One part of the reading I found particularly interesting this week was Chapter 93, which covered Pip’s death. Instead of being violent or scary, I felt this chapter wrote Pip’s death off as something natural, a regular casualty of the whaling industry, and a celestial commentary on the feelings of death. The deaths’ of animals in this novel comes off as graphic and horrifying, filled with resistance and gore, yet Pip seems to just fade away into the horizon, as if he is nothing more than a leaf floating down the river.
Melville writes: “The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul… So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feelings then uncompromised, indifferent as his God” (p.453). What a way to describe death. First off, the sea seems to be taunting, as it keeps Pip’s mortal body afloat, similar to those of the floating whales after their perishing. I also found the second half of this sentence interesting. Melville calls the soul infinite, yet it has been drowned. Drowning implies death, yet infinite implies forever, and these two contrasting descriptors could imply the place after death (presumably Heaven with the religious undertones we already see in this novel). These two contrasts mediums (solid body and infinite soul) are also important to note in a historical context; where examination of these two ideas were less scientific and more theoretical, not that we have much stronger of a grasp on these concepts nowadays.
Melville continues on, talking about how man’s final thought would be absurd and frantic, and almost brushes over this idea. When the whales die, it is frantic. Yet this slight acknowledgement of the same concept in human’s death is barely seen, as Melville works to romanticize and sweeten Pip’s death with soft words and celestial language. He finishes it off with “indifferent as his God,” which implies God would not care of this death, or perhaps any human’s death.
Hello Sophia! I enjoyed reading your discussion post! Pip’s death was simply written and then continued with the pursuit of the whale, which has been, as you said, graphic and horrifying. The death of a man is not seen as very significant compared to the hunting down and killing of a whale. This highlights the humanity of these sailors and their motivations for pursuing financial gain. What else can we see from these sailors as we continue to read this book? Will they continue to be like this, or maybe change their ways to save their crew?
I’m glad you focused our attention on this section, and I hope we can discuss it in class because it is poetic and poignant and also unclear. I am a bit unclear about how you read it. Why do you think the novel is presenting it this way? I’d really like to understand because I don’t yet have an interpretation myself.!
Hey Sophia. I enjoyed your reading your take on Pip’s death. I agree that Melville definitely softens the blow when describing, what I could only imagine, to be a hopeless and terrifying death. We’ve discussed this part of the novel in class, and I think that Pip’s death just shows how he is a commodity to the whaling industry and capitalism as a whole. Stubb hardly cared that Pip fell off the boat, and did not even go back to rescue him because he was too focused on capturing a whale. We know that the more whales they capture, the more money they will receive, and to put money over another man’s life, it seems like Melville is critiquing the mindset and practice of capitalism.