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Essay # 2 – The Menu

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The ethics behind animal use and rights have not been a popular topic within American history for very long, but the morals behind which animals are deemed fit to eat has been an argumentative subject. Different societies and ways of life have vastly dissimilar views as to how animals are meant to be utilized, and Ishmael criticizes the typical means of animal consumption within American society within the mid 19th century. By the use of irony and satire when explaining situations that are common in those who have never stepped foot on the sea, Melville points out the hypocrisy of “civilized” and normalized habits in chapter 65. This reveals the ignorance behind mindless consumption and gathering, humans carrying an unnecessary need for cruelty from convenience, not necessity. Thus, Melville emphasizes that critical attitudes towards moral standards of consumption is inherently hypocritical, questioning who is deserving of acting as judge.

Chapter 65, dubbed “The Whale as a Dish” begins with Ishmael explaining the brief history of whale meat as a food. It is the ending passage of the chapter that calls into question Melville’s point of moral hypocrisy towards animals as food. “But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? And that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl.” (327) Stubb here is initially used as a device rather than a character, a conduit to introduce Ishmael’s parallels towards other very common practices within the dining world. “But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light does he?” is ironic. Irony is utilized here for an emphatic effect, as adding “insult to injury” for a dead whale is pointless. After hunting the whale from previous chapters, Stubb is eating the rich meat besides a lamp lit by whale oil. Ishmael is also a man of the sea, so he does not condemn Stubb for eating the whale. As he points out later in the passage, there is an argument that denotes other dining practices as vastly similar. Oil is the byproduct of the whale, and it is what most whales are hunted for during this era. It makes sense for Stubb’s lamp to be lit by the very oil of the whale he is eating. Thus, Melville asks why is a “civilized and enlightened gourmand” capable of judgement towards Stubb? The experiences of whale men are not so common to most on land,  judgement becomes ill-placed.

Ishmael carries a lack of judgement for Stubb, but he addresses the reader to point out the civilized hypocrisy of the situation twice. Readers are told where exactly to look first, as Ishmael says “Look at your knife-handle, there…” The eyes are brought towards the cutlery on the table, followed by the “roast beef” the subject is dining on. He calls upon the reader to ponder afterwards, asking “what is that handle made of?” The assumption could be wood initially, but Ishmael eventually reveals “what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating?” In the act of consuming the roast beef, there is an idea that many do not pay mind to what their utensil is made of. For many years, animal bones have been utilizes for tools and cutlery alike. As such, the situation presents itself as similar to Stubb’s consumption of whale meat. The “gourmand”, that is someone who is deeply fond of food and drink, is eating beef with another ox whose bones were used to make the very knife that cuts the meal. It is satire that criticizes the issue behind food use and waste, which then prompts readers to think to the relations behind how humans treat and exploit animals for their own use. 

Another example that Ishmael presents to the reader in comparison to Stubb’s whale is geese. He questions the reader once again, asking “And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl.” Audiences are told once more where to look, but the language of this line differs from that of the ox. “Devouring” is more of a violent descriptor of consumption, and why is the goose specifically described as “fat”? The history behind this is simple. In order to create more appetizing geese, as well as the pate de foie gras mentioned earlier within the chapter, geese are force fed to fatten up their livers. The word “fat” is a hidden notion towards this exploitive practice, suggesting that the reader is aware of this entirely rational yet inhumane action. It gives leeway towards judgement, as humans additionally utilize the “feather of the same fowl” to “pick your teeth with” after dining. To use part of the animal that was just consumed in order to clean the bodily tool that ate it seems wholly normal, but it is this that is supposedly more civilized that Stubb’s whale and oil lamp.

Melville suggests that animal exploitation is part of the human condition, yet labels the reader as a “civilized and enlightened gourmand.” “Civilized” suggests that someone or something is to be characterized as having taste or refinement, highlighting the idea that Ishmael is almost “speaking” to the fact that Stubb, or whale men are not. The “civilized” world is entirely susceptible to hypocrisy in this case, as most civilized folk at the time were unaware of the toils of the sea unless they were whale men themselves, and would not care to eat a whale due to its impractical richness and meat. Additionally “enlightened” has many potential defined meanings, but there is one in particular that is ironic towards the situation. Enlightenment implies that someone free from ignorance or misinformation. The description is contradictory, as Melville hints within this chapter that most land dwellers are incapable of seeing the ironic paradox that presents itself within “civilized” dining customs. Ishmael presents these two scenarios to point out that the common practice of the times add towards the irony behind consuming whale meat next to its byproduct. 

Moral outrage towards human and animal relationships tend to be misplaced. Ishmael draws these parallels towards beef and fowl to show that exploitive practices are not unique to the job of whaling. It is hypocritical to draw judgement towards different practices that do not fit within a cultural norm. Until recently of the time within the book, geese were being plucked for feathers to create quills. There are inconsistencies that Ishmael points out, certain animal practices may change yet those of the present believe older customs that society are used to remain reasonable. What practices seem barbaric to the civilized and enlightened gourmand? Why are people inherently incapable of receiving criticisms towards what they believe to be ordinary? Whale men seem demonized because of their occupational hazards, but it is human for man to keep some kind of moral high ground. 

Essay 2

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In the middle of chapter 87, Ishmael is directly telling readers to understand the importance of killing a sperm whale by saying: “Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump anymore. Hereby, perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted that though man loves his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.” (Melville 452). 

This passage highlights how a sperm whale is such a rare creature, and by hunting it, humans are exploiting the very essence of a whale, which is oil, to gain profit from it. This also reflects on the problem of slavery, where Melville is creating an analogy between the hunt for the whales and the hunt for the escaped slaves to teach readers to think critically about how humans exploiting whales is similar to humans using slaves for labor. Through this connection, Melville points out the truth that whales were never enemies. It was the humans who did all the hunting, all the killing, and all of the exploitation that they could get their hands on, while reflecting the problem of slaves being captured and sold for labor during that time period.

The mirroring of the hunt between whales and slaves was to tell readers that it was always about money. In this passage, Stubb said: “We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you” (452). He is referring to Pip as ‘the likes of you’, meaning he is very much annoyed by the fact that Pip keeps messing up everything. This attitude of Stubb is influenced by money, and when money controls you, nothing matters anymore, including the lives of people on that boat. The reason why the hunt between whales in the sea and slaves on land mirror each other is that both were used for the purpose of capitalism. Think about it, when people sell whales, they usually extract gallons of oil and sell it for consumers to use. When it comes to fugitive slaves, there are markets that people use for the slave trade. They use the auction block as a way to sell slaves to the wealthy for labor. In this case, the consumers and the wealthy are mirroring each other because they were meant to exploit, while whales and slaves are considered to be objects, things to be sold for the purpose of money. This is peak capitalism because businesses were meant to operate and make profits, while exploiting more and more valuable resources. 

Stubb was referred to as specifically a ‘money-making animal’ because he lost the human nature of showing his emotional side to others. In the passage, we get a glimpse of Stubb through Ishmael, where he said: “Hereby, perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted that though man loves his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal.” (Melville 452). The sea plays a huge factor here because it influenced Stubb, while using the values of a whale in order to lure Stubb in and show him the importance of money. Because money is power, and when power rises, that is when greed plays into hands. Humans will do whatever it takes to exploit their own resources. To them, nothing is ever enough, and they will keep talking until there is no resource left. In this passage, when Ishmael refers to Stubb, a human being to an animal, it means Stubb blindly follows money, like an animal blindly hunting its prey. He does not think meticulously like a human; instead, he seeks what he sees. In this case, a whale is all that Stubb sees, and when Pip interferes with him, Stubb literally threatens Pip that he is going to leave him behind because he is being too clumsy. Stubb only sees whales, which is why human lives do not matter to him. Stubb could leave a hundred Pip behind with no problem. The real problem here is that capitalism is what changed Stubb, and it made him into a money-making animal with no thinking at all.

With the analogy between the hunt for whales and the hunt for fugitive slaves, Melville is showing readers the truth of how whales were never the enemies. Humans are the reason why whales are being hunted. They are also the reason why slaves were captured and sold for labor. In the passage, Stubb told Pip: “We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump anymore.” (Melville 452). This particular phrase shows how undervalued a human life is when it is being compared to whales. However, a fugitive slave is different because they are worth being purchased over. You see, the humans, alongside their curiosity, led them to hunt, to explore, and to exploit everything that they could lay their hands on. This is important because all actions have consequences, and every action that they took, such as hunting whales, capturing slaves, led to exploitation and inequality among themselves. Nothing good comes out of it, and money is what influences all of them to do these things. Melville is letting readers know the danger behind these specific circumstances because he wants us to learn from it. It’s insane how Melville sees this happening way longer before we do, and we are too blinded by the fact that money is what empowers us when the truth is it’s been controlling us this whole time.

The whales did not do anything to us; it was we humans who endangered them first, and we are the threat to them. If we think about it, the whales were out in the sea, enjoying their own company and their own home, and all of a sudden, these aliens came out of nowhere, attacking them face-on. What would their response be? To fight back. They will fight back to defend themselves and their homes. This applies to the slaves on land as well because slaves are normal human beings, but because of their skin color, it made them turn into something that inferior to others, hence it was the assumption that those who are lesser are not considered to be a human being, and that makes them view slaves as less than a human and more than an object. But money plays the real game because both the whales and slaves are worth something, and humans did what they could, which is to exploit and deceive in order to get more money. Greed, selfishness, and assumption are what influence humans. 

This is why it has come to the conclusion that humans were different due to these factors. I do believe that Melville succeeded in letting people know the importance of it because humans do learn from their mistakes. In today’s society, we have learned that racism stems mainly from slavery, and we have moved away from it. We learned about sustainability and how resources have been exploited for a really long time. We came up with alternatives in order to hunt and farm more sustainably. This tells readers that humans can be changed for the better, and we should have done it a long time ago if we all understood what Melville is trying to say through this novel. But I am glad we saw this mistake beforehand and are trying to fix it.

Essay 2

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Throughout Moby Dick, Herman Melville constantly shines an honorary light on the people that have served as the foundation for the whaling industry and the United States. In “The First Lowering” to hunt whales, Melville zooms in on a peculiar scene where, acting as a mast-head, the “noble negro” Daggoo bears the “vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious, little Flask” upon his shoulders (Melville 241). This scene on Flask’s boat serves as a microcosm of the United States in which the black man literally uplifts the white; Melville uses this to reverse the preconceived notions of nobility based on race all while praising the stability of the foundational Daggoo.

At the start of this scene, it is described that little King-Post (Flask) was “recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead” in hopes of satisfying his “large and tall ambition” (Melville 240). In a situation where these men are chasing their main source of profit, it’s important to note that the ambitious yet little King-Post could not satisfy his desires by himself. Fortunately for Flask, his harpooner Daggoo “volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal” (Melville 240). Daggoo’s volunteering of himself as a pedestal or mast-head here can be viewed as a reclamation of power. If we are to view this scene as a representation of the state of the 1850s United States, Daggoo willingly offering himself directly goes against the subjugation of slaves’ labor. Daggoo is proud to offer himself as a mast-head because their unified work is what will lead to their success in this whale hunt. 

Though there may be something to argue about Daggoo maintaining the status of an object, specifically one that lets the white man stand upon him, Melville proposes we change our minds about which position really deserves praise. He writes:

But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. (Melville 241) 

It would be easy to forget that this is all happening during the chaos of their initial whale hunt, rolling on the waves within their small boats, all eager to pierce the whale. Yet Daggoo is described as “sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty.” Maintaining his posture and balancing himself is a second nature to Daggoo; he is able to stand firm and support the little Flask in his “barbaric majesty.” No longer is Flask referred to as little King-Post, now Daggoo receives the title of majesty. Melville employs his common trick of pairing opposing terms, barbaric and majesty, to overthrow the idea that they’re meant to be separate. He continues to use this honorific language as “the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form.” Again, Melville gives praise to the ones that not only withstand the pressure of nature and those they’re uplifting, but are harmoniously able to roll with its flow. It’s no surprise “the bearer looked nobler than the rider”, for Daggoo, and the many noble negroes enslaved by the majestic barbarians of 1850s America, were the pedestal that provided the stability that Flask and all the other snow-flakes relied on to satisfy their ambitions.

While Melville sings the praises of Daggoo, Flask seems to have fallen from grace. He was already stripped of his title of King-Post, but Melville only continues to mock the attitude of this snow-flake:

Though, truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro’s lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that. (Melville 241)

One way to think of it is that Flask has now been reduced to a spoiled and bratty prince. He maintains his lively and obnoxious attitude, trying to lord over the boat, stamping with impatience, but his power has diminished. And he knows how reliant he is in this situation too, as he does not dare add one heave to “the negro’s lordly chest.” Melville can’t help but sprinkle in some more compliments for Daggoo, again referring to him as “lordly”, now bearing not only Flask, but his authority as well. Then Melville closes this scene with one last comparison for both men: Flask is assigned to the “Passion and Vanity” that stamps “the living magnanimous earth” that is Daggoo. The once lordly King-Post, now just a vain bundle of intense emotion and pride, can only try and stamp his desires upon the generous and forgiving Daggoo. But in this celebratory scene of Daggoo, we are presented with an alternative to the United States in which the noble negro refuses altering for the ones they bear on their backs.

In the context of their first frenzied chase of whales, it is important that Melville stops for a second to focus on this comedic scene of Flask and Daggoo. By positioning the mast-head Daggoo as noble, majestic, firm, and magnanimous, we are left to commend him rather than the ambitious, ostentatious, vain, snow-flake known as Flask. A whale boat in which the ambitions of the head are prioritized over the stability of the pedestal cannot even participate in the chase. The humbling mockery of Flask and glory given to Daggoo is a direct reversal of the narratives that have persisted since the 1850s United States, in which the figureheads are praised while the people they stand upon are belittled, mocked, ignored, enslaved, and persecuted. Should the United States desire any success in our hunt of prosperity, we should follow this example and recognize that the bearer truly is nobler than the rider. 

Light and Labor: The Price of Illumination

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In Chapter 97, “The Lamp,” Ishmael writes, “But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light” (Melville 466). The sentence appears simple, even poetic, as if merely describing the sailor’s surroundings: a man whose work deals literally with oil and flame, dwelling in brightness amid his dangerous and quite lonely life at sea. Yet, like much of Moby-Dick, this moment actually contains a deeper, unsettling paradox. What begins as just a factual observation about whale oil, which happens to be the literal “food of light,” expands into a moral and metaphysical reflection on the cost of illumination itself. Melville’s language transforms physical light into a spiritual metaphor, complicating the whaleman’s apparent purity by revealing the violence and destruction that make such light possible in the first place. Through this sentence, Melville explores the moral ambiguity of enlightenment, suggesting that the pursuit of knowledge and progress always casts shadows. To “live in light,” in this sense, is not a state of purity but one of contradiction: a human condition sustained by the very darkness it seeks to overcome.

At its surface level, Ishmael’s statement describes the basic reality of the whaling industry. The “food of light” refers to whale oil, which is the material substance that, once extracted from the whale, refined, and then burned, illuminates homes, streets, and cities across the world. The whaleman literally harvests the world’s light from the sea, working amid furnaces, boiling blubber, and lamps that glow through the ship’s night. In this sense, he does indeed always “live in light.” Yet even within this literal interpretation, Melville’s phrasing evokes something even more mythic to the reader. The whaleman becomes not merely a laborer of the ocean but more of a Promethean figure, the one who brings fire to humanity at great personal and moral cost. The “food of light” recalls both nourishment and sacrifice, suggesting that illumination must be fed, sustained by something perishable, in this case, even living. That food, of course, is the whale itself, whose body becomes the actual physical foundation of civilization’s brightness. Melville’s specific word choice here in this sentence collapses the boundaries between consumption, destruction, and enlightenment. The world’s ability to “see” depends on an ongoing act of death, on the rendering of life into death into fuel. In that transformation, the whaleman stands as both the agent and the witness of light’s creation. The one who participates in an enterprise that makes human vision possible, even as it stains that very same vision with blood.

Melville’s syntax deepens this tension through its balance and rhythm. The clause “as he seeks the food of light” establishes a more causal, almost moral equivalence: we are supposed to believe that the whaleman’s purpose aligns with his environment, his labor mirrored by his world and their desires. But then the symmetry between “seeks” and “lives” suggests more than any type of coincidence; it implies justification. If he “lives in light,” then perhaps his violent work is redeemed by its very luminous result. Melville toys with this logic, allowing the sentence to hover between affirmation and irony. The actual structure of the line reads like a moral proverb to the audience, neat and almost comforting, but its context undercuts that quiet simplicity. Ishmael’s narrative at this point describes the grisly processes of rendering blubber into oil, how the ship is transformed into a floating factory, and the men laboring in smoke and heat. The “light” that surrounds them comes from the fires of their own making. What appears as divine illumination is in fact just an industrial glow, born from the destruction of the very creatures they hunt. Melville’s juxtaposition of the spiritual and the mechanical turns the whaleman’s work into a representation for human progress itself: every light we kindle depends on something we extinguish.

This irony reveals Melville’s larger philosophical concern with the relationship between knowledge and violence. The pursuit of enlightenment, whether that may be through scientific, intellectual, or spiritual ways, requires a certain amount of dissection, penetration, and the laying bare of what was once whole or known by the consumer. In this sense, the whaleman’s rendering of the whale parallels Ishmael’s own rendering of meaning. To “seek the food of light” is to participate in an endless process of breaking down the world in order to understand it. Melville’s language often blurs this line between the physical and the epistemological: the same curiosity that drives men to cut open whales also drives them to dissect nature, God, and, in turn, themselves. The “light” they seek is both literal and figurative, an emblem of reason, discovery, and power that they can reach for. Yet, this light is often accompanied by a terrifying glare that threatens to consume those who labor within it. When Ishmael writes that they “live in light,” the statement becomes disturbingly double-edged. The same light that signifies enlightenment may also suggest a possible damnation. In Melville’s moral universe, illumination is never innocent.

The phrase “lives in light” also carries a certain amount of theological resonance. Light has long been a symbol of divinity, purity, and truth, from the opening words of Genesis, “Let there be light,” to the Christian notion of spiritual illumination. To “live in light,” then, evokes an almost saintly or angelic image, as if the whalemen are chosen vessels through whom divine radiance enters the world. Yet at the same time, Melville destabilizes this association by placing such holiness in the hands of those engaged in an act of slaughter against seemingly innocent creatures. The whalemen are both creators and destroyers; their light is a paradoxical mixture of grace and guilt. This inversion echoes throughout Moby-Dick: the line between sanctity and sin is perpetually blurred. Melville suggests that human beings cannot separate their search for truth from their capacity for destruction. The whaleman’s “light” thus becomes a microcosm of civilization’s moral compromise: with every advancement, every brightening of the world, there is a hidden darkness that always lies just beneath the surface.

The communal aspect of this illumination adds another layer of complexity as well. The whaleman’s labor produces the oil that fuels lamps across nations, so his private suffering enables collective vision. Melville uses this image to question the ethics of progress built on invisible toil. Those who may “live in light” aboard the Pequod do so through peril and deprivation, while the consumers of that light remain untouched by its very violent and barbaric origins. This disconnect mirrors the broader human tendency to enjoy the benefits of knowledge or comfort without ever thinking about or confronting their cost. The “light” of modern civilization, such as its science, industry, and expansion, rests directly upon the bodies of those rendered seemingly invisible by the glow. Ishmael’s phrasing exposes that blindness even as it embodies it: the sentence itself glimmers with poetic beauty, concealing the blood and labor it describes. Melville thus implicates language, and maybe even literature itself, in this economy of light, where aesthetic pleasure risks masking any type of moral awareness. To read Moby-Dick attentively is to recognize the shadow that every illumination casts.

In this way, the passage encapsulates Melville’s broader meditation on the limits of human vision. To “live in light” may seem to promise clarity, but in Moby-Dick, light often blinds as much as it reveals. The whalemen’s proximity to flame makes them less capable of seeing beyond it; the brightness becomes overwhelming, distorting any perception. The lesson is clear: illumination, when pursued without humility, leads to madness. Ahab, too, “lives in light” of his own making. A constant fiery, obsessive glow that consumes him. His monomaniacal vision is a different form of enlightenment, a search for ultimate truth that obliterates everything else in its way. In this sense, the whaleman’s “light” is both the beginning and the very end of human aspiration. It represents the desire to know, to see, to master, and then the inevitable self-destruction that such strong desire entails.

Ishmael’s brief but poignant reflection in Chapter 97 shows Moby-Dick’s entire philosophical tension in a single sentence. The whaleman’s life of light is both his glory and his doom, a very real figure for humanity’s contradictory condition. We are creatures who burn for understanding, who turn the world and its animals into literal fuel for our enlightenment, yet in doing so, we run the very real risk of extinguishing ourselves along the way. Melville’s imagery reminds us that every light depends on its opposite, that there can be no illumination without shadow, no knowledge without cost. The “food of light” that sustains civilization is inseparable from the death that feeds it and allows it to grow. Through this paradox, Melville exposes the moral and metaphysical price of human illumination. To “live in light” is to live with that awareness, to recognize the darkness within the glow, and to be able to see, even in the brightest of flames, the very trace of what it consumes.

Short Essay: Close Reading #2

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Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick repeatedly blurs the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical, especially in moments where characters confront the ocean as something more than an environmental setting. This tension becomes most relevant in Chapter 112, “The Blacksmith”, where Ishmael moves from narrating the blacksmith’s tragic biography to reflecting more broadly on the psychology of sailors whose lives have been hollowed out by grief, failure, and spiritual exhaustion. After detailing how the blacksmith’s losses render him numb to life on land, Melville turns to a broader meditation on the kind of men who go to sea, the men who yearn for release yet recoil from the moral stain of suicide. Melville transforms the ocean into a liminal space that invites sailors to imagine escape from the moral weight of selfhood rather than literal self-destruction. Melville’s imagery of “Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics,” (Melville 529) suggests that the men long not simply for death but for relief from the isolating burden of their own identities, choices, and moral responsibilities. In this way, the ocean becomes a threshold where melancholy blurs the boundary between transcendence and self-erasure, revealing Melville’s critique of the human desire to death when individuality feels too heavy to bear.

When Melville opens the passage with “Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this”, he reframes death as a logical outcome rather than a moral rupture. In doing so, he places sailors within a psychological landscape where exhaustion and exposure to vastness distort the meaning of mortality. The phrasing “seems” is crucial, Melville suggests not that sailors rationally desire death, but that the ocean’s psychological pressure distorts perception, making death appear coherent and almost natural. Sailors do not rationally desire death, rather, the ocean’s immensity conditions them to imagine death as part of the natural continuum of their existence. By presenting “death” as a tempting “sequel “rather than an ethical violation, Melville situates sailors in a mental landscape where the immensity of the sea dissolves moral frameworks built on land. The language is crucial because it dramatizes one of the novel’s central tensions, which is the collapse of land-based ethical norms in the face of nature’s boundless indifference. Melville’s diction thus supports the idea of how the ocean destabilizes identity by framing self-erasure as a seductive continuation rather than a moral violation. 

Melville intensifies this destabilization when he writes “Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried.” By using the verb “launching”, a word associated with maritime, he transforms death from an ending into the beginning of another voyage. This metaphor is important because it reflects how the ocean reshapes the sailor’s conceptual framework, it absorbs death into its own logic of exploration and discovery. The language pointedly avoids Christian associations of death with sin or final judgment. Instead, the ocean’s vastness reorients spiritual meaning, rendering death spiritually neutral, even generative.   Melville’s decision to frame the afterlife as a “strange” reinforces the paradox at the core of the chapter that terror and desire are inseparable, and the unknown becomes strangely inviting. In this reframing, Melville exposes how the ocean seduces sailors into imagining dissolution not as destruction but as transcendence.

With the cascading list, “the immense Remote, the Watery, the Unshored”, it magnifies the ocean’s overwhelming scale. Melville’s piling of adjectives functions rhetorically like a wave, engulfing both the reader and the sailor in a rhythm of expansiveness. This excess of description matters because it reflects the sailor’s psychological dissolution in the face of something that cannot be contained or comprehended. Melville’s ocean, defined by remoteness and the absence of boundaries, becomes a symbol of nonidentity, a space where human limitations lose their meaning. The language mimics the reverence that the terror of boundlessness becomes indistinguishable from the desire to be absorbed in it. This imagery is significant because it constructs the ocean as a spiritual force that both terrifies and seduces, turning death into an appealing surrender. By presenting the sea’s enormity as almost redemptive, Melville critiques humanity’s fantasy of escaping individuality by merging with something larger than the self. With Melville using this phrasing, it shows how beauty and death coexist inseparably. 

Melville deepens the psychological tension by invoking “death longing eyes” belonging to sailors who still possess “interior compunctions against suicide.” This juxtaposition highlights an internal struggle between instinctual desire and moral restraint. The phrase matters because it reveals the sailor’s temptation is not purely emotional or aesthetic but ethically fraught. The term “compunctions” underscores that these men are aware of the moral gravity, yet the ocean’s seductive vastness weakens their resistance. Melville’s language thus frames the ocean as a force capable of eroding the boundary between self-preservation and self-erasure. In this spiritual space, suicide is reimagined as self-dissipation—a merging with the environment rather than a transgressive act. By foregrounding this inner conflict, Melville illustrates how extreme environments destabilize moral frameworks, exposing the dangerous proximity between transcendence and destruction.

Melville’s description of the “all-contributed and all-receptive ocean” further emphasizes the ocean’s paradoxical nature. The ocean “receives” everything — bodies, ships, histories, desire — while also giving back a sense of unity through dissolution. This specific phrasing matters because it casts the sea as a universal absorber, a space where individuality dissolves into a larger whole. The personification of the ocean “alluringly spreading forth his whole plain” suggests intent, as though the natural world acts as a spiritual tempter. Melville highlights the human impulse to surrender to something vast and impersonal, to escape responsibility by merging into a larger whole. The oceans’ “plain of unimaginable, taking terrors” blends beauty and danger, promising both death and renewal. Here, Melville’s diction shows how the natural world can be mythologized into a spiritual alternative to human society, a place where burdens can be shed but only through self-erasure. 

Melville concludes the passage with how the ocean offers “wonderful, new life adventures” emerging “from the hearts of infinite Pacifics.” The juxtaposition between “new-life” and the earlier emphasis on death reveals Melville’s deliberate conflation of ending and beginning. The phrase is significant because it frames the ocean as a site of potential rebirth, but only through the destruction of oneself. The “infinite Pacifics” suggests multiplicity and endless spiritual possibility, but this infinite promise is intimately tied to the dissolution of individuality. The language is important because it exposes the underlying contradiction in the sailor’s fantasy; the desire for transcendence is inseparable from the desire for extinction. By characterizing death as a getaway to “Adventures”, Melville critiques how romanticized visions of nature can distort moral judgment. The ocean embodies a form of spiritual seduction that tempts sailors toward self-loss. Melville’s phrasing reinforces that transcendence in Moby-Dick is always shadowed by mortality. 

Through this elaborate imagery in Chapter 112, Melville transforms the ocean into a liminal and spiritual space where sailors confront the temptation of self-dissipation with the moral finality of suicide. The passage’s language — framing death as a “launching”, describing the sea as “Unshored”, addressing the “death-longing eyes” of morally conflicted sailors, and presenting the ocean as “all receptive” — all contribute to a depiction of nature that invites surrender while destabilizing land-based ethical boundaries. Melville’s imagery of death as paradoxically alluring and redemptive exposes humanity’s deeper desire to escape the burdens of individuality and morality imposed by Western social structures, including capitalist pressures, by dissolving into something vast and impersonal. The solemn tone heightens the tension between transcendence and death, revealing that the human longing for spiritual elevation often masks a darker yearning for release from the self. Ultimately, Melville critiques the dangerous appeal of metaphysical escape, exposing the ocean as both a spiritual frontier and a seductive abyss where enlightenment and oblivion become indistinguishable.

Essay #2: Life or Profit?

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Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick focuses on a very profitable industry during the time of the 1830s, the whaling industry. Melville writes characters that are driven by profit and greed, which can be seen through these capitalistic sailors. He shows that capitalism is a driving force, as one values profit more than the well-being of their fellow sailors. Stubb, in chapter 93, shows his true colors as Pip almost dies while they are in pursuit of a whale. “Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for 30 times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear in mind, and don’t jump anymore.” Hereby, perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that the man loves his fellow, yet man is a moneymaking animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence” (452). Human life is very crucial to the industry, and one needs these men so that they can make their living, but is profit more valuable than each other’s lives? Melville has stated his view on this, as he believes that human connection is valued less than the gain that the sailors will receive within this industry. As these sailors are out for profit from hunting these whales, one sees that they valued what they could receive over the value of human life, as they were surrounded by a world of capitalism. 

Whaling was a very profitable industry in the 1830s, which nearly led to the extinction of whales, as they were a large source of material and money that one could get from them. This whole novel is surrounded by this subject, and one can see how the profit that these whales could bring them will lead to greed and maybe not value other aspects of their career. The whaling industry is a very dangerous career as they risk death from many factors, like storms, diseases, tragic accidents, and even the whale attacking them, as they seek them out to kill them. Reading through chapter 93, one can see an instance of an accident like that which proves that these sailors cared more about the pursuit of a whale than the life of one of their comrades. Pip, a young African boy who was also aboard the Pequod with Stubb, had jumped overboard board amisdt hunting down a whale. He had gotten caught in the line, then Tashtego asked Stubb if he could cut him free, as he saw him struggling, and Pip was saved, but they lost the whale. This section truly shows that these men, particularly Stubb, value money more than the life of one of their comrades. 

“Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that” was the first command Stubb had said to Pip after pulling him back aboard the smaller boat used to spear and pursue the whale. Here, Stubb gives Pip a harsh command and a warning of what he will do next time if he jumps overboard. The whale clearly is the main goal in mind for him, not saving anyone who might go overboard. Stubb’s warning to Pip can be seen as a literal warning and as an existential meaning behind it, as he tells him not to do it again, or else he will be left at sea and no one will come back for him, as they have the whale, which is seen as more important. Stubb’s comment here shows the beginning of what drives them towards capitalism and favoring money over human life. 

Stubb’s morality and values are being questioned here by Melville, suggesting that he prioritizes profit over saving a life. “We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you” says Stubb, which also shows that Stubb was not willing even to save his life as the whale was seen as more important than he, then says, “a whale would sell for 30 times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump anymore.” Stubb had said this, which can be seen as proving that money is what he sought after in his pursuit of the whale and that, as Pip was a young African boy, he could be sold for less than what a whale would get him. This proves that money is what motivates them and exposes their true nature, in this instance, Stubb. He uses the imagery of how much he would get for a whale over what he would get for selling him into slavery, which he says would be “30 times what you would, Pip, in Alabama,” which shows that Pip’s life was not of much value to him compared to what the whale would get him. The whaling industry proves that people who pursued these whales were in it for what they could gain. As they did this, the value of human life versus profit became apparent as they realized the potential gains from this industry. 

Man’s value for what they could earn from hunting these whales is more evident when Ishmael says this about what Stubb had said to Pip. “Hereby, perhaps Stubb, indirectly hinted, that the man loves his fellow, yet man is a moneymaking animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.” Stubb does show some empathy towards Pip as he did save him, but he warns him that he isn’t the priority, as “man is a moneymaking animal” in pursuit of the whale for gain. Melville had even compared humans to animals, as they are even hunting down one that they will then use for profit. “Propensity too often interferes with his benevolence,” Melville writes, showing that they care about each other aboard the Pequod, but then, when money comes into play, it is different. All of the sailors aboard the Pequod had their hearts out for money, and they would do anything for it, which proves that man values profit over their fellow sailors’ lives. 

Stubb’s commentary after Pip had fallen overboard shows what Melville believes to be true amongst the sailors. They were consumed/addicted to this industry and what they could receive from it, rather than valuing someone else’s life. Capitalism controlled them while aboard the Pequod, which shows their true nature and values. Money came first in their line of sight, then their comrades’ lives as they traversed the deadly oceans in search of these whales. 

Essay 2 – I’d Rather Feel Your Spine

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In Chapter 80 of Moby Dick, Ishmael mocks the 19th-century pseudo-scientific practice of phrenology through a faux-scientific analysis of the whale’s skull that exposes the absurdity of determining intellectual and moral qualities through physical form. Ishmael’s exaggerated attempts to measure the whale’s intellectual qualities through the size and shape of its skull and preference to feel a man’s spine to categorize him, rather than his skull, critique humanity’s misguided attempts to categorize nature’s creations through flawed and doctored systems of knowledge.

Although Moby Dick was written in the 1850s when science was not at its best and pseudo-science was rampant in a pathetic attempt to expand colonization and white superiority, some of the points that Ishmael proposes can easily be understand or dismissed as being common sense. He begins the chapter by stating, “If the Sperm whale be physiologically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle, which is impossible to square” (381). Comparing the whale to a mythological Sphinx does us no good in producing scientific evidence, but throughout the novel, constant mention of ancient Egypt, the Sphinx, and hieroglyphics has symbolized the difficulty in reading a human’s skin, behavior, or mind. Following this quote, the chapter reads, “But in life – as we have elsewhere seen – this inclined plane [the skull]  is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous super incumbent mass of the junk and sperm” (381). Almost immediately, Ishmael dismantles the idea that the whale’s brain cannot be “squared”, according to phrenologists, proposing that the scientific evidence and ideas produced by them can easily be debunked. There is difficulty in reading the human brain and his characteristic through his skull, and the easy debunking of Ishmael’s first claim quickly leads into the dismantling of the use of phrenology. 

A whale is massive in size, meaning that its brain is much bigger than a human’s as is all of the material built up inside of it, meaning that it is also difficult for us to read the skull and brain with all the tissue surrounding and protecting it.  As the chapter continues, Ishmael states, “Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part of his as the seat of his intelligence” (381). Here he is contributing to the views of phrenologists; throughout the entire novel, Ishmael is known for stating something and directly contradicting it, and so on and so forth as it progresses. The bulk of the whale’s head, from an outside perspective, shows no expanse of where the brain might sit, if any, creating the idea of a “false brow to the common world” (382), one that depicts the creature as brainless because its brow cannot be read to formulate the size or existence of its brain. Once more, this novel is set in a time where phrenology depicted the characteristics of humans based off of the shape of their skull, and the lack of brains within, producing false scientific evidence that made Europeans morally and physically superior to their black counterparts. Applying this idea to the whale would indicate that, despite its size, skill, intelligence, and danger, it is but a mindless creature, passive and almost idiotic in sense, because we cannot read his skull from his exterior. 

Once more, a contradiction comes into play as Ishmael talks down on the pseudo-scientific practice of phrenology by dismissing the investigations through the skull and proposing the evidence be taken from the spine of the whale, or human. He states, “For I believe that much of a man’s character will be found betokened in the backbone, I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of a flag which I fling half out to the world” (382). The idea that the backbone upholds more of a man’s character represents the part of our body that carries us; yes, our heads and feet assist in the balance of the human body whilst being upright, but the spine is such a vast expanse of bone that connects the head, torso, and lower body that is is arguably of more importance than the reading of the skull. With no backbone, a man is weak; a “spineless” individual has been depicted as a weak or immoral one for centuries, someone who does not have the nerve to speak up, stand out, and defend. Ishmael compares the human spine to the spinal cord of the whale, its size never wavering in comparison to its skull as it tapers down into the tail. It is directly connected to the skull, a path that feeds mobility and strength. The final sentence of the above quote is also symbolic of the strength of men, or the weakness of them. To compare the spine to a flag is representative of the backbone of the country; in a time where scientific evidence is altered for desired results, making white men more superior than black men, these men are ultimately lacking in a backbone. Their flag does not stand upright, it falters and sags, and cannot be thrown out unwavering to the rest of the country. It is reflective of the country’s lack of morals, despite the phrenological evidence that it has more than the “other”. 

Ishmael’s mockery of phrenology and pseud-scientific evidence compares the skull and spine of the whale to man, and proposing the dismissal of scientific practices that create falsified evidence. To depict a man’s character through a part of the body that is shrouded by flesh, muscle, and tissue makes it difficult to understand them, and thus can be twisted into creating misconceptions about them. However, to define a man by the part of his body that holds him upright, that, in Ishmael’s eyes, is connected to the noble soul, you can better define a man by his strength, skill, and prowess. With this, all the “evidence” of pseudo-science can be dismissed, for the false brow of the whale hides the true mass of his brain, and the morality of his soul.