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.
In the book MobyDick, author Herman Melville uses the development of human relations to critique American society as a whole, building off the inability to determine differences between races and ethnicities to create a nation that is incomplete in its understanding of one another. Throughout Moby Dick, the reader can see the tension or heartfelt companionship between different characters, most of their relations quite intriguing when compared to the time. Most notable is the relationship between the narrator, Ishmael – a white, middle-class, Presbyterian Christian – and Queequeg, a black, Pagan cannibal. Melville uses the evolution of Ishmael and Queequeg’s relationship to illustrate how curiosity and lack of fear of the unknown serve as a fundamental factor in personal growth and the bettering of the United States as a nation built on ignorance, showing how a willingness to understand what is unfamiliar to a person can transform ignorance and prejudice into mutual understanding and respect.
Chapter four of the book is the most notable for the strange and rather rushed companionship between Ishmael and Queequeg, though it is not the focus of this essay. The narrator’s lack of information regarding his new roommate at the Spouter Inn dissolves into a state of pure panic; who could this man be? A murderer? A savage? Of what race or occupation could he have been? With little information on who Queequeg actually was – even the lack of his name earlier in the book – Ishmael resorts to outbursts of fear and anger, demanding to know who he is to be roomed with. Upon reveal, his own prejudice in regards to black individuals and cannibals from never-before-seen islands of the South Pacific Ocean, Ishmael cannot help but be both terrorized and enraged. Though very subtle, concerning the time in which Moby Dick was written, the United States was divided based on race and slavery. The North and the South were at odds with what to do about runaway slaves, and whether the new states occupied through Westward Expansion were to be turned into free or slave states. Newbedford, Massachusetts, where Ishmael and Queequeg first met, was a free state, but with the consequences of the Fugitive Slave Act circulating at that time, tensions between white and black individuals were at an all-time high. With historical context, we can see where Ishmael’s fear stems from – from the unknown identity of his roommate, and later, the realization that Queequeg was an uncivilized, black cannibal.
From this lack of understanding of who and what Queequeg actually was stemmed a guttural sense of curiosity within Ishmael. The simple nature of observing Queequeg and his actions – the way he walks, dresses, his tattoos, his Pagan idolatry towards Yojo (the small doll he carries with him and seemingly worships), and his speech – began to break down the barriers of ignorance that separated Ishmael and Queequeg into various categories. Queequeg states in Chapter thirteen, “It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians” (pp. 68). The much-needed development of the United States, to Melville, should be built on a mutual understanding of one another, not the categorization and segregation of white from the “other”. To Queequeg, we all all human, and despite the initial introduction between him and Ishmael, the curiosity shown between the two of them has developed into a mutual understanding and respect for each other. Melville uses this development in their relationship to critique to ignorance of the United States, founded on the lack of understanding of what makes white superior to other races, and condemning our nation to a future of further ignorance as it grows into the idea of fear of the unknown. We fear what we lack knowledge of, whether it be the depths of the ocean or the idea that we are all the same, regardless of our race.
What makes the quote above so intriguing within the book is that prior, Queequeg is overwhelmed with a “profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people happier” (62), only to learn that the glorious nation of the United States and its Christian citizens were in fact so backwards in their ways of thinking and understanding one another that they should instead learn from the cannibals. Ironic to think about: Christians learning from the ways of cannibals, a group demonized and referred to as uncivilized and dangerous, not only for their race, but for their culture. The lack of knowledge of Queequeg and his people instilled a fear towards them, one that makes Ishmael and his relationship so out of the ordinary to most. Their relationship is a direct reflection of what Melville hopes the United States to become: an accepting, knowledgeable nation built on the mutual respect and understanding of different peoples, not one that is separated based on race, and the idea that white is superior to all else.
The latter idea alone can be torn from its pedestal under the singular quote that Queequeg believes white Christians should learn from the group they despise to return to a place of unity over division. Moby Dick, while encompassing numerous allegories and references to the foundation of our society and nation, focuses on how the lack of knowledge and understanding of oneself and others can form a rift from which we develop as a nation into an ignorant and fearful people.
As I was reading through chapter 44, I came across this passage, which perfectly encompasses how much Ahab was truly obsessed with the whale he calls Moby Dick. Ahab describes the whale as if he knew the whale personally, and I thought that this bit shows how he has truly made hunting down this whale his entire personality and part of his life.
“That in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? No. For the peculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries-tallied him, and shall he escape?” Chapters 44
Amidst the vast ocean, Ahab was in sight of one whale, which caused him to lose a part of himself, which then caused him to want to take vengeance upon the massive creature for the pain that he went through. That piercing whiteness of the whale, he will never forget, and will be part of how he can identify Moby Dick out traversing the seas. He knows the anatomy of this whale whale so well that it has been haunting him ever since. This causes him to even believe that he can spot the menacing white whale even if he is trying to blend in with other sperm whales that could be traveling nearby.
He details the anatomy of the whale, which he could spot from and knows is his nemesis, in the blink of an eye. The vengeance that is built up in him as he has traveled the oceans seeking out Moby Dick, with the marks he has left on him in the past encounters, to identify the creature to hunt him down to kill him. Ahab, with his charts, knows where this whale has gone, and he can still know this whale apart from the rest, and the image of this large ocean creature has not left his mind since that first sighting.
Ahab has shown us that his dedication to seeking out Moby Dick to kill him has the same mentality as when someone says I put my heart and soul into it. He has dedicated his life to hunting down this whale, and now he has encouraged his crew of the Pequod to help him seek out his ocean nemesis.
In Chapter 35, “The Mast-Head,” Ishmael reflects on the uncanny stillness and spiritual isolation that comes from the high above the ship as a whale lookout. He starts turn the tone very philosophical and more about the consciousness of the human mind. In the quote, “but lulled into such such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thought, that at last he loses his identity…” (172) , he’s describing on how the watcher drifts away from its own consciousness and starts to separate from himself, basically losing his identity. Melville starts to use poetic imagery and philosophical views for us to see on how isolation can mirror the human struggle of awareness and illusions. It demonstrates on how Ishmael’s calm yet warning tone can see the meaning of searching for whales, but how it can lead to excellence or destruction.
It’s scary on how it can be easy to disconnect yourself and others in moments where you start feeling vulnerable. I’ve felt like when life starts getting hard and so my mind starts to wonder off to those thoughts, but then I start to reflect on the positives in order for me to seek the good things I have encountered in my life.
In chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” Melville almost literalizes the phrase “speak of the devil.” After Ahab said that he would reward the sailor who saw a white whale matching Moby Dick’s description, Ahab commanded, “Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.” Shortly thereafter, the harpooners Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg spotted the white whale Ahab had described. Ahab’s phrasing also felt as if he were summoning the whale itself, like he knew it was there. The sequence of events mirrors the phrase “speak of the devil” because almost immediately after Ahab described it, Moby Dick appeared. In other words, Melville turned a familiar phrase into a narrative device.
In Chapter 36, The Quarter-Deck, it is noticeable to the reader that Ahab is blindly seeking revenge against Moby Dick for the loss of his leg. I use the word “blindly” in a broad manner, not just referring to Ahab’s dismissal of danger and death of himself while seeking out Moby Dick, but also for that of his crew. As Ahad gathers the crew around in a sort of sacrificial toast, the text reads, “…the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on their head in the trail of this bison; but alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian” (179)
Thinking realistically, wolves are keen and expert hunters, reflecting Ahab and the crew’s years of experience as whalers and harpooners. However, blinded by the bloodthirsty revenge to kill Moby Dick, Ahab is set to fall into the hands of the very thing he seeks out, or the inhabitants that live alongside them. While the rest of the crew blindly submits to Ahab’s orders to hunt down and kill Moby Dick, Starbuck is the only character who noticeably resists Ahab’s vengeful and problematic proposal. But, like the loyalty of a pack of wolves following their leader in a hunt, Starbuck submits to the will of his captain, allowing for the safety of himself and his crewmates to be jeopardized for the sake of bloodthirsty vengeance.
At the end of Chapter 35, “The Mast-Head,” Ishmael closes his reflection on watchkeeping with a haunting sentence: “There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship: by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.” (Melville 173) It’s a moment that collapses the sailor’s physical existence into a more spiritual chain of dependence. Melville ties the ship, sea, and God together in a rhythm that both sustains and erases individuality.
This line captures how Moby-Dick constantly blurs the line between the material and the metaphysical. Ishmael is speaking of the literal rocking of the ship, but the repetition of “by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God” transforms that motion into a meditation on creation as well as power. Life is described not as something self-contained and private but more as something borrowed, a gift moving through layers of being: from the divine to the ocean, from the ocean to the ship, and finally into Ishmael himself. The chain of dependence reveals human fragility. Our very existence rests on something vast, shifting, and very unknowable.
At the same time, there’s comfort in the image. The “gently rolling ship” gives an almost peacefulness to Ishmael’s isolation, and the sea becomes a living intermediary between man and God. He is never alone when he’s on the ocean. Yet Melville’s phrasing, such as “inscrutable tides,” reminds us that this connection is mysterious, even dangerous. The same tides that lend life also take it away. I think that Ishmael’s meditation at the masthead mirrors one of the novel’s central paradoxes: the ocean as both cradle and grave, revelation and oblivion.
I believe that this passage suggests that life at sea, and perhaps all human life, exists in a state of borrowed motion. The “rocking life” is not something Ishmael, or any of us, owns; it passes through, over, and around him like the tide. Melville leaves us with a vision of existence that is deeply dependent and deeply uncertain. A quiet acknowledgment in the novel that whatever life gives us, it is never fully ours to keep.
In Chapter 23, “The Lee Shore,” Ishmael pauses to reflect on the paradox of safety and danger, using the image of a ship struggling against the wind: “The port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, and all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale……the one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.” (Melville 116) This passage captures Melville’s fascination with the tension between the comfort of home and the perilous freedom of the open sea. On the surface, Ishmael seems to pity the ship for having to turn away from warmth and companionship, but beneath that pity, I think lies admiration. Admiration for the ship’s strong refusal to yield to safety. The repeated p sounds in “port,” “pitiful,” and “peril” emphasize the actual physical struggle of resistance, almost mimicking the ship’s heaving motion in the storm.
Melville’s language transforms the sea into a kind of moral testing ground. The ship, personified as a living being, “fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward.” (Melville 116) It’s as if the forces of nature, which normally symbolize comfort, normalcy, and even mortality, try to push her back to safety, but she seemingly continues to reject them. Her “refuge’s sake” lies not in reaching the shore, but in being able to escape it. The paradox here is striking: the ship seeks survival through danger, finds peace in motion, and calls her “bitterest foe” (the sea) her “only friend.” I believe that Melville’s phrasing suggests that true existence, or what Ishmael later calls “the highest truth,” can only be found in defiance of stillness and complacency.
What’s really remarkable about this moment is how it extends beyond the image of the ship. The passage feels like a challenge from Melville to his readers: to question the value of safety and to consider whether comfort dulls our vitality. The port, with its “warm blankets” and “friends,” represents the easy life of certainty and convention within society. The ship, meanwhile, embodies the actual human soul that refuses to settle, even when that refusal means pain or destruction. Melville’s use of the word “forlornly” conveys both sorrow and beauty, showing that this restless search is lonely but necessary to grow.
By turning a simple nautical scene into a full-blown philosophical allegory, Melville continues to show that he makes the sea a mirror for human experience. To live meaningfully, he suggests, is to sail “offshore,” to face the unknown with courage even when the winds seem to demand our retreat. The ship’s struggle against being blown homeward becomes a symbol of human endurance, a strong insistence that the comfort of safety can never compare to the freedom found in risk.
