Moby Dick by Herman Melville

There's something stirring in the soul of Ishmael, the narrator of this "great and enduring volume." When civilization becomes an anchor on the soul, it's time to cut the line, to cast off to sea. It's time to reawaken "that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it." He says "call me Ishmael" in the opening line of the text. He is the bastard of civilization, out of place in his own father's house, but perhaps all the better for it. He is not "the son of the inheritance," and he shrugs off all societal responsibility and obligation, in search of adventure.

As I read Moby Dick I found that I had a certain fellowship and kinship with Ishmael, a fellow pilgrim in search of a life of deeper mystery and awe, a life somehow connected with exploring the wild of the natural world, a life a bit less comfortable but a bit more terrifying. Civilization can make one "grim about the mouth." Civilization values its domestication and the easing of any human exertion. It is, in a word, boring.

I've been chatting with some folks, and I've found that many of us in the States read Moby Dick as required reading in high school. It's unfortunate, I think. (Perhaps it is unfortunate that any text is required reading for students.) It can be a difficult read. Melville's great work was a forerunner to the modern novel. It cuts from plot to poetic and philosophical musings, or it breaks off of the narrative to attempt an encyclopedic-type entry on whale classifications, these sometimes spawning several chapters at a time. This disregard for strict narrative in a novel, however, was ahead of its time. In fact, it took a generation of two to really recognize that Moby Dick is one of the great American novels; indeed, one of the greatest novels of all time.

I think Moby Dick is a novel for a mature soul to savor, and to do so with a certain joy. I found it to be insightful, informative, breath-taking in its scope, and above all quirky and irreverent. Melville's Shakespearean prose does not take itself too seriously, but in the process, I find it to be a sweeping commentary on the entirety of western civilization. My review, then, will follow the epic nature of this great text and tease out how Melville, in his subtle and sly way, re-imagines civilization: with its imperialism, religious dogmatism, philosophical foundationalism, its life of comfort, its mastery of nature, and our conception of free will, necessity, and chance, with chance being the dominant force.

A Grand Epic

The Greek tragedy warns o the passions of a human being. The grasp exceeds the reach. Be wary of overstepping the boundary of morality. Live within your nature and all will be well.

The primary story line of Moby Dick reads like a Greek tragedy, and it is epic in its scope. We see two essential characters throughout the novel: Ishmael, the insightful, if somewhat idiosynchratic, narrator of the tale, and Ahab, the monomaniacal Captain of the Pequod. Ishmael has been taken aboard the Pequod for his first whaling expedition. Not long after setting sail, Captain Ahab reveals his true intentions for the Pequod: "Death to Moby Dick," the famed white whale who kills men and once took Ahab's leg. The two perspectives of Ahab and Ishmael are woven together throughout the tale. Ishmael, the investigative, thoughtful, and poetic novice, alongside Ahab, the seasoned old captain, a "grand, ungodly, godlike man."

"The chick that's in him pecks the shell. 'Twill soon be out." Ahab is intent on his vengeance of Moby Dick. "He piled up on the white whale's hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race, from Adam down." Ahab's was a "supernatural revenge," an anger that pursued the whale with a divine fury!

One of the crew speaks prophetically, even desperately to Ahab as the chase for the whale threatens the whole ship: "Let Ahab beware of Ahab. Beware of thyself, old man." Beware of thyself could not be more Greek, that sense that one's passions mixed with hubris--an arrogance that exceeds its proper limits--might produce a monstrosity of desire. "God help thee, old man. Thy thoughts have created a creature in thee!"

Melville's intent is to create a story that is on a grand scale. As such, even his long detours on the whale, the nature of the whaling equipment, and any other fact that strikes his fancy--all of these are meant to draw the reader into the epic tale. The true-to-life detail creates a greater-than-life narrative, something worthy of the full awfulness of the sea; something to inspire awe and dread.

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme: No great enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

A Critique of Western Civilization

Where does one begin, to distill the spiritual, religious, and metaphysical musings of Moby Dick? Is it an act of hubris and madness, like the quest of the cracked old Ahab? Perhaps. And yet it may also be the case that Melville gives us the modus operandi for interpreting his text. In the interrogative words of Ishmael, "Why then do you try to enlarge your mind? Subtleize it." Melville works in a poetic, subtle, and even silly manner as he pokes at the fabric of the civilized world and the imperialistic worldview of the West.

What better place to start than with religion? Melville's imagination recasts and reinventS our conception of faith and the spiritual. He works with the same clay as the rest of us, for Melville is constantly alluding to Christian scriptures, motifs, and characters. His interest is primarily with the Hebrew scriptures, almost exclusively. Even when mentioning Jesus, Melville refers to him as "the man of sorrows," the prophetic title given in the book of Isaiah. In this way, Melville is writing his own Christian scriptures. Like a modern Apostle Paul, he recontextualizes the Hebrew faith into something new.

The best example of this work is found when Ishmael is caught in a bit of a bind. His new friend Queequeg is a "savage" and a pagan; yet Queequeg beckons Ishmael to join with him in worshiping his little idol, Yojo. Ishmael wants to be polite, friendly, and accommodating, but he is also a Presbyterian and knows that this act would make him an idolater. It is well worth citing the text at length, to see Melville's recontextualization in action.

"I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with the wild idolater in worshiping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do the will of God?--that is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolater."

Not quite the same conclusion that the Apostle Paul would reach; however, in this wonderful paragraph, Melville recasts all of Christianity in light of goodwill toward one's fellow traveler. It's a sort of practical, organic Christianity that meets its neighbor where its neighbor is, even if smack in the middle of idolatry. And what is more, this interpretation seems to foreshadow the theological issues facing Christianity in the coming era of globalization. Melville's novel, as you know, was first published in 1851.

I also see Melville as developing a new (or perhaps very old) interpretation of God. I think Melville conceives of God as he conceives of the whale--as a being that is most fundamentally beyond our grasp. I suppose I ought to cite the novel again at length, to get the full sense of this idea.

"You must needs conclude that the Great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any considerable degree of exactness so there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like, and the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour is by going a whaling yourself. But by so doing you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him."

This conception of God strikes me as a very Hebrew idea. Again, I see this as Melville's reach back to the Jewish roots of Christianity. The allegorical link between God and the whal is almost made explicit when Melville says of the whale, "He has no face," and we must only see his tail. It is a clear allusion, as I see it, to the passage in Exodus chapter 33 where Moses asks to see God's glory, and God says, "you will see my back; but my face must not be seen," because, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

As has been alluded to, my read of Moby Dick is that it is not only a reinterpretation of the Christian faith but also the whole of of Western Civilization. Melville seems to take the lessons of the Greeks, with their warnings against hubris and untamed passions, and merge them with the Hebrew wisdom tradition and their conception of God as a God of awe and mystery.

There are two very notable passages where this merger seems most explicit to me. The first is in Father Maple's sermon on Job. God is not to be trifled with. Beware the disobedience of Job, Shipmates! Melville gives us an entire sermon on Job, a sermon that Ishmael listens to before embarking on his voyage. The whale narrative of Job is inverted, when rather than a whale swallowing a sinner-prophet on the run, Ahab is "chasing a Job's whale around the world." This is the switch from Hebrew narrative to Greek tragedy, but they both seem to bring the reader to the point of a healthy fear and trembling. This sense of awe is clearly lost on Western Civilization, in its imperialistic, monomaniacal quests to conquer and master the natural world.

Western Civilization in the modern era borrows its philosophical concepts from Greece and creates a new Christian God who charges her with conquering the nations in the name of Jesus. So, the pursuit of land, wealth, and glory merges with an evangelistic zeal. Melville inverts these. He takes the very human wisdom of Greece and carries over the God who cannot be contained in temples made by men.

This Greek and Hebrew merger also comes together in Ishmael's musings on the book of Ecclesiastes. Ishmael calls this "unChristian Solomon's wisdom," insights that the Christianity of Western Civilization knows nothing of.

"Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with they hand on the helm! Turn not they back to the compass." In other words, the darkness can overwhelm. But on the other hand, "that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or underdeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity!' All. This willful world hath not yet got hold of unChristian Solomon's wisdom yet."

This "willful world" is the imperialistic force of modern civilizations, which like Ahab would cry out, "I'd strike the sun if it slighted me!" But again, we must keep in mind, that Melville's text is not a sermon. It's philosophical themes and words of instruction are tucked away in a subtle manner, with a sense of humor and a wink of the eye. Melville isn't looking for converts. He isn't even seeking to undo Western Civilization: he's only deconstructing it through is novel, using its words and story to exaggerate it. He only wants to play with it and work it out with a crazy old captain, a massive and mythological whale, and a witty observer to record it all. Ishmael records it all as such:

"Here goes for a cool, collective dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost."

Conclusion: A Desperado Philosophy

If Melville stirs up a sense of awe and fear toward the world, he does so with the advice that we ought to still dive into it. There's something of the best of all practical wisdom in that. The world, with all its grandeur and greatness can swallow you, like the deep sea. God is great and beyond us; but don't let all that stop you. If you have a sturdy back and a noble soul, then take that cool, collective dive. "I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul."

So, Melville's "desperado philosophy" emerges from all of this. "There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange, mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own....That sort of wayward mood....comes in the midst of his earnestness....There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial desperado philosophy."

I do think that it is fairly clear that on some points, Melville may be guilty of a bit of over-romanticizing. He seems to believe, for example, that whales will never be driven to extinction. The whale is "immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality." The estimation that I am familiar with is that in the last 200 years, the whale population has been reduced by 90%. Ecosystems, we are now learning, are fragile things. Wiping out a species can have a devastating effect on the world, to say nothing of being deprived of the beauty of a species. Technology is powerful enough to wipe out even the mighty Leviathan.

We live in fascinating times. Our world now has the technological capability to either create "a new heavens and a new earth" or completely destroy it. This extreme is perhaps unknown in all of human history. The tower started at Babel is finally complete. Still, for all of our mastery, it is our humanness that holds us back. "Sayest all of us are Ahabs."

"Heaven have mercy on us all--Presbyterians and pagans alike--for we are all cracked about the head and sadly need mending."