What is Ahab?

I think the question of what Ahab is, while somewhat obvious, is interesting and also ambiguous.  I already mentioned in response to Alison's post, that Ahab is a man/nature hybrid with his ivory leg.  Ahab in the bible was the King of Israel, i.e. King of the Jews.  In MD, he is clearly something of an anti-Christ, and there are quite a few references along these lines.  In Ch. 28 we get "...forboding shivers ran over me.  Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck." And one sentence later: "He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them..."
Ahab spends much of this section of the book below.  In Ch 29: " 'It feels like going down to one's tomb,' - he would mutter to himself - ' for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth'". 

I don't think it's as simple as Ahab being the devil.  But in the order vs. chaos theme of Caitlin or man vs. nature theme of Alison (aren't these really similar, order=man, chaos=nature?)  Ahab is struggling to be human while battling his darker, chaotic nature that is literally attached to him at the hip.

Moby Dick and Girls

I wish I had more to offer this evening than this cartoon I found in this week's issue of the New Yorker, but I don't. I did however finish last weeks reading and shall check in soon!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Just a quick thought, as I, too, am behind in the reading. Is the natural world out to get us? We already know the ocean is against our sailors (see the "malicious waves" of the Lee Shore, and also every other chapter). But it doesn't seem to be just the water. From chapter 28: "For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods..."

Thoughts?

The Advocate

Was it only a week ago that I was wagging my finger at those of you who weren't posting with your responses to the second week's reading? Well, you can wag back, because I still haven't finished the reading due on Sunday. I'm working on it, though! I don't have anything long and/or thoughtful to post, although I was struck by something Melville said in Chapter 24 (The Advocate), in which he mounts a defense of whaling:

"...whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb." 

I don't know about the Egyptian mythos that he is referring to (do you guys?), but I do know that aphids, and probably some other insects, bear young that are already pregnant. I was wondering if Melville knew about this. Something he got from Darwin, maybe?

All this is but a draught--nay, but the draught of a draught

As Alison mentioned before, this is the section where Ishmael the narrator starts to fade from view. This is also the section where the chapters themselves start to get a little... strange. Up to this point, the book has proceeded in a more or less plot-driven, narrative way. But in the chapters that we read this week, we start to drift in to different sorts of storytelling.
In "The Lee Shore" we get Ishmael stepping away from his story to talk to us as readers ("Some chapters back...") and to give us a preview of the fate of Bulkington and the ship. That very beautiful, emotional chapter is followed by "The Advocate," in which Ishmael abandons the plot altogether and does a 180 in terms of tone in order to give us a legal-style defense of the glory of whaling. Then of course there's "Cetology," a break from the story to give us a lesson on how to classify whales. The book starts to feel a bit jumbled.
What's going on with that?
I'm wondering if this has to do with some of the ideas that start to emerge in "Cetology," about order and chaos ("The classification of the constituents of chaos...") and about incompleteness ("I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty"). Do you think that the sort of disordered, unfinished feel of the book is a product of the way disorder and incompleteness is presented as inevitable--and not only inevitable, but preferable ("For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity")?

Ishmael the narrator

I have a lot of thoughts about the Lee Shore, and I don't plan on getting them all out in this post. (And good point, Caitlin, about the gender dynamics in the chapter!). But I'll start here, with how we might think about it in terms of Ishmael as narrator. We've stuck pretty close to Ishmael so far, with the exception, I think, of when Ishmael tells us the story of Queequeg's youth. But by the end of this week's section he's going to fade away and we'll barely see him again until the end of the novel. (Eli, I hope I'm not giving anything away for you). So I think one (of many!) ways to think about the Lee Shore chapter is as a foreshadowing of of Ishmael's fate.

Bulkington is introduced in the third chapter as though he might become the hero of the novel: "This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned) I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man..." He sounds like a superhero! But then the Lee Shore is the very last time we see him.

So I see Bulkington's disappearance as a precursor to Ishmael's own self-abnegation in the face of the sea's chaos. And the Lee Shore seems to be saying that it's this very disappearance that is our truest or highest expression: "Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing -- straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

Now compare that to Ahab's reaction to the "howling infinite." But that's a whole other post...

Hey all, I don't have much time to make a post about the book. Just wanted to let you know my account is set up and I'm caught up on the reading, so you will hear what I think soon.

Nantucket is no Illinois

Some random thoughts from last week's reading.
I also was struck by the humor, which I did not at all remember from last time I read it.  An example:
When discussing how he an Qq sleep with just the tips of their noses uncovered and how that makes them feel "delightfully and unmistakably warm" he says "For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich."

Speaking of Qq and Ishmael in bed, there are many instances in which they appear to be married. 
When Ishmael tells Qq that he's going whaling, Qq resolves to go with him: "in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds"

 And of course there are the many scenes in bed.  So what's up with this?  Anyone?

Back to the humor.  My favorite scene is Qq signing up on board the Pequod.  Peleg calls him Quohog, then Hedgehog,then Quohog again.  Peleg-Bildad routine very amusing.  By the way, some of you may not know that there are several spellings of quohog.  Others are quahog and quahuag.  Once upon a time in a scrabble game..

Ramadan:  I was interested in the use of "Ramadan" to describe Qq's holiday.  Clearly it is not the muslim Ramadan.  Anybody know where this use comes from?

Know ye, now, Bulkington?

Ok, I couldn't resist posting about "The Lee Shore" as soon as I got to it--it's still the best! But I'm sure that Alison, at least, is going to want to say some stuff about it, so I'll be brief.
When we read this in my class at Hampshire, I remember talking about how Moby Dick deals with women and femininity; and my professor said she thought this chapter sets up the port as something explicitly feminine, in contrast to the masculine ocean and all the manly men whalers. It says, "...the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities." The port is the home, aka, a woman's domain. Reading the book again, I noticed something--a little earlier, in Ch. 20, we have Aunt Charity--one of, I think, only two women to appear in the entire book--supplying the ship with "anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation." Sound familiar? The safety and comfort come from a woman.
The other thing I want to note is that this is the first time we hear for sure that the Pequod comes to a bad end--right? I don't know why, but for some reason it never occurred to me to pay attention to this before (maybe because I knew what happened to the ship long before I ever read the book). Before "The Lee Shore" we've had lots of very ominous foreshadowing; but it's not until we reach this chapter that we learn the crew will face an "ocean-perishing."
Correct me if I'm wrong here.

"no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor"

Sub-subs! Do not let this poor benighted blog commit suicide out of loneliness or neglect. It would ruin the virtual counterpane, and I do hate to clean up blood stains, virtual or no. Don't make me go all Tiger Mother on you (to mix eras, genres, cultures, etc.)!

OK, breathe deep, seek peace (bonus to the first person who cites the source in a comment).

I'm continually struck by the humor in this book! Why did I not recognize it the first time I read it? There are countless examples in just these first few pages. Lord, Melville's good. But I'm also stricken by his use of language (news bulletin! The language is lovely. Yes, I know.). But it really is lovely. I noted this passage:

Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of files and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and son on, for ever and for eye. Such is the endlessness, yeah, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

 It brings to mind Gerard Manley Hopkins; I think you know I adore his use of language and rhythm and meter.

And I have a little bonus from Moby Dick in Pictures. In chapter 18 (His Mark), Queequeg is asked to make his mark to sign the contract. In my print edition, that mark is portrayed as an Iron Cross (you know, that symmetrical Germanic cross), although the footnote reads thus: "The cross printed in the American edition as Queequeg's mark (and imitated here) is not a "queer round figure," and was probably supplied by the original typesetter in place of the figure Melville had drawn in his manuscript." Here, in contrast, is Matt Kish's interpretation of Queequeg's mark. I think it's much better, don't you?

Is Ishmael a Stoic? Ahab certainly isn't.

I've been noticing in my reading several references to Stoicism is the text. The first is the passage Alison already quoted, about suicide: "With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword, I quietly take to the ship." Cato was a Stoic, and Stoicism premits suicide in cases where you cannot live a flourishing life (human flourishing, or eudaimonia, being the goal of Stoic, and in fact all ancient Greek, ethics). Just a few paragraphs later in Loomings we get this: "The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it." "Grin and bear it" is a somewhat cartoony description of the Stoic philosophy, but I think it's interesting that Ishmael thinks you need a Stoic disposition to survive a whaling voyage.
The Stoics thought that our passions kept us from flourishing; we want things that we can't have, or aren't meant to have. Instead, we should control our passions through use of our rationality; the more rational we are, the more we can come to recognize what things are appropriate for us "according to our natures"--that is, things like food and shelter. (And it's the recognition that things like food and shelter are what's appropriate for us, rather than the attainment of food and shelter, that's essential for eudaimonia.)
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Stoicism:

The passions or pathê are literally ‘things which one undergoes’ and are to be contrasted with actions or things that one does. Thus, the view that one should be ‘apathetic,’ in its original Hellenistic sense, is not the view that you shouldn't care about anything, but rather the view that you should not be psychologically subject to anything—manipulated and moved by it, rather than yourself being actively and positively in command of your reactions and responses to things as they occur or are in prospect. It connotes a kind of complete self-sufficiency. 

 Which brings me to Ishmael's description of Queequeg in Chapter 10:

...and yet he seemed entirely at his ease, preserving the utmost serenity, content with his own companionship, always equal to himself. Surely this was a tough of fine philosophy, though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving.

On the one hand, he's saying that trying to live "philosophically" is incompatible with perfect contentment; on the other hand, I'm struck by the fact that it's the absence of striving that he's valuing here--exactly like the Stoics.
Maybe more interesting that Ishmael's possible Stoicism is Ahab's total lack of Stoic belief. The whole novel is about Ahab's passionate pursuit of Moby Dick. It's a book all about  a man who is "psychologically subject" to something outside of himself!
Hmmm, very interesting...

To the peanut gallery

To our friends and family who may be following along: should you want to read along with us, our tentative schedule is as follows:

By 6/10: Through Chapter 9

6/17: 10-20

6/24: 21-34

7/1: 35-47

7/8: 48-57

7/15: 58-71

7/22: 72-86

7/29: 87-99

8/5: 100-114

8/12: 115-131

8/19: 132-epilogue

All these things are not without their meanings

"In token of my admiration for his genius this book is inscribed the Nathaniel Hawthorne." Am I the only one who found Melville's dedication of Moby Dick to Hawthorne terribly moving? The two men were close friends, and Hawthorne, a successful author at the time, was one of Melville's few literary champions. I learned here that, after Hawthorne read the final draft of Moby Dick, he pronounced it work of genius, and Melville responded: “A sense of unspeakable security is in me at this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.”

A wicked book? Isn't it supposed to be about good vs. evil, etc.? Well, let's look at the sermon, because I suppose I know a thing or two about sermons. As noted on the website I linked to above, in the Bible, the whale is God's instrument to whip Jonah into shape. But in Moby Dick, God is the sea, and the sea uses the whale to bring down Ahab. Jonah is a coward, while Ahab certainly is not, but Jonah worships the false god of his own importance, while Ahab worships of the god of his own ambition.

Another thing worth noting in the sermon: Jonah pays to go aboard the ship to Tarshish, but Ishmael, as he has made clear, would never pay to go to sea. "And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid," he says in Loomings. "The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves [Adam & Eve, of course--SL] entailed upon us. But being paid,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills [actually, the Bible says that the LOVE of money is root of all evil, a point that all good Christian capitalists like to point out.--SL), and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!"

I thought I'd try to post a memorable picture from Moby Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page in my missives. Given my subject for this post, I thought this one appropriate:

"Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God..."

Beginnings.
 Ten chapters of Mr. Dick is jam packed with stuff.  It's hard to know where to start, so just two things that struck me.  First, I was struck by the ahead-of-his-time comments, through Ishmael, against prejudice.  Mostly this is focused on the first encounter with Queequeg:  "I to myself - the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.  Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."  Melville chooses to make Queequeg not just an exotic, dark-skinned import from the South Seas, but a cannibal to boot.  All the more to drive home the idea that we are all human beings who can't be judged by skin color (original or tattooed), dress or diet.  Related to this is the question of who is civilized and who is not.  Queequeg is certainly the more gracious while sharing the bed.  His habits are decidedly odd, dressing from his hat down and putting his boots on under the bed.  But he does agree to dress first:  "Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture..".  Then Ishmael goes on to say that "these savages have an innate sense of delicacy" - they're polite, but still savages.  Then comes what must be every professor's favorite quote for the first day of class: "He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners.  His education was not yet completed.  He was an undergraduate." 

That's my theme for today - I'm sure we will revisit it.  Alison mentioned a suicide mission, which this clearly is for Ahab.  And I think the civilized/savage, sane/insane, dichotomy plays out between Ahab and Queequeg as well.  But we will see.

Just one other tidbit:  I was curious about the "Pythagorean maxim" and so googled around.  Found this, which Sara will particularly enjoy:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1204/does-the-pythagorean-maxim-tell-us-to-avoid-eating-beans

Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through water.

T/D

This is my substitute for pistol and ball

Well, I haven't finished our assigned reading for this week yet (but I still have 29 hours!). But I did read the first chapter again (we'll talk about Etymology and Extracts later, Dad). For me the most interesting lines in the first paragraph are "This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship." Ishmael is basically saying this is a suicide mission. I don't think this is something I thought about a lot the first time I read Moby, but I'll definitely be paying attention to the connection between the sea or the Pequod's voyage and suicide this time around. Just in the first chapter we have it again twice: "But look! here come the crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive." And again with the story of Narcissus a few paragraphs later. I think your comment about parmacetti for the inward soul fits in too, Dad.

That's all I've got for now! I'll try to write some more once I've finished the section.

Arg, I was hoping to do this before anyone really started posting, but I guess Dad beat me to it!
I started my reading by looking through all the supplementary material in my Norton Critical Edition, and I thought you guys might be interested in seeing what the critics had to say about MD when it was first published. So here's what we have to look forward to, according to the critics.
An anonymous critic from Parker's Journal says

Such a mass of information about the whale was probably never brought together in one book before, certainly never in a work of fiction. "Moby Dick," as a medium of information, cannot be found fault with. As a work of fiction it is liable to the objection which presents itself to all Melville's writings since "Typee." Typee was just perfect. In the attempt to make the rest better, and improve upon perfection, we think he runs into the grave error of giving us altogether too much for our money.

A different anonymous critic from the Boston Post, after declaring that "we have read nearly one half of this book," says

"The Whale" is not worth the money asked for it, either as a literary work or as a mass of printed paper. Few people would read it more than once...

And WIlliam Gilmore Simms has this promising note:

[Ahab's] ravings, and the ravings of some of the tributary characters, and the ravings of Mr. Melville himself, meant for eloquent declamation, are such as would justify a writ de lunatico against all the parties. 

But they're not all so dire. Eight years after Melville died and 48 years after MD was published, Archibald MacMechan had this to say:

 This book is at once the epic and the encyclopaedia of whaling. It is a monument to the honour of an extinct race of daring seamen; but it is a monument overgrown with the lichen of neglect. Those who will care to scrape away the moss may be few, but they will have their reward. To the class of gentlemen-adventurer, to those who love both books and free life under the wide and open sky, it must alway appeal.

That sounds more like it!

I haven't begun reading yet, but I just heard that Ray Bradbury died. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's 1956 film version of Moby Dick. I hope it's not heresy to embed the movie trailer here.

Ahoy mates (new rule:  you can use "Ahoy" if followed by "mates").  My first post about the actual book - if you can call "Etymology" part of the book (and I know you do).  It has its moments though.  Here's one:
“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise”
Shakespeare, of course (take that, Eli) - not that I knew that, but it's attributed to King Henry, and is in fact the IV, Part I.  So it's been a while, and I had to look up "parmacetti".  I tried my pasta dictionary first, but it wasn't there.  It turns out to be " the pearly white, waxy, translucent solid, obtained from the oil in the head of the sperm whale" (http://pitt-crit-reading.blogspot.ch/2012/02/ahab-and-insane.html) .  So "parmacetti for an inward bruise" is using it (probably in cosmetic form) to sooth a bruise - this one I guess is inside, so really a bruised soul.  But what means "sovereignest" in this context?  Said by King Henry it seems to refer to his rank, but in context appears to just mean "best". 

Quite a gutsy opening for 1851, I must say.  Probably before the invention of editors.  I know you will all come down on me about how important this section is and how it foreshadows the story.  I'm sure that's true, but still, Call me Ishmael already.

But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts!

-T/D

P.S.  LOVE that he quotes Darwin in 1851, 8 years before the publication of Origin!