Category Archives: Week 9: Chapters 37-57

Week 9

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In chapter 44, Melville highlights the negative effects obsessing over the past has on a person’s mental health by Ishmael’s narration of how Ahab’s obsession over the whale is causing him to spiral more into madness. Ishmael says, “God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates” (Melville 220). Here, Ishmael is observing the fact that Ahab’s obsession of killing the whale is consuming him from within. Ahab is a monster in the making right in front of everyone’s eyes. This suggests that Ahab’s fixation on revenge has shaped his inner self, how his thoughts became the very reason for his suffering. Melville here is showing how when the mind is trapped in an endless cycle of vengeance, it becomes a saboteur of the individual.

Prometheus is from Greek Mythology and his story was he defied the gods and his punishment (which is what’s mentioned) is he was chained to a rock where a bird would eat his liver which would then regenerate overnight, only for the same thing to keep happening. And with the comparison to Prometheus, Melville shows how Ahab’s obsessive thoughts are becoming his own punishment, one that feeds at him endlessly. Ahab’s torment is self created and it is causing him to spiral more into insanity. When one cannot let go of the past, it can become their own destroyer. As seen with Ahab, his obsessive thoughts are ruining his mental state and physical state. His bad state is so noticeable that his crewmates, like Ishmael, are able to point it out. Also seen in earlier chapters, other crewmates also point out Ahab’s madness. This shows how people are able to recognize the negatives of obsessing over the past and how it leads to self destruction

Week 9

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In Chapter 49, Ishmael is ready to write his will after having a scare from the dangers of whaling. He feels gratitude in being alive saying, “Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection.”(249) Ishmael is not taking the rest of his days for granted and will cherish being alive. Also while having no knowledge of who Lazarus is, I googled him and found out that he was resurrected by Jesus four days after his death.

As a Christian man, Ishmael uses the reference of Lazarus to connect himself to something with familiarity thus turning towards God for comfort. His faith will help him gain not only a clear perspective but also tranquility to continue on his voyage, “I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.”(249)

This also makes me think about The Chapel chapter, where he was reading the marbles of the dead sailors. In the end of that chapter I remember his clear mind regarding death, he seemed to not worry about death as he knew that his soul will live on forever. I guess in the face of death, your fear of death instinctively can come back and naturally you will try to avoid it from happening.

The curse of overthinking

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Chapter 44, “The Chart,” gives us some insight on Ahab’s plan to find Moby Dick. He is obssessively charting a course for the Pequod that may guarantee them an encounter with the whale, but there are too many variables. We also get insight into Ahab’s fixation and how it shapes his every waking (and dreaming) moment. His thoughts are about Moby Dick alone and he is slowly consumed by them. In page 220, Melville writes, “God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.” The mention of Prometheus is an interesting one because it highlights the consuming quality of fire, something that is evidently going on in Ahab’s mind. However, recalling the story of Prometheus, he was punished for defying the gods and giving fire to humanity, which caused him to be tortured for eternity. This chapter is presumably in Ishmael’s point of view, which means that choosing this reference purposefully paints Ahab in a heroic and tortured light, although Ahab is clearly helping no one in madly chasing the whale. Ishmael has started idolizing Ahab, specifically starting from the moment he agreed to the crazed chase for the whale, and now sees him as a type of mad intellectual, tragically cursed for thinking too much. Additionally, in the story, an eagle would eat Prometheus’ liver every night, which is parallel to the passage above, only for Ahab it’s “a vulture that feeds upon that heart forever,” and the vulture is a creature of his own making. This part is evidence that Ishmael does recognize Ahab’s part in his own suffering, and he pities him, but the tone in which he describes this still paints Ahab in a poetic light and as a kind of victim. As Ahab becomes increasingly fixated on catching the whale, Ishmael observes in wonder and admiration.

Chapter 44.

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Through reading this week’s chapters, I found myself being excited to pick the book up again. Once they got onto the Pequod I found myself getting a little bored in the reading compared to the chapters earlier that revolved around Ishmael and Queequeg. However, after chapters 41 and 42 I have become excited to read more and honestly shocked with how much I have been enjoying the book. From this week’s chapters the one that I kept coming back to was chapter 44, where Ahab is in his cabin going over the ways that he might be able to predict where Moby-Dick might be and when. The quote that stood out to me was at the end of the chapter, when Ahab rushes out of the room, “ God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates” (Melville 220). This passage shows how self destructive Ahab’s obsession with this whale has become for him. Melville using the word creature here is something that stood out to me because it separates Ahab from this “creature” full of vengeance within him. The mental struggle Ahab has dealt with since losing his leg to Moby-Dick is something that has taken over his every thought, making his decisions completely irrational and quite frankly ridiculous. But this is a creature, as Melville says, that he created. The whale was acting out of pure instinct yet Ahab has turned this into a personal attack, Melville does a wonderful job at making this quest for Moby-Dick not just a physical adventurer, but also a projection of Ahab’s inner torment. This also makes the blind commitment from most of the crew on the Pequod even more terrifying. That with just one speech from their captain they are ready to take out his revenge on something that is innocent. Ahab has created this creature within himself that is full of hate and revenge, and as he fixates on that he also forces it onto his crew making whatever he says correct without argument. This reminds me a lot about what is happening today, and the more we read this book the more I am able to see the connections. 

Chapter 55: An Interlude

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In this chapter we pause the narrative once again, to return to Ishmael’s wide berth of knowledge concerning the worldly and historical preconceptions of what whales look like, based on depictions of artists and scientists that have never seen a living whale. As can be expected, they’ve got it all wrong : “Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars (288).” 

This pause, for suspense, serves as a narrative reminder that we are about to embark into the unknown, and never seen before. The great leviathan is about to be viewed in its natural environment, thrashing in the roiling sea. This chapter is a reminder, that in the grand scope of historical documentation, from the ancient Egyptians to Melville’s present, there has been very little understanding of the size, or scope of such a marvelous creature. And then, there is the reminder, that the only way to be intimated with the sight of the whale, is to embark on the dangerous and often ill-fated task of whaling.

What is interesting is that Ishmael seems to be most focused on the one thing these images, skeletons, and even carcasses can not capture, it soul: “even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could not catch (289).” To stare into the eye of the living creature, one must meet it in it’s living state, submerged and alive within the water.

A Measured, Mad Mind: The Cartography of Obsession

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In “The Chart,” Melville reveals Ahab’s obsession not through outbursts or violence but through precision. Alone in his cabin, Ahab bends over sea charts, tracing the imagined paths of whales with “slow but steady pencil” strokes. The scene reads like an act of devotion rather than navigation. Melville writes, “it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead” (p. 215). The image is eerie; his intellect turns inward, and his mind becomes as mapped and wrinkled as the parchment before him. Ahab’s search for Moby Dick is not just physical; it is carved into him.

What fascinates me about this passage is how Melville fuses rationality and madness. Ahab’s tools, charts, logbooks, and calculations are supposed to represent knowledge and control. Yet here they become symbols of fixation. His disciplined method is indistinguishable from mania, and his careful plotting mirrors the very entrapment he seeks to escape. The “invisible pencil” suggests that obsession itself leaves marks, both mental and physical. The act of mapping the ocean transforms into a self-inscription, as if Ahab’s need for order has consumed his identity entirely.

By showing Ahab in stillness rather than frenzy, Melville captures the quiet terror of obsession. The charts promise mastery over the unknown, but they only deepen Ahab’s confinement. The vastness of the sea, which should humble him, instead becomes an extension of his will. This inversion, where reason turns into ritual and knowledge into obsession, makes the scene unsettling. It is not the storm that threatens Ahab, but his own steady hand. In his attempt to draw order out of chaos, he ends up redrawing himself. Melville’s image of the “charted” forehead lingers as a warning that the more we try to map the world, the more we risk becoming the map itself.

Within context of whaling and the Pequod

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From reading chapters 42-57, it is clear that Ishmael shapes his worldview and takes hostile identities from the unidentified and unknown, labeling it as supernatural, in order to adhere to his romantic feelings on whaling. In chapter 50, Ishmael talks about the castaway saved at sea, Fedallah, speculating, “Whence he came in a mannerly world like this…so far as to have some sort of half-hinted influence…” Ishmael here is a bit frustrated, trying to piece together into his worldview why Fedellah was so integral into the force of the Pequod if not uncivilized? He sees Fedellah as an independent, yet vulnerable force onto the ship because he is educated and intellegent. This brings into question the origin and formation of dominating narratives into society that see people as blank canvases to write heroism and transgression when there was none in the first place. This is dangerous as Ishmael sees the Pequod’s mercy decision as righteous, instead of seeing the rescue of castaways as human decency. He sees Fedellah as a “half-hinted influence” brought supernaturally from heaven, expected to influence the narrative of the whaler’s autonomy; but this only means that Fedellah is nothing short of an instrumental pawn in a game, rather than seeing the man as a person with his own agency and role in the world. He also states the nautical life as distinctly separate from the land when he says Fedellah unexpectedly happened to be in a mannerly world like this. Here, not only does he dehumanize Fedellah, but he contextually imprisons him into a person with no origin. This gives Ishmael reason to call his worldview the only right concept apart from others, emphasizing the nautical life as mannerly, compared to back home in New Bedford.

The Separation of Nations – Week 9

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One quote from the beginning of this week’s reading has stuck with me throughout the duration of my reading. From Chapter 48, “The First Lowering”, reads the quote, “The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart” (pp. 244). The reason this quote stuck out to me was that, after our group discussion in class on Thursday regarding the search for an understanding of whiteness and the “one drop rule” applied to identifying and categorizing black individuals versus whites, there seemed to be a bit more development on the topic through this quote. As we know, Melville is using Moby Dick to critique the circumstances of the United States in the late 19th century, building on the idea that, without understanding what whiteness is and what exactly makes it superior to other colors, one will lose their identity and their mind (as seen through Ahab). The idea as a whole is quite absurd.

From this quote, we can dissect and categorize two key components of this work of literature: the whales (white superiority/colonialism/the right to Westward Expansion/etc.) and the ships (nation-states). Through the desire to obtain this idea of “whiteness” and all the havoc it creates, the turmoils with which those searching for it succumb to, can create a nation-wide divison, whether between two or more countries, or the two races within one. This quote indirectly lays claim to the fact that the idea of segregation and superiority simply based on the rule of “whiteness” will divide the people of our nation now, and for long after in the future.

Ch 47

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“free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, through restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either.” (234)

It’s funny to me to bring up free will and remind us that it’s free to have it. When just before this, Ahab has taken over the mission and is now in control of these men for some gold… Melville is telling us that freewill is free; these men have free will and can use it as they please. That is still an option; they don’t have to go with Ahab and his wishes. Starbuck is the only one using freewill, which is the free thinking of his mind. play freewill in the right line of necessity, what is necessity to these men, we clearly see what Ahab necessity is but what about Ishmael. I could keep going on about Ishmael and how ghost like he is but has a lot to say.

Week 9 : Chapters 43 – 57

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As I begin to dive into this section of reading, something that keeps sticking out to me is the way in which Ishmael has started to speak about whales since joining the mission Ahab is on. In Chapter 45, The Affidavit, he is trying to express to the readers just how possible what is happening in their book is by discussing the habits and stories about sperm whales. But one quote that really stuck out to me was him saying “The man and the whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other.” (Melville, page 222) This quote does not exactly seem to truly have any significance to the overall message he is trying to present, but it really stuck with me.

I think the use of the word “vanquished” within this quote is so extremely impactful and shifts the way in which I feel the whale is being spoken about. It seems that since Ahab brought them all in on his mission of vengeance against Moby Dick, the whale is being spoken about in a more mythical sense, much like the way Ahab was spoken about prior to his introduction. it feels, to me, as if Melville is really trying to emphasize the true size and threat of the whale. Earlier in the book, he was really emphasizing just how massive sperm whales were to give the readers a perspective that they might not have, but now it seems like the power of the whale is what is being emphasized. This is effectively setting up the whale as such a looming presence on the ship despite it not having made an appearance yet.

I am not sure if this is the way it has been throughout the book and I am just now noticing, but I think regardless it is really impactful to the experience of reading.