From the Archive (2000): Melville

Billy Schraufnagel

English 277a, Schirmeister

December 12, 2000

Final Paper

Swallowed by a Whale

At the beginning of Chapter 55 of Moby Dick, Ishmael discusses the image of the whale. His goal is to examine several different artistic representations of whales, and, for the reader, separate the authentic from the fraudulent: “I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman” (Melville, 224). Even as he begins this task, Ishmael identifies at least three inherent parameters he must work within. First, he announces the limits of his medium; as a writer, he must “paint” with words and all the devices attached to them (i.e. rhetoric, literary structure, allusion, characterization, etc.). Second, he is striving for “something like the true form,” that is, Ishmael acknowledges the tremendous elusiveness of his subject. He must find a way to reconcile the physical/biological whale with the imaginative/poetic whale. Ishmael’s third challenge is to represent the whale through the “eye of the whaleman.” To do this, it follows that he must provide a rather strong understanding of the “whaleman’s” perspective. One may read the entire novel as Ishmael’s endeavor to accurately represent the whale via these parameters.

Unfortunately for our narrator, the “whale” through “the eye of the whaleman” is an extremely difficult subject. He openly expresses his frustration, for example, after spending nearly four pages discussing the whale’s tail: “Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will” (Melville, 318). Ishmael’s rhetoric splits roughly between two different approaches: narration and description. Much of the novel develops as the plot-driven story of Ishmael, Ahab, and the Pequod. Many chapters do not fit into the story; they become scientific explorations of the whale as a natural being, and any sense of character or the movement of time disappears. The two modes of understanding trade prominence as the novel progresses and there is always some middle-ground rhetorical gray area. Sometimes they inform each other, and other times they contradict each other. At the heart of this literary uneasiness seems to lurk a dissatisfaction with any one form.

The more objective, factual chapters in Moby Dick follow a pattern of understanding outlined in Emerson’s essay, “Nature.” Through this method, Ishmael begins with scientific observation and works toward philosophical implications. However, he realizes that the whale is a living beast with a dynamic identity, and so seeks a more temporal, immediate, human-related understanding. He tries the narrative approach, and a colorful life springs up around the whale. The passage of time adds human immediacy and relevancy to Ishmael’s “painting.” It is truer to life, closer to Emerson’s view of human subjectivity as told in another essay, “Fate.” The characters aboard the Pequod are mired in fate, eliminating intellectual possibility. We find that the Pequod has one, and only one, point of view. Our understanding of the whale is driven by Ahab’s monomaniacal quest for vengeance.

The resultant novel is a patchwork of styles that attempts to balance the descriptive and the narrative, knowledge and experience, the universal and the temporal, the objective and the subjective, and, ultimately, freedom and fate. As Emerson writes in his essay “Fate,” the tension between the biological and the intellectual allows us to be free. When Ishmael writes on the facts of the whale, our intellects and imaginations are free to conjecture whatever truth we wish. When Ishmael tells the story of Ahab and the White Whale, we watch the characters become consumed by scientific inevitability. Only through an amalgamation of these two modes of understanding can Ishmael truly paint the whale.

Emerson provides a model for the pursuit of scientific knowledge in his essay, “Nature.” Ideally, correspondence with nature should be able to answer all questions. In other words, the proper mind entering into the proper relationship with nature should see absolute perfection: “A faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections” (Emerson, 55). Emerson spends much of the essay elaborating on those “holiest affections,” again speaking in ideal theoretical terminology. “Man is an analogist,” he writes (Emerson, 32), and therefore should see himself and all humanity whenever he examines nature. The overwhelming profundity should drive him to poetry; he should glean “absolute truth” (23), “uncontained immortal beauty” (24), and a “new faculty of the soul” (36) by observing the merest leaf. The staggering proportions of his optimism aside, suffice it to say Emerson urges us to seek some sort of abstract truth in nature. Also important is his requirement that we “detach every object from personal relations,” something which Ishmael attempts several times in Moby Dick with regards to the whale. His complex scientific inquiry extends throughout the novel; for brevity’s sake, we may focus on three categories of the inquiry to provide sufficient example. They are the social behaviors, the anatomy, and the fossilized remains.

Ishmael has no problem relating Sperm Whale patterns of social behavior to those of humans. The whales travel in two different types of schools, he explains– mostly-female schools and all-male schools. The mostly-female schools are presided over by a male “schoolmaster,” who mates with the females and provides protection. The male schools are comprised of young, energetic bulls who have yet to become schoolmasters. Playing the comic analogist, Ishmael likens the female school to a group of fashionable ladies, “for ever on the move in leisurely search of variety” (Melville, 328). To the roving bands of male-schools, he bestows a slightly more exuberant resemblance: “Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard” (Melville, 330). The schoolmaster Ishmael compares to “a luxurious Ottoman” (328) traveling with his harem and leaving “anonymous babies all over the world” (329). During a more poignant moment of contemplation, Ishmael muses that rival bulls will fight (sometime to the death) over a female, just as humans on land. Finally, he makes the important observation that old schoolmasters move away from their harems to become loners who viciously shun any visitors; thus all loner whales found are understood to be very old and considerably tough. Moby Dick is one such whale, as the sailors later discover.

While Ishmael may not reach the sublime depth predicted by Emerson, his analysis of whales’ social organization follows the spirit of Emerson’s model. He gains an understanding of whale society via his observations and understanding of human society. Ishmael carries out this process to a much greater extent in pondering the whale’s anatomy, allowing him to create a more complex picture of the whale. Consequently, he reaches toward more complex philosophical truths. For example, the whale’s warm-bloodedness and thick outer layer of blubber allow it to maintain a constant body temperature in many different climates and regions of the Earth. To be equally at home in the Arctic Sea and the scalding Equator, Ishmael regards as truly admirable. Regarding this biological fact leads him to wistfully desire the same for humans:

“Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own” (Melville, 261)

Another poetic image of the whale arises from Ishmael’s contemplation of its mystifying spout. After outlining the various proposed scientific theories of explanation, he hypothesizes that the spout is pure water vapor, by virtue of his considering the Sperm Whale to be a “dignified and sublime” being (Melville, 313). He regards the mist as evidence of profound contemplation akin to that of “Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on” (313). He does not conjecture a benevolent spirit, mind you— only a profound depth, lending the whale a foreboding and almost holy nature, even if it may be a dark holiness. A third example of Ishmael’s imagination working upon the whale’s anatomy (there are many examples, but three will do for our purpose of illustration) is the mighty tail. In this powerful organ, Ishmael finds his most sublime yet most frustrating subject of analysis. The tail’s awesome strength and tender delicacy create a magical quality, and its motion when the whale dives beneath the waves becomes a religious experience: "This peaking of the whale’s flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven" (Melville 317). In the Emersonian spirit, Ishmael has allowed his imagination to work upon anatomical reality to create a natural deity.

This sentiment grows and indeed becomes overwhelming when Ishmael turns to the fossilized whale and brings into account its stupendous history. He remembers the awe-inspiring whale-bone fossils that have been discovered in Western Europe and the Southern United States. His mind drifts to the time before man walked the Earth, when the world was covered in water and ice: “Then the whole world was the whale’s; and king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs” (Melville, 380). The vast dimension of time magnifies the whale’s persona a thousandfold in Ishmael’s mind, and he staggers under its weight:

"For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth” (Melville, 379).

His final thought in this section is to sympathize with the ancient and/or primitive people who have or continue to worship the whale, using its bones for miracles and painting its countenance on their temple walls. The final words of this chapter draw the reader into his experience: “In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there” (Melville, 381).

Although Ishmael may be said to have reached the pinnacle of the Emersonian vision in his scientific exploration of the whale, we have already begun to see some of the drawbacks of such a position. As the whale becomes more and more hallowed, it becomes less a whale and more of an ethereal idea that drifts beyond tangible understanding. Ishmael acknowledges this difficulty in trying to read the ambiguous marks on the whale’s skin when it is first caught: “the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable” (Melville, 260). The same holds true for the tail discussed earlier: “The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it” (Melville, 317). His imagination may work towards a spiritual communion with the whale, but that spiritual link becomes increasingly trapped within the narrator himself until it threatens to consume him.

Emerson warns of this danger in “Nature” when he cautions against a pure Idealism: “It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end” (Emerson, 49). Missing from Ishmael’s picture of the whale, Emerson suggests, is relevance to the narrator’s life and a sense of time. To Emerson, truth attained through nature must become more than “barren contemplation” (30) or “technical use” (35); it must inspire and/or inform human action. Ishmael, too, in judging the quality of different artistic representations of the whale, praises the paintings that show dynamic scenes of the actual hunt, not just static portraits: “They represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale... The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and true” (Melville, 229). Emerson promises that active forces must respond to intellectual forces (and vice versa) and Ishmael admits, “The only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his [the whale’s] living contour, is by going a whaling yourself;” (Melville, 228).

So a-whaling we will go. The drive to narrative immediately arises from such vivid and profound understanding of the facts. We yearn to see them in motion, listen to the human stories that are tied to them. Ishmael boards the Pequod and we meet all manner of characters: the outlandish savage Queequeg, the sober Starbuck, the maniacally driven Ahab, the looney coward Pip, and more. Scenes of conflict, brotherhood, tragedy, and humor– all the emotional conventions that contribute to a compelling narrative appear in the narrative portions of the novel. To discuss the full extent of Melville’s storytelling and characterization skills befalls another paper with another focus– for our purposes the narrative brings human emotion, the passage of time, and subjective point of view (the eye of the whaleman): all of the qualities lacking from the earlier approach to understanding the whale. However, one important limitation arrives with the narrative structure– a linear inevitability governed by natural forces working together under the common appellation of fate.

Emerson describes fate in an essay of the same name as the limitations imposed by natural forces on our actions: “When each comes forth from his mother’s womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him” (Emerson, 334). The most obvious sources are our biological limitations as a species and as individuals, but the forces may also include natural and supernatural phenomena. In fact, the suspicion of supernatural forces is unavoidable in reading the story of the Pequod. The omnipresence of omens and prophesies alongside Ahab’s intensely focused and irrational drive to kill Moby Dick rather plainly predicts the final destination of the old captain and his ship. Whereas the descriptive chapters allow Ishmael to freely intellectualize and shape the whale into a spiritual being, the narrative chapters are tightly bound by biological and supernatural necessity.

Early in the narrative, before Ishmael encounters the Pequod for the first time, we are met with a supernatural figure tied to the natural world. Yojo, Queequeg’s wooden idol/god, “chooses” a whaling ship for the two newly befriended sailors: the pagan god “had already pitched upon a vessel, which if left to myself, I, Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it had turned out by chance” (Melville, 66). After signing onto the fated ship, as Ishmael and Queequeg go to board, they encounter another mysterious, oracular figure: Elijah. He obviously knows of the doom awaiting them, but stops short of revelation. The ambiguous old man seems to concede their fate as predetermined: “Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be after all. Any how, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready” (Melville, 87). Thus the very beginning of Ishmael’s voyage establishes fate as a strong force.

The sense of destiny runs far deeper in the Pequod’s maniacal captain Ahab. Seeking vengeance for a lost leg, the old sailor is inwardly consumed by the need to kill Moby Dick. Shortly after the ship sets sail, the captain makes it clear to the crew his intended purpose for the journey: he offers an ounce of Spanish gold to the sailor who first sights the white whale. Ishmael explains this drive in terms of Ahab’s destiny: “With little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still drive us on” (Melville, 145). To assist his quest, Ahab secretly procures the service of Fedallah, a mysterious Asian soothsayer who is frequently compared to the devil by members of the ship. The Parsee, as he is also called, materializes to the great surprise of all the sailors upon the first lowering. Much later in the narrative, we discover that Fedallah is a sort of personal oracle for Ahab. One night, while the two sit together on a smaller whale-boat, Fedallah offers a prediction of Ahab’s death: “Ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea” (Melville, 410).

As may be expected, Ahab’s increasing proximity to Moby Dick increases this fatal drive. Conscious of his impending doom, the captain responds to the whale’s natural call; after two unsuccessful forays, Ahab is finally destroyed on the third day of the “chase.” The Pequod and her entire crew sink at the finale, their fates inextricably linked to the captain’s. By the end of the novel, Ahab’s character is both frightening and indicative of his subordination to the natural: “Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels... thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that” (Melville, 460).

Enough of the plot has been elaborated upon by now to show a strong tendency of the narrative to become fatalistic. The names of the characters themselves– Ishmael, Ahab, Elijah to name the best examples– are Biblical names, with stories already attached to them. Ahab’s manner of speaking (to a lesser extent mirrored by the other characters) is also borrowed, namely from Shakespearean soliloquy. Both of these conventions speak to stories that have already been written, enhancing the notion that the characters’ lives have already been mapped out. Furthermore, the Bible and Shakespearean tragedy are both heavily steeped in fate, and the idea of a divine script. How different from Ishmael’s directionless philosophical meanderings already discussed!

Remember that we earlier read Ishmael’s use of the narrative as a way to provide an immediate active picture of the whale, but we have not yet seen how the picture of the whale changes. Let us turn to the first time one of the characters in the narrative viscerally encounters a whale, namely in Chapter 61, “Stubb Kills a Whale.” Stubb’s efficient work reveals the gruesome reality of the deed: “The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood... At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore... ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!” (Melville, 244-5). No matter how many fanciful philosophical wonders we may divine from the whale, we are reminded that the purpose of a whaling voyage is to hunt and kill whales. The bursting heart jarringly converts the whale into a biological creature, no more spiritually endowed than the basest human or the lowliest slug. During the subsequent chapters, the mariners completely disassemble the beast, digging into its bowels to extract their commercial product. Ishmael accepts this process as the way of the world, just as Elijah accepts the inevitable death of the Pequod’s crew. The whale gains no sympathy– Moby Dick is just as vicious and just as relentless in destroying the ship.

Ishmael’s whale now has many faces, many of which contradict each other: a social animal, a spiritual nomad, a profound philosopher, a timeless majesty, a vulnerable organism, a savage demon. Yet the narrator makes no apology for his endeavor: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it” (Melville, 379). Though not perfect, Ishmael has largely succeeded in painting his portrait. He has given us “somewhat the nature of the whale” and “the eye of the whaleman,” a combination of objective truth and temporal realism. And although he works brilliantly within each rhetorical method, the way in which he assembles the novel is just as cunning.

As said before, the chapters in Moby Dick switch back and forth between expository and narrative throughout the novel. On a large scale, the interplay follows a sort of general pattern, and the novel can be roughly divided into three sections. In the first section, comprised of the first fifty-four chapters, Ishmael acts mostly as narrator and sets up the terms of the narrative. We are introduced to the characters, given a general idea of the whaling industry, and enticed with the promise of further plot developments. Most importantly, the principal conflict of the narrative– Ahab vs. Moby Dick– is established. Within this generally narrative section, Ishmael pauses every so often to provide some background knowledge, to be used in assisting the narrative.

The second section is roughly made of up Chapters 55 through 105. From “Monstrous Pictures of Whales” to “Does the Whale Diminish?,” Ishmael turns to the descriptive understanding of the whale as already outlined. Inter-mingled throughout the second section, Ishmael interrupts his inquiry to relate brief, isolated encounters with other whaling ships or whales. Oftentimes, these episodes serve to illustrate or to lead into a scientific discussion. For example, “The Grand Armada” (Chapter 87) describes the Pequod’s encounter with a school of whales, and the next chapter, “Schools & Schoolmasters,” launches into a discussion of how these schools are organized. The essential plot does not move forward– i.e., Ahab’s confrontation with Moby Dick is no closer– in the second section.

The final section, beginning with “Ahab’s Leg” (Chapter 106), takes us back to the narrative and the heat of the chase. Ahab regains his position as central figure, and the climactic confrontation is hastened to without interruption.

Admittedly, this model is not perfect, but an emphasis on the general pattern of literary structure can uncover some interesting observations about Ishmael’s tactics. The consciousness of fate, omens, and prophesies in the opening chapters immediately imposes a temporal quality upon the novel and makes readers aware of the end of the novel. Fate demands to be followed through upon, and prophesies demand to be fulfilled. We know we are fated for death, but we feel compelled to live out that fate, provide some closure. Ishmael wants to do more than this, however. He wants to rise, transcend time, transcend fate; thus his yearning for scientific truth and philosophical meaning. By moving away from the narrative with a promise of ultimate climactic fulfillment, Ishmael brings alive what Emerson would otherwise call “the thin cold realm of lifeless science” (Emerson, 263).

Though Ishmael descends from his intellectual plateau, his inquiry has not been wasted. Separate from the narrative, it transcends the narrative to create a universal space in which nothing is Learned, nothing is Answered, nothing is Proven; but here, the mind is free. Ishmael must undoubtedly return to reality and confront his fate, but the reader inherits an interpretive ambiguity, for Moby Dick swims away at the end. What is the whale, ultimately? What is nature? Is it a poetic landscape designed to sharpen our intellectual skills and from which we may spin our philosophical truth? Or is it a cold unfeeling collection of atoms, each body fighting for its survival? The novel does not conclude nicely with a safe ribbon of Conclusion wrapped around it. It extends beyond itself into the imagination and the life of the reader.

[2025 Postscript: for more Whale stories, see one of my favorite childhood stories from Pete Seeger: Sam the Whaler]