Call me Newbuck
I finished reading Moby Dick several weeks ago and highly
recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good read. Prior to dipping into it,
I had the impression that the book was dour, serious, and long. Those characterizations
are true… but it is also hilarious in parts, peopled with wild and entertaining
characters, and is a deep and thoughtful meditation on human nature and our
world.
A short background and summary:
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| Herman "that's a nice beard" Melville |
Herman Melville published Moby Dick in 1851, after he
had given up his work as a merchant-seaman and whaler. Melville based the novel
on his own experiences on the sea as well as the actual sinking of the whaleship
Essex after being struck by a whale in 1820.
Moby Dick is narrated by the merchant-seaman Ishmael
who joins the crew of the whaling-ship Pequod during the height of the American
whale-fishery in the first half of the 19th century. As the novel
progresses, Ishmael’s participation in the novel gradually deteriorates until
he practically disappears from the narrative. Ahab, the captain of the Pequod,
is obsessed with killing the albino whale Moby Dick who took his leg on a previous
whaling voyage. As Ishmael disappears from the novel, Ahab grows in
significance until he occupies almost the whole plot of the book.
The Pequod sails from Nantucket in pursuit of Sperm Whales
in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. At the time, whaling was an
extremely lucrative business because spermacetti oil was the preferred source
for candles due to its smokeless, bright flame. A successful voyage
might harpoon several hundred whales over the course of a two- or three-year
voyage; the accumulated oil from these whales could easily provide the entire
crew with small fortunes at the conclusion of their journey. That is… if they
survived that long: whaling was a notoriously dangerous profession; in addition
to the hazards associated with sailing a large, wooden, square-rigged ship
through the roughest waters in the world, the crew were expected to pursue 40-ton
whales in small, wooden rowboats, harpoon said whales, and then be dragged at
breakneck speed by the harpooned whales until they tired. As you would expect,
many, many men died while whaling.
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| Will you be my friend? |
The novel follows the whaling ship and crew as they travel around the Horn of Africa, into the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, and finally into the Pacific in pursuit of the white whale. Along the way, Melville indulges in numerous detours as he describes the numerous intricacies and oddities of the whales and whaling. Melville uses these details of the profession as the framework onto which he adds sidelong analyses and critiques of the world as he sees it. These additions to the narrative can be distracting but they add a light, whimsical touch to a story that can be overly dark.
As the journey progresses, Ahab draws the crew further and further
into his obsessive desire for revenge until only the first mate Starbuck
retains any sense of the insanity of their mission. Just before catching up to Moby
Dick, Starbuck reminds Ahab of his family in Nantucket in the hope that by
doing so, he will convince the captain to turn the ship toward home. Ahab
teeters on the brink of giving up the chase, but cannot turn away from his
desire for revenge. The crew engages in a three-day chase that ends when the white whale
rams the ship, sending the Pequod and her crew to the bottom of the Pacific.
Ishmael alone is left to tell the tale of the ship and the whale.
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| I've made a huge mistake... |
Analysis of the Themes of Moby Dick:
The central theme of Moby Dick as I see it is the
problem of living in a world which we know to be disordered and fallen. Captain
Ahab has experienced tragedy in his life, a fact symbolized by the loss of his
leg; he responds by seeking to restore justice to the scales of his life by
killing the creature that unbalanced them. This desire to correct our world can
be noble, and Ahab does present as such on occasion, but it can also be taken
to the extreme. This excessive, utopian desire to perfect our fallen world is a
feature of what is often called Romanticism and is very apparent in the poetry
of the second wave of Romantics: Lord Byron, Shelley, and Keats. These poets
were called in their own day the Satanic School because of the close thematic
connections between their poetry and the character of Satan in Milton’s Paradise
Lost. Milton depicts Satan as an individual knowingly struggling without
hope against an impossibly strong God: “Better to reign in hell, then serve in
Heav’n.”[1]
In the case of the romantic poets, this struggle was seen as a fight against
society, culture, the status quo, even reality itself.
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| Satan being dramatic |
The ethos of the romantic poets has also been the driving force
behind all revolutions (except perhaps the American) and all progressive
movements since the French Revolution in 1789. However, the romantic ethos is
altered slightly in progressivism from a noble but impossible struggle against
reality into a belief that our broken, sordid world can be remade into paradise.
The progressive sees the inequality and the injustice of our world and believes
that those faults can be corrected. The danger of this philosophy becomes
apparent when it meets any kind of opposition. Because the progressive believes
that our world can be perfected, anyone who opposes the progressive agenda stands
in the way of paradise on earth. Thus, the opponent of the progressive agenda
becomes a traitor to humanity and is no longer a member of the in-group. Any cruelty
becomes permissible when dealing with such an individual… ergo the great
tragedies of the 20th century: the forced collectivization and the purges of
the Soviet Union, the cultural revolution in China, the killing fields in Cambodia.
In contrast to the progressive impulse, the conservative believes
that there are some features of human beings and our world which will never be
perfected in this life. Because the conservative believes that some things are
permanent, he also believes that the past can teach us about those permanent
things. By looking to the past, we can make slow and steady progress as we work
towards a better world for our descendants, but the injustice and the tragedy
of our world will always be present to some degree. There are two alternative
beliefs that the conservative can choose when faced with the injustice of our world:
either suffering is meaningless, or it will be remedied in a better world to
come. Those two alternatives: nihilism and hope, are opposite sides of the
conservative coin; but, ironically, the nihilist often ends up in the same camp
as the progressive.[2]
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I "mustache" you a question |
Captain Ahab is the personification of the romantic spirit: he
desperately desires to correct the injustice of the world and he does not care
whether he and the crew are destroyed in the process. Starbuck is the only member
of the crew who opposes Ahab’s project, but he fails to act in time to save the
crew. Our world, like the Pequod, needs men and women who are willing to oppose
the self-destructive tendencies of our age; men and women who can successfully remind
our world of the permanent things.
[1] Milton, Paradise Lost, book 1, line 263.
[2]
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