Tag Archives: systemic injustice

Essay 1

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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.  

Essay #1: The Art of Systemic Injustice and the Perpetual Victim

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Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville, calls out how capitalism and greed have dominated the understanding of the social dynamic in hierarchy. Ishmael, an avid whaler, explains the underestimation of the hefty whaling industry that largely generates the economy and monarchy, deeming whalers to be a part of royalty as well. However, like the Pequod, the social hierarchy ladder is not streamlined and is unresolved. With this narrative, Melville challenges the conventional standards of seeing the capitalistic realm through a two-dimensional structure, revealing that even the monarchs are not a stranger to socioeconomic manipulation within their regime. This in itself, changes the manner in which we as readers were meant to view the social ladder, with whalers to royalty, as something beneficial for generating the economy. This symbolic alliance is now tainted with a hierarchy that upholds nuance and censorship, tricking people into seeking individuality and romanticization, in an effort to hide corrupt, social ideological framing. 

Chapter 25 depicts the social ladder in this way; it is not just looking from a lens of good and evil. As the author here cleverly paints the situation in an extensive scale, the depiction thematically aligns with addressing the scale of the colossal Pequod as withstanding, yet having intellectual gaps of socio-economic diversity and complexity tied onto the ship. The social order is not only corrupt but also becomes perilously systemic. At the same time, Ishmael is oblivious to this danger that clearly deludes him into seeking status in tandem with royalty as he overlooks the gap of acknowledging what exactly then controls the monarch’s autonomy. Through the lens and testimony of a perpetual victim, this passage seeks to expose the clear systemic injustice within the capitalistic hiearchy.

After giving praise for the whaling industry over the years through record and analogy, Ishmael interestingly gives readers an ‘afterscript’, almost as if to let us re-evaluate our knowledge of how devastating the downfall of the social system is at that time. He instigates that,

“… at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning … for their functions is gone through…Can it be…that they anoint[salt]…its interior[to run well]…as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, … in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair…In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil medicinally… has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount much to his totality ”(Melville 123). 

First, we are prompted to see how the dedicated use of oil is a discussion on uncanny vanity and brainwashing. The coronation of kings and queens is brought up to strike particular skepticism about succession and hierarchical rule that he sums up in an analogy. The use of subtlety and ambiguity to decode the “certain curious process” reveals the nature of censorship seeping within the social hierarchy. While the character may speak to the coronation’s formalities in general, Ishmael rather speculates that the meticulous tradition’s intentionality has more to do with implications of conditioning besides a one-time celebration, such as christening or crowning a ruler. The text’s hyperfixation to social conditioning can be seen where Ishmael gives an analogy of anointing one’s hair as well. From the line, he directs our attention to one anointing his head with oil as respectable in public appearances, but then backtracks this oustide view by indicating that routinal use of the oil, especially as an already ‘mature’ individual, articulates a need for conceivable, vain perfection that is nowhere near reality. Ishmael uses ‘mature’ to encapsulate how uncanny and unsettling this routinal use transforms into. Instead of attempting to abide by the laws, one now creates fantasy laws that fit an ideological idea of orderly and flawless. This vanity towards perfection evidently calls out social, ideological narratives in the nation. Introspectively, this analogy critically exposes how imperialist narratives and social propaganda are formed under a vain, dictated regime that discriminates and exploits, instead of performing ethical, governing responsibilities that affect the nation-state and its people within the social caste system. Two things are then subsequently seen: cultural exploitation and erasure of a foreign concept then further objectification and fetishization.

With this dehumanizing feauture, the author indirectly distinguishes between the  “oil” from whalers and the “salt” used as a medium to season– control– the monarchs. The use of “oil” and “salt” in the sentence serves to dehumanize the people into their roles, instead of seeing them as human beings. This imagery and representation of seasoning also inadvertently works to signal, with that control, a warning of systematic censorship and liminal space that Ishmael wonders about. Indication of two distinct control systems in the social ladder, instead of one streamlined system, adds depth to the worldbuilding behind the capitalist hierarchy we as readers thought we knew about. The clever contrast between these two ‘seasonings’ that ‘anoint’–control– the person shows us that our functions play down to collectively creating social propaganda that discriminates and erases culture. 

In the same vein, dehumanized imagery is present to also add layers to the meditated alienation the benefitted recipients feel, however advantaged or not. As a result of this alienation, the privileged class point fingers at the minorities. In another light, one can turn against their own community and blame their counterparts, rather than seeing the downfall from the start. Ishmael is acknowledgeable about the origin of the oil, but cannot recall the origin of ‘salt’ used to control the monarchs, indicating that there is a gap in information that becomes treacherous. Here, the author now clearly lays out the groundwork of systemic injustice that is a domino effect amongst other possible disadvantaged groups, not just a linear capitalist hierarchy, or a good versus evil side. In other words, with this empty feeling of alienation due to dehumanization, we are inclined to project discrimination onto our own community that makes the nation collapse. 

From looking at the unfortunate effects of dehumanization and projecting this insecurity onto others, the chapter uses this to convey the passage of time and its importance in constructing the ‘regal curious process’ as ancient and practiced. It is known that whales are powerful common symbolic representations to the whalers and sovereignty, but what about what is considered the ‘modern ones’ apart from the ancient ones in the novel then? Even though the text does not adhere to a certain time period, the implied passage of time puts into perspective how the social hierarchy reinforces ideological narratives that are practiced and traditional throughout time, making the manipulative process to be universally cherished, instead of being seen as long-term conditioning; and for this reason alone is it hard to eradicate systemic social narratives that have been generationally learnt, as we are wired to be dependent on ‘tried and true’ symbols that define our infrastructure today. 

Lastly, as conditioning takes over, one is encouraged to push for their false individual liberation in advertisement to dismiss the systemic issue. Ironically, his romanticization of whalers as part of nobility ties back down to the illusion of social status and approval that he tries to steer away from, while simultaneously trying to expose the systemic injustice in society himself. The last sentence then transforms into Ishmael wrestling with the question of ‘how one cannot amount to much in his totality’ because of the social conditioning rooted deeply into the fabric of society. Though Ishmael is cognizant of the fact that we are trapped to become mere parts in a machine, the irony is when he tries to find external validation and credit in the whaling industry. To readers, it becomes clear that irony is portrayed so as to illustrate the hazardous, long-side effects of manipulation within a social construct; Ishmael is blinded and brainwashed by artificial identity in whaling. Instead of becoming a secure nationwide alliance, the connection actually becomes a threat to the common working class because of the advantaged group’s desire to maintain the social divide, glued together by propaganda in public spaces. While Ishmael calls the audience to “look here”, Melville calls readers to look at Ishmael’s lack of awareness in light of him being a perpetual, enticed victim to the social climbing. As a result, community solidarity is squashed by individualized romanticization. 

It is presented that systemic issues start with conceivable, vain constructs that pervade the nation by a strong powerhouse in the social ladder. With this, social narratives start to become practiced then foundational throughout society, shifting our working class perspectives to normalize social discrimination and dehumanization in public spaces; and because these ideologies are traditional, the framework becomes easy to manipulate as something good and beneficial for the economy. The text exposes how calculated the systemic injustice is by instigating two mediums of control that trickle down the social ladder, making it harder to resolve or bring to light the societal issue at hand. As a result of this learnt notion to dehumanize, we end up projecting alienation onto others that ends up hurting instead of helping our trajectory towards human individuality in the nation. His dismissal is a foreshadowing of what might happen if we dismiss the need to educate ourselves about the socio-economic state of the world to the point of illusioned escapism and toxic individuality that tears us down. Even through all the deep contemplation about the systemic injustice Ishmael reveals, the last sentence turns into an actual doomed read of Ishmael’s critical symptoms due to the altering affects of systemic injustice.