Tag Archives: Rayne Lambert

Final Essay – Vain Unity within the Pequod and the U.S.

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 In Moby Dick, Herman Melville uses the Pequod’s doomed voyage as a consequence of vain unity throughout the novel. The inability to unite under rational judgment and respect for autonomy shows how Ahab’s monomaniacal leadership, the crew’s coerced obedience, and the dismantled social order of the Pequod undermines possibilities of a collective goal – successful whaling, profit, and a safe communal voyage – that ultimately lead the entire crew towards destruction. These elements within the novel are direct parallels of tensions within the United States at the time Melville wrote the novel, a period marked by conflict over slavery, the deep-cutting erosion of democratic compromise, and the rise of extremist leadership – a time marked with the rise of division rather than cohesion. 

Throughout the novel, Melville frames the Pequod as a place of community and cooperation. Whaling voyages are a promise of shared labor, risk, and reward – an economic and social system dependent upon mutual trust and a collective goal. Ishmael initially views the ship as a kind of democracy, referring to it as a nation-state, which is populated by men of various backgrounds from across the globe whose labor surpasses the national and cultural differences amongst them all. However, this political pluralism is proven very fragile amidst the emergence of Ahab’s authoritarian rule over the Pequod and its crew, gradually undermining the ship’s communal structure and transforming the crew’s labor into coerced participation in his journey to kill the White Whale. What starts out as an enterprise built on cooperation and trust becomes a vessel of singular obsession of the White Whale, revealing how easily unity can be crushed under a centralized power. 

Ahab’s authority over the Pequod exemplifies how obsessive authority and leadership can dismantle a structuralized sense of unity for a lesser good. From the moment Ahab reveals his true intentions on leading the Pequod – to hunt down Moby Dick at any cost, even the cost of his and the crew’s lives – he then replaces the ship’s commercial purpose for his own personal vendetta. Ahab declares, “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks” (Melville, 165), insisting that Moby Dick represents a type of evil that must be condemned and killed at all costs. From this moment, the White Whale is framed as a metaphysical evil, elevating Ahab’s private obsession into a moral imperative. Many traditional Americanist readings portray Ahab as a figure of “totalitarian will”, whose authority tolerates nothing along the lines of dissent and demands absolute submission to his authority (Pease, 110). Captain Ahab’s leadership thus becomes abstract as well as totalitarian as resistance is pushed far from reach and considered a moral betrayal as the book progresses. However, Ahab’s power is not grounded solely in the consent of the crew, but also in his charisma, experience, and intimidation. His body consists of scars, a prosthetic, ivory leg, and prophetic rhetoric that renders him as an almost mythical presence in Ishmael’s eyes. Starbuck, the ship’s moral conscience, recognizes the danger of Ahab’s quest, calling it “blasphemous, monstrous” (Melville, 223), and yet is still the only character throughout Moby Dick who attempts to make a stand against Ahab. In the end, his moral clarity reigns ineffective through his repeated hesitation to confront Ahab and his refusal to kill him in the end when given the chance. It goes to prove that authoritarian unity can paralyze an individual’s better judgement and ethicality. In his writing, Melville suggests that when absolute allegiance is demanded of an authoritarian, morality alone cannot prevent the catastrophe of vain unity and leadership. 

The communal obedience of the Pequod’s crew further reveals dangers of unity when stripped of one’s physical and metaphysical autonomy. Though composed of men from diverse backgrounds, the sailors are gradually combined into a singular mess under Ahab’s will. The absorption of all of these diverse characters into a single wave of conscience occurs through a rather ritualized performance rather than a politically democratic agreement. When Ahab presents the doubloon to the crew, he nails the gold coin to the mass and invites the crew to interpret what they see or feel when observing the coin, yet each interpretation ultimately circles back to a singular sense of obsession despite the continual differences in interpretation per each man. This reinforces Ahab’s dominance over the crew, sealing their loyalty through an oath that institutes ritual submission: “Drink ye harpooners! Drink and swear” (Melville, 179). Arguably, such moments reveal how collective identity aboard the Pequod is manufactured rather than chosen, showing how authority converts difference into a type of submission (Pease, 119). Unity aboard the Pequod is less a result of shared values, as each member of the crew has their own reason for being aboard the ship in the first place, but rather of enforced allegiance. There is no chose for them to back out of the voyage so far in; once the voyage begins, it takes many years for them to return back home to Nantucket, if at all, leaving them to succumb to the will of their authoritarian captain and sustain the all-consuming goal of killing Moby Dick. Even Starbuck eventually succumbs, despite being more of a doubter and free-thinker throughout the novel, ultimately admitting, “I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too” (Melville, 227). Starbuck is a crucial character for presenting obedience as surrender rather than acceptance, exposing a sense of moral conflict without autonomy over one’s self.

 A social and moral order aboard the Pequod collapses, so does autonomy. The Pequod once acted as a microcosm of democratic labor and shared profit, one that upheld American economics and society, instead becoming a kind of dictatorship as the novel progresses, driven solely by the will of Captain Ahab. Ishmael states during the voyage, “Ahab was tyrannical; a tyrant in fact” (Melville, 214). This singular quote strips the novel of any romantic ambiguity surrounding Ahab’s leadership of the crew and their voyage overseas. “The collective enterprise is overtaken by a single dominating vision” (Buell, 136), dramatizing the collapse of national concord and abandoning the crew’s original purpose of successfully hunting whales and collecting spermaceti, leaving that sense of unity in a vain and destructive mess. Though the entirety of Moby Dick includes foreshadowing of the Pequod’s demise, the collapse of social order is the most prominent in ensuring its catastrophic end. The shipwreck in the final chapter is something that was inevitable since the moment Ahab made it known what his true intentions were. It produced a system that valued loyalty to the captain over rational judgment and accountability. Each crew member is a valid participant in the authoritarian rule, whether actively or passively, by helping to sustain such a problematic system and refusing to absolve it. Melville presents each character’s obedience as a moral choice shaped by power, one that cannot be excused as per the back-and-forth judgement and final submission of Starbuck. 

Melville’s critique of vain unity is reflective of the political climate of the United States in the 1850s. At the time, the nation was divided socially, economically, and politically over slavery and Westward Expansion, giving way to a sectional extremism. Situating Moby Dick within this historical moment in our history, it can be argued that its enduring relevance lies in the state’s refusal to resolve national contradictions into a single moral vision (Buell, 145), fueled instead by power and personal gain rather than communal agreement. Similarly, the transnational reading of Pease’s article challenges the assumption that American unity is inherently virtuous, revealing how appeals to cohesion often conceal domination (Pease, 112). Within Moby Dick, the Pequod thus becomes a warning to the reader, using allegory to state that unity pursued without reason or autonomy leads to destruction. 

Moby Dick  portrays the doomed voyage of the Pequod as a tragic, yet inevitable, outcome of vain unity, one that is corrupted by obsession and authoritarianism. Through Ahab’s monomaniacal rule, the crew’s coerced obedience, and the dismantled social order, Melville demonstrated how the suppression of rational and moral judgement and the erasure of an individual’s autonomy can undermine the success of a collective goal. He not only critiques Ahab’s monomaniacal leadership but also the political culture of his own nation in the 1850s by exposing the dangers of vain unity. Moby Dick successfully parallels the antebellum period within America, deepening the warning of lack of balance, structure, and communal morals ultimately leads us – whether aboard a ship or within the politics and society of our own nation – to ruin.

Works Cited

Buell, Lawrence. “The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick as Test Case.” American Literary History, vol. 20 no. 1, 2008, p. 132-155. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/233009

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick Or, the Whale. Edited by Andrew Delbanco, Penguin Books, 1992.

Pease, Donald. C. L. R. James, Moby Dick, and the Emergence of Transnational American Studies, John Hopkins University, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, Volume 56, Number 3, Autumn 2000, pp, 93-123.

Week 16 – Final Takeaways/So What?

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This class has definitely been a roller-coaster, yet one I have enjoyed every step of the way. Not only did this class enable me to further develop my skills in close-reading and reignite the fun of annotating books, but it has also helped my to read between the lines of a story. Not everything that makes Moby Dick what it is is stated outright in the novel, and yet, thanks to group discussions, everything seems so clear.

My final take away from Moby Dick and the class as a whole is the importance of interpretation and perspective. We are all approaching the novel from different angles, different backgrounds, forms of education, and the newest historical perspective. All of these factors are important as they shape the way an individual close reads a novel, whether having read it before or not, and what they might be drawn to within the book itself. Many of the parts I found extremely boring within the novel and left mostly unannotated were caked in notes and further developed in group discussions by others. It has made me value the importance of every interpretation, whether it be a scholarly critic or my classmate across the room. These different interpretations allow for different analysis of a specific text, creating a different approach to literary development and rhetorical analysis from not only an academic approach, but a cultural one as well. We have experienced a life that never before could have been imagined by people in the 1850s, and yet for the most part, the ideals that Herman Melville portrayed in his novel still have important relevance to all of us in 2025.

Moby Dick and the Antebellum Period – Week 15

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As was discussed numerous times during the semester, a big reason for Moby Dick “flopping” during its initial publication was because slavery alongside many of the topics that Herman Melville argues against were key factors that contributed to the social and economic aspects of the United States during that time. Moby Dick as a whole single-handedly dismantles the ideologies that the United States was built and founded upon and argues for more thoughts against these ideologies than for them, which is understandably a difficult thing for people (let alone an entire country) to grasp and work towards. Even now, with some readers of Moby Dick either not enjoying or arguing against the themes and topics that Melville incorporates into his novel, we can still see the difficulty in grasping how the United States “democracy” is not a democracy, and the overzealous and monomaniacal thinking of our president(s) contributes to a sheep-like mindset amongst the greater public, thus creating an institution that works against the United States and its people rather than for them. While reading the articles, the mention of the “American phenomenon” (Riegel, 7) made me realize how detrimental the single mindset and communal way of thinking has become for American people. We have already constructed a history that still impacts us to this day, and yet we continue to make some of the most subtle mistakes that were made in the past in present day that could lead us down a path of joint destruction just as Ahab and the crew aboard the Pequod lead themselves down.

Final Project Proposal

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For my final essay/project, I am going to discuss the issues of coerced obedience and vain unity within Moby Dick. I have not fully collected all of the chapters/sections I will be pulling from, but I know I will be using Ahab’s monomaniacal leadership and the idea of the Pequod as a “nation-state” as part of my evidence. Using these important themes throughout the novel, I intend to tie Melville’s underlying themes about the eroding democracy of the United States and the rise of extremist, centralized thinking within the states that leads to a greater division amongst the North and the South (and Africans and Europeans).

I am still deciding whether or not I just want to write a formal essay about my proposal or if I should bother with a creative piece to tie into it. I tend to take too much time on the creative aspects of a project rather than the writing itself, but I think a creative piece will really tie into my argument how the novel comes across to the reader, especially a reader of color who was both directly and indirectly affected by the horrendous acts of the United States during the late 19th century and somewhat (because this is a close reading and we are not focused on the now) how some of the themes are very applicable in current day.

Week 13 – Chapter 134

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Throughout the entire novel, Ahab has been portrayed as a lord, a God, or an almighty being high above the Pequod and its crew. In Chapter 134, the second day of the chase, Moby Dick has single-handedly torn down all notions of Ahab’s power (despite Ahab surviving). Moby Dick uses the harpoon lines against the crew, capsizing multiple boats and even killing the Parsee, Ahab’s dopple-ganger. He has singled out Ahab numerous times and snapped his ivory leg, leaving him mad, unstable, and reliant on the level-headed members of the crew. Ahab’s own madness and vengeful approach to Moby Dick stirred a rage inside the whale that will ultimately lead to his own downfall.

Above all of this, Ahab’s harpoon, bathed in Pagan blood and cursed in Latin, was told to be the one harpoon that could kill Moby Dick, had to be abandoned. Starbuck has talked of omens numerous times over the pages of the last few chapters, but in Chapter 134, we can see all the bad omens arising against Ahab alone; he will not succeed in his pursuit of killing Moby Dick – the whale is stronger and more adapt to maneuver the ocean and its elements in his favor while tearing down all the stability Ahab has relied on during his voyage. Everything Ahab has is crumbling around him in his pursuit of the white whale. From all of this, we can see that Ahab’s feverish pursuit of whiteness will be his worst decision, tearing down the one thing that has kept him elevated above the rest of the crew for decades; his journey to find whiteness has completely dismantled his power and ultimately left him with nothing, bitter and angry.

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.

Chapter 112 – The Blacksmith

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During our readings, I am always careful to take careful consideration for a chapter dedicated to any one specific character. Since the blacksmith has hardly ever been mentioned, or only been introduced as a means of dialogue between him and another more important character, I decided to do a bit more research on the language and references made to him. Towards the end of the chapter reads the lines “But one night, under cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robber them of everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family’s heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror” (pg. 528). What an odd name to give a burglar…

After a bit of research, I realized that the “Bottle” aspect of the burglar’s name was what held the most importance. It wasn’t a man that had come in and robbed the family of everything they owned and loved, it was alcoholism. The blacksmith had fallen into drinking and thus lost his possessions, his home, and then his family. Alcoholism has always been known, across various fields, for destroying not just the individuals addicted to alcohol, but the people around them. My research further brought about information of a magician, around 1749 in London, England, who proposed the trick that he could fit within a glass bottle, failed to do so, and in turn the audience burned down the event and tent he was performing in. This can be used as a means of representing how quickly the blacksmith’s alcoholism burned down everything he loved, and his ties to his loved ones, leading him to “the guilt of intermediate death (suicide)” (529) and thus resulting in his being on the Pequod in current time of the novel. Ishmael had stated during the beginning chapters of the novel that men who contemplated suicide often sought out ships and whaling as a better means of self-destruction. After burning ties to everything he cared about, instead of committing suicide, the blacksmith turned to a whaling voyage, one that prolongs his death, but leads to it nonetheless.

Ch. 94 – A Squeeze of the Hand

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While a lot of the chapters from this reading went right over my head, I could not help but be drawn to the ending of Chapter 94. Ishmael is discussing the works of the blubber-room and the man who works beneath the deck. From this chapter reads the passage, “With this gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is as sharp as hone can make it; the spademan’s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistant’s, would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men” (458). While it is quite gruesome to think about the loss of someone’s toes to a sharp object, toes are used to stabilize us on our feet. I would like to argue that, while the blubber-room and its men are apart of the Pequod, and the Pequod being referenced as its own nation state, that the act of sawing and cutting at blubberous commerce and even at the risk of one’s self, that the blubber-room and its men represents the self destruction of the people within the nation state. As America is at one of its worst points in history, clawing after the idea of white superiority at the expense of others, they are actively cutting through themselves and destabilizing the very foundation that they believe they have erected for themselves and the nation. With the tossing and turning of the nation, creating such an already unstable foundation, the mere acting of cutting down another object in turn leads them to cutting themselves down.

Extra Credit – Moby Dick Costume

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For class on Thursday, October 30th, I dressed up as Queequeg at the beginning of Moby Dick. He is presented to us, in his and Ishmael’s first endeavors outside the Spouter-Inn, in a long coat, slacks, and a Beaver skin top hat. While I could only assume the attire he wore underneath (most sailors portrayed in media are placed in plain white button-up dress shirts), I decided to include a rope to my costume, ties around my belt loops, to incorporate the passage on Ishmael and Queeuqeg’s wedding by the anchoring of the rope they share on the Pequod while Queequeg assists in skinning the whale. While not very noticeable (since I wear these rings quite often to class), I assigned specific passages/meanings to the designs of each of my rings. 1) A coffin, symbolizing the crew’s imminent and constant threat of death, and the foreshadowing of the shipwreck of the Pequod at the end of the novel, 2) a skull, referencing chapter 80 – The Nut, and Ishmael’s rant about the phrenology and craniology of the Sperm Whale, 3) a sun, made of bronze, gold, and silver, referencing the numerous times Melville uses terrestrial language and points out the use of light in representation of the feature of the whale and whiteness, and 4) a ring I received from my eldest brother’s grandmother containing different parts of an Abalone shell. Another piece of jewelry I used to reference the book was my cross earing (I know, I wear it all the time and hardly switch it for something different), which I used to represent Queequeg’s desire to learn from Christians for the betterment of his people and himself, and later his repulsion of the behavior of so called Christians, and rebuttal for them to learn from cannibals instead.

The Separation of Nations – Week 9

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One quote from the beginning of this week’s reading has stuck with me throughout the duration of my reading. From Chapter 48, “The First Lowering”, reads the quote, “The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart” (pp. 244). The reason this quote stuck out to me was that, after our group discussion in class on Thursday regarding the search for an understanding of whiteness and the “one drop rule” applied to identifying and categorizing black individuals versus whites, there seemed to be a bit more development on the topic through this quote. As we know, Melville is using Moby Dick to critique the circumstances of the United States in the late 19th century, building on the idea that, without understanding what whiteness is and what exactly makes it superior to other colors, one will lose their identity and their mind (as seen through Ahab). The idea as a whole is quite absurd.

From this quote, we can dissect and categorize two key components of this work of literature: the whales (white superiority/colonialism/the right to Westward Expansion/etc.) and the ships (nation-states). Through the desire to obtain this idea of “whiteness” and all the havoc it creates, the turmoils with which those searching for it succumb to, can create a nation-wide divison, whether between two or more countries, or the two races within one. This quote indirectly lays claim to the fact that the idea of segregation and superiority simply based on the rule of “whiteness” will divide the people of our nation now, and for long after in the future.