Tag Archives: Midterm Essay

The Gilder: Let Faith Oust Fact; Let Fancy Oust Memory

Posted on by
Reply

Starbuck had been an adversary for Ahab throughout the novel, but as the voyage progressed, Starbuck could only rely on hopeful illusions to face the noxious reality. In Chapter 114, The Gilder, Melville’s use of forceful diction and stark contrasts reveals how humans cling to imagination to cope with horrifying truths.

Melville uses forceful diction to show Starbuck’s coping mechanisms. On page 535, Melville wrote in Starbuck’s perspective, “‘Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!—Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways.’” “Loveliness unfathomable” tells of Starbuck wanting to believe in a positive outcome, and “Tell me not of–” tells of the truths Starbuck wants to reject; the facts that have been happening. He wants to forget and go home, a common coping mechanism for people with trauma.

Melville uses stark contrasts to show Starbuck’s mental state. He wrote Starbuck to explicitly say this because Starbuck was holding on to what little hope he had left. On page 535, Starbuck continued, “‘Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.’” The contrasts, especially the last line, paints Starbuck’s psychological struggle and reliance on imagination. The word “oust” here means to remove, meaning Starbuck wants to replace fact with faith, and memory with “fancy”. Perhaps here, fancy means imagination, and in this case, Starbuck is saying he’d rather believe in faith and imagination than accept fact and memory. This ties into the religious context, where believing that a mental construct exists feels more satisfying than facing reality. 

Melville’s use of diction and contrasts highlights Starbuck’s mentality. The diction had shown Starbuck’s conviction with his iron-willed beliefs. The contrasts between faith/fancy and fact/memory show not only the internal conflict in Starbuck’s morals, but also how he wants to be a good man in a world of cruelty. Applicably, people in real life struggle more in living with fact and memory than believing themselves in faith and imagination.

Essay 1: Authority, Self-Awareness, and Obsession

Posted on by
Reply

In the 19th century, authority at sea was absolute. The captains had the say in everything, and this unchecked power was a matter of life or death. Being able to lead means understanding your people’s capabilities, and in a whaling ship, the boat’s life are the shipmates, like organs in a body. As the brain, Ahab from Moby-Dick knows this, but instead, he uses his position to satisfy his vengeance and obsession. When Starbuck questioned Ahab’s pursuit, Ahab saw it as a motivation. He calls himself “demoniac” and “madness maddened,” revealing his self-awareness as part of his insanity rather than a barrier. Ahab turns his madness into justification for his actions as captain.

Ahab’s self-awareness enables his rationality to make obsessive decisions, turning his authority as captain into an outlet for vengeance. In chapter 37, Sunset, Ahab was sitting alone in his cabin, staring out the windows, when he pondered, “They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!” (Melville, p. 183). The sentence “They think me mad—Starbuck does…” shows Ahab acknowledging how people see his craziness, but instead of denying it, he redefines it. By saying, “I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened!” he is claiming a higher, almost supernatural-like, form of madness. Melville’s choice of using repetition and the word “demoniac” shows how Ahab consciously justifies his abuse of authority with madness. He portrays how someone under emotional obsession can be dangerous regardless of clarity. In the phrase, ”That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself,” that calmness is not sanity but a moment of control inside insanity. Ahab acknowledges the chaos he controls rather than resists. He understands he became the embodiment of absurdity, insanity, vengeance, and obsession, and he lets it all define him. Such madness isn’t blinding Ahab; it sharpens his vision. He clearly sees what he’s doing and he still chooses destruction.

What does that have to do with life or death? Simple: if madness himself is the brain, the rest of the body is obliged to follow it. You are reading this essay because you want to understand my insight, and just now you may have been wondering what authority, obsession, and self-awareness have to do with anything, or maybe you just came here to find something to talk about in the reply section. Whatever your reason for being here, you wouldn’t have been able to if your fingers, blood, and/or nervous system refused to obey. The same goes with captains: their team, or in the context of Moby Dick, their crew would not be able to do anything without a voice to follow. However, there would be a little voice in the mind that goes against their wishes. For Ahab, that little voice of reason is Starbuck. When Ahab thought, “They think me mad–Starbuck does,” he isn’t rejecting the warning. This is the first domino to fall before the ship’s fate: as the more these two bicker, the higher chance the ship would split before Moby Dick the whale is back in the action. This reveals how obsession overrides reason and sets the crew to an inevitable downfall. The type of captain matters far more than being charismatic, and much like the captains, leadership in the historical and modern context are just as vulnerable to emotions.

During that time, royalty and those that could taste that similar power were often indulging in said power. Melville’s warning still resonates today: a leader driven by obsession leads their followers to ruin. Our politics, our social circles, our families, our social media circles like influencers, there is a reason why there are followers. For Captain Ahab, his followers are the crew of the Pequod, and with one incentive, he managed to convert regular sailors and whalehunters into soldiers to do his bidding. This is what Melville criticizes about authority: awareness without restraint, paired with obsession, is just another form of power that can destroy the very people meant to be protected.

Essay 1

Posted on by
Reply

Herman Melville’s multicultural crew of the Pequod is often read as an allegory for the culturally diverse melting pot that is the United States of America. If anything is to be deemed an accurate representation of our nation, it’s bound to include the same types of inequalities that have plagued our entire historical record; Moby Dick excels in this portrayal. In presenting the crew of the Pequod through a medieval caste in “Knights and Squires”, Melville highlights the hierarchical system of whale ships to expose the inequity of systems rooted in America.

The shared title of Chapter 26 and Chapter 27, “Knights and Squires”, already plants this idea of separation between the knight and their attending squire. The mates Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, white men from Nantucket, Cape Cod, and Tisbury, assume the position of knight. Each of these knights has under them a squire, the “savages” Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo, all more physically capable and reliable as the main support to their commanding officers. Despite the camaraderie needed to properly function in this violent and vital industry, this distinction between the leading white men and their subordinates denies them equal status.

This dynamic extends to the rest of the unnamed crew and many other American industries as well:  

“As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles” (Melville 131).

This is a very important aspect for Melville to give emphasis to, reminding us who it was that labored the most in the founding of our country. Though “not one in two of the many thousand men” in the whaling industry were born in America, in other words immigrants, most of them never received the title of officer nor the benefits aligned with someone who put in the most effort. In the specific case of the Pequod, we are never given the names of a majority of the crew who keep the ship operating; they don’t receive the focus that is given to their king Ahab, his knights Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, and even their squires Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. At the bottom of the ladder, most of them do not receive proper recognition despite their importance in maintaining the ship, akin to the enslaved of 1850s America, unrecognized as humans to the highest degree, stripped of their rights, yet expected to provide the labor needed to maintain the growth of the nation.  

It isn’t enough for Melville to just point out this disparity in the whaling industry, as he directly cites the same structure in the “American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads”. These foundational industries that served to protect and expand the American nation ran off of the same design that let the mass contributors go unnoticed and unappreciated while the ones in charge received all of the attention and glory. Despite the majority of employees in these industries being immigrants, they were used in service of further increasing the white man’s position with the conquering of Mexican land and expansion towards the West. They were the ones that made it possible, but the end goal was never in favor of them.   

If the power dynamic wasn’t clear enough, Melville then uses language very effectively to show who is respected and who is not: “in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles”. In deliberately leaving native uncapitalized, Melville directly shows us the replacement of the Native American by the white man, claiming the term for themselves. Liberally is another interesting choice of word here because, though it could be read as the “native American” providing the brains out of generosity, the more likely application is that it is a loose assumption that they should be the ones to provide the brains. This is due to the immediate use of generously in reference to the supply of muscles that is the “rest of the world”. Read in this way, Melville brings to question the legitimacy of the white man as the brains and everyone else as the muscle to challenge the structures of the American whaling industry, army, navy, and the Canal and Railroad construction companies.

All of this culminates in the fact that the industries imperative to the growth of our nation were established with hierarchical systems that placed one group, the white man, above the rest who were not even deemed worthy of recognition. In the context of 1850s America, specifically in the increased national attention towards slavery and the continued westward expansion, Melville draws attention to the structures behind the categorization of humans as more or less and breaks down the reasoning of these systems to show how unreliable they are. Why should the native American receive the title of knight and officer while the Native American who does most of the work is just the squire? Is the rest of the world, who so generously supply the muscles, denied recognition simply because they’re not American born, despite that being the groundwork of our nation?

While a chain of command is a necessity to keep a ship running properly, the discriminatory design prevents the equal treatment of everyone on the ship. From our country’s inception to the present, this established hierarchy has been used by those in power to ignore and vilify the ones before the mast, the ones that keep our nation afloat.  

Midterm Close Reading Essay #1: Of Horror & Faith

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Midterm Essay – Restoration and Reconciliation found on the Ocean

Posted on by
Reply

(Spoilers ahead for the end of the novel! I have read it before, so I know how it ends.) 

When reading through Moby Dick these past few weeks, the following quote stood out not only to me, but to many of my classmates as well, and that’s for a good reason. In Chapter 35, The Mast-Head, Melville writes, “There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you . . . “ (pg. 169). This passage immediately caught my attention because of how calm and dreamlike it feels. It evokes a sense of peace and surrender, which contrasts sharply with the restless energy Ishmael displays at the start of the novel. 

Ishmael’s description of the calm, dreamlike sea reveals his emerging sense of peace and self-acceptance, contrasting his earlier depression while on land. Through this scene, Melville illustrates how the ocean serves as a place of restoration and reconciliation for Ishmael, showing the sea’s power to restore balance and quiet inner turmoil.

This moment of “languor” gains significance when read against Ishmael’s earlier restlessness, highlighting the sea’s power to still what once was chaotic within him. In particular, the growth he has had when it comes to his mental health. The following quote, from Chapter 1, extremely contrasts with the one from Chapter 35. “I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball”(pg. 1).  Essentially, the sea is an alternative to suicide for Ishmael.

By the time we reach Chapter 35, however, there’s a noticeable change in tone. The sea, once a vast and potentially threatening force, now acts as healing for Ishmael. The stillness of the water and the gentle rhythm of the waves mirror an inner calm that he tends to find while away at sea- and that’s going to be interrupted very soon by Ahab. In particular, the phrase “everything resolves you into languor” suggests a sort of peaceful surrender. A letting go of tension and restlessness that he feels while on land. It feels like he’s finally learning to be at ease with himself and his surroundings.

I would argue that this passage represents Ishmael emerging from his depression through his time spent at sea. The ocean becomes a space of restoration and reconciliation for him, allowing him to detach from the pressures and anxieties of life on land. This moment feels like a rare glimpse of tranquility, a moment where Ishmael’s soul seems to align with the rhythm of the world around him as he describes life at sea to the reader.

  Melville’s opening image of being “lost on the infinite series of the sea” evokes both physical vastness and psychological release, dissolving Ishmael’s boundaries of self. “infinite series” has mathematical and philosophical connotations that suggest endless continuity, emphasizing the sea’s rhythm. The phrase positions Ishmael between individuality and dissolution: an identity expanded by losing its limits, like the ocean, which appears to be endless from his point of view. And consider the tone. It’s gentle, almost reverent rather than fearful. While the ocean, and what lies within, is life-threatening, because Ishmael and sailors in general spent so much time looking out at the “infinite series of the sea”, they have plenty of time to not reflect internally. Also, Melville’s rhythmic phrasing, such as long vowels and soft consonants, imitates the waves and motion of the ocean. While there are exceptions, most days spent at sea are boring and uneventful. This seemingly bland image marks the first step of transformation in Ishmael, and in the reader. His ego and mind loosen into something infinite and cyclical, just like the ocean itself.

Also,  Melville’s imagery of the “trance ship” and “drowsy trade winds” extends the hypnotic atmosphere, creating a world governed by rhythm rather than will. This can specifically be seen through Melville’s use of adjectives such as “tranced,” “indolent,” and “drowsy”. Each suggests stillness through motion slowed to an almost meditative pace. The long vowels require repetition of soft consonants such as “r,” “w,” and “l”. Each of these imitates the rocking motion of the ship, just as the opening phrasing does. Additionally, Melville’s use of semi-colons creates pauses that mimic breathing or waves. Ultimately, the rhythm of these word choices and phrasing creates a beautiful pacing and tone that imitates the environment in which the book is set – the ocean. Melville also uses “tranced” to imply consciousness suspended between waking and dreaming. It is relaxed, unlike the outside world, which causes Ishmael to have depression. The boring yet beautiful repetitiveness of the ocean allows Ishmael to escape from his depression and anxiety caused by the constant chaos of land life. Ishmael going out to sea is a titular example of escapism. Melville ends up rendering the sea not as chaotic as the land, but as harmoniously self-sustaining, a world in which the problems of the outside world melt away.

Even the final line, “everything resolves you into languor,” captures the culmination of Ishmael’s surrender: an erasure of tension that borders on spiritual healing. For example, Melville’s use of “resolves” suggests both musical harmony and an emotional release, or a resolution of dissonance Ishmael was feeling at the beginning of the novel. Also, within this phrase he uses “you”, using second person to bring the reader into the scene, and helping them imagine what it was like to spend time away at sea, and specifically on the mast head. It also expands on the informational tone of the book, teaching the reader what it was like to be a whaler in the 19th century. On the other hand, the word choice of “languor” also helps bring across this point. Standing at the mast head doesn’t cause boredom or laziness but brings about a tranquil ease, a peace born from acceptance of the reality sailors were in, and the isolation they had away from the outside world. Also, the use of the phrase “everything resolves you”, implies passivity. Ishmael, and the reader, through a second person pov, yields to the  forces beyond himself, to the ocean waves and the creatures within. 

Also, the use of “sublime endlessness” once again captures both the beauty and terror of the sea’s vastness. The word sublime suggests something awe-inspiring yet overwhelming: a scale beyond human comprehension. By pairing it with “endlessness,” Melville evokes a space that both humbles and liberates Ishmael and the reader. The ocean’s infinite expanse mirrors the boundlessness of the human mind when freed from society’s constraints, allowing Ishmael to lose himself and find peace in his insignificance within the vastness of the ocean. It transforms the sea into a spiritual landscape, one in which awe and fear coexist, and where Ishmael, and by proxy, the reader themself, can momentarily dissolve into something greater than themself.This passage also anticipates Ishmael’s survival at the end of the novel. When the Pequod sinks and all the crew are consumed by Ahab’s mania, Ishmael alone endures, floating upon Queequeg’s coffin in the vast, indifferent sea. 

What makes this passage even more profound is how it anticipates Ishmael’s survival at the end of the novel. When the Pequod sinks and all are consumed by Ahab’s mania, Ishmael alone endures—floating upon Queequeg’s coffin in the vast, indifferent sea. This moment on the masthead, then, is more than a brief pause before the storm; it is a foreshadowing of Ishmael’s eventual acceptance of his smallness within the universe. By learning early on to yield to the sea rather than fight against it, he develops the spiritual resilience that later allows him to survive. His earlier surrender to “languor” becomes a metaphorical rehearsal for the ultimate surrender he must perform at the novel’s end—trusting himself once more to the ocean’s rhythm. Thus, Melville transforms what seems like a quiet interlude into the emotional and philosophical core of Moby-Dick: a meditation on survival, humility, and the redemptive power of letting go.

This moment on the masthead, then, is more than a brief pause before the storm. It is a foreshadowing of Ishmael’s eventual acceptance of his smallness within the ocean, and, by proxy, the universe itself. By learning early on to yield to the sea rather than fight against it, he develops the resilience that later allows him to survive. His surrender to “languor” becomes a metaphorical rehearsal for the ultimate surrender he must perform at the novel’s end, once again trusting himself to the ocean’s rhythm. 

Thus, Melville transforms what seems like a quiet interlude into the emotional and philosophical core of Moby-Dick: a meditation on survival, humility, and the redemptive power of letting go. He distills the paradox of Moby-Dick: the ocean as both destroyer and healer, chaos and calm. Ultimately, we can see one of Melville’s many points within the novel through it –  how peace arises not through mastery or perfection, but through surrender to nature’s vast rhythm. His spiritual and reflective tone causes momentary transcendence before the novel’s later descent into Ahab’s obsession with the whale and the chaos that follows.