Term Paper on "Moby Dick -- Ahab's Whale of Malice"

Term Paper 5 pages (1748 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Moby Dick -- Ahab's Whale of Malice, Ahab's Whale of Nothingness

One of the most attractive, yet mad aspects of the character of Ahab in Herman Melville's Moby Dick is the way that Ahab seems to attribute morality and intelligent design to the natural world, as embodied in the persona of the white whale Moby Dick. Ostensibly, Ahab is captaining a whaling ship to hunt whales for profit, for the ship's financial backers. But in defiance of his mission as captain, and of his duty to the safety of the crew as well as his financers, Ahab is also on a mission of revenge. He lost his leg to Moby Dick long ago, and he is determined the whale will pay for this transgression. Ahab is so bent upon his quest in avenging himself against nature that even when he admits that the whale may not have intended to take his leg it does not matter. Ahab says human beings must act as though life has meaning, even though life may be arbitrary and meaningless.

In Chapter 36, Starbuck, the voice of reason and common good sense in the novel (and also conventional wisdom and Christianity) reproaches Ahab for seeking: "Vengeance on a dumb brute...that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous," as only human beings have will and the ability to act with moral intelligence and animals do not. At first, Starbuck seems to be speaking the truth, what the reader likely believes regarding the actions of the whale Moby Dick. However, in chapters such as "The Blanket" Melville suggests that the mysterious nature of whales is not so easy to explain, from the perspective of science or religion. The titular reference to the blanket of whale flesh or blubber makes a connection between whales and man-made objects like blankets. Unlike human beings who must create things like blankets to stay warm, however, the whale can generate its own heat in a manner that seems superior, on the surface, to the intelligence of the human animal. The whale comes naturally equipped with its own blanket. The skin of the whale itself defies logic: "however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption" (Chapter 68).

Melville the author does not come to a final conclusion as to whether Moby Dick or animals have moral intelligence or not. The narrating voice of such passages of Moby Dick, may be distinguished from Melville's perspective as an author, as it is distinct both from the involved perspective of Ishmael. Yet it cannot be equated entirely with Melville himself, as Melville the author encompasses both the narrator and Ishmael in his creation. Still, this intervening narrator about the nature of whales makes strange, Ahab-like statements about implications about the sensibility and consciousness of the whale. The narrator speaks of the pleasure of "read[ing] about whales through their own spectacles" as if whales were human beings in possession of spectacles (Chapter 68).

At other times, such as in Chapter 85, when detailing the mechanics of the whale's breathing apparatus, this narrative voice contradicts this idea of intelligence. In this chapter, the whale is portrayed hardly as an animal at all, but an impersonal system of mechanics that is also potentially deadly as well as mysterious, for no human being knows how it works: "Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do then; it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone" (Chapter 85).

Thus, skin of the whale is thick and concealing and useful, much like the whale's true nature, and aspects of the whale like its breathing fountain are deadly to humans simply by touch -- yet the whale is a warm blooded creature like a human, and must breathe above the water like a human. This is a paradox, one which Ahab admits he cannot really figure out, about the intelligence of whales. In response to Starbuck, Ahab states that "visible objects....are but as pasteboard masks... In each event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask" (Chapter 36).

In other words, there may be a moral intelligence behind animals like the whale, in Ahab's view, and God or some intelligent force is acting behind the manipulation of the objects or pasteboard creations. After all, God gave the whale many human-like characteristics, like the need to be warm and the need to breathe above water, even though God also gave the whale the ability to do these things naturally, without recourse to culture like blankets and breathing apparatus. And Ahab believes that because Moby Dick deprived him of his leg, he must act as if there is moral, intelligent design and reason to the universe, and take vengeance upon either the whale itself or upon the forces or being that gave the whale the power to act against his leg.

Ahab it determined to act as though the universe acts with intent. He refuses to bow and accept whatever will is behind it and simply shrug off natural disasters as either the will of a good and intelligent divine being whose ways are mysterious to our knowledge, like a Christian might advocate, or say that bad things happen by chance. Instead, Ahab vows: "If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it" (Chapter 36) Yes, Ahab says, there might be a great nothingness to the morality and reasons of the world and he may be a prisoner of fate. Yes, it may be futile to act against a seemingly dumb animal, or even to strike back against a man, but what else can human beings do, but strike out against the mask or moldings in the world to show his displeasure against the arbitrary nature of fate?

Despite his fixation, Ahab, more than any other character in Moby Dick, possesses a deep sense of self-knowledge. He knows what he is doing is somewhat mad, to take vengeance against a specific whale, and admits that more than the whale it is: "that inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations" (Chapter 36). Thus there is a method and sad awareness to his apparent madness.

And is Ahab really so mad? Melville suggests that upon the flesh of the whale, almost like an artifact or a wall, there are hieroglyphics on its visible surface: "These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connection. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiseled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable" (Chapter 36). The whale is like an intelligent, living vestige of human culture and undecipherable language. The whale's motivations in chewing off Ahab's leg, whether of malice or evidence of a sinister natural force are inscrutable, and the physical and visible texture of the whale itself is a kind of mystery to all observers, but so are human ruins. The whale is an exterior marvel to humanity, and mimics what humans have done throughout the ages via culture. These hieroglyphics might be full of meaning, or the whale may be testimony that what we think are meaningful hieroglyphics and human language is in fact meaningless. The meaning of the whale's ambiguous skin, whether it means that human hieroglyphics and language are meaningful or meaningless, testifies to Ahab's statement about the ambiguity of Moby Dick's ability to act with intelligence.

The whale, for all of its strangeness is 'like us.' This provides compelling evidence that Ahab's treatment of Moby Dick like a man who has stricken him may not be so mad. The whale is "like man,"… READ MORE

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