Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick

I didn’t start the two hundred thousand plus words of Moby Dick expecting to be surprised. Herman Melville’s book has been on the shelf of my reading list for years, always an intended read but never open. Its iconic status has always proven to be too great a barrier to its launch. However, the motivation ultimately came from a particularly moving production of Benjamin Brittten’s Billy Budd opera, based on a story by Herman Melville, which led to the decision to start Moby Dick, the whale-sized book about hunting whales. whales, and I had a whale for a while. A copy of Billy Budd, incidentally, was not available at the time. This must be remedied.

The bare whale bones of Moby Dick are arranged very simply. The story is told by Ismael, who is looking for work as a sailor. Paradoxically, perhaps, we learn very little about Ishmael. He appears to be depicted as almost an unbiased observer, able to discern the motives of others, but usually unable to state his own feelings to himself. He is, however, undeniably a character, not a mere vehicle for a writer’s declamation.

On Nantucket, Ishmael befriends Queequeg, a fellow sailor, who is ethnically and religiously different from him. They soon share a room and even a bed. How cultural difference and male camaraderie are depicted is one of the most memorable and thought-provoking aspects of this book. Both men are recruited on the Pequod, a whaler under the command of the initially anonymous and even mysterious Captain Ahab. Apparently, they are joining a factory ship on a standard mission to capture whales for oil profits. The source of profit and the means of making it may run counter to our current assumptions, but the capitalist nature of the activity remains central to our contemporary interactions.

However, once on board, along with the rest of the crew, they discover that their now-revealed captain has been nearly destroyed in an encounter with a huge animal called a white whale and that their ship, the Pequod, is embarking on a mission of get revenge. Captain Ahab is determined, no, single-mindedly obsessed with hunting down his attacker and returning the compliment. A simple irony about Ahab is that, having lost his leg in his encounter with Moby Dick, he now stands on a false leg made of whalebone, tapered at the base to fit into a deck socket for stability. Thus anchored, sustained by the very material he seeks to destroy, he surveys the sea for evidence of his prey. He finds the target of him and chases him for three days. Ismael lives to tell the tale. But those particular events are more than one hundred and thirty chapters in the reader’s future after first encountering Ishmael looking for work on Nantucket.

In Moby Dick Herman Melville places us firmly in the middle of the 19th century. Modern readers should keep in mind that assumptions will be challenged by what has changed in the intervening decades. It was a time before electricity, mass travel, immediate communication at a distance. But it was also a time when the industrial exploitation of the earth’s resources, both animal and mineral, was not only underway, but was seen as an essential and desired end that could provide employment, generate wealth and benefit life. human. As readers today, we must try, for that is all we can do, to free ourselves from our novel positions on the activity the book describes. This was an era when killing whales for profit was quite normal, although, for most people, it was still a distant, dangerous and even fabulous activity. Reading a whodunnit does not indicate acceptance of murder, so exposure to Moby Dick does not imply support for whaling. And making this required mind shift will unlock the tremendous power, immediacy, and indeed wisdom of this masterpiece.

That whaling happened, that a great industry grew and was sustained by the activity and that people lived the life they demanded is indisputable. Like all history, we are never condemned to repeat it, but we are also reminded that, although we are free to reinterpret it, we are powerless to change it. And this book, almost like no other, is packed with the whaling experience that is now so alien to us. We, through Herman Melville’s magnificent storytelling, enter that world, that pursuit of life and death, and the experience is not for the faint of heart.

But what is most surprising about Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is its form, or even the lack of it. The effect is surprisingly modern, as the novel is not presented as a linear narrative. Instead, Moby Dick presents facts about the whales, descriptions of the whaling process, details of their contemporary surroundings and, above all, portraits of the characters that populate the Pequod and are forced to collaborate in Ahab’s mission. In some ways, Moby Dick presents a total experience of a microcosm, often so focused that it literally makes its subject die, but in other ways so lacking in focus that a reader can profitably drift in and out of the book almost at random.

And despite the theme’s location in a particular time, some of its themes are also relevant to our contemporary society. For example, through Ishmael’s narration, Herman Melville addresses the question of what kind of animal the whale might be. He is aware of Linnaeus and the modern species concept. He is aware of the evidence that whales, unlike fish, give birth to and nurse their young with their mother’s milk. The Bible, however, describes Jonah’s encounter as definitely with a fish, and that is all, and thus the question is unarguably answered. The whale has to be a fish, since God cannot be contradicted. What more perfect example of fake news ignoring the facts or conspiracy theory could one imagine?

Ahab is certainly a tyrant, but he may not be the totalitarian dictator that some interpretations demand. He is driven by a personal mission and recruits others, perhaps by deception, perhaps by stealth, to further his ends. Now an imperfect human being, he uses the trained bodies of his recruits to pursue his ends and overcome his own limitations. But although he carries out his manhunt on his own terms and in his own autocratic way, eventually leading his own manhunt, his personal vendetta and tunnel vision free him from his better judgment, whereas a modern dictator would have an exit strategy ready before he could die. any risk. he could be considered. Essentially, Ahab is the political overlord who recruits stalwart and loyal followers who become co-owners of individual impulse. And then, like any politician who needs to exert pressure, he calls on his supporters to amplify, albeit to no avail. All political careers, we are told, end in failure.

Overall, once the paradigm shift in the reader’s assumption is made, Melville’s Moby Dick presents a completely modern and therefore completely amazing experience. The topic may not be fashionable today, but it reminds us that today’s preoccupations and assumed values ​​could soon seem worthless and, indeed, repulsive.