So, like everyone else, I'm pretty far behind. But I just finished "The Whiteness of the Whale," and I want to weigh in with a couple thoughts about these last few chapters.
This section, especially "The Quarter-Deck," "Moby Dick," and "The Whiteness of the Whale," have a lot to process. And not only are these chapters filled with layer upon layer of idea, but both Ishmael and Ahab seem intent on telling us exactly that.
In "The Quarter-Deck," when Starbuck is skeptical about Ahab's quest, Ahab tells him "thou requirest a little lower layer," and goes on to describe how the things that are visible to us are nothing more than masks, and that "the inscrutable thing [behind the mask] is chiefly what I hate."
In "Moby Dick," Ishmael wonders what "the White Whale was to them," the crew, and why they so readily agreed to join Ahab on his quest. He says that "all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go."
In "The Whiteness of the Whale," Ishmael begins by listing all the positive associations of the color white, then says "yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue..."
In all these cases, it's the thing that is deeper/beneath/inside that is true; but it's also inaccessible, out of reach. It made me think about the relationship of the boat, on the surface of the water, to Moby Dick, underneath. What do you guys think? Is that a stretch, or not?
And one last note, for those of you reading without footnotes:
At the very end of "The Whiteness of the Whale," when Ishmael says "And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues...all these are but subtle deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without..." This is a reference to John Locke (and perhaps some other people), who talked about primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are those which exists in the object itself, apart from out perception of the object, such as shape; secondary qualities are those which do not, such as color and taste. I.e., objects don't have color, and neither do lightwaves, but when lightwaves bounce off objects and in to our eyes, our brains interpret those lightwaves as color. I've always loved this distinction, in part because it's one of the few philosophical proposals that pretty much everyone agrees with, because of science.
I just finished reading The Quarter-Deck; it's such an amazing chapter. Meaning aside, and that's a BIG aside, is that it's a terrific example of Melville's willingness to experiment with the form. The chapter begins with a stage direction (Enter, Ahab: Then, all.), and then later on, he give another very brief stage direction, the "Aside" when speaking to Starbuck.
ReplyDeleteSo I think that he's making it quite clear, after the conventional narrative opening chapters narrated by Ishmael, followed by the "nonfiction" chapters, and now something that seems to have been written in an entirely different style, as if for a stage play, that we (the readers) should know that we're in for something very different than anything we've read before.