When it comes to isolating yourself from others and being in the most strenuous environment, we humans tend to seek out ways to tap into our unconscious ( incomoda) state and be able to feel that sense of dopamine and pursue that freedom, which allows us to step outside ourselves and feel alive. Alone at the top of the ship’s mast surrounded by nothing, but sea and sky, Ishmael ascends himself into a dream-like trance. Herman Melville’s, “Moby Dick”, this accurate moment transforms a simple task of whale-watching into an intense reflection of the human mind. As Melville describes in this quote on Chapter 35, “ “but lulled into such such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thought, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature….” (172) Melville demonstrates the beauty and rhythm of the ocean can disintegrate the boundaries of thought and reality. Melville uses philosophical imagery and hypnotic language in this quote to explore the meaning of isolation and nature can be blurred by the line of self-awareness and self-loss. The passage becomes more about daydreaming, it slowly becomes a meditation form to Ishmael and how easy it is the dangers of transcending and the fragile nature of the human identity.

We describe the ocean as a marvelous one of a kind part of our existence as human beings and planet earth. We try to connect ourselves with the sea in the phrase, “..blending cadence of waves”(172), Melville starts to incorporate the language tone with rhythm and imagery in the passage mirrors of the sea; it makes you feel like you’re in a hypnotic state. He merges the sound and the mind together and creates this melodic tone of repetition and softness, just like the waves of the ocean. It makes both the reader and Ishmael be in a trance-like state. The sea’s rhythm becomes like a lullaby, almost like a natural feeling of comfort and safety, imagine like a rocking chair where your mother would carry and sing to you to fall asleep, it soothes you and forget about everything around you. Through this sensory and mental imagery, Melville uses these effects because he suggests that the power of nature can weaken the human consciousness, which I find credible, hence why some people tend to connect more and live in areas surrounded by trees and nature. We can see in the chapter how Ishmael is starting to slowly dissociate himself from everything around him and his mind starts to synchronize with something bigger and dangerous, the ocean. The more he surrounded himself  with the ocean itself, the more he started to lose himself mentally wise.

One of my preferred parts of the phrase in the chapter, “ opium-like listlessness” (172) Melville reveals both the pleasure and the danger of losing oneself in their own thoughts. The word “opium”, which defines an actual narcotic, is like an escape and intoxication and having freedom from the pain and reality. I think for Ishamel the ocean became a drug for him, and starts to seduce him into a state of numbness and forgetfulness, obviously being under the influence of a drug, which is why he uses the imagery of the word, “ opium”. Melville demonstrates to us in this scene of the chapter, that transcendency is not a part of an understanding, but more of an erasure. He demonstrates to us how Ishamel starts to lose his identity and experiences both the pleasure and terror. The sea is giving Ishamel the freedom he wanted from the beginning, but it will also consume him entirely spiritually and mentally.

The most philosophical part of the chapter to me was Ishamel being on the mast-head of the ship. The mast-head represents a place between heaven and earth, Ishamel is among the sky and sea. The higher he rises, the more he isolates himself from reality. Melville uses this metaphor for the mast-head as a separation from reality due to the fact he is up in the mast-head, which disconnects Ishamel from bottom, obviously the human world (earth). The scene reflects the balance between self-knowledge and self-loss through the unlimited whether is nature or knowledge or even faith. We see Ishmael’s identity start to fade due to the immenses of existence he confronts which makes the human thought be diminished.

Herman Melville portrays the conflict of human consciousness with a perception of wanting to transcend to a sense of freedom, even if it costs us into disappearing into a state of the unknown. Just has how Ishmael’s trance in the mast-head becomes more of a distraction for him from reality, we as humans tend to seek the same way to escape the reality of existence. It’s what makes us feel human at one point in our lives, even if it make us feel has if we are losing and have that feeling of discomfort with ourselves, it makes us be who we are.