A mountain separating two lakes. A room papered
floor to ceiling with bridal satins. The lid of an immense snuffbox. These seemingly unrelated images
take us on a tour of a sperm whale’s head in Herman Melville’s "Moby Dick." On the surface, the book is the story of Captain Ahab’s
hunt for revenge against Moby Dick, the white whale who bit off his leg. But though the book features pirates,
typhoons, high-speed chases, and giant squid, you shouldn’t expect a conventional
seafaring adventure. Instead, it’s a multilayered exploration
of not only the intimate details of life aboard a whaling ship, but also subjects from across
human and natural history, by turns playful and tragic,
humorous, and urgent. The narrator guiding us through
these explorations is a common sailor called Ishmael. Ishmael starts out telling his own story as he prepares to escape the “damp
and drizzly November in [his] soul” by going to sea. But after he befriends
the Pacific Islander Queequeg and joins Ahab’s crew aboard the Pequod, Ishmael becomes more
of an omniscient guide for the reader than a traditional character. While Ahab obsesses over revenge and first mate Starbuck
tries to reason with him, Ishmael takes us
on his own quest for meaning throughout “the whole universe,
not excluding its suburbs.” In his telling, life’s biggest questions
loom large, even in the smallest details. Like his narrator, Melville
was a restless and curious spirit, who gained an unorthodox education
working as a sailor on a series of grueling voyages
around the world in his youth. He published "Moby Dick" in 1851, when the United States’
whaling industry was at its height. Nantucket, where the Pequod sets sail, was the epicenter of this lucrative
and bloody global industry which decimated the world’s
whale populations. Unusually for his time, Melville doesn’t shy away
from the ugly side of this industry, even taking the whale’s perspective
at one point, when he speculates on how terrifying
the huge shadows of the ships must be to the creature swimming below. The author’s first-hand familiarity
with whaling is evident over and over again
in Ishmael’s vivid descriptions. In one chapter,
the skin of a whale’s penis becomes protective clothing
for a crewman. Chapters with titles as unpromising
as “Cistern and Buckets” become some of the novel’s
most rewarding as Ishmael compares bailing out
a sperm-whale’s head to midwifery, which leads to reflections on Plato. Tangling whale-lines provoke
witty reflections on the “ever-present perils”
entangling all mortals. He draws on diverse branches of knowledge,
like zoology, gastronomy, law, economics, mythology, and teachings from a range
of religious and cultural traditions. The book experiments with writing style
as much as subject matter. In one monologue, Ahab challenges
Moby Dick in Shakespearean style: “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.” One chapter is written as a playscript, where members of the Pequod’s multi-ethnic
crew chime in individually and in chorus. African and Spanish sailors trade insults
while a Tahitian seaman longs for home, Chinese and Portuguese crewmembers
call for a dance, and one young boy prophesies disaster. In another chapter, Ishmael sings the process
of decanting whale oil in epic style, as the ship pitches and rolls
in the midnight sea and the casks rumble like landslides. A book so wide-ranging
has something for everyone. Readers have found
religious and political allegory, existential enquiry,
social satire, economic analysis, and representations
of American imperialism, industrial relations and racial conflict. As Ishmael chases meaning
and Ahab chases the white whale, the book explores the opposing forces
of optimism and uncertainty, curiosity and fear that characterize
human existence no matter what it is we’re chasing. Through "Moby Dick’s" many pages, Melville invites his readers
to leap into the unknown, to join him on the hunt
for the “ungraspable phantom of life.”
