Moby-Dick, or, The Whale
Sep. 29th, 2013 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
widsith"Don't take him too seriously. A lot of what he says is intended as humor."
Pronounced an 'American Classic', and often designated 'long-winded and boring', it can arguably be accurately described either way. Use in required English Lit classes has popularized the latter notion, but if the story is judged on its own merits instead of by the preferences of a teen audience, it fares a little better. Notwithstanding the apparent plot of a 'monster hunt', the story is more accurately described as a series of anecdotes about whaling practices and the life of whalers, interspersed with bits of dubious natural history. Connecting these various pieces is a plot of high tragedy, with narration in the voice of a Shakespearean fool. The 'folly' here takes the form of digressions into intentionally bizarre arguments, wordplay, and nonsensical reasoning, all done for humorous effect.
My hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts.
Unlike the 'comical buffoon' characters in Shakespearean comedies, but typical of the 'licensed fools' from the same works, Ishmael narrates his observations and odd opinions mostly in a light but considered tone. Slipping often into an oblique mockery, his 'satirical wit' (such as it is) is applied as liberally to himself as to others. Combining a mocking humor with off-the-cuff, eccentric observation is definitely characteristic of Shakespeare's fools, but this needn't have been an intentional connection on Melville's part. 'Observation' is inherent in any narration, and a degree of humor is a good choice to enliven long monologues, so a similarity to Shakespeare could be coincidental. Not so with Ahab, who seems to be drawn explicitly from Shakespearean tragedies rather than implicitly from comedies.
But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutible thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.
That's as much rationalization as we get for Ahab's idée fixe, but then he wasn't meant to be rational, merely high-functioning. Regarded as cursed from birth, dire prophesies surround even his name, 'Ahab', which is a Biblical reference of the darker variety. As superstitious as any sailor, Ahab has sought out more optimistic oracles of his own, and a Parsee named Fedallah has given him some assurances he has come to rely upon.
"Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse can be mine: -- and hemp alone can kill me! Ha! ha!"
Placing such confidence in a course of action based on predictions such as Fedallah's clearly calls to mind Macbeth, whose witches provided very specific but indirect pledges of safety. Unreliable as those proved to be, it's hard to join Ahab in his self-assurance based on the promise that he would see two hearses before he died, he himself would have neither hearse nor coffin, and only hemp could kill him.
Though Birnam wood come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on Macduff,
And damn'd be he that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
Not that that statement wasn't suitably stalwart and martial, but it might have come off a bit more bold if he hadn't tried to back out of the fight before making it. Contrasting with Macbeth's moment of doubt, Ahab stays bold and fully committed, or at least fatalistically obsessed, even as his own prophetic protection comes into doubt:
"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
Taken as harsh counterpoint to the commonplace exposition and amusing anecdotes comprising Ishmael's view of "the fishery", the Ahab plot contributes an ominous and sinister influence, with notes of operatic drama surfacing at long intervals. Undoubtedly some would say "too commonplace, not amusing enough, and at intervals much too long", but still...
"Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round Norway Maelstrom, and round perditions flames before I give him up."
Melville also frequently has Ahab paraphrase "Wrath of Khan" for some reason.
