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February 23, 2007

A Bit More on Moby-Dick

One recent frigid February day, I completed my first reading of Moby-Dick. Naturally, as soon as I closed the book, I dashed down to the river, despite the ferocious winds. At the embankment, the frozen Hudson lay all crumbled, broken in flat gray shards like miniature Arctic plates. It took some moments to realize they were animate--almost imperceptibly rocking in gray-green mercury, breathing in deep sleep. Caught in the white-rimmed chips was a tiny seagull, frozen to death. The sky, the water, and that bird were all in a palette of gray-and-white--as was the grizzled sea, barely visible beyond the harbor--and the slowly moving tugs and barges beyond; even the yellow ferries were grayed out by mist and distance. A fitting scene with which to say so-long to Ishmael, clinging to the life buoy of Queequeg's coffin.

Unaccountably, I wondered if humans and whales perhaps had changed places, ages ago--because of our fetal phylogeny and the salt water in our blood; because of the whale’s and dolphin’s vestigial legs, the digits in their fins. (Ch. 55: “…in the side fin, the bones…almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger.”) In any case, we are doubtless related to the sea and the sea mammals therein. And Moby-Dick makes that abundantly clear.

Now, a bit more about Melville’s intimations, his apportioning of fragmented evidence, his suspension of disclosure and of discovery. Just as we fully apprehend the eponymous whale only at the end of the book, so Ishmael (and we) encounter others piecemeal. Ishmael meets Queequeg first by reputation and sinister hint; Peter Coffin teases that Ishmael’s future roommate “eats nothing but steaks, and likes ’em rare”; and the harpooneer is out at the moment, peddling shrunken heads. Alone in the room they’ll be sharing, Ishmael’s apprehension builds when he sees the collection of strange effects (bone-fish hooks, harpoon, incomprehensible poncho). Enter at last the cannibal; it is some time before Ishmael, hidden in bed, sees his face; when he does, the tattoos, at first misinterpreted as surgical wounds, give him a start. More Queequegian emblems and artifacts follow (tomahawk, wallet, the unsold embalmed head). Then the cannibal doffs his beaver hat to reveal a bald, purple-yellow skull and scalp-knot. It gets worse. Undressing, his tattooed chest, arms, back and legs are revealed. Ishmael’s fear fabricates ghastly assumptions; and when the unwitting Queequeg finally jumps into bed, their dread and shock are mutual. But soon Ishmael’s prejudice dissolves into respect for this strangest of bedfellows, as Queequeg’s uneasiness is allayed into deep affection—thus, the dissolution of stereotype and acceptance of otherness. As Ishmael says: “What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

The whale is Ahab’s bête blanc; both are revealed through hints and in stages, but with opposite results. As with Queequeg, Ahab’s reputation precedes him; danger is adumbrated by Elijah on the wharf. When Ishmael mistakes Peleg for Ahab, he is asked, “Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?” Peleg says Ishmael will know the captain by his ivory leg--the living one having been “devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat!”–which also introduces the formidable danger of Moby Dick himself. Aboard the Pequod, Ishmael’s tension and “perturbation” about the captain grow, and for days Ahab remains below in his cabin (even as Moby Dick remains deep in the sea). Not until Ch. 28 does Ahab appear, and then so abruptly (as suddenly as when, in Ch. 134, the whale breaches) that Ishmael’s usual loquacity collapses. You can almost hear his intake of breath when he says: “Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarterdeck.” Before him stands a larger-than-life being with a cicatrized face (as Moby Dick’s body is scarred by wounds and Queequeg’s flesh is ubiquitously tattooed). “So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me and the livid brand which streaked it,” says Ishmael, “that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood….fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw.” Little by little Ahab’s insanity emerges and expands. His bionic limb symbolizes the fact that he is not fully human. Obsession has reified a human who's been swallowed by monomania as his leg has been swallowed by the whale. He has been “dismasted,” yet is likened to a fourth mast; his advancing pride and hate will push ruthlessly through the novel, a juggernaut en route to annihilation.

It goes without saying that Moby-Dick is a universe of themes and symbols, and it would be sheer luxury to spend time analyzing some of them; for example, the meanings of the different “gams”--those nine strange encounters with passing ships, to which Ahab instantly sings out each time, like the refrain among stanzas: “Have you see the white whale?” It would be interesting to examine the balance of comedy and tragedy; and the recurrence of such themes as ingestion, glyphs, and scale (physical, emotional, spiritual). In Ch. 56, e.g., is described an illustration of the “…full length of the Greenland whale” along with, by the same illustrator, a rendering, "with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck ... a shivering world ninety-six facsimiles of magnified Arctic snow crystals.” It would be interesting to examine the significance of the numbers 3, 6, 9, 30. And the motif of astrology. And the different voices of the characters. And the symbols of the elements.

It would be interesting even to chart inconsistencies. For example, the Pequod is steered sometimes by a tiller made from a whale's jawbone; at other times by a wheel. Or, in Ch. 130, "The Hat," Ahab significantly loses his "slouching hat" to a hawk ("Ahab's hat was never restored")- but two pages later: "From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea..." And what about Bulkington, who appears at the beginning, is carefully described and built up ("he became my comrade on the sea") but does not appear again?

It would be interesting to discuss the many foils and paradoxes, such as the motif of accurate, the measured, the scientific--in contrast with the fabulous, the ineffable, the Romantic hyperbole (nautical instruments vs. the numinous mystery of the whale). It would be interesting to parse each described member of the 30-man crew—pagans vs. Christians. It would be interesting to dive into the countless poetic, imagistic passages, like “…the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air…” (Ch. 87). Or the Pequod's sinking, Ch. 135:

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea.

It would be interesting to recount Melville’s many original aphorisms ("Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure" [Ch. 119], "For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books" [arguably an ironic statement]. And parallels with Homer, Plato, Shakespeare (Ahab as unrepentant Lear), Poe. It would be wonderful to examine a few of the tropes, like paradox (“careful disorderliness [ch. 82]; “queerest looking nondescripts” [Ch. 6]; "the personified impersonal" [Ch. 119] “humorously perilous” [Ch. 72]; "coffin life buoy" [Ch. 135].

Now as I begin Moby-Dick again, from my perch in the Manhattoes near "extreme downtown...the Battery," I’ll pay closer attention.

Posted by Jane on February 23, 2007 1:50 PM

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