Tag Archives: Starbuck

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

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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.

The North’s Predicament

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Starbuck has so many chances to stop Ahab on this doomed hunt for Moby Dick. He could have invoked a mutiny, he could have cut his line when Ahab was posted on the mast-head, and he could have shot him with the musket. But Starbuck didn’t do those things, Starbuck the “honest, upright” man of the union hardly recognizes an evil thought when it strikes him. He begins his interior monologue by raising the concept of fairness. “But how fair? Fair for death and doom…” Through Starbuck, Melville explains that fairness does not exist, there is always someone on the other side of it. Starbuck continues on, grappling with the possible murder of Ahab: “But shall this crazed old man… drag a whole ship’s company down.. it would make him the willful murderer of thirty men and more if this ship comes to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm my soul swears this ship will… Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed—” Starbuck’s contemplations when he is handling the musket in chapter 123 is an embodiment of the northern predicament. Is murder justified when it prevents more murder? Is declaring a war that will shed the most ever American blood justified to end the horrors of slavery. We all know the answer to this dilemma, and I doubt there are any rational people who would say the civil war wasn’t worth it. Though how could one know in its looming days. This is why Melville turned his mutiny story into one of doom. If it was a mutiny story, the ship would be saved, everyone would live (well maybe not Ahab) and it would be a happy ending. A happy ending that may not even be equated with American systems. But being made aware of an account, that after a continued lack of intervention, leads to the doom of a perceived nation-state, forces Americans to recognize their current state of affairs. In this case murder justifies murder. If the war on slavery was going to be ignored, this ship we call America was doomed to capsize.

Blame God

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Reading Starbuck’s last plea to Ahab in “The Symphony” was very disheartening because we know that Ahab couldn’t be swayed from his crusade. Starbuck, the voice of reason, or our symbol for “we the people”, is practically begging to change course back to Nantucket, but his words fall on deaf ears as “Ahab’s glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil” (592). Ahab can’t even bother to look at his first mate during his request, “blighted” by whatever this force is that keeps him on his mission, the “last, cindered apple” of any hopes of salvation now gone from him. We had the first confrontation in the Cabin just last week, but this is the final moment when the captain turns his back on his people, hardly listening to them as he leads the Pequod to their doom. I know it was present throughout the novel, but this scene of Ahab’s final soliloquy before The Chase felt the most like Shakespearean tragedy as we, with Starbuck, just want him to stop, but we know it won’t happen, and can only watch as he broods over his so-called fate, questioning whether he even has any agency or he’s just a puppet of God:

“Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I” (592).

In giving up his agency, claiming that it may just be that God is moving him on this path, Ahab is reassuring himself that this is just the way it has to be. If the great sun that allows us to live doesn’t have control over it’s actions, then why should Ahab’s small heart and brain have any power? So Ahab assigns himself to what he believes to be his fate, despite the consequences it will have for the people he is responsible for. Placing the responsibility on a higher being is a way for him to excuse his actions that he knows will not bear the fruit he wants (where have we seen that before?) Despite the countless warnings and pleas from other ships (and Starbuck) and ill omens and prophecies, Ahab, or rather God, in his eyes, cannot be moved. By assuming divinity, Ahab prevents any alteration towards a better outcome for the nation state of the Pequod, leaving the people “blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair” (593).

Ahab & Starbuck

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The chapter I am focusing on is chapter 109, “Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.” This chapter shows us an interaction between Captain Ahab and Starbuck; like most of their interactions before, we really get to see the differences between the two characters, noting that neither one of them is fond of the other.

One quote that stood out to me this chapter came from Starbuck when leaving Ahab’s cabin: “Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man’ ” (Melville 518). I found this warning to be fascinating, and something that could be noted as foreshadowing. After writing my first essay about the dangers of a leader such as Captain Ahab, I enjoy reading the parts of the novel where Starbuck calls him out for his delusions and corrupt leading. I truly believe that Ahab will be the downfall of both himself and the Pequod, there is no doubt that his obsession and anger will cause trouble for the rest of the crew members later on in the novel.

This chapter, although pretty short, gives us good insight into the relationship between Ahab and Starbuck, and we are able to see that not much has changed since the beginning. It will be interesting to see how their relationship will continue to play out the more the novel progresses and the more wild and crazy Captain Ahab becomes.

Chapter 46: Is Man a Tool?

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I believe this is one of the first chapters that addresses the idea of Ahab being aware of his tyrannical tendencies and near insane quest to solely focus on Moby Dick. Ishmael himself observes that Captain Ahab hasn’t entirely lost his mind, but it doesn’t change the fact that he has to ensure that the crew remain all for his idea, lest the boredom of the sea change their minds. There’s a clear fear of a mutiny, but the line that centralized Ahab’s command over the Pequod out of the entire chapter were the lines connecting the pages.

“Starbuck’s body and Strabuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain; still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it.” (230-231)

Ishmael mentions that Ahab “must use tools” (230) in order to complete his quest for vengeance, but Ishmael himself points out that Men are most prone to breaking the order on the ship. I think what primarily makes me ponder this specific line though is the idea that even if Starbuck opposes Ahab so greatly, he’s still under his command. Even if there is clear defiance, who in their right mind (with how early we are within the novel) would defy such a maniacal yet clear-sighted man? He might not be clear-sighted in a means of rational thought, but he is clear sided in what he wants, in this quest to hunt down the very whale that took his leg. Another thing to mention is the way Ishmael observes “coerced.” Starbuck here is clearly forced to do Ahab’s bidding. Whether by force or a threat, Ahab himself is a man of loaded language and even greater force, he’s full of charisma, and is able to continue using the crew as tools, no matter the position. While we have discussed in class that the Pequod is like a nation, I’m starting to see them as a toolbox. Ahab can pick what he needs to use for whatever purpose it is, and as diverse as the sailors may be, the hysteria (or potential languor) all melds them together into one hive-mind of a crew to be used under Ahab.

Ahab; or the fallen angel

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Ahab is searching for God. Chapters 36, 37, and 38 were interesting to me because not only does Ahab confront the crew and have them sign a pact (or a deal with the devil), but Starbuck publicly questions the madness of his captain and voices the doubts that others are more than willing to ignore in favor of peace. What interested me was the fragile peace maintained on the ship, and how Ahab is almost daring Starbuck to challenge him, and inspire rebellion. This instability is revealed to us in Chapter 37, Sunset, where we get insight into Ahab’s inner thoughts. What I found there proves to me without a doubt that this quest, for the whale, is the quest of a fallen man, a quest for God. 

Ahab has lost all connection and appreciation of nature: “ Oh! Time was when the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed me. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy it. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! Damned in the midst of Paradise! (182)”

Like Starbuck, I feel such immense pity for Ahab. Surrounded by the beauty and splendor of the open ocean, which seems to have been his heaven on earth, his paradise, but he can enjoy none of it. Ahab is like a dead man walking. He is completely disconnected from God and fueled only by anger and rage, which is focused on Moby Dick. But why has his disillusion with god become funneled into this Whale? I look to these passages where he acknowledges the accident: 

“it was Moby Dick that dismasted me, Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now(177).” 

“The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and – Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophecy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were(183).”

By describing his losing his leg to the whale as ‘dismasting’ and ‘dismembering,’ we understand that this act by the whale, or by god, threatened his masculinity. His acts of madness, his exertion of force amongst the crew, and intimidation of Starbuck, feel like attempts by him to restore his masculinity and power through his position at the top of the hierarchy. Furthermore, he numerously attempts to scorn God by enlisting pagan harpooners, making them swear an oath to him (to hunt and kill Moby Dick), and describing himself as a prophet and fulfiller, greater than “ye great gods ever were.” This path Ahab is intent on paving has a biblical mirror, and like the fallen angel Lucifer, he has joined forces with his crew to wage war on God and his creatures.