Tag Archives: week 8

Narrative Perspective and Stage Performance

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This part of the novel has so many moments that made me question exactly who is in charge of the narrative and how it functions for plot and character development. Specifically, how the description of characters, actions, and scenes works as a plot device to paint the happenings of the Pequod as a much larger thing. One of the first moments and most impactful moments came on page 162 in a description of Flask. Melville writes:

“But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk’s head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap into the mizen-top for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remain visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping onto the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character of Abjectus…” (162).

Flask, after hearing that dinner is ready, seems to go into a dramatic and hilarious performance that involves all sorts of theatrics. This level of performance touches on the recurring themes of theater and Shakespeare throughout Moby Dick, thus far. Instead of describing Flask getting up, grabbing his hornpipe, playing a song, and pulling himself together before joining Ahab, the narrator deliberately describes his actions step-by-step, giving them a level of performance that belongs on the stage of a grand theater. This level of description paints Flask as a character in a much larger production with the Pequod as the stage. In this scenario, Ismael plays the role of the audience, taking in information and having no significant role in the plot (so far) while describing the peculiarities of the ship and her inhabitants. The level of detail given to Flask and his actions is reminiscent of Ismael’s observance of Queequeg in earlier chapters. As we touched on in class, Ismael spends most of his narrative focus simply staring at other characters, collecting and cataloging small details that would otherwise go unnoticed. In this way, in our course discussions on who he is and how reliable Ismael is as a narrator, maybe we’ve got it wrong. Instead of looking at Ismael as the narrator, we might benefit more from looking at him as the audience in a production much bigger than he is.

Ahab, in all his mysterious glory, is the central protagonist who stirs, quite literally, the central plot. In the chapters where Ismael is not directly retelling the happenings of the ship, such as “The Pipe,” there is a noticeable absence of detailed explanations because Ismael is not physically present on stage. Instead of getting the dramatic, theatrical paintings of a scene from Ismael, we, as the readers and audience of this production, are watching it ourselves.

Borrowed From The Sea: The Fragility of Life

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At the end of Chapter 35, “The Mast-Head,” Ishmael closes his reflection on watchkeeping with a haunting sentence: “There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship: by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.” (Melville 173) It’s a moment that collapses the sailor’s physical existence into a more spiritual chain of dependence. Melville ties the ship, sea, and God together in a rhythm that both sustains and erases individuality.

This line captures how Moby-Dick constantly blurs the line between the material and the metaphysical. Ishmael is speaking of the literal rocking of the ship, but the repetition of “by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God” transforms that motion into a meditation on creation as well as power. Life is described not as something self-contained and private but more as something borrowed, a gift moving through layers of being: from the divine to the ocean, from the ocean to the ship, and finally into Ishmael himself. The chain of dependence reveals human fragility. Our very existence rests on something vast, shifting, and very unknowable.

At the same time, there’s comfort in the image. The “gently rolling ship” gives an almost peacefulness to Ishmael’s isolation, and the sea becomes a living intermediary between man and God. He is never alone when he’s on the ocean. Yet Melville’s phrasing, such as “inscrutable tides,” reminds us that this connection is mysterious, even dangerous. The same tides that lend life also take it away. I think that Ishmael’s meditation at the masthead mirrors one of the novel’s central paradoxes: the ocean as both cradle and grave, revelation and oblivion.

I believe that this passage suggests that life at sea, and perhaps all human life, exists in a state of borrowed motion. The “rocking life” is not something Ishmael, or any of us, owns; it passes through, over, and around him like the tide. Melville leaves us with a vision of existence that is deeply dependent and deeply uncertain. A quiet acknowledgment in the novel that whatever life gives us, it is never fully ours to keep.

Chapter 35: A Life Dedicated to the Sea!

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As I was reading through chapter 35, The Mast-Head, Melville begins to describe the sailors on the ship and how they were so dedicated to their life of sailing. I thought that this section was a great description of how the saliors must have been going through on thier ship!

“In one of those southern whaleman, on a long, three or four years voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the masthead with amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a century box, a pulpit, a coach or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves,”

I can truly believe that the men on these vessels were extremely exhausted from being out in the ocean for so long. They most likely wanted to go back to their town which was dreary and plain similar to what they are currently experiencing on the ship. Traveling very far distances in a boat for months on end in many different ocean conditions must have been a lot on them. Melville even describes how sad the living quality was on the sailing boats as well. These boats must have been very dreary and not full of much color and felt more like a very plain house which they might have been used to. The fact that he describes the place where many men would spend a lot of their time as “destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness” says a lot of how the Pequod must have also been like. I can imagine that it was not very comfortable either and they might not have had their own personal space due to how many people were abord. These men might have grown depressed being on the ship for that long and being surrounded with something that they had to become comfortable in for so long.

Chapter 35, Ishmael addresses “You” once again

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With the malleable way that Ishmael tells the story of Moby-Dick or The Whale, I’ve tried to pay particular attention to the moments when he shifts from addressing a general audience without pronouns to the moments when he addresses the specific “you.” Once again, he returned to this form of address, on the second paragraph of page 172:

“And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch his head. Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.”

There were a couple of terms that I needed to look into to better understand the passage, which were:

Phædon is a defense of the simplicity and immortality of the soul, according to Moses Mendelssohn’s book of the same name. He was a Jewish Philosopher in the 1700’s.

Bowditch – referencing a mathematician, astronomer, and navigator, Nathaniel Bowditch, who was prominent in the early 1800’s.

Unlike in Chapter 3, when he was taking “you” the audience on a tour of the Spouter-Inn, this time is more of a moment of him addressing a specific kind of “you” the audience – anyone who might someday own or operate a whaling vessel. The simplest way to boil down this passage is to say, “don’t hire people who think a lot to do jobs where they are required to pay close attention to their surroundings, they will become lost in thought and lose you considerable money in the process.” Perhaps the most interesting part of this is that, for all of his talk of needing to go to sea to lose his personal melancholy, he’s literally describing himself as the worst hire for this type of job.

Ishmael continues to be an unreliable narrator, a person that we should not consider an authority about whaling despite all of the research that he does and the knowledge he continues to impart on us. He is telling us that this is a job he should not have done – this was his first job on a whaling ship, he was inexperienced and barely able to succeed in joining the crew. At best, he’s an extra set of hands. For all his talk of country dandies, he is no better than the people he admonished.

Chapter Thirty-Four

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In Chapter 34, Ishmael gives us a glimpse into the dining hierarchy under Ahab’s silent, oppressive presence. He writes, “Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible.” (166) Melville uses this sentence to critique isolation and the destructive nature of obsession through Ahab and the Pequod. Interestingly, even though the crewmates are excluded from the fellowship with their captain, Ishmael’s tone implies that this is not a loss at all. The “no companionship” in the cabin transforms what should be a place of command and unity into a symbol of emptiness and emotional deprivation. The dining room, typically a space for conversation and community, becomes a physical manifestation of Ahab’s psychological and physical distance. 

Describing Ahab as socially inaccessible underscores the self-imposed isolation that defines Ahab’s character. Ahab’s distance is not only physical but also psychological since he has withdrawn from his own crew and his own humanity. His social inaccessibility reflects his obsession with the white whale, an obsession that leaves no room for empathy or connection with others. Melville presents Ahab’s leadership here as a state of alienation rather than communion. Ahab’s authority separates him from his crew, transforming leadership into loneliness. His inability to connect with his crew reveals the futility of control built on obsession rather than understanding. 

Melville critiques not only Ahab but the hierarchy structures that create power with detachment. The crewmates’ lack of companionship with their captain mirrors the moral decay of authority leaders isolating themselves from humanity instead of uniting. This brief passage highlights Melville’s vision of isolation — a loneliness born from obsession, destined to consume both the leader and his crew.