Tag Archives: DelBanco

Delbanco’s Introduction

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My focus was drawn towards Delbanco’s claim that Moby Dick has a distinctively American accent because it is predicated on the shared belief between thinkers that America needed to stop looking towards Europe and the past in order to forge a uniquely American path. It seems to me that the founding of this American story as we understand it now also necessitated the erasure of the history of the Indigenous peoples of the land in order to create its self-made facade. I am interested to consider how the text explores this subject. While I understand how radically new this form of thinking was in its time, now in hind sight it feels like this same American story is also now being weaponized against anyone that does not fit the constructed idea of the ‘American’ persona. It fundamentally misunderstands and erases the multiculturalism that built this country.

An American Prophecy

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There’s a lot in Delbanco’s introduction that I wanted to highlight, but I’ll try to limit myself starting with this simple quote: “He [Ahab] is on a mission, Ishmael is on a cruise” (xx). It’s very brief but it does a lot to frame one of the main conflicts of the novel. Considering our talks about language in relation to the blue humanities, the words “mission” and “cruise” evoke the different nature of their goals here. Ahab is set on a clear path with the definitive goal of hunting Moby Dick, whereas Ishmael is willing to go with the flow and really goes on the Pequod just to see more of the world and learn about the whaling industry. Delbanco makes the point that this conflict never becomes a direct battle in the novel and their ideals aren’t directly pitted against each other because “Melville himself incorporates both, and he feels their claims with equal fervor” (xix). This I feel is very important to include because rather than only give us Ishmael’s perspective and preach about one over the other, Melville shows that there is merit to each side; no one side is completely right or wrong.

I’m a bit hesitant to view Moby Dick as a prophecy of a doomed American experiment because of the implications it has for our country’s past, present, and future, but time and time again we see the consequences of unbridgeable fissures between the people of our nation (xx). It only continues to get worse when people adopt the “us against them” mentality, and the view that “the other” is always at fault. “Like Ahab, every man feels maimed and hopes to find relief by assigning blame” (xxii). This line of thinking is poisonous, contagious even, and all it does is further increase the gap between differing ideals. Leaning too far on either side leads to more tension and ultimately catastrophe. I don’t even really know what I’m trying to say anymore, but I’m hoping I can find more of the optimism the chronicle of the Pequod has to offer.

Unmoored, Vulnerable, Dispensable – Past & Present Converging as One

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                Reading the introduction to Moby-Dick made me considerably nervous – not dissimilar to the nervousness I experience watching movie trailers in the modern era. I do not long for synopsis, I do not strive to have my stories spoon fed to me in digestible segments shorn from the story like butchered meat before I ever get the opportunity to read it for myself. I want to dive into the ocean of language, into the thick of the chaos and make my peace with my ability to sink or swim along with the author’s current. The farther into the introduction I read, the more I found things that my brain will elect to latch on to thanks to Andrew DelBanco’s focus on them – such as the figure Bulkington that is due to appear in chapter three and then “recedes from view until twenty chapters later” (xvi). I do not wish to read about how “everything becomes unmoored, vulnerable, dispensable” (xviii). I wish to find myself adrift!

                When not exposing the story beats, speaking of important later moments well before the time we access them ourselves, there is much to dissect and carry with us as we venture into Moby-Dick. DelBanco’s belief that “Melville…extracted a human sample from a culture he both loved and abhorred, and he made of the Pequod a kind of Noah’s ark” is absolutely fascinating (xxi). Yet more amazing still is the knowledge that these human capsules are still reflective of figures in power today. It’s impossible to discern which is a more terrifying revelation: That time is inevitably cyclical, forever repeating the mistakes of the past with brighter clarity, or that the individuals in power frequently exhibit the same monomania of the doomed captain of the Pequod. Our ship continues to steer into darker, dangerous waters, my friends.