Tag Archives: whaling

Chapter 112 – The Blacksmith

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During our readings, I am always careful to take careful consideration for a chapter dedicated to any one specific character. Since the blacksmith has hardly ever been mentioned, or only been introduced as a means of dialogue between him and another more important character, I decided to do a bit more research on the language and references made to him. Towards the end of the chapter reads the lines “But one night, under cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robber them of everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family’s heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror” (pg. 528). What an odd name to give a burglar…

After a bit of research, I realized that the “Bottle” aspect of the burglar’s name was what held the most importance. It wasn’t a man that had come in and robbed the family of everything they owned and loved, it was alcoholism. The blacksmith had fallen into drinking and thus lost his possessions, his home, and then his family. Alcoholism has always been known, across various fields, for destroying not just the individuals addicted to alcohol, but the people around them. My research further brought about information of a magician, around 1749 in London, England, who proposed the trick that he could fit within a glass bottle, failed to do so, and in turn the audience burned down the event and tent he was performing in. This can be used as a means of representing how quickly the blacksmith’s alcoholism burned down everything he loved, and his ties to his loved ones, leading him to “the guilt of intermediate death (suicide)” (529) and thus resulting in his being on the Pequod in current time of the novel. Ishmael had stated during the beginning chapters of the novel that men who contemplated suicide often sought out ships and whaling as a better means of self-destruction. After burning ties to everything he cared about, instead of committing suicide, the blacksmith turned to a whaling voyage, one that prolongs his death, but leads to it nonetheless.

Illumination

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Throughout this book, Melville has made several points using contrasts in the subject that he talking about. In chapter 97, he makes another contrast, using darkness and illumination relating to the emotions as a whaler. Ishmael shares, “To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in the darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.”(486) This gloomy line provokes feelings of loneliness, solemnity and sadness. The whalemen, have a difficult job as is when it comes to dealing with whales and the ocean, but what about the emotions that come from the loss of connection with other human beings besides the other whalemen on the boat?

Ishmael continues with, “But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light…so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still houses an illumination.” At night or in darkness, the whaleman is able to indulge in the retrieval of the oil and make use of it with the lamp. While he himself is surrounded by the absence of light, the one thing that is changing that is the lamp in which he had the ability to help create.

Melville has touched base on a lot of different emotions in this book so far, for example, madness, anger, desperation, etc. but in chapter 97 he reflects on the solemness that comes from the job of a whaler. At the end of the day, when you’re done with your job for the day and you come home to your own thoughts, without the support or conversation with your loved ones, it can be hard to evade the emotions that come with that kind of darkness. Even though your job, ironically enough, is to retrieve the oil that will help with the illumination for others.

“Oh! the metempsychosis!”

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We’ve been talking a lot about noticing the moments when Moby Dick puts us to sleep and then pulls us out of that boredom and trying to discover why is it that the book is formed this way. I think the end of Chapter 98 gives us one possible answer to this:

“Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when–There she blows!–the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life’s old routine again” (469).

The constant jump from pillaging one captured and slain whale to immediately hunting another is representative of the flow of life as a whole. We hardly have time to fully invest ourselves into extracting the small but valuable sperm from this world’s vast bulk when another call prevents us from even fully cleansing ourselves of the task at hand. It’s nearly impossible now for us to just sit and digest something without the endless media and entertainment fighting for our attention. So to see Melville talk about this constant distraction in 1850s America, it’s clear that its not just the modern day technology that keeps us from ever giving our full attention to something, but it’s often the case that the people ordering us expect us to swiftly wrap up our business with one whale to plunder the next profitable goal. Constantly put through this metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul after death, reincarnation basically), going through young life’s old routine again and again, to extract the resources and discard the source.

Ch. 94 – A Squeeze of the Hand

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While a lot of the chapters from this reading went right over my head, I could not help but be drawn to the ending of Chapter 94. Ishmael is discussing the works of the blubber-room and the man who works beneath the deck. From this chapter reads the passage, “With this gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is as sharp as hone can make it; the spademan’s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistant’s, would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men” (458). While it is quite gruesome to think about the loss of someone’s toes to a sharp object, toes are used to stabilize us on our feet. I would like to argue that, while the blubber-room and its men are apart of the Pequod, and the Pequod being referenced as its own nation state, that the act of sawing and cutting at blubberous commerce and even at the risk of one’s self, that the blubber-room and its men represents the self destruction of the people within the nation state. As America is at one of its worst points in history, clawing after the idea of white superiority at the expense of others, they are actively cutting through themselves and destabilizing the very foundation that they believe they have erected for themselves and the nation. With the tossing and turning of the nation, creating such an already unstable foundation, the mere acting of cutting down another object in turn leads them to cutting themselves down.

An old & glorious occupation, no more

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Chapter 82, “The Honor and Glory of Whaling,” offers us a great insight into the history and mythology of whaling and stories of whales. One section that particularly stood out to me was when Ishmael said, “Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves” (Melville 397). It truly shows the significance that whaling has had throughout history, it is stories both ancient Greek and Roman, it’s in the Bible, it’s in many different religions such as Hinduism, the impact and importance of whaling is something that has been lost in time as the book has gotten older. Now we look at whaling and we disagree with it, for a good reason of course, but back then it was heroic and it was something that the legendary men in myth, Hercules and Perseus, did.

I think that Melville wrote this chapter to show why whaling should have been considered a prestige occupation with a sort of righteousness that came with it; “when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity” (Melville 395). It seems like Melville is talking about himself here, and how he feels to be included in a group that is surrounded by legends and myths and religious figures, people’s whose stories have been around for millenniums. Another quote that stood out to me was, “Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders” (Melville 395). It shows how much whaling has change from the days of Perseus to when Melville was writing Moby-Dick, and now today were the whaling industry in America is dead.

This chapter definitely showed the historical and mythical significance of whaling. It’s incredible to think that something we now view as unethical and immoral was once viewed as heroic and glorious, however the purpose of whaling has changed significantly since those times. Mythical legends, Saints, Heroes, and gods all take up a seat in whaling, as Melville puts it; “Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there’s a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like that?” (Melville 398).

Fast-Fish, Loose-Fish

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“I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it. II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it” (433).

In the chaotic business of whaling, it’s necessary to have the code of Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish to avoid disputes over who deserves the claim of killing whichever whale. Melville applies this whaling code of Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish to “the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence” to show us how weak our justifications of possession are. Melville starts with: “What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is the whole of the law?” (434-35). He is directly arguing against the claim that “possession is half of the law” by giving multiple examples that contradict it, the first being the serfs and slaves that are literally bound to their masters, serving as their property. The Loose-Fish doctrine is even more applicable as the chapter ends presenting more abstract ideas as Loose-Fish:

“What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What are all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish?” (435).

With all of these being Loose-Fish, fair game for whoever can soonest catch it, it raises questions about their legitimacy. If the Rights of Man and Liberties of the World were just up for grabs, we need to know who caught them and whether they had some bias in crafting them. If our minds, opinions, and beliefs are Loose-Fish, we need to be aware of whoever laid claim first, because they can often shape our entire thoughts and belief systems. Melville calls out the “ostentatious smuggling verbalists” as they seize “the thoughts of thinkers” to manipulate for their own purposes as though they were Loose-Fish. The globe itself has repeatedly, throughout history, been viewed as a Loose-Fish for colonial powers and empires to claim for themselves behind their Loose-Fish justifications of divine right or Manifest Destiny. Then we have Melville directly asking us readers to view ourselves as both Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, fastened to the systems we are born and raised in, yet fair game to whatever outside influence we let catch us. If we should be both, then we should also be weary of the distinctions of Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish applied to others, realizing how absurd it is to blindly follow the claims to land, property, thoughts, and people.

Chapter 80: A Whale’s Uniqueness for Profit

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This section from chapter 80 made me step back to really look at how vast this whale truly is, as it described how large the head of this creature is. Though the brain does not fill the entire cavity, these whales are still very intelligent. These whalemen could tell these creatures’ intelligence by how the creatures might have grouped in formations and more, yet they still hunted them down. These whales were killed for money and were drained of what makes them unique for profit. Their profit from the whale’s communication and life is a big factor in their industry.

“The brain is at least 20 feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice, casket is the secreted in him, that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny the sperm whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that Mystic part of him as the seat of his intelligence.”

Melville uses particular words to describe the vast leviathan creature and even to tell us how small the brain is amongst the massive skull. He exaggerates his description by telling us that the head of the whale is so big that the brain is so far back in its melon. The brain is very safe in that massive skull of the sperm whale; it is almost hidden in a way. He tells us it is like a very important part of a city being protected by thick walls surrounding it. Melville uses his own scientific knowledge of whales to show us that these creatures are immense but have a small brain compared to their large body.

The use of the word “casket” is not used how you might think; Melville is using it as a case, as the very valuable oil which they hunt for is in their braincase. These very smart creatures were used for their own gain. The sperm magazine is a description of where the spermaceti is stored, as they saw these whales as their money source. That is the substance which they use for candles, lubricants, and more. These whale heads were very important to the sailors, as that is where their money source comes from.

Again, the very large head of the whale is seen as their money source; they might not take into account how important these whales are to the ocean and how smart they are, as they do have large brains. These whales are killed for profit in the end, and were close to extinction during the worldwide whaling from the 1800s to the 1980s. Profit or the extinction of a majestic creature?

Chapter Twenty-Four

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In Chapter 24, “The Advocate”, Ishmael breaks the narrative chain and goes on a tangent about whaling; he advocates for the respectability of whaling as a profession and whalers as a social class. He appeals to history, religion and cultural authority, situating whalers alongside kings, emperors and saints. By invoking such figures, Ishmael seeks to prove to the audience that whaling is not simply just a brutal industry but one that has shaped civilization and society. He goes as far as claiming that whalemen have something better than good blood in their veins, they are like “royalty”; positioning whalers above any other profession. “Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By Old English statutory law, the whale is declared ‘a royal fish’.” (Melville 121)  The more Ishmael insists upon the heroism of whaling, the more his argument  begins to become absurd, comparing whalers and whaling to the Bible and even Cetus, the whale constellation.

I feel Melville deliberately constructs tension between admiration and absurdity to highlight the instability of society’s attempts to justify violence through borrowed symbols of power. By having Ishmael place whaleman on a pedestal among religious and political leaders, it makes us reflect on not just the morality of whaling but also, in a broader way, on how society rationalizes violent and exploitative labor. We, as the audience, can sense that Ishmael is “trying too hard” on making us romanticize the whaling practice. We know that whaling is a brutal and destructive activity and Ishmael is trying to promote the opposite. This commentary of whaling can show how much violence is often masked with hefty rhetoric.

Although Melville wrote this in the 19th century, this commentary remains relevant in modern day. Just as Ishmael’s rhetoric glorifies whaling, modern propaganda often glorifies war, reframing perspectives. Melville’s chapter critiques not just whaling but also the human impulse to conceal brutality behind the “greatness” of tradition and power.