Throughout Moby-Dick, there has been a kind of attention to the number 3. There are 3 mates for the ships, 3 mast heads to the ship, and the 3 peaks featured on the doubloon, but there are also supernatural connections to 3 sprinkled through out the novel, such as the blood of 3 harpooners to temper Ahab’s barb, the 3 fires alight the top of the mast heads, as well as 3 people prophesizing Ahab’s demise: the prophet, Gabriel from the Jeroboam, and the Parsee.
This is a number present in the Bible – the holy trinity – and even Pythagoras, a great philosopher of Greek History that has been mentioned at least once in the novel, believed that the number three was special. One such reason was that it is the only number where the numbers that come before it add perfectly to it. Another reason, and one that I link more to this section of the novel than his other reasons, was that it seems to reflect our world on a conceptual level – beginning, middle, end; birth, life, death.
In the chapter, The Candles, this number is repeated and emphasized as the spectral lights cast brilliant shadows onto the ship below.
“All the yard arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightening-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.” (549)
This all comes two chapters out from Parsee’s prediction of Ahab’s death by hemp rope, after Ahab calls it a strange sight the idea of a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean. For reference, hearse plumes were ostrich feathers that would adorn hearse carriages at the time, signaling the departed’s wealth and status. Having 5-6 plumes meant you were wealthy, more meant that you were truly rich. In reference to this, the flames are described as pallid and tapering. What are the flames but Ahab’s own funeral plumes, floating atop the ocean he so desperately searches for his monomaniacal need for revenge?
For my costume on Thursday, I elected to dress as Ishmael wrapped in the counterpane. This chapter, while early in the novel, was so immensely important for Ishmael’s development and even for his ability to board the Pequod at all. This marked the true beginning of Queequeg and Ishmael’s relationship – at whatever capacity that you see it in – and it is the catalyst for his embarkment on the Pequod. Without Ishmael, Queequeg would have struggled to board the ship. Without Queequeg, Ishmael would have likely boarded a different vessel altogether.
For the costume itself, I had an ivory colored cotton shirt with ties, a laced up brown suede vest, simple black pants, and black laced boots. I took care to avoid straps and buttons, as Ishmael was no “bumpkin dandy” (37)! He knew “how bitterly those straps would burst in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest” (37). I elected to leave off his monkey jacket, partially due to the weather and partially because he would not have had his outer clothes fully on when in bed with Queequeg. My earrings I had mostly left in tact, though I did wear a hoop laden with three chains to represent the ties that would come to bind Ishmael – the ocean, Queequeg, and Ahab.
While I do not have a picture, I do think it was a happy coincidence that Rayne and I were standing side by side in the front of the classroom – as Rayne had dressed as Queequeg in his Beaver Hat. Had I thought more on it, I should have switched the shoulder my counterpane was on so that it was the shoulder closest to Rayne, but I missed out.
Edit: I kidnapped this image from the slides for Lesson 19!
There were a number of parts from this most recent reading that struck me – I wondered if, perhaps, Pippin from Lord of the Rings was partially named for Pippin in Moby Dick. Both are known to be young, somewhat fearful, and thrust into a dangerous voyage that they may not have necessarily signed on for. They are also particularly clumsy, eliciting anger and frustration from their superiors.
Yet the part that interested me from an academic standpoint was Chapter 92, Ambergris. “Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing?” (448) This passage, while referencing the thick, waxy stuff found within decaying whales, can apply too to the story of Moby Dick and the characters within it. The procurement of the Ambergris was duplicitous, the urgency from Ahab to continue forward on their journey despite the valuable find was further proof of his abandonment of their financial goals for this trip. Despite the harrowing nature of the journey, despite the questionable nature of Ahab and the cruelty expressed by crewmen such as Stubb, Ishmael and Queequeg are the ambergris of the ship – the incorruptible pieces found within the heart of decay.
As another aside, I have been listening to this https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=aNpA6yRene0&si=q_8oCmRmJK9RLytG while reading the novel and have found it to properly put me into the mindset of being on the Pequod. I wanted to share it for the others that may need to listen to something while they read.
At last, we have found whales within the deep! Chapter 48 sees the introduction of a few new characters, such as the individuals acting as Ahab’s contingency plan against mutiny, as well as a first look at what whaling entails for the crew. Nathaniel Philbrick’s comment about how Moby-Dick could allow aliens to understand 1800’s whaling makes sense, at last!
I feel the need to make a point that it is very clear that Ishmael has a type – first his loving descriptions of Queequeg, then the way that he described Daggoo and Flask on the whaling ship:
“But the sight of little Flask mounted upon the 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, the flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. 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 I have seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.” (241)
While Flask is described as one might describe a princess or a child – impatient, little, ostentatious – Daggoo is described with words synonymous with nobility – indifferent, lordly, majesty, noble. While Flask is the leader of the boat, the one that is urging the men and calling the shots, Daggoo is painted as the reliable, quick thinking, and sturdy man that ensures it continues.
It seems that any moment we meet a new character with darker skin, we find ourselves given an in-depth description of the way that they carry themselves and the continence of their brow. Yet many of the cast that are white or in power remain faceless within the crew of the Pequod, save Ahab. This reinforces the narrative that Melville was presenting us – that whiteness is absence, that the war that was building at the time was senseless, and that slavery exists for little men to feel as though they have power beyond themselves.
I wanted to see if I could post these to make it so that Professor Pressman wouldn’t have to keep emailing people who ask for it – the link is glitched in the Reading/Work Schedule tab.
I saved them into my Google Drive, hope this helps/works!
Herman Melville pulls from many sources of inspiration within his novel Moby Dick, or The Whale, such as Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allen Poe. Melville’s tonal shift on page 42 belies a horror element within the story, creating tension and a sense of foreboding. This is both amplified by the context of the scene – Ishmael visiting a chapel and seeing marble placards for lost whalers – and the placement within the story – it is before we are introduced to Ahab, the Pequod, or even Moby Dick. Employing our ineffable narrator Ishmael, Melville asks the reader to critically engage with the concept of complicit faith.
While utilizing techniques such as foreshadowing early within the novel, the tonal shift into horror comes at the end of Chapter 7, The Chapel. When faced with the mortality entailed with the job he sought by way of several marble tablets on display in the church, Ishmael goes into a mental reverie, stating, “How is it that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like the jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope” (42). This passage uses clear and plain language to instill the reader with his message.
Beginning first with the personal response with grief, he comments on how religion itself is meant to be some kind of comfort. Despite this, religion does not truly ease the loss or suffering of those left behind – “we still refuse to be comforted.” He continues with the innate response of the grieving: “why all the living so strive to hush all the dead,” to not hold their words or actions against them and remember them as “the best” of themselves. Yet, or perhaps because of this, people do not want to know the truth beyond the grave. Were someone to come back to tell of their death, it would unsettle rather than bring comfort.
The mystery of death feeds the perceived comfort. The fear of the unknown is what lives at the root of fears such as nyctophobia (fear of the dark) or thalassophobia (fear of deep bodies of water). Humanity can never know for sure what awaits us after death, if anything. They must persist beyond the flood, dreaming of rewards and “unspeakable bliss.” The line with the strongest horror tone, “But Faith, like the jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope” (42), stands as a paragraph of its own on the page; this emphasizes the importance that Melville places on the line. This is where the built up shift happens.
By capitalizing “Faith,” Melville changes the concept into a character within the novel. This implies that the concept may exhibit human characteristics, such as a duplicitous nature or that it can be any number of things within the text. Further illustrating this point, he compares Faith to a jackal, a wild dog of Africa that feeds on carrion, game, and fruit that is known to hunt in packs. Much like the Raven in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, which acts as a kind of supernatural emissary that has come to crush the narrator’s hopes of ever being reunited with his beloved Lenore in heaven, Faith as a jackal is used to embody the dread that has begun to grow within Ishmael despite his reluctance to pay it mind.
In the final part of that small paragraph, Ishmael circles back to the beginning ideal presented: “even these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope” (42). Contextually, this is in direct reference to the line “those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss” (42). Despite Faith being the creature that takes the prayers and feeds among the tombs, Faith is also the reason for the maintained belief that those lost are in a better place. The ineffable nature of belief is that it comforts as much as it confounds. It exists beyond interpretation, beyond explanation. It is the other side of that fear of the unknown.
Noticing moments such as this in the text is imperative to understanding the story being told. To quote Melville, “All these things are not without their meanings.” (42); tonal shifts, perspective changes, and historical information are all integral to comprehending the text as a whole. Being able to recognize when the story shifts into horror, romance, or action, understanding the underlying reason behind these shifts, and applying them to one’s interpretation of the novel teaches the reader how to read Moby Dick. Beyond that, Melville is showing the readers to critically engage with beliefs – by personifying faith itself and providing it with a description rooted in horror, it forces the reader to come to terms with complicit faith and a lack of personal thought. This theme will be strengthened upon Ishmael’s voyage on the Pequod, where the lines of personal identity and fanatical belief become skewed by the terrifying charisma of Captain Ahab. Beginning the novel with moments like this acts as the foundation for our understanding of relationships built later in the novel.
With the malleable way that Ishmael tells the story of Moby-Dick or The Whale, I’ve tried to pay particular attention to the moments when he shifts from addressing a general audience without pronouns to the moments when he addresses the specific “you.” Once again, he returned to this form of address, on the second paragraph of page 172:
“And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch his head. Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.”
There were a couple of terms that I needed to look into to better understand the passage, which were:
Phædon is a defense of the simplicity and immortality of the soul, according to Moses Mendelssohn’s book of the same name. He was a Jewish Philosopher in the 1700’s.
Bowditch – referencing a mathematician, astronomer, and navigator, Nathaniel Bowditch, who was prominent in the early 1800’s.
Unlike in Chapter 3, when he was taking “you” the audience on a tour of the Spouter-Inn, this time is more of a moment of him addressing a specific kind of “you” the audience – anyone who might someday own or operate a whaling vessel. The simplest way to boil down this passage is to say, “don’t hire people who think a lot to do jobs where they are required to pay close attention to their surroundings, they will become lost in thought and lose you considerable money in the process.” Perhaps the most interesting part of this is that, for all of his talk of needing to go to sea to lose his personal melancholy, he’s literally describing himself as the worst hire for this type of job.
Ishmael continues to be an unreliable narrator, a person that we should not consider an authority about whaling despite all of the research that he does and the knowledge he continues to impart on us. He is telling us that this is a job he should not have done – this was his first job on a whaling ship, he was inexperienced and barely able to succeed in joining the crew. At best, he’s an extra set of hands. For all his talk of country dandies, he is no better than the people he admonished.
Melville presents the readers with an aversion to Christianity, presented frequently throughout the text by the relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael. Starting all the way back in Chapter 3 with the line, “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” (26), he spends much of the chapters proceeding it focusing on the kind of man that Queequeg is and the way that he treats Ishmael as well as others surrounding them. Despite having three chapters focused on the importance of religion and practices, they are still dotted with the presence of Queequeg and internal dialogue such as “but Faith, like the jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope,” (42).
Christianity is painted as opportunistic, almost parasitic in the way that it prays on the fears, doubts, and hopes of the sailors and their families in New Bedford. “…few are the moody fisherman, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the (Whaleman’s Chapel). I am sure that I did not” (39). Each person is compelled to attend the weekly sermon, one way or another, and not even Ishmael is able to avoid it. Yet later, when he is observing Queequeg, he makes another startling statement: “I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy” (57).
Perhaps there will be a time when we understand Ishmael’s continued heretical talk against the religion that he claims he was born into (58), but as of now Queequeg is painted as an innocent, sweet man who is alien to the culture he lives amongst yet willing still to respect and attempt to understand it – which is more than can be said of Christians in relation to religions outside of their own.
At last, we have begun the journey of Ahad, narrated by Ishmael, told by Herman Melville. Prefacing the novel itself is the Etymology and Extracts sections, lovingly composed with information regarding whales and their importance to literature throughout time. The first thing that struck me when reading through the excerpts provided was the idea of how much longer it would be had it been written today as opposed to the 1800’s. Would there have been a companion collection instead? Would it have included transcriptions from the scripts that are read during whale watching excursions? Would it have included information about the Orcas and other whales that are intentionally capsizing ships around the world? What about moments from serialized shows or episodes from Dimension20’s NeverAfter storyline when they fought the whale from Pinnoccio’s story?
Perhaps it would have included all of the above examples, as it had included missives such as “Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them” (xliii). Unsurprisingly, an excerpt from Owen Chase’s account of the Essex was included – a dramatic line, though with little description of the whale itself. The most stunning edition, in my opinion, was the inclusion of J. Ross Brown’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, 1846. Some part of me had always wondered if the phrase “Thar she blows!” came from Moby Dick, as it is ubiquitous with whales to this day. The inclusion of this excerpt both disproves that notion and shows that the phrase further predates the novel by a few years at least.
Beyond the preface, into the beginning, the first chapter truly left me thinking deeply about the novel we were embarking on. Within the first page, I had more questions than I had started. Ishmael treats voyaging out to sea as though it is both a necessity and a means to keep himself from depression. “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul…then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can” (3). Was this a common form of escapism at the time – a way to change your scenery and improve your moods? Did those who suffer from depression tend to go to sea as a means of improving their mental health? How many more died at sea due to their depression worsening with the extreme isolation? Many questions without answers.
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.
