Better to be Bored than Mindlessly Entertained

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Sophia Fugazzotto 

ECL 522 

Dr. Pressman 

December 12th, 2025 

Better to be Bored than Mindlessly Entertained

The famous novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville is often detailed by the hunt for the whale, but the true nature lies in the lack of action. The anti-climatic nature of Moby Dick creates  an experience in which the reader must be bored. The novel is a device for the experience of boredom and delayed gratification, intended to teach the reader the importance of being bored. These seemingly wasted moments of waiting are crucial for the development of new ideas, creativity, and new ways of thinking. 

Boredom fuels creativity and is key for the development of new ways of thinking. Jason Farman details in Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World: “Waiting, as represented by silences, gaps, and distance, allows us the capacity to imagine that which does not yet exist and, ultimately, innovate into those new worlds as our knowledge expands”. Let us consider chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale, in this context. It begins with small commentary on Ahab’s obsession, transitioning slowly into how the whiteness of the whale appalls Ishmael, and then simply proceeds into a seven page explication on the meaning of whiteness. This pure obsession and deep dive can only be explained by what is fostered in moments of boredom and emptiness. A simple color is considered in domain after domain, along with the implications that come with it. Despite this deep contemplation, the chapter seems to reach no real conclusion on what whiteness is, that it may just be nothing. “Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows–a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?” (p.212) This chapter shows the importance of the state of boredom, how one small idea–the whiteness of the whale–can unfold into seven pages of critical thought of the color white. 

In chapter 132, Symphony, another example of the product of boredom is found. In this, creative, new ways of thinking are born through a view of the ocean. Melville writes: “hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow white wings of the small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them” (589). This chapter begins with a simple observation of the ocean, seemingly objective, but then dives into a subjective, gendered criticism of nature and society. Although on the surface it is a description of the interaction between air and water, this description becomes a critical analysis of gender and how society separates masculine and feminine. As Melville says “The contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one” (p.589), he emphasizes his idea of gender only being established by concepts of physical form. Having analytic thought on societal constructs from a simple view of the ocean demonstrates further the importance of boredom and how it can bring about new ways of thinking. Not only does Melville create a gendered view of the nature before him, but he also immediately deconstructs the model he has created. This can be connected back to Farman’s way of thinking as he states: “Wait times are key…because they afford us the opportunity to imagine and speculate about worlds beyond our own immediate places and speculate about the possible.” The beginning of Symphony is an example of this expansion beyond our physical place in the world, where Melville speculates about the possibility of a world not contained by gender roles. 

Additionally, in this chapter, Ahab reaches a sudden realization of the manic chase he has led the boat on and the life he has pursued. Throughout this novel, Ahab seems to have few thoughts or reflections beyond his obsession with the white whale, but in these final chapters, he stares out at the sea and seemingly gains perspective on where he is and the path he is purging himself on. “Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched out his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze… the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul… From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop” (p.590). In this moment of boredom, Ahab–for just a moment–is relieved of the pain inside of him. This is another example of how moments filled with nothing allow for new ways of thinking and positive reflection. 

In chapter 35, Ishmael takes watch at the mast head, and is lost in a reverie of thought. Watching at the mast head does not entail much, and is a recipe for boredom in the way that one just stands and watches the water for hours. There is no distraction, no entertainment, just a man alone with his thoughts and the ocean. Melville writes: “But lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absentminded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity… every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it” (p.172). Although no new ways of thinking or creative insight come of this reverie, it is still an important part of boredom. This loss of identity, for the youth, is an important part of life because it allows for change. When someone is tied too strongly to an identity, it prevents them from having the ability to change themselves or to think in different ways. Therefore, this feeling of boredom on top of the masthead, as one sinks away into the calmness of the waves, pulls one away from their identity, and creates an open mind.   

Moby Dick has often been characterized by Ahab’s maniacal chase of the whale, and while this is a central point of the novel, there are only a handful of chapters in which the white whale appears and the crew chases. Specifically, the last three chapters of the book. These chapters are suddenly packed with action, contrasting the pace of the rest of the novel. Ahab’s desired whale is suddenly within reach, in his sights. And yet, the novel ends on another anti-climatic paragraph. The supposed goal, finding and killing Moby Dick, is never completed, and the Pequod and its crew fade into obscurity. Melville writes at the end of chapter 135: “Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago” (p. 624). There are two relevant pieces to this ending. First, the action that the reader has been teased with for 600 pages only is satisfied for three chapters, a brief taste of this whale hunting. This delayed gratification for no gratification highlights how the trial of boredom is the important aspect of the experience, instead of reaching a climax. In this ending of Moby Dick, the goal is never completed, the crew entirely dies save for Ishmael, and life immediately moves on. 

The second relevant part of this ending is the idea of waiting for something that may, or may not occur. Farman writes: “Day after day, as we wait for the things we desire, we become different people. In the act of waiting, we become who we are. Waiting points to our desires and hopes for the future; and while that future may never arrive and our hopes may never be fulfilled, the act of reflecting on waiting teaches us about ourselves… in the moment of waiting, meaning is located in our ability to recognize the ways that such hopes define us.” The anti-climatic ending of the novel is an example of how the act of waiting in boredom shapes us. This literary choice to keep the action at the end, and to end without a final hurrah, imposes upon the reader a forced reflection of what their time was spent doing and the value of boredom. The idea of plot and climax are dissolved in this conclusion, and the book instead becomes a device for experience of boredom and dormancy.

Throughout the novel, Melville switches between chapters of action and those without. Some of the chapters are deep scientific dives into aspects of the whaling industry, such as anatomy of the whales or specifications of tools. Having this alternating format that lulls the reader in and out of a reverie is important because of the contrasting model it creates. The article Stuplimity by Ngai proposes the idea of shock (sudden excitation) and boredom (desensitization) as diametrically opposed terms. This opposition is shown in Moby Dick as Melville writes chapters of violently killing whales, followed by a deep, slow analysis of the whale. Creating this dynamic is important to imposing boredom upon the reader. The chapters become binary in which ones have action and which are consumed by Melville’s commentary. Without the chapters of action, there would not be boring chapters, and vice versa. 

Reading Moby Dick becomes not just an experience of reading the novel for the plot, but a device to understand boredom and its purpose. The combination of forcing the reader to be bored and showing how characters in the novel achieve enlightenment in their boredom are important elements of the book. They emphasize the significance of waiting in our lives, and how productive that time can be, despite the feelings of restlessness it may evoke within. Without this time to be lost in our thoughts, it becomes impossible to generate new ideas and allow creative rivers to run their courses. 

Popova, Maria. “The Art of Waiting: Reclaiming the Pleasures of Durational Being in an Instant Culture of Ceaseless Doing.” The Marginalian, 11 May 2022, www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/17/jason-farman-delayed-response/. 

Ngai, Sianne. “Stuplimity: Shock and Boredom in Twentieth-Century Aesthetics.” Postmodern Culture, vol. 10 no. 2, 2000. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2000.0013.

Final Essay – Vain Unity within the Pequod and the U.S.

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 In Moby Dick, Herman Melville uses the Pequod’s doomed voyage as a consequence of vain unity throughout the novel. The inability to unite under rational judgment and respect for autonomy shows how Ahab’s monomaniacal leadership, the crew’s coerced obedience, and the dismantled social order of the Pequod undermines possibilities of a collective goal – successful whaling, profit, and a safe communal voyage – that ultimately lead the entire crew towards destruction. These elements within the novel are direct parallels of tensions within the United States at the time Melville wrote the novel, a period marked by conflict over slavery, the deep-cutting erosion of democratic compromise, and the rise of extremist leadership – a time marked with the rise of division rather than cohesion. 

Throughout the novel, Melville frames the Pequod as a place of community and cooperation. Whaling voyages are a promise of shared labor, risk, and reward – an economic and social system dependent upon mutual trust and a collective goal. Ishmael initially views the ship as a kind of democracy, referring to it as a nation-state, which is populated by men of various backgrounds from across the globe whose labor surpasses the national and cultural differences amongst them all. However, this political pluralism is proven very fragile amidst the emergence of Ahab’s authoritarian rule over the Pequod and its crew, gradually undermining the ship’s communal structure and transforming the crew’s labor into coerced participation in his journey to kill the White Whale. What starts out as an enterprise built on cooperation and trust becomes a vessel of singular obsession of the White Whale, revealing how easily unity can be crushed under a centralized power. 

Ahab’s authority over the Pequod exemplifies how obsessive authority and leadership can dismantle a structuralized sense of unity for a lesser good. From the moment Ahab reveals his true intentions on leading the Pequod – to hunt down Moby Dick at any cost, even the cost of his and the crew’s lives – he then replaces the ship’s commercial purpose for his own personal vendetta. Ahab declares, “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks” (Melville, 165), insisting that Moby Dick represents a type of evil that must be condemned and killed at all costs. From this moment, the White Whale is framed as a metaphysical evil, elevating Ahab’s private obsession into a moral imperative. Many traditional Americanist readings portray Ahab as a figure of “totalitarian will”, whose authority tolerates nothing along the lines of dissent and demands absolute submission to his authority (Pease, 110). Captain Ahab’s leadership thus becomes abstract as well as totalitarian as resistance is pushed far from reach and considered a moral betrayal as the book progresses. However, Ahab’s power is not grounded solely in the consent of the crew, but also in his charisma, experience, and intimidation. His body consists of scars, a prosthetic, ivory leg, and prophetic rhetoric that renders him as an almost mythical presence in Ishmael’s eyes. Starbuck, the ship’s moral conscience, recognizes the danger of Ahab’s quest, calling it “blasphemous, monstrous” (Melville, 223), and yet is still the only character throughout Moby Dick who attempts to make a stand against Ahab. In the end, his moral clarity reigns ineffective through his repeated hesitation to confront Ahab and his refusal to kill him in the end when given the chance. It goes to prove that authoritarian unity can paralyze an individual’s better judgement and ethicality. In his writing, Melville suggests that when absolute allegiance is demanded of an authoritarian, morality alone cannot prevent the catastrophe of vain unity and leadership. 

The communal obedience of the Pequod’s crew further reveals dangers of unity when stripped of one’s physical and metaphysical autonomy. Though composed of men from diverse backgrounds, the sailors are gradually combined into a singular mess under Ahab’s will. The absorption of all of these diverse characters into a single wave of conscience occurs through a rather ritualized performance rather than a politically democratic agreement. When Ahab presents the doubloon to the crew, he nails the gold coin to the mass and invites the crew to interpret what they see or feel when observing the coin, yet each interpretation ultimately circles back to a singular sense of obsession despite the continual differences in interpretation per each man. This reinforces Ahab’s dominance over the crew, sealing their loyalty through an oath that institutes ritual submission: “Drink ye harpooners! Drink and swear” (Melville, 179). Arguably, such moments reveal how collective identity aboard the Pequod is manufactured rather than chosen, showing how authority converts difference into a type of submission (Pease, 119). Unity aboard the Pequod is less a result of shared values, as each member of the crew has their own reason for being aboard the ship in the first place, but rather of enforced allegiance. There is no chose for them to back out of the voyage so far in; once the voyage begins, it takes many years for them to return back home to Nantucket, if at all, leaving them to succumb to the will of their authoritarian captain and sustain the all-consuming goal of killing Moby Dick. Even Starbuck eventually succumbs, despite being more of a doubter and free-thinker throughout the novel, ultimately admitting, “I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too” (Melville, 227). Starbuck is a crucial character for presenting obedience as surrender rather than acceptance, exposing a sense of moral conflict without autonomy over one’s self.

 A social and moral order aboard the Pequod collapses, so does autonomy. The Pequod once acted as a microcosm of democratic labor and shared profit, one that upheld American economics and society, instead becoming a kind of dictatorship as the novel progresses, driven solely by the will of Captain Ahab. Ishmael states during the voyage, “Ahab was tyrannical; a tyrant in fact” (Melville, 214). This singular quote strips the novel of any romantic ambiguity surrounding Ahab’s leadership of the crew and their voyage overseas. “The collective enterprise is overtaken by a single dominating vision” (Buell, 136), dramatizing the collapse of national concord and abandoning the crew’s original purpose of successfully hunting whales and collecting spermaceti, leaving that sense of unity in a vain and destructive mess. Though the entirety of Moby Dick includes foreshadowing of the Pequod’s demise, the collapse of social order is the most prominent in ensuring its catastrophic end. The shipwreck in the final chapter is something that was inevitable since the moment Ahab made it known what his true intentions were. It produced a system that valued loyalty to the captain over rational judgment and accountability. Each crew member is a valid participant in the authoritarian rule, whether actively or passively, by helping to sustain such a problematic system and refusing to absolve it. Melville presents each character’s obedience as a moral choice shaped by power, one that cannot be excused as per the back-and-forth judgement and final submission of Starbuck. 

Melville’s critique of vain unity is reflective of the political climate of the United States in the 1850s. At the time, the nation was divided socially, economically, and politically over slavery and Westward Expansion, giving way to a sectional extremism. Situating Moby Dick within this historical moment in our history, it can be argued that its enduring relevance lies in the state’s refusal to resolve national contradictions into a single moral vision (Buell, 145), fueled instead by power and personal gain rather than communal agreement. Similarly, the transnational reading of Pease’s article challenges the assumption that American unity is inherently virtuous, revealing how appeals to cohesion often conceal domination (Pease, 112). Within Moby Dick, the Pequod thus becomes a warning to the reader, using allegory to state that unity pursued without reason or autonomy leads to destruction. 

Moby Dick  portrays the doomed voyage of the Pequod as a tragic, yet inevitable, outcome of vain unity, one that is corrupted by obsession and authoritarianism. Through Ahab’s monomaniacal rule, the crew’s coerced obedience, and the dismantled social order, Melville demonstrated how the suppression of rational and moral judgement and the erasure of an individual’s autonomy can undermine the success of a collective goal. He not only critiques Ahab’s monomaniacal leadership but also the political culture of his own nation in the 1850s by exposing the dangers of vain unity. Moby Dick successfully parallels the antebellum period within America, deepening the warning of lack of balance, structure, and communal morals ultimately leads us – whether aboard a ship or within the politics and society of our own nation – to ruin.

Works Cited

Buell, Lawrence. “The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick as Test Case.” American Literary History, vol. 20 no. 1, 2008, p. 132-155. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/233009

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick Or, the Whale. Edited by Andrew Delbanco, Penguin Books, 1992.

Pease, Donald. C. L. R. James, Moby Dick, and the Emergence of Transnational American Studies, John Hopkins University, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, Volume 56, Number 3, Autumn 2000, pp, 93-123.

Final Essay

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Darian Murillo

ECL 522

Professor Pressman

December 10, 2025

Psychological, obsession and depression

In Melville’s Moby Dick, madness is not a distant presentation, but mostly a storm that’s brewing in their mind. Herman Melville demonstrates the characters in the Pequod who are fighting their inner demons during their time sailing at sea they start to reveal their obsession, grief and isolation can wrap someone’s brain in a turmoil. Herman Melville uses Ahab’s obsessive monomania, Pip’s traumatic experience psychological break, and Ishmael’s existential crisis to explore how unaddressed mental health struggles not only shape that person’s inner conflict. Melville illustrates three different psychological responses to suffering, eventually suggesting that psychological struggles form the moral and narrative course of Moby Dick. 

In Chapter 1, “Loomings”, Ishmael reveals the emotional crisis he’s going through, that pushes him into joining the sailing crew and Melville uses vivid imagery for his depression. In the quote, “ Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street…”(4), when Ishamel describes a “damp, drizzly November” in his soul, the cold weather becomes a metaphor for his inner life, such as cold and heavy clouded. What I noticed was the repetition of the word “whenever” creates a rhythm that mirrors the nature of his depressive state and how it returns during these random episodes of despair like a cycle over and over again. One thing I found noticeable in the quotes was Ishmael’s fascination with death: the coffin warehouses, follows funerals, saying his mind goes into the darkness even when he doesn’t want to. Melville mentions the word “hypo” defining down which meant how Ishamel had his moments of despair and downfall that was taking such control of him that “it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street..” (4) its almost like a reference to suicidal thoughts. The whole paragraph of the chapter, not only shows us Ishmael, the protagonist, but the whole theme of the story just by hearing the first couple of sentences and Melville demonstrating us Ishmael’s journey as a task to survival from the storm inside his head.

In chapter 44, Ishmael explains how obsessed Captain Ahab has become on planning his hunt for Moby Dick. Melville writes,” God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates”,(220), in this passage Melville explores how obsession can transform the human mind into its own tormentor and how easy it is to lose yourself to madness when the thoughts come too deeply to torment the human mind. He transforms Ahab as a victim and the creator of his own madness. The phrase,” God help thee” is recognizing that Ahab is suffering and no one can save him, but Him. When he says the “creature” it represents the madness being born inside of him from his obsession with Moby Dick, while comparing him to Prometheus due to both being defiant and both being punished for not fulfilling their duties. Melville uses imagery to warn us, the audience, about the conception of madness of the human mind, becoming too much of a delusion of something we can’t let go.

I recently read in my rhetoric writing class Terry Eagleton’s, “Literary Theory: An Introduction,” one of his chapter, psychoanalysis, in this quote, “ Every human being has to undergo this repression of what Freud named the ‘pleasure principle’ by the ‘reality principle’, but for some of us, and arguably for whole societies, the repression may become excessive and make us ill,” (Eagleton, 131) ,Eagleton discusses that psychoanalysis views that humans are driven by unconscious desires and compulsions that they don’t comprehend, which comes as a clear example: Ahab’s obsession with Moby Dick. 

In chapter 93 of Moby Dick, Ishmael reflects, ” So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weak or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God,”(454) the quote transforms the idea of madness from being known as weak into a form of divine understanding. We see Pip, a young cabin boy who is left adrift in the vast ocean, who experiences trauma so badly, he loses touch with humanity itself. I think Melville often uses and questions the human definitions of sanity and reason, like in this chapter, he demonstrates in a tragic and spiritual way. Melville shows, in Pip’s point of view, explores how the moments of extreme isolation and suffering can lead to a person’s beyond reasoning of humanity. What’s the whole obsession with the sanity of the human mind that peaks Melville’s interest towards it?

Pip’s experience reminds me of Annie Cresta from The Hunger Games. Just like Pip, Annie endures the overwhelming trauma from not just witnessing her tribute member being decapitated in front of her, but also from drowning after the whole arena malfunctioned. Her being from District Four (known to be a district of water and fishing) she knew how to swim and was the only survivor hence made her the winner. But at what cost though? She’s considered unstable by the Capitol due to her losing her mind and going insane after her traumatic experience; she was found basically useless, but that also shows her fragility and how cruel the world can be. Both of these characters embody how innocence collides with inhumanity, such as sensitivity, being mistaken for madness, and is their true response to their suffering. Both Pip and Annie challenge society’s discrimination of sanity being called mad for no good reason at all. Both characters are gentle souls who have endured enough trauma that it transforms their sanity into understanding.

In conclusion, Melville presents psychological suffering as an inescapable condition of human existence. In my opinion, I think the book is mostly about survival both physically and mentally. Throughout the book, Melville demonstrates psychological problems in power, obsessions and control with his characters, especially with Ahab slowly becoming consumed by the darkness and self-destruction.  Psychological or now, in the modern era, mental health struggles is an unavoidable part of human existence, even in such a time where it wasn’t recognized properly. Melville uses survival as a coping mechanism for his characters in order for them to recognize their inner darkness which can be the only way to endure it.

Work Cited

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, 1983.

‌ Melville , Herman, et al. Or, the Whale. Or, the Whale. London, Penguin Classics, 2003.

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A Lesson In Arts and Crafts – What Does It Mean?

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Moby-Dick exists as a novel that remains elusive in creating a universal understanding for readers. It remains inscrutable in and of itself, the titular creature of the whale working as Melville’s key unknowing analytical symbol. This is apparent in Chapter 79, “The Prairie,” as Ishmael describes the process of attempting to understand the whale’s brow through a lens of science. The human mind carries a constrained capability to decipher the mysterious whale, thus it promotes vast amounts of interpretation by evading any true meaning. My project entailed creating a box costume, representing the attempt to find meaning in interpreting the appearance of the whale based off of the novel’s descriptions. This works alongside Melville’s criticism towards phrenology, as a means of highlighting the way interpretation evades typical structured meaning.

Firstly, the novel itself claims that “face reading,” that is Physiognomy, is a flawed science that remains incapable of interpreting a whale. Ishmael notes, “Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable…I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can” (Melville 380). Ishmael offers the challenge of understanding the whale’s brow by addressing readers directly. Melville by extension finds fault with Physiognomy, calling it and other sciences a “passing fable.” A fable entails that it is akin myth or legend, as Physiognomy in modern times remains a pseudoscience now obsolete. Ishmael also mentions Champollion, the French philologist responsible for cracking the code of hieroglyphics. The line “But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face,” essentially states that there is no one central meaning, no one person capable of understanding everything or every face. Again the whale’s brow, and by extension the whale entirely, evades definition because of how humans are attempting to decipher it with the use of a specific lens. Everyone comes to find their own understanding, as knowledge remains a shared concept across human beings.

Information evolves over time, and creating the whale costume entailed finding my own explanation of understanding the whale’s appearance. Even if the symbol of the whale within the novel is inscrutable, the reader becomes significant in the process of finding their own definition as the novel itself constantly prompts readers to do so when constant themes and main ideas are tossed into the sea of the mind. Utilizing a box to create the shape of a whale required the references from Melville’s writing, but there was also a means of using modern technology and information alongside Moby Dick’s descriptive language. I took mental images of the whiteness of the whale, alongside making a pun on “The Prairie” chapter itself upon the brow. This in turn allowed me to find my own ideas towards what I think the whale could have truly looked like, as the costume could have referenced Moby Dick itself or the whale the Pequod had already slain. Chipped, dirty, and bloodied teeth, came about from the character’s ideas of violent animals. In addition to this, current scientific information showed that sperm whales only have a lower row of teeth. Accidentally giving the costume both rows of teeth before rescinding the mistake became both a learning experience and a creative one in an attempt to be “accurate” towards the novel. 

Walter E. Bezanson’s “Moby Dick: Work of Art” (1953) essay commemorates the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication, and his line “For the good reader the experience of Moby Dick is a participation in the act of creation. Find a key work or metaphor, start to pick it as you would a wild flower, and you will find yourself ripping up the whole forest floor,” written only 72 years ago, still holds true to this day. Bezanson’s line carries a sense of reverence, a sense of admiration for a novel that had done poorly during its time.  Experiencing Moby Dick, reading it, analyzing it, dissecting it just like the Whale, creates an active participation as he claims. Spending time with the novel alongside creating a costume for this final project is an act of curious creation. Even with the terrestrial language Bezanson provides, the whale is the “key work or metaphor.” Picking at such a grandiose creature one can only dream of seeing up close is one of the reasons why the project was created to be more tangible. It is interactive, it “tears up the whole forest floor” of my imagination, and it has myself participating in finding my own interpretation of a whale, if not the whale. 

Another analytical lens towards this creative project comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar.” Delivered in 1837 at Harvard University, Emerson called for intellectual independence. Making the box costume brought about the question of “why?” So what if a simple imaginative whale costume was made, why does it hold significance? Simply put, it carries significance because a reader’s self interpretation is important in and of its own due to the nature behind what is being presented within the novel. Emerson said, “Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student’s behoof?” All things, literature, nature, knowledge, it “exists” to a student’s “behoof.” Behoof. Benefit. Advantage. Moby Dick itself exists for students and readers alike to interpret for themselves because there are vastly different analyses. The box could simply be a box to someone else. It could pose as some insignificant toy that is simply a whale. Even so, it exists because time was spent in creating something to benefit existing knowledge pertaining to the novel. 

The inscrutable language of the novel creates this sense of a treacherous voyage in trying to decipher what Melville is telling readers. Language and life itself carries a plethora of meanings, and some messages being conveyed or taught are only know to the author when readers are presented with their novel. Melville’s criticism of Phrenology inherently had not effected the creation of the whale box because scientific information had long since evolved. Not only this, but all beings are capable of creation and interpretation, finding meaning merely becomes a question of how someone knows what they have come to know. The novel, other readers, and the internet all provided key information. As Emerson attempts to convey that it is significant for scholars to go out into nature and find their own observations alongside Bezanson’s explanation of Moby Dick as an active participation of bringing thoughts into tangible existence, the definition of meaning is brought about by only by oneself. 

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Works Cited:

Bezanson, Walter E. “Moby-Dick: Work of Art.” Moby-Dick Centennial Essays. Tyrus Hillway and Luther S. Mansfield, eds. Southern Methodist University Press, 1953.

Emerson, R. W. (n.d.). The American Scholar. Emerson–“The american scholar”. https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/amscholar.html

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale. Edited by Andrew Delbanco and Tom Quirk, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003

Pip in the Deep

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The cloudless sky that is affixed above the South China Sea holds no remembrance. Memory, like CO2 and heat, is absorbed into the ocean. Pip, being at sea long enough, is now a memory. Just another greenhouse gas occluding into omniscient seawater. He notices his body straining to stay afloat as he is carried down alive to wondrous depths. Corals sway to the faint current. Reef sharks gently swirl around him, unbothered by his tender presence. The Deep breeds energy, jolting Pip with pulses of knowledge. He is aware of every world; past, present and future. Every transpiring reality surrounded him, like glowing colossal orbs. He witnesses his ancestors, cradled in the same depths, relinquishing themselves to the same transcendent orbs. Mothers weeping; ocean salinity rising. Like them, he surrenders himself into the arms of the miser-merman. These arms, that hold the finite of history, collect Pip among their hoarded heaps and cast him to the depths.

The deep swallows light and disrupts spacial awareness. It is a space for knowing everything and knowing nothing in one swift, spark of a moment. The sound of clicking is heard in the distance, or in the foreground, or somewhere in between. There is no way to tell. Pip is lost in his surroundings yet procured in his being. No longer subjected to earthly toil, to societal intolerance, Pip feels weightless under this unfamiliar immense pressure. The pressure acts as a binary opposition to oppression. It cradles his soul. That is all he can really feel, his soul. He can’t feel his legs kicking or his arms waving, or his head bobbing. He can’t feel his body being dragged onto the deck of an ancient ship. He can’t feel the resuscitation. The clicking multiplies into thunderous echoes. The water around him is displaced. A shock of white, a flash of horror, Pip’s mind slips out of consciousness.

He is awoken by the surge of a massive fluke swimming away, stirring the water around like a school of sardines. Awake in a wake and sieged by what seems to be a starless night sky, an inky cloud where light cannot invade, no matter how much oil is collected. This is the realm where whales govern, where glares do not exist. The blackness permeates Pip. It is the most blackness he has ever contemplated. It feels like home. In a world where shapes barely exist, and the sound that would usually hang upon a breeze dissipates into the cool, dense molasses, communication is seismic. Communication is haptic. Communication is electric and is now a piece of Pip’s freshly attained knowledge. His heightened senses attempt to situate him in this new world. Beings glide around him, he can feel the pressure undulating like a current as they stream past him. He is being examined, beheld, welcomed. Pip felt things he has never felt before. Physical anguish, frothy vengeance, an Ocean full of ache gyrating around him. But also, collective existence, an unshakeable kindredness, a seep of community. One of them stops in front of him, so close their noses are inches apart. Pip can make out the scaled tail that sweeps back and forth holding this… this, thing, this being upright.

“The white whale has sent you here. He is the guardian of innocence, a knight of the Ocean and the great judge of morality.” Aj’s tidal voice drifted back and forth. “He has brought you to the deep, to the wajinru. It means you are one of us, a descendant of the enslaved. Welcome two-legs. I am called Aj.” Aj bowed his voltaic head and touched it to Pip’s cnidarian soul. “O thy fish God in yon darkness, I am Pip. Have mercy. The white whale you say? The white squall. Have mercy on Pip. I was but thrown from a whale ship, shirr, shirr, forced on the hunt.” Pip rambled, his electric mind rampant. “A whale ship” said Aj puzzled. “Were you not held captive?”

“Held captive? No, we Blacks in the North are free, well shirr, if I didn’t go on that whale ship I coulda got chained up myself.” explained Pip. “The North… Blacks? What is Blacks?” Aj wonders. “Ya know Blacks, negroes, I guess you can’t see so clearly down here but, me, I’m Black. The White men they shackle us, whip us, make us work.” Pip describes in sorrow. He never did have to say it out loud. “You mean all those bodies, cast from ships, all those innocent people dead, because, because they’re black?” Aj said, the rage boiling inside of him. “Pip, what else can you tell us of these people? Where do they live, these two-legs?” “I… they, live in America. Some in the North like me, a lot in the South. That’s where you don’t wanna be. That’s where they lash you, where they hang you.” Pip’s grief welling. “America? Pip I have something to ask of you.” “Shirr, shirr.” “I Aj, hold all the grief for my people, for the wajinru, the memories, the hauntings of our past are within me and only within me. I promised my Amaba not to share these stories. Right now, we live only in the present, in togetherness. But I fear for my people. They become restless, they yearn for who they are, for where they come from. I must break my promise, if only for a few days, to fill the cavities of their souls.” Aj says spouting with emotion. “Pip, I believe this is why you are here, why the white whale brought you to us. You hold knowledge from the other world. Will you help me? Will you help me bring relief to my people?”

“O what’s this? One asks for young Pip? Thy white God has brought me here. O that glorious whale. I have never felt more alive than here in this cold, dark abyss. Shirr, shirr I will help you.” Pip replied.

The next few days, or nights, or whenever it was in this place where light does not bother to penetrate, the wajinru congregated. They collected kelp, and mud, and the skin of the dead: sharks, rays, seals. Anything to envelop them, to protect them in what they knew would be a vulnerable state. The water hummed along with their electric palpitations. The vibrating pressure comforted Pip. He was anxious, but he felt free for the first time, alive with the idea of being needed, his mind being desired. The wajinru begin shoaling by the thousands, surrounded by their miry cocoon “Are you ready?” asked Aj. Pip nodded. They floated into the center of this gyrating ball of mud and dead matter. It resembled an oceanic womb, regenerating its inhabitants to foster new life. And inside, the water pulsed like the ocean’s heartbeat. Aj and Pip hovered in the center. Aj snapped his tail to the left and all the wajinru followed suit. He communicated to them through the water. Pounding his tail, electrically transmitting every story he learned from his Amaba. Happy and sad and everything in between, all of them. While he did this Pip went around from wajinru to wajinru. They were still, debilitated with the surge of information. Pip pressed his cheek to theirs, one by one. They wept. In anger, in confusion, in fleeting joy, with vengeance they wept. It lasted days. And this was the first Remembrance.

“The Past—or, more accurately pastness—is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past.” (Troulliot)

 The past shapes the present, therefore, the past surrounds us, like an ocean. Through fiction, the past is retrieved and reconstructed. In his 1851 novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville illustrates the lack of freedom of free Black men leading up to the Civil War. Throwing Pip overboard, and his subsequent enlightenment, is an acknowledgement of the atrocities of the Middle Passage and slavery because it is a recognition of the voices and History concealed in the Ocean’s depths. One hundred and sixty-eight years later, narrative discourse, like Rivers Solomon’s 2019 novella The Deep, continues to reiterate and remember the trauma inflicted on millions of captive people that were thrown overboard. Solomon retrieves the history of people who were deliberately silenced beneath the surface of the ocean. Both of these novels employ the setting of the Ocean to frame significant historical events. In this way, the Ocean operates as an archive of the American nation. An archive that has been concealed, like a witness who has collected hush money. Just as the silence of the ocean is depended upon to exploit it, so is the silence of the trauma of slavery. Emancipation might have been enacted, but the structures of slavery still exist, and silence enables them. Reading Melville’s character of Pip into Solomon’s novella The Deep demonstrates the prevailing marginalization of Black communities from 1851 to 2019. Pip and the wajinru act as voices for the Ocean and for Black communities both on land and those lost at sea.

Pip is a symbol of American blackness in Moby Dick. Christopher Freeburg, in his essay Pip and the Sounds of Blackness in Moby Dick, argues that Pip “allows us to realize that black culture is lodged in the very heart of the novel” (52) Melville is very purposeful and ahead of his time in his usage of Pip. It is Pip’s mere presence that welcomes readers into the diversity of America. This “presence constitutes the greatest value of the novel; he is a symbol of social equality and a catalyst for altruistic insight.” (Freeburg 52) Pip is a symbol of social equality because he demonstrates its inequities. The discrimination that independent Black individuals faced leading up to the Civil War constitutes a lack of freedom. In the “Forecastle—Midnight” Melville displays the marginalization of free Black communities: While ALL yell “The squall! The squall! Jump, my jollies! (They scatter.) PIP (shrinking under the windlass.)…” (193) soliloquizes. Pip giving a separate speech after “all” speak suggests that he is not a part of the crew. The Pequod, representative of the American nation, marginalizes Pip as America marginalizes Black communities. Through Pip, Melville demonstrates how freedom for Black individuals does not necessarily mean autonomy.

The “great shroud of the sea” (624) is a chronicle of all those who have been lost to its watery bowels. Through its obscurity, the Ocean is a silenced archive. It has been used as a naturally occurring cloak concealing capitalist exploitations. In “Pip’s Oceanic Voice: Speech and Sea in Moby Dick” Jimmy Packham “recognizes the power of language as a colonial tool, something which can impose itself onto a silence (…likely assumed) that cannot speak back” (Packham 7) Imposing language onto the voiceless enables History to be altered by colonial narrative. Melville also recognizes this muteness of the Ocean: “the waves rolled by… seemed a silvery silence” (Melville 253), “white, silent stillness of death in this shark” (Melville 206), “jetting his silent spout into the air.” (Melville 595). The archival Ocean and its creatures are speechless. The silence of an archive enables History to invalidate traumas. Silenced trauma and exploitation of the past enables the continuation of trauma and exploitation. Melville recognizes that “it’s the sea’s depths that obscure any voice the sea or its creatures might have.” (Packham 7) Because the Ocean and its inhabitants are unable to advocate for themselves, Melville assigns this task to Pip. “We can understand Pip’s discourse as Melville’s… effort to find a space in language for oceanic depth” (Packham 4) Pip, who was already a medium for the marginalized, forces the reader to acknowledge that the Ocean, similar to Black communities, is underappreciated, over fished(worked) and a vessel for unspoken trauma. Pip “saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it.” (454) Pip “spoke it”, that is he spoke for the Ocean and against Oceanic and Black exploitation.

 Melville’s concept of whaling drives his narrative. He frames his novel on the surface of the ocean. Therefore, the whalers only comprehend the surface. Pip, who has been “carried down alive to wondrous depths” (453) learns to speak for the deep. Packham raises the idea that Pip “comes to embody the ‘strange shapes’ of the depths, his voice exhibiting an instability that recalls the fluidity of the element into which he has plunged.” (Packham 1) When Pip, who represents American blackness,  speaks for the ocean’s abyss, he transpires the annals of a young nation. Pip’s designated voices collide when Pip’s soul is thought to be “in those far Antilles” (Melville 522) The Antilles, the Caribbean, where his ancestors were thrown from slave ships not so long ago. Pip is a voice for blackness, a medium for the Ocean, and ultimately an agent for his ancestors concealed in the sea. By giving Pip this multitudinous voice, Melville advocates for those lost within a buried archive. Melville uses Pip and the Ocean to frame the nation’s historical events.

The acknowledgement of the concealed archive is the cross section for Moby Dick and The Deep. One hundred- and seventy-five-years pass, and the United States continues to exploit its citizens while it feigns perfection. It is a time where Literature rather than History must command the discourse of the trauma of slavery in order to hinder the continuation of it. The Civil War may have legally ended slavery, but as Christina Sharpe points out in The Wake, “Racism [is] the engine that drives the ship of state’s national projects… cuts through all of our lives… in the wake of its purposeful flow.” (Sharpe 3) Slavery, through marginalization, through racism, through incarceration continues to press its haunting mark onto Black society. Silence enables exploitation. Silence of neighbors, silence of mainstream media, archival silence, exploits hidden in coral reefs, are all factors perpetuating exploitation. “The means and mode of Black subjection may have changed, but the fact and structure of that subjection have remained.” (Sharpe 12) Drexciya, clipping., and Rivers Solomon, the curators of the wajinru, exemplify the need to break the silence of this continuation of slavery. Literature like The Deep, which reinterprets the traumas of the Middle Passage into the creation of a new race of merpeople,attempts to begin a process of healing. This healing arises not only by re-gifting life to these erased humans, but by telling their story; uncovering the History that was meant to be obscured by the voiceless Ocean.

In The Deep it is the Ocean depths that act as the setting for the novel rather than the surface in Moby Dick. Expanding to the abyss of the Ocean as a main setting attempts to give definition to the deep, unknown, ocean environment.  Similar to Melville, who implements a uniquely American narrative with whaling, Solomon turns to the wajinru to constitute a distinct facet of American history: chattel slavery. Connecting these two stories materializes the Ocean as an American archive. Mooring Pip into the narrative of the wajinru points to the extensive duration the issues of racial marginalization and exploitation have subsisted. Pip, who was written nearly two-hundred years ago, was an attempt to enlighten readers of 1851. However, he continues to be relevant, Pip can easily become a character in a 2019 novel. He does not demonstrate what has passed, instead he now depicts the continuity of Black American subjection. Pip and the wajinru are modern vehicles for the advocacy and amplification of the Ocean and Black communities.

Fastening Moby Dick to The Deep aimed to establish two main assertions of the books: Ocean as archive and the oppression of Black communities. Utilizing Solomon’s narrative enabled a clearer highlighting of these allegories in Moby Dick, a book with endless analyses. Both of these novels employ the setting of the Ocean to frame American historical events. They recognize the important documents held within Oceanic depths and sought to retrieve them. For it is through literature that the past is reconstructed. Literature breaks the silence that exploitation so dearly depends upon. It then became natural to transport Melville’s sea speaking character of American blackness, Pip, to the profundal realm of the wajinru. The nearly 200-year-old Pip, who was fabricated before emancipation, emphasizes the continuity of a nation that upholds slavery as his character retains relevance. Through Pip, the wajinru, and the Ocean we learn that the concealment of sunken traumas promote exploitation. The Lorax might speak for the trees, but Pip and the wajinru speak for the Sea.

Works Cited

Freeburg, Christopher. “Pip and the Sounds of Blackness in Moby Dick.” The New Melville    

           Studies, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 42-52.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Penguin Books, 2003.

Packham, Jimmy. “Pip’s Oceanic Voice: Speech and Sea in Moby Dick.” The Modern Language

          Review, vol. 112, no. 3, 2017, pp. 567-584.

Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press, 2016,

https://doi-org.libproxy.sdsu.edu/10.2307/j.ctv1134g6v.3

Solomon, Rivers. The Deep. Saga Press, 2019.

Final Essay

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Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is often read as an expansive novel — geographically, philosophically, and stylistically boundless. Yet one of its most powerful critical strategies lies not in its vastness but in its confinement. For this project, I argue that Melville constructs the Pequod as a microscope of nineteenth-century American society, a tightly enclosed world where racial diversity, economic ambition, and hierarchical authority collide. Ismael’s observation that the crew were “nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too” (Melville 131) captures the novel’s central paradox: a collective formed out of diversity, yet defined by isolation rather than solidarity. By compressing the contradictions of American democracy, capitalism, and authority into the narrow space of a single whaling ship, Melville suggests that the forces shaping American life are not merely external pressures but internal systems individuals carry with them. The Pequod’s eventual destruction thus operates as a symbolic warning about the nation as a whole. Through close reading of key moments aboard the ship, and through engagement with Andrew Delbanco’s introduction and C. L. R. James’s Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, this essay demonstrates how Melville uses constrained space as a literary form to reveal the political and cultural stakes embedded in American society. 

From the moment Ishmael boards the Pequod, Melville emphasizes enclosure. Although the ocean appears limitless, life aboard the ship is governed by rigid spatial and social boundaries. The term “Isolatoes” is especially revealing since it names a condition of enforced separation within proximity. Even as the sailors share decks, labor, and danger, they remain detached from systems of legal protection and collective political power. Ishmael repeatedly frames the ship as a world unto itself, describing it as a “little lower layer of the sea” (Melville, 131), a phrase that collapses physical depth and social hierarchy. Andrew Delbanco notes in his introduction that Melville understood America as an “experiment burdened by contradiction,” a nation that proclaimed freedom while sustaining inequality. The Pequod becomes a testing ground for this experiment. Because no sailor can leave once the ship departs, consent becomes structurally compromised. This matters politically because it shows how democratic participation can erode when individuals are enclosed within systems that eliminate alternatives. The sailors’ status as “Isolatoes” reveals how freedom can exist rhetorically while being materially inaccessible. Although the crew is multinational, Melville does not present diversity as inherently democratic. Ishmael’s description of the sailors as “Islanders” emphasizes their displacement rather than their inclusion. Islanders are people removed from land-based social contracts, existing on the margins of imperial and economic systems. This exposes the limits of representation without power. Sailors of color and non-European sailors perform the most dangerous labor, while authority remains concentrated among white officers. The ship’s apparent pluralism thus masks deep structural inequality. The importance of this contrast lies in what it reveals about nineteenth-century American democracy: difference is celebrated when it serves economic productivity, but equality is withheld when it threatens hierarchy. The Pequod’s confined space makes this contradiction visible by forcing diverse bodies into constant interaction without redistributing power.

The Pequod is fundamentally a commercial enterprise, and Melville repeatedly foregrounds the economic motivations binding the crew together. Ishameal’s explanation of the lay system reveals how capitalist logic governs the ship, as sailors are promised fractional shares of future profits in exchange for immense risk. “A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,” (Melville 122) Ishmael remarks, equating labor with survival and self-improvement. This matters because it illustrates how capitalism transforms freedom into necessity. The sailors appear to choose the voyage, yet their economic vulnerability renders that choice hollow. Within the ship’s constrained space, capitalism becomes inescapable. There is no alternative employment, no legal oversight, and no possibility of exit. This intensification is important because it demonstrates how economic systems gain coercive power when individuals are enclosed within them. C.L.R. James argues that the Pequod resembles an early industrial workplace, where cooperation is enforced through dependency rather than mutual agreement (James 41-45). Melville’s depiction matters because it reveals capitalism not as a neutral system of exchange but as a structure capable of enabling authoritarian control when unrestrained. The ship’s microcosm thus clarifies how economic ambition can override ethical judgment and collective well-being. 

Captain Ahab’s authority aboard the Pequod is neither accidental nor purely tyrannical; it is carefully performed and socially produced. His dramatic nailing of the gold doubloon to the mast, “Whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce” (Melville 474), transforms a personal obsession into a shared economic incentive. This moment is important because it reveals how authority operates not only through command but through persuasion. Ahab aligns his monomania with the crew’s material desires, collapsing individual interest into collective destiny. The ship’s confined space is crucial to this process. The crew is physically gathered, socially dependent, and economically bound to the voyage’s success. In such an environment, dissent becomes both risky and isolating. Delbanco notes that Melville was deeply skeptical of charismatic leadership, particularly when spectacle replaces accountability (Delbanco xxx). Ahab’s performance matters because it demonstrates how democratic participation can be redirected into submission when individuals are denied structural alternatives. The Pequod shows how consent can be manufactured within closed systems, turning diversity and cooperation into instruments of domination.

The destruction of the Pequod represents the logical conclusion of the social structures Melville constructs throughout the novel. When the ship sinks, Melville describes it as dragging “a living part of heaven along with her” (Melville 624), emphasizing that the catastrophe is internally generated. This matters because it frames the disaster not as an accident or act of fate but as a consequence of accumulated choices. The ship is destroyed by the very hierarchies, ambitions, and obediences that sustained it. Only Ishmael survives, floating on Queequeg’s coffin—a final image that underscores the possibility of alternative social arrangements. The Pequod matters as an allegory because it demonstrates how societies collapse when authority goes unchecked and internal contradictions are ignored. Melville’s warning extends beyond his historical moment, revealing how enclosed systems reproduce their own destruction.

By confining a racially diverse workforce, a capitalist enterprise, and an increasingly authoritarian leader within the narrow space of the Pequod, Melville transforms the whaling ship into a powerful political microcosm. What begins as a collective defined by shared labor—men “equal to their task”—becomes a closed system in which equality is subordinated to profit and obedience. The ship’s destruction is not inevitable but produced by social structures that reward ambition while suppressing dissent. Melville’s critique lies not in abstract condemnation but in form. The ship’s enclosure eliminates alternatives, making domination appear natural and resistance futile. Through close reading, we see how Melville embeds political critique in spatial design, labor relations, and narrative sequencing. The Pequod is not merely a vessel but an argument that societies which equate equality with productivity, and consent with compliance, risk participating in their own destruction. Ishmael’s survival leaves readers with responsibility rather than resolution, to recognize these patterns beyond the deck of the Pequod, and to question the systems of power we inhabit before they, too, collapse.

Reading the novel through the lens of constrained space clarifies Melville’s critique of power. The ship’s physical enclosure eliminates alternatives, making authority easier to consolidate and harder to challenge. Economic dependence binds the crew to Ahab’s obsession, while charismatic performance converts personal vengeance into collective purpose. In this way, Melville suggests that authoritarianism does not arrive from outside democratic systems but develops internally when structural conditions discourage resistance. The Pequod becomes a warning about how societies, when organized around unchecked ambition and centralized authority, can willingly participate in their own undoing. Close reading is essential to recognizing these stakes. Melville embeds his political critique not in overt declarations but in the novel’s formal choices—its spatial constraints, labor structures, and scenes of collective performance. Attention to language, metaphor, and narrative framing reveals how literary form models social dynamics, allowing readers to see power at work rather than merely being told about it. The Pequod’s tight social structure is not incidental to the story; it is the mechanism through which Melville stages his argument about democracy, capitalism, and control. This project reflects my broader interest in how literature interrogates systems of power and represents social complexity. Moby-Dick demonstrates that fictional spaces can function as laboratories for political thought, where the consequences of social organization are made visible and urgent. Melville’s novel ultimately suggests that the most dangerous forces shaping collective life are not external enemies or abstract ideas, but the structures societies build and sustain from within. By surviving to tell the story, Ishmael leaves readers not with closure but with responsibility: to recognize these patterns beyond the deck of the Pequod, and to question the systems of power we inhabit before they, too, collapse.

Extra Credit: Annotations

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For class this semester, I bought a copy of the book so that I could write in it. I only started writing in books a few years ago, and have been enjoying the practice of it. It is nice to be able to look back on these annotations and see how my perspective has changed on the same words. It reminds me of keeping a journal and looking back on past entries to see how much I have changed. I annotate in a few different ways. I underline the passages/sentences I find most important, either to the ‘plot’ (not that there is really one in this book), or by what strikes a particular chord inside of me whether because of the topic or how the sentence was written. I also use square brackets for a few different reasons. Either to highlight longer paragraphs that would be unsatisfying to underline completely, to emphasize something within an already underlined part, or something I think is important but not important enough to be underlined. Many uses for the same thing. I also used post-it notes for chapters I found particularly relevant and wanted to discuss. In the margins, I often wrote down notes or thoughts as they came. Sometimes at the end of striking chapters, I would write more where there was space after the chapter ended. 

This process enhanced my reading and interpretations of Moby Dick by forcing me to slow down and reread. Had I not been writing and underlining in this book, I probably would have been doing a lot more skimming. It also helped for bringing ideas to class because I could see what I had underlined or comments I had written, which was helpful because I often forgot what parts stuck out most to me. I also think this enhanced my reading by making me think critically about what I was reading, because I didn’t want to just write nonsensical comments in the margins (although that too happened sometimes). 

Extra Credit Opportunity – Annotation Explanation: People are People are People are People

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Last semester, I broke my biggest rule I have regarding novels, that being no writing in them, no exceptions whatsoever. For whatever reason, I was overcome with feelings for the novel, and was compelled by the novel itself to write within it. It is thanks to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey that I now feel comfortable with annotating my novels; highlighting, writing, anything I feel is needed in the moment. Typically, it comes from this overwhelming feeling deep within me to tell someone of this moment. However, with no one to turn to, my notes app glares my way! Even this did not satisfy my seemingly insatiable need to convey this information within myself to another. I think what Professor Pressman has said has forever changed how I view annotating, but also captured what it was that I was seeking in that moment. I was seeking another to share my thoughts, but who better to share these thoughts with than the other themselves? As Professor has said, we are writing back to the author through the act and art of annotating. It was in that moment that I needed to write to Wilde, and that has very much stayed with me as time moves forward. If Dorian Grey was tempting me to write within his pages, then Moby-Dick is practically begging to be written in!

On this page, I wrote about the relationship I noticed between the biblical story of Eve and her temptation by the apple. I felt as though Ishmael had begun to be tempted in a similar way to Queequeg, especially as a Christian man. The highlighted segments point to areas that made me think of something else; not in a way of “I wish I were reading x or watching y right now”, but more of a possible connection to something else, whether it be an academic idea or more of a fun idea, as we see on the following image.

In the final page of chapter 10–everyone’s favourite chapter, I’m sure–shows how far Ishmael has fallen for Queequeg. He WAS a good Christian, he let Queequeg place tobacco and fifteen dollars in silver into his pockets, to which I replied, as I’m sure everyone else did, by writing “BOTTOM!” on the top of the page. Here, I saw Ishmael allowing Queequeg to do whatever it is he wanted. It echoed similar feelings I had when I read Catcher in the Rye, in that both of these characters say one thing, but never follow through, often times becoming walking contradictions and massive hypocrites. In this case, Ishmael becomes such by speaking of his religion and lamenting sleeping with Queequeg initially to the manager at the inn where they met. He speaks of his religion and his conviction to not trusting “cannibals”, and yet here he is, putty in Queequeg’s hands. The underlined section is what the written note refers to, but it is also a note to close read the language used, as he is letting it happen, not that Queequeg forced this upon him to a rejection, but an acceptance of Queequeg’s ways, at least the very first sprouting of such a relationship that flowers throughout the novel.

Through taking this class, the use of different pen colours and highlighters seems mandatory in order to cover everything one wants to examine on reread. In doing such annotations, it becomes a conversation that then helps the reader understand the text more, allowing for deeper conversations and writings on the novel, all through conversing with Melville in the margins of our novels. What I’ve gained from this exercise is how each and every time we read, the novel becomes an adaptation. We all read and understand differently, no matter how slight, and this shows best in the annotations of the novel. I cannot imagine how others annotated, especially with sticky notes, that is seemingly impossible for me! It’s a great reminder that we are all so different but that creates the spice of life, as they say. Learning from one other through our differing ways of thinking only helps us grow, not only as students, but as people!