Tag Archives: The True-Horror That Inspired Moby Dick

Week 2: Stealing 100 Turtles and Lighting an Island on Fire! (Boys Will Be Boys).

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I enjoyed reading about the horror’s that inspired Moby Dick.

Firstly, I love to hear when authors (like Melville) visit places of inspiration for possible literary ideas. I believe this makes for some of the best work to be created as they’re quite well immersed in the eventual “nature” of the novel-to-be.

Secondly, I found it hilarious that Pollard and his crew upon the Essex stole around 100 turtles and then lit the island on fire upon leaving. That cracked me up. I think that is such a “boy” thing to do. In addition, how tragically ironic that their initial response was to not touch the alleged “cannibal” island but to then later resort to exactly this when their hunger descended them into madness. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In all seriousness, this passage right here is really nightmarish:

“They had only the bones of the last crewmen to perish, which they smashed on the bottom of the boat so that they could eat the marrow.”

To then become obsessed with the remains of your crewmates to the point where you’re not relieved to being rescued is creepy as hell. I could only imagine the harrowing countenance of Pollard and Ramsdell in these moments.

Entry on Gilbert King’s Excerpt

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Between Emmerson and King’s excerpts, Gilbert King’s seemed the most interesting to me. I have always been more drawn to the horrific side of history that which some of our society’s literature is based on. Seeing as I am coming into this class having NOT read Moby Dick prior, the mention of cannibalism drew me in.

Being based on the sunken ship Essex, Herman Melville took the tragedy as an opportunity to write about the horrors of the whaling industry. Given King’s approach, both literal and hypothetical, it is difficult to imagine how a person’s mind and body would react given such circumstances. Melville’s book goes in depth about the darker side of human nature, and while King referred to a particular figure within the literature as a “thing,” I could not help but produce multiple instances to which said “thing” could be applied. The “thing” could be the whale, the ship, the sea, or man themselves, but considering a darker, more metaphysical approach, I would like to consider that he is talking about human nature. Human nature as we know it ranges through a wide variety of behavior, but being pushed to the limits as the ship’s crew is in Moby Dick, the “thing” that King talks of could very well the human nature pushed to its limits. Starved, scared, and desperate, the surviving men turn to cannibalism to stay alive. While skimming other’s posts, I could tell that some thought the same thing as I did; given a hypothetical question, we would never turn to it, but in reality, there is no saying what we would do to survive, or the “thing” that we would become to do so.

Emerson and King – Honest Review

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I’m going to be honest and say that it probably wasn’t the best to be trying to write about this at around 10:30 PM, but I’m going to go ahead and do my best to break down what I understand and what I’m gathering from both. I’ll start with King purely because it is shorter. Reading about the tale that inspired Melville’s book in the first place doesn’t strike me as entirely horrifying. While it is a scary and unfortunate circumstance that occurred many many years ago, I do not find myself surprised by what has occurred. Human nature is often driven to limits and a breaking point, and it is only “natural” for dire circumstances to occur. Cannibalism thanks to extreme starvation from a lack of available/nutritious food? Yikes! I find the sort of questions that are phrased in a “Would you do this if you had to?” when it comes to scenarios like this are a little unreliable. I personally would obviously never condone or commit the act itself, but in a desperate attempt, I wouldn’t really know how my mind would justify it. If Moby Dick is actually based off of this retelling that includes the horrific nature of whaling back in the day, color me intrigued as boring as I thought the book would be based off of its initial length.

In terms of Emerson’s essay, I like how he puts this specific quote into perspective. “Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.” The word thing seems entirely impersonal, a thing could be anything, as repetitive as that sounds. Man itself has evolved, made many advancements, and continues to strive for greater things to this day (at least I hope.) It is no surprise that it makes me think about the intriguing way he frames the way someone thinks about themselves. What purpose does someone have unless it is shaped by the very “things” around them? Ultimately, I do think his essay is something that strives to tell someone to move into action. There are a lot of phrases around there that say the world does not revolve around oneself, but even if it doesn’t, why not take knowledgeable advantages?

Emerson and King

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Of both readings, Emerson’s was most challenging. However, I think I was still able to pick up what Emerson was laying down. Emerson points out that the American scholar’s first influence is nature. Nature draws curiosity and inspires scholars to be hungry for knowledge and search for the truth. Emerson also points out that books are thee most important thing to influence others. He writes “Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.” (Paragraph 14). Each generation has their own books that reflect their beliefs and values, so when the readers read the books of their time, they can continue to get inspired and eventually write their own. Something that stood out to me that Emerson wrote was “The world is nothing, the man is all…” Man is who brings curiosity into the world and also takes knowledge from it. By challenging nature and books, scholars gain their knowledge and experience. The soul in ‘man’ is what inspires us to look for the truth and answers.

After reading King’s article, it made me wonder if Melville included any cannibalism in Moby Dick. Now, I am even more interested in reading the book to see how the real life incident shaped this story. I found King’s article both terrifying and interesting. Terrifying— because I am not very fond of the ocean. The ocean is very large plus it has a huge number of animals, both discovered and undiscovered. And interesting— because I enjoyed the history aspect of the article. In his article, King mentions that during the real life incident of the Essex being attacked, the first mate spotted a 85 feet whale. This is absolutely horrifying and not something I would like to imagine. The captain of the ship, Captain George Pollard and his men were attacked by a sperm whale and had spent 92 days without food or water, and these men eventually resulted to cannibalism. During the Captain’s journey though, they had come across an island but decided to keep moving because they said it was filled with cannibals. I found this to be pretty ironic and slightly amusing because they became exactly what they didn’t want to encounter.

Emerson and King

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I initially skimmed through Emerson’s text, then had about three headaches and took a couple Tylenol just to understand at least two points: American scholars should be thirsty for knowledge and form their own identity instead of copying others. I am probably on my 4th read before passing out again, and that’s still all I can figure out.

About the two points I did find, I… agree? I don’t really know what else to say because they seem straightforward enough. You’re not a scholar when you don’t want to learn, and America is known for using other cultures and blending them, which I guess is a tradition of its own. I don’t know, I came here because I was gaslit into thinking I’d meet Spider-Man when I was about to turn 8.

At the very least I can comprehend King’s article and, I’m probably messed up for this, but I find it amusing that they became cannibals after trying to avoid islands of them. I guess it made sense when King included “Cannibalism in the most dire of circumstances, it was reasoned, was a custom of the sea,” but it’s still a terrifying thought. There goes any hope of ridding my thalassophobia.

The Horror of the Essex

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Of the two readings that we were set to read this week, The True-Life Horror That Inspired ‘Moby Dick’ was significantly more enthralling to me. In particular, due to the nature of the tragedy and the timing of the event. As mentioned in the article by Gilbert King, the trouble began for the Essex in 1819 – 65 years before the first account of the criminalization of nautical cannibalism for survival in the court case R v Dudley and Stephens in 1884. Arguably, the Essex tragedy was significantly worse – with only 8 of the 20 man crew surviving vs. the 3 of the 4 man crew surviving, with the person who died having already been gravely ill due to drinking sea water. The crew of the Essex was also at sea significantly longer – 3 months as opposed to the 3 weeks of the Mignonette.

I had actually learned about the tragedy of the Mignonette through a podcast that I listen to from time to time – Lore by Aaron Mahnke – so I was not surprised with the cannibalism in the tale of the Essex, but the degree of the tragedy was not lost on me; the cruel irony of being forced to abandon their whaling ship due to a whale attack, the avoidance of the closer islands due to rumors of cannibalism only to succumb to it themselves, as well as Pollard having to eat his first cousin that he had promised to look out for, all of it was a horrible series of tragic errors. The fact that 8 people managed to survive at all was truly miraculous.

Reading about the truth behind the story has made me significantly more interested in reading Moby-Dick than I had already been. There are so many layers within the history of the narrative, alongside the narrative itself, that I’m really excited at the prospect of coming to class discussions looking like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when he had his Pepe Silvia conspiracy board.

[Edit: Fixed formatting, removed the HTML]