblings because I was bored, annoyed, confused, and didn’t “get it”. Admittedly this chapter, and a large chunk of this book, still maintains those qualities but that’s exactly the reason why I wanted to dissect some of the quotes in chapter 32. Before providing us with this makeshift dictionary on whales, Ishmael says “I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty” (147). Having discussed his willingness to change his mind about Queequeg and witnessed his desire to continue to learn about the world, this seemed like a very Ishmael thing to say. By preceding with this, he shows us that “any human thing” should always remain open to change in order to progress/grow; to claim completion is a disservice to the very nature of being alive, for to live is to change. Our ideals, perspectives, values, our LIVES are not set in stone, we should constantly evolve and learn from past experiences lest we be faulty by denying our incompletion. It’s a very fitting contrast to Ahab whose “infinity of firmest fortitude” and “fixed and fearless, forward dedication” keeps him on this path, uncaring for anything else as his mind is set on nothing but destroying Moby Dick (135).

The chapter ends with Ishmael’s “cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything” (157). Again, the value of leaving things unfinished is shown by Ishmael here; it also shows how his meeting with Queequeg changed his whole attitude towards life, in chapter 2 he was saying “it’s too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished” (12). Ishmael is showing us how vital it is to change our minds and accept the incomplete nature of life. We can’t have a complete dictionary of these whales, and there is no definitive description of how to live. They’re meant to be interpreted in many ways, added upon by each generation and their encounters; any reading with one singular message would simply be propaganda (this last part doesn’t really make sense in this context but I just wanted to add it because I’ve been thinking about this since our professor said it).

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.

Chapter 13: People Watching Back in the 1860s

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When I was reading the beginning of chapter 13, this line which Ishmael blessed us with made me curious. “As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much – for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in the street, – but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along, wheeling the barrel by turns,…” pg. 64. What could this mean for both men and how people view them both?

Was it so common in the US, during the 1830s or 40s, to see cannibals roaming the town streets? Were they minding their own business or were they sceaming and wanting to find their next victim to eat. The fact that the towns people were going about their days as normal seeing Queequeg if he was by himself strolling down the street. But then when both Ishmael and Queequeg were walking together down the road they stared and were most likely concerned for why Ishmael was with this cannibal.

Were cannibals known to be sole survivors of themselves and were not typically seen with other people or was it the fact that Ishmael was a normal looking man with this savage creature that was Queequeg. Were the people of the town racially profiling both men or were they just being cautious and wanting to make sure that Ishmael doesn’t end up being the next name in the obituary paper. From the time period which the book takes place I can see how this challeneged the norms of that time, especially seeing two men who are distincively different together like this.

Maybe people of the town had seen them both many times before walking around together or even eating together. The fact that they also shared a room at the inn would be skeptical too but both Ishmael and Queequeg just kept going through the streets of the town not caring what others might have been thinking of them. Their dynamic was not common and how close they had gotten so close, sleeping in the same bed and even Ishmael calling them “married” at one point. They have shared many moments together so far throughout the story and I wonder how thier dyamic will either stay the same or even change while being aboard the Pequod.

Chapter Twenty-Four

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In Chapter 24, “The Advocate”, Ishmael breaks the narrative chain and goes on a tangent about whaling; he advocates for the respectability of whaling as a profession and whalers as a social class. He appeals to history, religion and cultural authority, situating whalers alongside kings, emperors and saints. By invoking such figures, Ishmael seeks to prove to the audience that whaling is not simply just a brutal industry but one that has shaped civilization and society. He goes as far as claiming that whalemen have something better than good blood in their veins, they are like “royalty”; positioning whalers above any other profession. “Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By Old English statutory law, the whale is declared ‘a royal fish’.” (Melville 121)  The more Ishmael insists upon the heroism of whaling, the more his argument  begins to become absurd, comparing whalers and whaling to the Bible and even Cetus, the whale constellation.

I feel Melville deliberately constructs tension between admiration and absurdity to highlight the instability of society’s attempts to justify violence through borrowed symbols of power. By having Ishmael place whaleman on a pedestal among religious and political leaders, it makes us reflect on not just the morality of whaling but also, in a broader way, on how society rationalizes violent and exploitative labor. We, as the audience, can sense that Ishmael is “trying too hard” on making us romanticize the whaling practice. We know that whaling is a brutal and destructive activity and Ishmael is trying to promote the opposite. This commentary of whaling can show how much violence is often masked with hefty rhetoric.

Although Melville wrote this in the 19th century, this commentary remains relevant in modern day. Just as Ishmael’s rhetoric glorifies whaling, modern propaganda often glorifies war, reframing perspectives. Melville’s chapter critiques not just whaling but also the human impulse to conceal brutality behind the “greatness” of tradition and power. 

standing and watching

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I want to take us back to the passage of the painting when he first arrives at the inn, looking at the painting at first, it made no sense but the more you looked at the painting through the smudge and smoke that one would think the painting is ruined but when you keep coming back to it and stand there for a while, it all makes sense minute by minute.

now to my point, Ishmael seems to very obsessed with Queequeq, he can’t help but sit and stare at him, he is taking him in even though he doesn’t really get it/him.

“With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face-at least to my taste.” (55) then he later says…

“As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after it’s first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me.” (57)

Queequeq is the painting, he is ran through in Ishmael’s eyes but for some reason he can’t get away from standing and staring at him, he keeps coming back like a revolving door. He wants to analyze him and get to know what what doesn’t make sense on the outside to further know what the true meaning is, just like this painting that has been through the ringer but Ishmael still found beauty in it.

I also want to make a second point about how this book is very much the new romantics, this book is fully about romance and the relationship with Ishmael’s soundings, truly everything is romantic to him, he can walk the street and see someone being eaten and still find the words to romanticize it.

“this ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in the fog.” (46)

He truly is gathering this idea to make anything and everything sound beautiful even though what he is describing is boring.

Country-bred dandies

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In Chapter 6, “The Street,” Melville introduces us to the microcosm of New Bedford through the eyes of Ishmael. Right off the bat, he draws a parallel between Queequeg’s perceived savageness and the strange sight he encounters on the street (pg. 16). He turns his focus, however, to a specific category of men; to this group, he refers in the following way: “…scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the wale-lance.” (16). The visual element of the description is key to representing the naiveness, frivolity, and recklessness of these men. They are green, inexperienced, and scrawny, but also money hungry and air headed. In their hometowns they kill trees, now they are looking to kill whales. He later identifies them as “bumpkin dandies,” a new breed of spoiled brat that surpasses even city dandies in their insufferableness. Then he turns our attention toward New Bedford itself, a seemingly unremarkable piece of land that has nevertheless prospered immensely. To answer where this wealth came from he says, “Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea…You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles” (17). The description of the New Bedford community is starkly similar to that of the bumpkin dandies. Maybe dandies are out of their depth in this new town, but they are just as greedy and irresponsible as the locals. The local wealth comes from the exploitation of the ocean, just as the country people’s wealth comes from the exploitation of the earth. Although Melville doesn’t directly compare the two, it’s not coincidental that he writes of one right after the other. In reality, these bumpkin dandies come to continue the cycle of exploitation already set before them, so really, how out of place are they? I would say they are right at home, and though Ishmael doesn’t seem to notice, Melville is fully aware of it. He once again employs imagery as his strongest resource, because, by giving the reader a visual representation of wealth (the dandies and their clothes, New Bedford weddings), and contrasting it with a mental image of exploitation (“emblematical harpoons,” the axe that cuts down forests), he highlights the imminent link between them.

The Sea and Life

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There is literally so much that I could analyze from these chapters, but I keep finding this connection between the sea and how it provides a sense of life for seaborne characters. When Ismael sits down for breakfast in chapter 5, he describes the silence and quiet, awkward embarrassment of the table full of sailors, stating that:

“Yes, here were a set of seadogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas – entire strangers to them – and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table – all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes – looking round sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains.” (pg. 34).

This reminded me of the very first chapter, where Melville, or even Ismael, describes why he is writing about the sea and the human connection to the ocean. For me, the quote above paints a picture of burly, sea-roughed men who have seen some shit, comfortable on the seas and vocal about what needs to be done. However, when all sat together at a “social breakfast table,” there seemed to be nothing urgently to talk about, despite their shared experiences. In many ways, the sea brings life to these people in ways that common, daily happenings bring awkwardness. Water and sea life bring out aspects of living that normal life simply cannot, which connects back to Ismael’s introduction to the audience, where he declares that he goes to the sea when he feels depressed with his life. Melville even directly states this relation between life and the sea on page 5, where he says:

“It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.” (pg. 5).

It’s in these small moments that Melville connects the role that the ocean plays in bringing forth one’s humanity, personality, and the very essence of life. When on the water, these men have to be vocal and social and themselves because they are surrounded by both nothing and everything else. However, when sitting on a social breakfast table on land, the whalers are at an awkward, silent loss.

Jonah and the Whale – Potential Foreshadowing? – Chapter 9

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This week I stumbled upon the following passage in Chapter 9, on page 47. “Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sea-line sound! What a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle on the fish’s belly!”

For those who don’t know, or struggled to understand how Melville framed the story, the Book of Jonah in the Bible is that Jonah, a prophet, disobey’s God by not going to the City of Niniveah. Jonah attempts to escape from God on a boat, and when the boat is being overwhelmed by a storm, her relives that it is his fault, and asks the shipmates to throw him overboard. The storm stops, and he is swallowed by a “big fish”, and then is thrown up after 3 days, after which he goes to the city of Nineveh.

Why do I bring this up? Because I believe this is an instance of foreshadowing. My guess is that Ahab will either be mutinied against, like Jonah being thrown overboard, or eaten by the “Big Fish” that is Moby Dick, just like Jonah.

Now, I don’t remember much of my first read-through, but I do remember that Melville is brilliant at foreshadowing. (If you were paying attention in the first 3 chapters, you will be rewarded later on). I do not remember, however, if this pays off or not. I guess I’ll just have to read and find out.

This Chapter within Moby Dick is riddled with quotes that feed into that theory as well, not just the one I shared. In fact, pretty much the entire Chapter supports this. I believe that this is a clear instance of Chekov’s Gun. And, while Melville does tend to go on philosophical tangents, which this can also be perceived as, I believe it will directly relate to the plot.

If you want to do your own research, I highly recommend reading Jonah. As Mapple says, it is only 4 chapters. It’ll put into context a lot of what the sailors, most of whom are Christian or grew up son, act and think the way they do about and around whales.