Tag Archives: ashleysims

The Sermon

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The story of Jonah is one that is well known, especially in the 19th century. An account that could stand to have a passing mention and a reader will know what his author his alluding to. Melville begins Moby Dick with hints of criticism towards Christianity. So, why does he spend a chapter not only retelling, but expanding on the story of Jonah? In his revitalization, Melville adds dimension to the point of view of the story, from Jonah onto his shipmates. The trade of shipping and the crew members are given life. Life in a story that’s important to this novel. Maybe Moby Dick is its own fantastical recount of Jonah. Giving a voice of reason to the captain and crew gives the whaling industry character. By showing the shippers’ outlook readers can sympathize with them. They can see how sin affects others. “Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent.” The crew knows Jonah is guilty of something, yet they still let him on board. It all comes down to money. Another theme that Melville seems to have touched on a couple of times already. “Now Jonah’s captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime an any way, but whose cupidity only exposes it only in the penniless. In this world sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas a virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.” Another commentary on the joy of money. The autonomy of money. The sin of money. Another commentary that resonates with the corruption of the present.

It is notable that this sermon is preceded by a chapter that focuses on watery graves. Is that chapter foreshadowing? Or just flaunting the realities Ishmael faces. “But faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.”  Like a jackal, an opportunistic feeder, faith grasps at those in desperation. Like someone who has been swallowed by a whale.

Also, just a quote that I love: “Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.

This is the World

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Herman Melville instantly responds to Emerson’s call for a great American scholar in the first chapter of Moby Dick as he digs into prominent issues of 1850 America. Page six serves up the word slave on a silver platter. The most controversial issue in American history. An issue that caused more strife than we face today (so far). This is not a novel to escape the world. This is the world. And Melville forces the reader to face it as he says: “Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that.” (6) One can only imagine the pause this would warrant on an 1850s audience. Hmm that’s right who aint a slave… maybe there is a place for compromise on this ripe issue of slavery, they might think to themselves. But Melville hastily shuts any of these thoughts down with his fervent talk of money. He goes on: “But being paid, – what compares with it? The urbane activity with which man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!” (6-7) One may feel like a slave at work but must remember the pay day. And why does getting paid feel so marvelous? Because money creates autonomy. Autonomy is humanity. What is so interesting about Melville’s analysis is his conclusion that a monied man cannot enter heaven. Slaves, whose justification for being enslaved is being seen as less than human, cannot enter heaven, monied men cannot enter heaven. So, who is it that is going to heaven? Furthermore, Melville centralizes American issues in the bill of fate that Ishmael draws up:

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.

“WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.

“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.” (7)

“Grand contested election for presidency” What a statement. A familiar one. The president in power during the writing and publication of this book was one Millard Fillmore. A vice president who was inaugurated after the death of president Zachary Taylor. Fillmore undermined Taylor when he signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act. An act that forced northerners to return slaves to the south, inciting the use of military force if necessary. Fillmore postponed the Civil War by ten years. But greatly increased tensions between the North and the South as well as his unpopularity. In the very first chapter of this 800-page, 135-chapter book, Melville confronts a nation. This is a beginning for America’s greatest novel.

The Greatest American Novel

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In his article “The Blue Humanities” John R Gillis informs us that the blue humanities are a “belated recognition of the close relationship between modern western culture and the sea.” The seascape is nothing more than a backdrop until the nineteenth century. Gillis notes that one of the first novels representing the sea in more than just a utilitarian concept is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. According to Gillis the “metaphysical sophistication” of the novel is what sets it apart. But it is more than just Melville’s allusions of pelagic grandeur that buoys Moby Dick into the blue humanities. It is the centric of whaling. Whaling is humanity’s first glimpse, our first attempt, at conceptualizing oceanography. It sounds like a paradox. Whaling, this egregious act against one of nature’s most majestic oceanic creatures. But, considering Gillis’ assertion of early ocean explorers that “Oceans were explored as a means to reach distant lands, little attention was paid to the waters themselves… they used the sea merely as a highway to get to the next landfall.” One can say whalers were the first voyagers who sought what was within the ocean instead of what was across it. Whaling expeditions that extended years only relied on land as a means to resupply their ships. The ocean became the anchor for whalers, their constant. And knowing these whales, their migration patterns, their feeding grounds, their habits, was arguably humanity’s first dive into marine biology. Specifically, the Nantucket whaling industry, where the Pequod hails from. In 1712 the first documented kill of a sperm whale occurred at the hands of Nantucketer Christopher Hussey. Thus launching an industry of deep-ocean whaling specialized in Nantucket.* The same time Americans began to cast their war upon sperm whales, Europeans were shifting “terror and awe religious folk held for the supernatural to nature itself”. Reshaping the Enlightenment era into the emergence of Romanticism. Gillis mentions a 1712 anecdote by Joseph Addison: “Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects imagination so much as the sea or ocean.” Americans were conquering some of the most fearsome creatures in the world’s most fearsome environment. The centric of whaling not only gives Moby Dick a place in blue humanities, but it hoists it up as America’s greatest novel, honoring the culture and heroes of America’s first past time.

* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/whaling-history-whaling-america/

My thoughts on “The American Scholar”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” is easily established as an inspiring piece. One that incites progress concerning American education and societal advancement during a tumultuous time in American history, the 1830’s. Considering turbulence, many are quick to cite the struggle over slavery and the oncoming civil war. But something else was happening in the United States at the time. In 1830 The Indian Removal act was signed into law by Congress under President Andrew Jackson. Thousands of Native Americans were forcibly removed from their southeastern homelands and made to march the fatal “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. Because of this, I find a tremendous amount of irony in “The American Scholar” regarding Emerson’s beckoning for man to connect with nature. “Ever the wind blows; ever the grass grows… the scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages” (paragraph 10). Emerson poetically asserts that the scholar who recognizes the unimaginable amount of learning to be had in nature is on the path to possess intellect. To engage with the awes of nature is to engage with one’s place in the world and therefore one’s understanding of it. Is not the principle belief held by Native American culture based on recognizing the importance of the intricacies of nature? This cultural significance, the reverence of nature, is what led our WASP settlers to judge these people as barbaric. Native Americans possess this engagement with the spectacle of nature. To make these claims while they are deemed savages and marched to the brink of death is harrowing. Now, I am not here to punish Emerson for the crimes of the United States government, nor place blame on him for this irony. It is most likely that he hardly, if at all, knew what was happening on the Trail of Tears, or any extent of Native American culture. I only aim to uncover a tragic irony. And a paradoxical instance that is assumed by our government. Beholding a white man for arousing intellectual connection with the natural world, while nature revering “savages” are being advanced to their impending doom.