Tag Archives: spermaceti

Plato’s Honey Head

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Chapter 78 is a nice change of pace, after all the musings once again and again afterwards. There were some quotes worth mentioning, but if I had to pick only one, it would be the last sentence, “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?” (p. 377) On the surface, this is about the whale Tashtego fell into, but what struck me is the specific mention of Plato… and why “honey head”?

First, the phrasing “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen…” invites us readers to think how many people fell into the very fate Tashtego would have had if Queequeg hadn’t come to save him. But the addition of “Plato’s honey head” suggests some kind of treasure, so the people who were “embalmed” by the whale’s spermaceti died comfortably? Maybe one of the things Melville is trying to say is that the whale’s spermaceti feels like honey, and when one falls into the mouth, they feel no need to escape? The last phrase, “and sweetly perished there,” suggests a “delicious” death.

Wait, the mere mention of Plato has to mean something. Plato is famous for philosophy… perhaps his thoughts were attractive to people. But some of Plato’s theories were questionable, and perhaps these theories are the “honey,” or like the whale’s spermaceti. If this is truly Melville’s intent, this chapter is about the dangers of blindly following an ideal – what seems sweet and harmless could end up being the very thing you should avoid.

Death by Spermaceti

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One part of the reading for this week that I took interest with was the end of Cistern and Buckets. This whole chapter was action packed, detailed, a jump from the lull of Melville’s technical and historical chapters. Although Tashtego is saved by Queequeg (in a midwifery way), Melville still fantasizes about an alternate reality where this rebirth did not occur. “Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it has been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can be readily recalled” (p.377). This feels like a romanticization of death, one that contrasts strongly with the death of the whales in subsequent chapters. These deaths are violent, painful, pitiful, and blood baths, covered in red. Tashtego’s death, comparatively, would have been covered in white–the color of purity, honor, fear, existentialism. And maybe that is exactly what being smothered in this white would represent, the honor of dying in the whaling industry, of dying in a masculine way, yet also the fear and existentialism that comes with death, of the unknown of what follows when the biological functions cease. 

The language used in this passage is light for such a heavy topic. “Precious”, “daintiest”, “sweeter”, romanticize this death as if it is something to be desired. This romanticization is only possible because Ishmael (and other crew) would not have witnessed this death, would not have witnessed Tashtego’ fright and slow drowning in the spermaceti. When spared the details of seeing what happens, it is easy to romanticize the results–as Melville often argues about the landsmen who reap the rewards of the whaling industry with none of the suffering. 

This idea of Tashtego’s death is calm, slow, peaceful, unlike the thrashing the whales undergo. We can draw metaphors here to how we think about nature and animals in a hierarchical fashion, underneath us and allowed to suffer in death. Or we can draw a metaphor for slavery, for how the whales are allowed to die as slaves are, while the humans will die these white, painless, precious deaths.