This chapter was a welcome one, helping to liven Ishmael’s last few detailed chapters, where he pondered the sperm and right whales contrasted views. Here we regain some action, and are faced with the consequences of human clumsiness which leads Tashtego to fall in to the whales Tun. I was very fond of Ishmael’s description of Queequeg coming to the rescue, of a scene that quickly spiraled out of control: “The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue (375).”

Like the rest on board of the Pequod, I read on with bated breath, hoping this was not the end of Queequeg’s journey. Luckily he emerged with Tashtego in hand, and subsequently, through Ishmael, we were able to read of the nature of this rescue. 

Much like we have discussed in class, this story is famously absent, but not completely devoid  of women and their presence. For this reason, I bring attention to the fact that Queequeg, of all characters, who is symbolic of the defiance of all presuppositions of the intelligence, bravery and capability of non-westerners (non-Europeans), is the one to perform this act of assisted birth. Not only is he special for the connection he forms with Ishmael, or of his selfless act’s of bravery, but he is also a midwife; assisting in Tashtego’s watery rebirth from the Tun:

“He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way—head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected (p.376).”

I’d like to note, that in terms of giving birth, the way that Tashtego was first positioned at the entrance of the Tun/womb, feet first, Is called a breech position, in which the baby is usually in danger of injury or death by suffocation. Even in modern medicine this is considered a difficult birthing position for the fetus and mother, often resulting in the injury of the mother and tearing of the cervix. A skilled midwife, or obstetrician, is capable of either carefully following through with this birth position, or helping to turn the baby. In other words, Queequegs delivery of Tashtego was a feat of obstetrics even for what is possible on land (and with human babies). 

Ishmael, seems knowledgable of the naming of this breech position in medical terminology, and it’s contrasted meaning of the homophone breach, which means to break or split open, and which is commonly associated with describing whales breaking the surface of the water as they come up for air. Ironically, he notes, the great head of the dead whale is sinking, rather than coming up for air. 

I bring back to attention Queequeg, and the fact that he is the one that conducts this emergency delivery. I think it say’s something of Queequeg’s knowledge that he was able to convey this delivery from the difficult position which he and Tashtego were placed in, both sinking (as the knowledge of gynecology we now know to be expanded upon the experiments on enslaved Black women in the United States).

However, it also says something about the limitations of man, and how their plunder of natural resources comes at the expense of the death and endangerment of Mother Nature, as childbirth is a consequence of the ability to give life, and which endangers the lives of the mother. There is more to be said about the connotations of the honeyed substance of spermacetti, which Ishmaels likens Tashtego’s close call with death, as a ‘very precious perishing’. For now, I leave it on the discussions of childbirth, and the dangers of giving birth, which the men of the Pequod are faced with, with the perils of harvesting whales, in a way most men never are with women’s bodies.