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Anxieties of absence: Authors, orphans and infidels in "Moby-Dick"

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Anxieties of absence: Authors, orphans and infidels in "Moby-Dick"

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Content INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M l 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A nxieties of Absence: Authors, Orphans and Infidels in Moby-Dick by Lawrence Joshua Keel A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PfflLOSOPPIY (ENGLISH) AUGUST 2000 C opyright 2000 Lawrence Joshua Keel Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3018096 __ ___ ® UMI UMI Microform 3018096 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation, written by c S J oshua ^ E e U under the direction of Dissertation Committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School in partial fulfillment of re quirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dean o f Graduate Studies Date ....A u £ u s t . . 8 , . . 2 0 0 0 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE Chairperson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lawrence Joshua Keel D r. A nthony Kemp A nxieties of Absence: Authors, Orphans and Infidels in M oby-D ick The dissertation explores H erm an M elville's M oby-Dick as an Am erican artifact, poised at a nexus of ancient and m o d em anxieties regarding the trustw orthiness of knowledge gained from divinely inspired text and know ledge gleaned from the scientifically rendered "natural w orld." The dissertation reexamines A hab's heresy and Ishm ael's infidelity as tw o distinct responses to the anxieties that m any ante-bellum Am ericans faced in an age betw een religion and science, betw een C alvin and D arw in. In ante-bellum A m erica the increasing persuasiveness of evolutionary theory (in conjunction w ith developm ents in other sciences) w as actively eroding the orthodox and m ore literal interpretations of the Genesis account. M elville's great heroes struggle acutely w ith this destabilization of authority. M elville, through A hab, presents the tragic result of a m an who deifies both G od and the H um an. Ahab chooses to obey himself; and in doing so, he m ust disobey the O ld God. A hab also questions the character and "goodness" of God. M any readers of Moby-Dick have reduced the relationship betw een Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ahab and his God to the sim ple form ulation of a G ood (but mysterious God) against His opposite. We reach a fuller reading, w hen we note the "Gnostic" conclusions Ahab reaches. A hab's m odem , rational, study of his w orld (a w orld that Calvinists believed m anifested God) discovers the presence of a lesser god— a dem iurge, a flawed creator— and not the O m nipotent and Loving God he h ad been prom ised. Ishm ael cannot m aintain his belief and confidence in the Old God. He is driven by an im pulse to create a philosophy and religion of his own, one that m ight fill the vortex left by the sinking ship of divine revelation and ideal philosophy. The skepticism of David Hum e helps us understand Ishmael's effort. H ow ard C. H orsford writes, "The success of H um e's destruction of the certainty of know ledge . . . eventually set off w hat has been called a m ania for epistemological investigation." T hrough his own investigation, Ishmael comes to realize that life w ithout m eaning authored and validated by a god, is life characterized by the opportunity to determ ine m eaning according to hum an dis-covered or invented values. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my father William Lawrence Hroch (1937-1998) He gave me my first push to look for the "little lower layer." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In m y devious cruising as I gathered books and collected confusion, five p eople helped me especially to keep things on a path. Thom as G ustafson and Charles B errym an helped m e get started. Dallas Willard w as invaluable as a pilot into the Religious and Philosophical w ilderness. R onald Gottesm an helped m e see the value of econom y and rem inded me to keep m y spring clean. a n d A nthony Kemp as m y C hair played m y Virgil, pointing om inously to the things I needed to see and study then m arking encouragingly m y progress up from the darkness. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS D ED IC A TIO N __________________________________________________________H ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS______________________________________________m EPIGRAPH____________________________________________________________ VI IN TR O D U C TIO N : GOD HA UNTED . H U M A N G O DS___________________ 1 — Searching for the Face of G od in the W rinkled Brow of a W hite Whale 1 — A hab the O rphan Colossus an d Ishm ael the Infidel 7 — The A nxiety of Absence: A hab a n d Ishm ael as M elville's Response to the N ew "G odly, Ungodlike W orld" 10 I - ANXIETY__________________________________________________________ 23 — The P aradigm Shift: Divine Revelation to H um an D is-Covery 23 — The A ge o f the Earth, the D epth of the W ater 27 — W ith a G rain of Salt: The Path of A ccom m odation 36 — The A nxiety of O rphans 46 n - A U TH O R S________________________________________________________56 — H erald (anxiously): "G od is D ying" 56 — D eus A bsconditus and the Ante-Bellum O rphan 62 — Theodicy: Signs of an Im perfect G od 66 — G nosticism : Signs of a Lesser G o d 71 — M odem H ubris: The Prom ise of Science and of H um an M achinery 86 — Liberal H ubris: The Prom ise o f Reason 91 — In Loco Parentis: The W orld W ithout a God 101 — Pip A drift an d the Unwelcom e G nosis 117 — A bandonm ent: The Rachel an d The Sym phony 122 m - AHAB: H IS MADNESS RETAILORED___________________________ 130 — A hab’s Charting: A Will to Gnosis 130 — Ahab: H is Skepticism 147 — Ahab: H is M adness 156 — Ahab: H is M utinous A nsw er to G od 165 IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. IV - ISHMAEL: H OLDING UP HIS IMBECILE CANDLE 178 — Ishmael's Cabinet: Trying O ut and C utting In 178 — H um e's M elancholy and D elirium 191 — The Path of Denial, The Path of Strong Faith 193 — Ishmael: H is Skepticism— N igh Unto Resignation 199 — Fear of the N aught 211 — Following H um e's lead: functioning w ithout faith 220 — Ishmael: H olding up his Imbecile C andle 224 SOURCES 238 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Apprehension grows through middle o f the period, that science is becoming self-sufficient, will dispense with religious concern or even actively oppose Christianity. Scientists hint science is a firm er revelation than Bible, etc. Apprehension becomes anxiety. Perry M iller, The Life of the M ind in Am erica from the Revolution to the Civil War: p lan for Book Three, C hapter Three, "The R eligion of Geology" You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage? Melville in a letter to N athaniel H aw thorn, June 1851 VI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION: GOD HAUNTED, H U M A N GODS "What d'ye see? " cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky. "Nothing, nothing, sir" zuas the sound hailing down in reply. "The Chase— First Day"1 SEARCHING FOR THE FACE OF GOD IN THE WRINKLED BROW OF A WHITE WHALE It is 1851 and it is a tim e of orphans. G od the father has abandoned his children. G od the father is dying or already dead. A nd no one seem s m ore aw are of this and tortured by this than H erm an Melville. It is 1851, now two generations beyond th e excited spasm s of the Am erican Enlightenm ent proper, tw enty-one years after Lyell first published his Principles of Geology, eight years after W illiam M iller gathered his flock in the w oods to aw ait the Second Com ing, and seven years before D arw in will compose his notes and m ake public the O rigin o f Species. The voices of H egel and Heine, Mill and others have echoed for decades w ith w hispered ru m o rs of G od's death. But no herald has yet arrived to shout out proof of the tragedy. In thirty-one years, Nietzsche will declare w ith his ow n su p e rh u m an vociferodty that God is d ead — as if He (Nietzsche) Him self were im m ediate to Unless otherwise noted, all chapter and page references to Moby-Dick are from the Hayford and Parker, Norton Critical Edition. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the event and to the knowledge. But for now , for our contem plation, for our consternation, w e know only that G od is Absent. It is 1851 a n d H erm an Melville publishes Moby-Dick. M ost readers do not celebrate the novel's "piratical running dow n of creeds and opinions," they do not em brace its cannibalistic philosophizings and they do not welcome its daem onic yawpings. As I w rite this, m ore than seven score years after the first A m erican publication of Moby-Dick, television stations are presenting new, extrem ely rare video footage of pelagic orcas attacking and killing a gray w hale. We had been confident th a t packs of orcas hunted and killed other large w hales; but we w ere sorely lacking in perm anent records— m arked empirical evidence— to add "truth" to o u r confidence. We can now see and hear w hat before we could only infer. We aw ait p ro o f for other "unconfirmed" theories regarding certain nagging m ysteries of the leviathan. But overall, our research during the generations has yielded perhaps m ore n ew questions than "answers" to old ones. Like Ahab w e have traced and charted the m igratory paths of the great whales and w e n o w posit the theory th at they navigate the globe w ith sovereign intelligent purpose following fam iliar canyons and rifts along the ocean floor. Som e researchers even believe now in the extraordinary physical possibility that the sperm whale uses its great m elon to generate the underw ater equivalents of sonic blasts that can stun and virtually paralyze 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prey. We have indirect evidence th at suggests the reasonableness of these conclusions— obliquely connected evidence that implies various answ ers to perceived mysteries. But patterns and coincidences of circumstantial evidence never really satisfy us— never answer our craving for certainty— not, at least, the exquisitely acute cravings of those of us deeper divers, those of us w ho seek the little lower layer. In fact such dis-covered patterns often beg another question— perhaps THE question. Perceived patterns appear to us as signs im plying design— as evidence of the intention and presence of a willful designer— a creating intelligence— an A uthor of us all. Traces of evidence, to w hich w e lustfully apply our m ost fashionable heuristics, coupled w ith som e palpable hunger inside us for trustw orthy meaning, elicit w ithin us a vulnerability to the siren song of the "argum ent of design": at the lead of w hat appears to be a wake, m ust there n o t be a whale whose great flukes heap and stir the waves? In Moby-Dick, Melville gives us unm asted Captain Ahab an d lonely, orphaned Ishmael. Ahab certainly believes a Sperm W hale or a G od lives and m ust answ er him — m ust adm it culpability for a man's broken bo d y and a man's broken spirit. Ishmael, rather seems merely to hope against hope for a divine Author; he lights his imbecile candle and searches for a sp irit of some degree of kinship, lest aE his w orldly pains and efforts be for naught. Melville created these two w onderful characters at a m om ent in American history charged like a field of electric energy. But w here Hghtning 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. strikes an abhorrent vacuum is created— an absence th at the w orld cannot seem to tolerate. As T. W alter H erbert states in M oby-Dick and Calvinism : The nineteenth century witnessed a m ajor transition of thought, both in E urope and America, as the w orld view, prom ulgated b y C hristian theocentrism yielded to various secular fram es of reference which encom passed com peting theories on the ultim ate context of m an's life and his m oral duties. Melville is generally recognized, w ith K ierkegaard an d Nietzsche, as a pro p h et of this spiritual revolution. (9) This essay takes up the issue of Melville's response and participation in this "spiritual revolution." Specifically, "Anxieties of Absence," will explore M oby-Dick as a calculated response to some of the great questions of Faith, Reason, Providence and Theodicy that faced the ante-bellum Am erican in an age betw een Calvin and D arw in. The critical exam inations of Moby-Dick have in a w ay come full circle. For a tim e w e generally spoke of Moby-Dick as a book about Ahab, and for a time as Ishm ael's book. M ore recently some critics have tu rn ed their attentions to the w onderful dynam ic energy Melville created w hen he drew out tw o extraordinary and significantly delineated, questing heroes for his great narrative. "Anxieties of A bsence," I hope, will serve readers as a valuable m editation exploring A hab's and Ishm ael's struggles w ith these questions and w hat those struggles tell us about the more general struggles of ante-bellum Americans in their confrontations of the frightening d ark voids between science and religion. 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. O ne strong m otivation for the creation of this essay lies in w hat I see as an alm ost constant, pervading bias in m uch of the p a st critical exploration of "religion" in M oby-Dick: a bias resulting from either an unrecognized or, at tim es, an unabashedly celebrated Christian (or at least "believer's) view point. M any of the m ost valuable w orks of Melvillean criticism on this topic, including W illiam T. Braswell's M elville's Religious T hought and Lawrance T hom pson's M elville's Q uarrel w ith God offer interpretations of Moby-Dick th at I consider lim ited by their author's choices to m aintain (or inability to escape) the self-configuration of "Christian-Reader" or "Believer-Reader." For the well-read reader of Melville, this territory of Melville's quarrels and tantalizings and w eavings about God seems a w ell fished ground. But the w hale does not dim inish. Too often critics have rendered Moby-Dick w ith a reductive flourish, they have draw n Ahab as m ad (neglecting to note his m ethod) and they have d raw n Ishm ael as the outcast orphan (refusing to g ran t him his authority). W hole levels of m eanings w ithin Moby-Dick are lost w hen we fail to read Ishm ael's narrative through the varied lenses of the believer and the Skeptic. Melville, himself, w as engaged— even at tim es tortured— by the question "C an I, should I believe in this God of the Calvinists," but also by the m ore generic question "C an I, should I believe in a god or any gods?" W hether Melville w as a believer, an Agnostic, an A theist or som ething else is still debated. But that M elville w as enorm ously concerned , perhaps even 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. obsessed, w ith m atters and questions regarding the existence and nature of G od is not generally questioned. M elville's novel does not presum e the existence of God. Critics of the book, however, often have discussed the book w ith just such a presum ption in m ind. It seems obvious, after all, that a reader w ho believes that the G od of the O ld Testament exists, m ust consider Ahab m ad, for in his hubris the violent, blasphem ous captain attem pts to defy an om nipotent and m orally perfect God. A nd it seem s obvious to a reader w ho believes in the G od of the Bible, that Ishm ael is condem ned also by his ow n hubris, for Ishmael w ould be an Infidel despite G od's providence of H is W ord. But if a reader enters M oby- Dick naively (or if the reader be a Skeptic, an Infidel or a thinker able to suspend belief for a tim e), he or she will find it m ore difficult to reduce A hab's and Ishm ael's actions to m adness and thoughtless infidelity. A nd if a reader asks the questions that nagged at the confidence and security of the ante-bellum American thinker— and for at least a m om ent refused to oscillate in the Transcendental rainbow — that reader m ight better explore the bounty of M elville's expansive, generous art. This essay— this m editation hovering over the vortex— is an attem pt to try-out some of Mobv-Dick's less charted lines— and to read Melville as he deserves to be read: w ith one eye open to all possibilities hinted at in the hieroglyphics. I will at tim es take up the provocative questions of the Skeptics and the Agnostics and entertain them as they d rag the orthodox to the bar. 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Maybe there is no God. Maybe there is a God and that God is less than Omnipotent, less than purely good, even malevolent. A nd maybe Moby Dick— as the captain himself claims— is an agent of God sent to heap and torture the man. AHAB THE ORPHAN COLOSSUS A N D ISHMAEL THE INFIDEL: As Ishm ael w ould hang Locke's head and K ant's head on opposite sides of a ship's m ast— to balance the weight, M elville offers both Ahab and Ishm ael to balance his narrative. Ahab, bestride the inspired past and the evolving future — A hab, as created by Melville, is the fallen Skeptic. T hough he proclaims an Agnosticism at tim es, he lives the bad faith of the scientific philosopher w ho wills to retain his fideism. Functionally, he is the H eretical Calvinist, the H ubristic Gnostic, the believer in natural religion— w ho traces the paths of w hales (scientifically) and interprets the actions of w hales (transcendentally) to be intentional. H e has m ade the w hite whale his m arker, a correlative signifier to stand in for all that he hunts, and he has lost his ability to delineate betw een m arker and thing m arked. U nfortunately Ahab forgets that M eaning— an Ideal creature— cannot be Real for it cannot be autonom ous and free of the subject for w hom it (re)presents. 7 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As M elville's creation, Ahab stands for the m ortal who can no longer posit sufficient confidence in the w estern d eity to suffer the original and essential requirem ent of obedience, a requirem ent progressively articulated an d inculcated as Logos. As a literary character he is archetypal generally of all hum ans w ho speculate on the palpable m ystery of God and the potential divinity of the hum an, b u t he is also archetypal of the early nineteenth century "progressive" A m erican, eager to em brace a n d utilize the discoveries and m achinery of developing science and in d u stry yet still tethered to religious an d cultural traditions that seem to conflict w ith such "progress." As a Christian "believer" Ahab is som etim es heretical in his insistence to retu rn to an early C hristian (proto-Christian?) N aivete— to a tim e before the C hristian church h ad m ade itself catholic— a tim e w hen the various credos and m yths had yet to be canonized as authorized gospel or dem onized as heresies t o be denounced an d destroyed. W ithin the rubric of Calvinist doctrine he is m ad, insane in his intention an d actions against G od. If, however, w e read of A hab's actions w ith a m ind o p en to the possibility th at G od does n o t exist or that G od is som ething less th an w e have been told by orthodox Judeo-C hristianity, we can see a certain desperate reason as w e w onder at the fiery h u n t. For in Ahab's m ind, he w o u ld have a w orthy C aptain— or a w orthy Father— a Better w ho deserves his "Logos" in the sense that the scriptures and the workings of the world itself demonstrate that humans are subordinate to God. Such a configuration is what begs the voice from out of the whirlwind to incredulously and angrily challenge Job with the questions, "Who are you..." and "Canst thou..." 8 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. obedience. But he cannot follow and grant liege service to a n im postor, a dem iurge, a pasteboard "Confidence M an," a creature no better than himself. M elville, through Ahab, explores the viability of the ancient and perhaps m ost essential tenet of Judeo-Christian w orship as it m ust be seen through the eyes of a m o d em hum an of reason: subordination to an entity the existence of which cannot be confirm ed by reason alone. He presents the tragic but perhaps ineluctable result of a hum an caught on the swell, w ho deifies both the O ld G od and the N ew Man, and w ho finds that by doing so, he cannot satisfy the essential requirem ent of w orship as he understands it: obedience. Ahab chooses to obey himself; and in doing so, to m aintain his integrity, he m ust disobey the old God. Ishm ael, Piratically R unning D ow n sacred creeds and opinions — Ishm ael is the heroic Skeptic w ho som ehow functions w ithout certainty. Ishmael dreads that "all is for naught," b u t is not himself overcom e by the w eight (or nausea) of such uncertainty. In the end he responds to the threat of im m anent annihilation "positively" by creating— he tells the tale and thus becomes an A uthor of meaning. H e does not merely strive to discover and leam to decipher the hieroglyph— to find his w ay through a m inotaurian labyrinth— he attem pts to create his ow n Gnosis. Ishm ael, unlike Ahab, does not forget that m eaning and significance are bound inextricably to the signifying author— the hum an subject w ho posits m eaning into the w orld. Nor does he forget that the receptive reader and the signifying au th o r are one and the sam e. 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. H e is haunted by the horrible thought of the void— n o t of the absent or hollow m arker— of the confounding hieroglyphic referent— b u t rather of the void set alw ays between the body and the idea, the individual m ind and the ideal objects it feeds upon. M elville, through Ishm ael, seeks to dis-cover the elusive and unstable elem ents that comprise m eaning as w e know it— if n o t m eaning of absolute certainty, then at least m eaning of know n origin, m eaning of practical value, m eaning that fills the void. Ishm ael, unlike Ahab, cannot m aintain his belief and confidence in the old God. Ishm ael is an orphan and an Infidel, who becomes himself— lest he be im m ediately annihilated— an A uthor. For creating w ith language, as Ishmael learns, is an act of faith— an enterprise of hum an salvation— a desperate attem pt by hum ans themselves to cast whatever light possible into the black abyss that ever threatens to devour and consume. THE ANXIETY OF ABSENCE: AHAB AND ISHMAEL AS MELVILLE'S RESPONSE TO THE NEW "GODLY, UNGODLIKE WORLD" The Anxiety of Absence: this is the locus of A hab's failure and also of Ishmael's trium ph. The fears, the apprehensions, the anger, the loneliness that attend the tragedy of losing a trusted, enabling ally inform the actions of M elville's heroic pair. Ahab projects upon the w hite w hale his fears and hatreds and creates in turn a W hite W hale (granted the capital letters of a deity)— a beast of the m ind so heaped w ith meanings th at it alm ost comes to BE— to actually have REAL Presence and REAL M eaning. Ishm ael is less 10 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ready to leap to A hab's conclusion. "God help thee, old man," he cries, "thy thoughts have created a creature in thee." W hen Melville w rote Moby-Dick, he w as aw are of the radically changing relationship betw een hum ans and their biblical G od. H e w as an A m erican son of both God and Science. H e had read from C harles D arw in's account o f the fam ous Beagle Voyage, he had read from Beale, Paley, Scoresby, Bayle, and others, (if not as an expert reader of science at least as a highly intelligent curious diver) and he w as sensitive to that w ind th at h ad begun to blow and signal a change. Every day, hum ans seemed m ore a n d m ore capable of sounding the earth's secrets w ithout help from G od— necessarily w ithout help from G od for despite the claim s of Calvinists and other W esterners who believed in an im m inent G od, G od Himself seem ed adam antly determ ined to keep hidden. M elville recognized th at belief in the old gods, nay, m ore specifically, a belief that one or m ore of the old gods is nearby to prom ise or proffer explanations, rules, reasonings, and meanings, is a belief th at becomes h ard er to justify in the face of new answ ers to the sam e questions that have torm ented believers and infidels for generations. M elville w as a child cradled and rocked upon the yet churning w ake of the Enlightenm ent. To a M odem such as he, m any of the sam e questions which challenged Socrates, Boethius, A belard, and St. A ugustine still seem ed unrequited. But Melville w as also aw are that Skeptics and heretics had long shouted their challenges, and Judeo-C hristianity had seem ed ever able to w eather the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. storm s. Even the E uropean and Am erican experiences of the E nlightenm ent had failed, despite harassm ent, to try and finally condem n God. So long as the sm artest, m ost articulate believers, and the "inspired" preachers could apologize for G od w ith fresher rationalizations and more nim ble exegetical gym nastics, those w ho w anted to believe could believe, those w ho needed a God could have a God. But M elville also knew that Skeptics an d heretics by 1800 seem ed better arm ed than ever. Post-Enlightenm ent hum ans on their self-sufficient journeys now w ielded the increasingly powerful m irror and lamp of progress— progress in all its m anifestations m elding the free and sovereign m ind w ith m achines that prom ised their ow n wonder-works. In the hands of post-enlightenm ent hum anists these am azing optics seem ed ever m ore able to shine into the darkling m ysteries and to always reflect back the image of a hum an standing at the threshold. The old G od w as vulnerable to such scrutinizing power; this is w hy H e had em phasized his great jealousy and w hy H e had com m anded that no other idols be placed before Him . The Skeptic chorus began to envision a new , possible future. Might the religion predicated on faith-in-Cod be superseded by a religion predicated on faith-in-human- ability-and-potential. Unlike the old G od w ho seemed still reticent to show His face, the Progressing H um ans, m arshaled before a trum peting of new rhetoric 12 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. expounding the "Ideal of Equality" and "Freedom from the Burden of Obedience," seem ed all too prepared to sap into the dense old foundations, to underm ine the ancient edifices, to breach the opaque spaces and to cast their own light upon their ow n faces. Such w as the fate of the fortress of divine inspiration. Melville w itnessed this and w rote Moby-Dick even as a new cam paign w as striking against this bastion. G od had survived generally the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenm ent, b u t could He survive a new age, the age ushered in by such as Lamarck and his pre-D arwinian ilk; by Lyell the Geologist; by Jefferson, Franklin and so m any other invention m inded tinkerers; by Herschel and the new astronom ers w ho were able to m ake their science the most dem ocratically popular science of ante-bellum America; by the industrialists w ho seem ed ever m ore capable of harvesting the physical riches of the earth (and parting them am ong the merchants); and by so m any others who would m ethodically strip the w ord Providence of its consoling prom ise— of God's provision, of God providing. The great ages of Inspiration and Idealism (that is Idealism qua Intuitionism) are being p u t aside by the Em piricism and Materialism of the m odem w orld. The hum an capacity to posit faith does not waiver. Instead, faith is invested no longer in the Father-God b u t now in the Child-H um an and in the w ondrous creative potential of the C hild. But if hum ans are inclined to such investm ents of faith, can they also be capable of allowing their God to die easily? 13 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the early 1800's m any believers anxiously struggled to reconcile the providence of G od and the providence of H um an Progress. Som e asked— Cannot human progress be seen as a manifest proof of God's providence? Is God, perhaps, the Author of evolution? Is God— as is the best father— the author of his own irrelevance? It w as a m om ent of intense discom fort for the thinking an d new ly self- aware signifying m onkey. For so long as G od rem ained hidden, it seem ed more and m ore irrefutable that H um an progress w as a m anifest proof of God's irrelevancy. A nd so, of course, som e asked— Shoidd our God be absent altogether, hozv long should zve wait? Shoidd God be merely at a distance, hozo much shoidd zve look to ourselves and to our ozvn machinations? While our God is absent, are zve humans to articulate and define our ozvn destinies, ethics, teleologies? In so m any w ays believers had already long engaged in a desperate attem pt to stave off such a tragedy as G od's death. From the m ost violent punishm ents suffered unto heretics to the m ost gentle and suasive rem inders proffered of G od's benevolence, believers h ad sought continuously to vitalize their God. 14 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For no subversion of the "G od H ypothesis" (no m atter how rationally persuasive) can ever be universally w elcom e. Life w ithout God is an orphan life for m ost. A life w ithout a Divine p a re n t is a life w ithout a divining guardian: a sober and tenuous life w ith no guarantees and little assurance (despite the intoxicating prom ises of h u m a n potential for self-enlightenm ent and self-governance). In the m inds of m any, the very absence of God condem ns the h u m an to a craven state, w here the hum an's o w n curiosity and desire for m eaning become constant rem inders of the probability of eternal ignorance— of life w ith o u t certainty. Severing the tie to a creator leaves the hum an alone— alone to create m eaning if th at is possible and alone as authority over the w orld a n d all it contains. In this n ew paradigm , the w orld itself "is that it is" and hu m an s are but to dis-cover it, to come to understand it by nam ing it, categorizing it, and m easuring it. The very structure of M elville's novel displays confidence in the hum an ability to catalogue and categorize, to label and encyclopedize. M elville's trying-out of religions in Mobv-Dick takes the form of a "scientific" enterprise. As the chapters of Mobv-Dick collect, they form a N atural H istory of G od on Earth: a record of G od's activities (but m ore precisely, of G od's progressive disappearance), and of hum an a c tiv ity - supposed by som e, b u t not by all— to b e guided by God. Melville describes the m anifestations of the divine presence— o r at least those phenom ena that beg our in feren ce/o u r creation of God. T hrough his 15 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m outhpiece, Ishm ael, Melville exposes the ironies of w orship and witness disharm onious to the Word, of intolerance practiced under authority of "God," of C hristian hypocrisy, absurdity, and bigotry. M elville plays, through Ishm ael, w ith the concepts of prophecy and pre-ordination, celebrating fate and divinely authored destiny in one flourish, then subverting the m ovem ent by calling the reader's attention to the possibility (and sometimes probability) that the events and "fated" occurrences of his dram a are authored by the players them selves— by the actions they choose, inspired by dem ons of their ow n creation. The m agic of Melville's overall effort lies not sim ply in his penetrating explorations of metaphysics and epistem ology, nor in his aggressive w rangling w ith the phenom ena and issues of his day b u t rather in the brilliance of his devious-cruising am ongst the ancient edifices and new architectural plans of the traditions of ideas and words. M obv-Dick is a Prom ethean effort to mine the w ord h orde for its luciferous treasures. Melville utilizes his masterpiece characters, Ahab and Ishmael, as his m ost thoroughly articulated split-tongued response to the dilem m as of living in an age of such flux. M obv-Dick then becomes our Doubloon. We often see in it o ur ow n limitations. W e follow Ahab's tragic course, we founder under Ishm ael's skeptical storm ings, and we lose sight of the one beacon that alone is survived to tell. M obv-Dick— the collection of Ishm ael's chapters— in all its m agnanim ous colorings, adding up to a white light— is our beacon. 16 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Before proceeding I m ust offer a few caveats and clarifications. M elville as Philosopher — Melville, obviously, w as n o t a disciplined (or even consistently hard-w orking amateur) philosopher. A nd I am not interested here in attem pting to condem n or apologize for M elville's philosophy as gathered, inferred, and constructed by the biographers and other critics bent in that direction. I am, however, concerned w ith the philosophical m editation and dialogue as it is creatively em bodied through M elville's fictional work Mobv-Dick. All readers (who are open to reading the novel as som ething more than literal travelogue) recognize th a t Metaphysics is vitalized in Melville's seminal w ork through the characters and actions of Queequeg, Starbuck, Ahab et al. and especially in the artificially created narration of Ishmael. N or am I concerned here w ith the weathered b u t im portant debate regarding "W ho is M elville/ w ho is Ishm ael" (a la W ho is P lato/W ho is Socrates). I will write throughout this essay of Ishmael as a com plete construct, an object created in the form of an intentional subject. I will attem pt to avoid the fruitless entanglem ents so often suffered by critics w ho get lost in argum ents over w hat Ishmael m eans, w hat Melville m eans, an d w hat Melville m eans for Ishm ael to mean. Accurately m arking off the lines th at bind Ishm ael to Ahab is an enterprise for others. The Name of God — Unless otherwise noted, I will be using such phrases as "belief in God" and "faith in God" in a generic an d naive sense. 17 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Unless I call specific attention to such, I will not typically distinguish betw een "G od," "the G od of the C hristians," "the Creator," etc. To dance perfectly am ongst all the sectarian articulations w ould require a constant draw ing (a reductio ad infinitum ) of m ean distinctions betw een such phrasings as "Ahab rejects G od's com m and ..." and "Ahab rejects G od's com m and as the com m and is interpreted b y the m ajority of ante-bellum Calvinists." Melville (as w ith everybody) w as b o m into and raised w ithin (conditioned by?) a specific religious tradition and thereby ineluctably enabled and limited by the customs, vocabularies an d prejudices of that tradition, he still w as a m an of willful independent thinking. Melville in a strong sense w as a seeker, a diver and an intellect never com fortable oscillating in the rainbow of another. G nosis and Logos — I m ust also attem pt here to define tw o special w ords and concepts that I will use throughout the "Anxieties of Absence," often in som ew hat unorthodox ways: "Logos" and "Gnosis." Both words have been used confidently and inconsistently for tens of generations by both religious and secular w riters. Both w ords have been used to express abstract concepts that are them selves differently conceptualized and described by different users. The Skeptic comes to these w ords today and finds them suffocating beneath centuries of determ ined overburden. I will note w hen I am using these term s in a specific o r traditional sense, but I will also seek a t times to use 3 Laurie Robertson-Lorant informs us that Melville's mother was a Calvinist and his father a Unitarian. 18 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. these w ords according to a more naive an d inclusive conception: a sense in w hich the w ords are som ew hat divorced from their historically religious predicates. "G nosis" has at tim es been used in very general and more or less secular ways to suggest "knowledge" of any kind and in very specific and religiously contextualized w ays— for example w ith G nosticism — to refer to redemptive and secret knowledge of the origins and workings o f the world that is provided only to an elite few .4 In this essay I w an t to allow for the idea th at phenom ena m ay occur in our w orld— events th at m ay or may not have been "caused" by some intelligence outside the hum an agent. O ften these events have been nam ed (and claim ed) by "believers," by those w ho presum e the presence of an intending su perhum an entity and therefore invest such a presum ption into the nam e of the event. Take for exam ple an event w herein a person comes suddenly to som e kind of "w isdom ." For such an event w e typically w ould use w ords such as "epiphany," "revelation," "inspiration" and "enlightenm ent." The first three w ords are alm ost inextricably bound to connotations predicated on the presence of an external (and providential) w isdom -giver. We think, Some being or thing has presented this wisdom. The w o rd "enlightenm ent" has been carried a step further in history. After the "A ge of Enlightenm ent" w e are able The best brief definition I have found for "Gnosis" as it pertains to Gnosticism is in Kurt Rudolph's Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. 19 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to imagine hum ans as the wisdom -givers w ho help to enlighten the ignorant. We can think, Locke's ideas enlightened us to the innate equality of all humans. In m y pose as a Skeptic, I am interested in separating (for the purposes of our discussion) the phenom ena from the causal agent so often presum ed to be present. In m y thinking, one m ay experience an epiphanic event and that event MAY or MAY NOT have been initiated or orchestrated by an external wisdom-giver. M y use of the w ord "G nosis" is grounded upon this foundational idea. Gnosis may be (as the traditional definitions have suggested) a precious piece of wisdom or an extraordinary azvareness o f some truth. Such a description, however, need not presum e that wisdom or aw areness to be the gift of an intentional other (for exam ple, the product of an inspiring deity). I am m aking this distinction in the hope of opening up such questions as those surrounding, for example, w hat it is that Pip sees/learns/feels/com es to know as he floats alone in the sea and w ho or w hat m ight author the nausea we m ight feel as w e hover over D escartian vortices.. "Logos," is perhaps, a referent even m ore nebulous than Gnosis. It is often reduced and dism issed as "w ord" as if our m undane use of ordinary nouns, verbs, etc. is som ehow equal to A ristotle's or St. John's usages. W hen asked once, "W hat do you mean by "Logos"? I replied, "It is the language of the universe; if there is a supreme God, it is that G od's voice— the sound and poetry of that G od's song and the sound and shock of that God's sneeze b u t also the sound of the spheres turning in the galaxy and the blood pum ping 20 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. through m y veins, for I can't imagine a suprem e creator to be separate from the created." I believe this is w hat the ancient w riters were approaching w hen they wrote, "A nd G od said, 'Let there b e '.. .and there w a s .. Traditionally— from Aristotle to us— "Logos" has m eant m any things. "The rational principle of all things," note the scholars of the NTV Bible as they explicate the first verses of John (1593). Such a definition is valuable— b u t also loaded. For m y present uses in this essay, I w ould divorce "rational" from this definition and substitute "articulate" to rem ove the predicated connotation "logical" w hile retaining the idea of "sense" and "cohesiveness." By saying Logos is som ething close to the articulate principle o f all things I hope I beg questions regarding "intelligibility" and perhaps "source" as in M ust Logos be intelligible? To whom must it be intelligible? And from where does Logos originate? I w ish to open u p the dialogue regarding w ho or w hat can or does author the Logos. C an an Ishmael or a M elville (or one of their readers) author Logos— or are all efforts of language to end at naught. I do not m ean for the word "Logos" to refer narrow ly to a purely secular formula that equates nam e and thing nam ed (i.e.: the static and fixed (and probably non-existent) thing so easily dem onized in deconstruction rhetoric. The true Skeptic, after all, m ust leave room for the possibility that a G od does exist whose utterance is absolutely one and inseparable from the form , function, sound and sense of that which is uttered. 5 Genesis 1:3 21 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A t tim es I also use the w ord Logos in a sense that I believe to be authorized w ith in the faith-fram eworks of m any believers. A believer w ho claims that the creation manifests the creator (providing an articulation or m apping of the creator— no m atter how unintelligible or confounding to w e hum ans) is claim ing the m aterial w orld itself to be Logos. A C alvinist w ho claims that G od and the Will of G od are already m anifest in the w o rld and in the m aterial of the w orld (indeed, if the believer can resist the dualism , these are the sam e) is claim ing the m aterial w orld itself to be Logos. In like m anner, a believer w ho claims th at the collected (and it seem s to go w ithout saying, canonized) w ritten scriptures m anifest the creator, is claim ing the scriptures to be Logos. This will becom e an im portant line of thinking as I raise the question (the possibility?) concerning w h eth er a hum an m ight au th o r an articulation so perfectly "truthful" or "wise" as to be Logos (or at least, to the subjective hum an, to be indistinguishable from the traditionally authorized Logos). 22 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I - ANXIETY Apprehension grows through middle o f the period, that science is becoming self-sufficient, will dispense with religious concern or even actively oppose Christianity. Scientists hint science is a firmer revelation than Bible, etc. Apprehension becomes anxiety. Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America from the Revolution to the Civil War: plan for Book Three, Chapter Three, "The Religion of Geology" THE PARADIGM SHIFT: DIVINE REVELATION TO HUM AN DIS-COVERY Mobv-Dick the novel w as b o m during a great paradigm shift in the w estern attitude tow ard h um an know ledge, toward the degree of certainty attainable regarding know ledge and m ost especially tow ard the nature of the wellsprings of knowledge. Mobv-Dick, as an American artifact, is poised at this historic nexus, this m om ent of conjunction betw een ancient and m odem anxieties regarding the trustw orthiness of knowledge divinely inspired and knowledge scientifically rendered. Faith-based knowledge— th a t is, meaning, divinely revealed— had always seemed, to som e degree or other, at odds w ith m eaning derived from independent hum an enterprise. M eaning composed by hum ans bent on biblical exegesis has often conflicted w ith that gathered and com posed 23 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. through inquiry derived by reason and logic and stoked w ith experiential (empirical) data. D uring Melville's young life the tree of the Enlightenm ent was being harvested b y intellectuals and cultural leaders for its second crop (even as opponents of enlightenm ent ideals hacked aw ay at limbs on all sides). The same spirit of individual enterprise— of the possibilities, even responsibilities of the individual to seek out and examine his or h er ow n truths— became m arried to the em pow ering assurance of the new m achines of scientific progress. The individual in search of insight and enlightenm ent found new tools that prom ised to extend the hum an ability to confirm or displace old beliefs or theories: concrete and practical tools such as im proved telescopes, more accurate time devices and increasingly substantial natural history societies, cabinets and libraries. In ante-bellum America a spasm of intuitionism (now labeled Rom anticism and American Transcendentalism) w as sounding horns against the very vital, but cautionary messages of Empiricism and Skepticism. Much of this Intuitionism w as inspired by European Idealism , especially German Idealism as it was filtered through English speaking intellectuals such as Coleridge and Carlyle. The questions shifted subtly aw ay from "W hat does God tell us?" and tow ard the epistemologically grounded, "W hat can we know?" As the essence of this question becomes transform ed in the collective m ind and w e as hum ans becom e the subjects and agents in our own actively 24 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. constructed sentence, both the onus and the opportunity for determ ining and validating m eaning becom e ours. What can we know? What can we invent? What can zve validate? Wltat do zve mean? This transform ation, as it plays out historically, conjures a spirit of confidence coiling like a spring, barely suppressing its potential energy. W hen hum ans gain sufficient confidence in their self-actuated m ethods of validation, they come to see that any and every new idea o r assertion m ay be im agined, invented, and then tested. H um ans appear to need no higher pow er to point a finger and lecture and instruct. And as "progress" progresses the specific collection of "facts" regarding natural history that the Bible has alw ays supplied, seem s to pale and dim inish as the collection of hum an "discoveries" grows exponentially. Believers (despite the heroic efforts of those w ho attem pted to determ ine the physical w eight of the soul and the standing room needs of angels on pins) find it increasingly difficult to dem onstrate w hat the Bible has to say about planetary orbits, dinosaurs, genetic engineering, or the infusion of the soul into a hum an foetus: all m atters "left out" of the Bible. Generations ago w e debated the blasphem y of attaching lightning rods to churches, now we debate the blasphem y o f disconnecting dialysis from a dying hum an. I do not m ean that this period in the A m erican story was characterized by a m ass exodus tow ard Secular Transcendentalism and aw ay from a basic belief in the existence of G od— or even a m ass abandonm ent of the Judeo- 25 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. C hristian God. After all, this w as also the age of the second great revival and the era of the M illerite end-tim e prophecy.6 I am speaking rather, of a profound shift (a shift begun first am ong A m erican intellectuals and then spreading generally am ong the populace over generations) in the attitude tow ard w hat G od offers in the way of instruction, tow ard the scope and im m ediate relevancy of divine revelation. For m any w estern believers, for example, the Bible was (and is) view ed as a more-or-less literal em anation of the m essage G od w ould have us hum ans know and heed: a sufficiently com prehensible (if still often mysterious) text th at accurately articulates physical, natural, and hum an history. For others, however, the Bible is som ething less than a com plete set of certain answ ers and com m ands. In the first half of the 19th-century the relationship betw een believers and their God changed for m any, m any people. Choosing a path of accom m odation, m any believers m aintained faith by abandoning som e of the m ore narrow traditional interpretations of biblical history such as the literal interpretation of God creating the earth in six days and of N oah's flood covering all the earth. Efforts tow ard reconciling traditional interpretations of biblical history w ith the exponentially grow ing m ass of "scientific" discovery w ere seem ing less and less feasible, and at tim es laughably absurd. We see today the extrapolated results of that paradigm shift. Belief in the existence of God is still claimed by the m ajority of Americans. M ost of One fascinating quality of William Miller's prophecy as it relates to the theme of this essay is that Miller's relatively exact date was based on a confidence in both mathematical calculations and scripture. His prophecy was both inspired and rational. 26 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. those sam e people, however, look to science and not scripture to explain and illum inate the "facts" in m atters w e now categorize as issues of "natural history" and of the "physical or m aterial w orld." THE AGE OF THE EARTH, THE DEPTH OF THE WATER This change, of course, did not start in ante-bellum America. Its roots go back past Gallileo's trouble w ith the church over his "hard-science" discovery that the m oon is less than perfectly spherical and smooth. Even the issues are ancient. Empodocles believed that hum ans and animals had evolved from earlier forms, m aking evolution as a theory older than Christianity (if not necessarily older than God). In Yankee Science in the Making: Science and Engineering in New England from Colonial Times to the Civil W ar. D irk J. Struik writes, The D arw inian controversy w hich after 1859 raged in N ew England as well as in other parts of the w orld w as the continuation of a long-standing struggle betw een a constantly developing science and the orthodox interpretation of the Bible .... In the early nineteenth century the battleground shifted to geology, and the m ain issue became the interpretation of the Mosaic account of Creation, w ith the historicity of the Deluge as a secondary point of controversy. (Struik 373) The debates regarding the "age of the earth" and the "depth of the w ater" have come to symbolically represent the battle betw een faithful biblical literalists and those who refuse to em brace empirical science w hen it seem s to conflict w ith biblical revelation. By the m id-nineteenth century a m ass of data had been processed that challenged certain C hristian articulations of natural 27 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and hum an history m ore thoroughly an d forcefully than ever. T he fossil record and the geological survey at th a t tim e, though by today's stand ards tiny, had grow n sufficiently w helm ing as to convince m ost educated persons that the earth w as far older than the roughly 5,800 years calculated by Archbishop U sher and accepted as "proven" by m any thousands of b eliev ers/ The scientists (even by now) have n o t w on a completely universal victory on this front. Some believers still deny the "prevailing scientific opinion." O nly a score of years ago Stephen Jay Gould was able to w rite, The G ideon Society . . . persists in recording the date of creation as 4,004 BC in their m arginal annotation to Genesis 1. Geologists believe th at our planet is at least a m illion tim es more ancient— som e 4 1 /2 billion years old. (ESP 147) At the tu rn of the millennium, as I w rite this, in San Diego, California visitors to the C reation M useum can pay a sm all donation to tour exhibits that graphically display "proof" of the accuracy of biblical accounts o f the E arth's ancient history (that is: the accuracy of accounts interpreting the w ord "days" in the bible as "days" and interpreting the discovery of land-bound m arine fossils— no m atter w here— as evidence of N oah's flood). In m any w ays this is all a question of authority. If Science now enjoys more authority than religion over know ledge regarding natural history, w e can easily harken to a time in w estern history w herein the opposite w as true. 7 Usher, by applying a calculus to the historical and genealogical notations in the Old Testament determined the creation to have occurred in 4004 B.C. 28 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. D uring M elville's youth, it w as n o t alw ays so easy— especially in regard to educated persons— to identify the deserving final authority. Such scientific usurpations of religious authority h av e a long historical record of provoking reaction from believers and from the earthly caretakers of religious authority. Just as A belard, Galileo, Da Vinci a n d so m any others sparked rather dram atic and sum m ary reactions (and persecution) so did the early sage-paladins of 18th- an d 19th-century scientific progress receive condem nation for their "heresies." The anxiety that undergirds such hostility seem s less than m ysterious. W hether territory is defined as the dom ain of the one tru th or the dom ain of political an d other earthly pow er, the entity recognized as "A uthority" is the prim ary (if n o t sovereign) stew ard of that territory. P erhaps nothing ushered in the anxiety that accom panies such a vacuum betw een authorities in its m ost dram atic form m ore th an the exponentially grow ing docum entation by science and natural historians that accum ulated so rapidly in the later years of the enlightenm ent— docum entation of em pirical evidence th at seem ed so clearly contradictory to long believed conclusions. The cabinets of natural historians sw elled during this period, preparing the w ay for the m useum boom — essentially a phenom ena of collecting collections— of the early 19th-century. Geologists and others claim ed the age of the earth to be far greater than the biblical literalists had calculated. Because of this som e believers had long since shifted to interpreting the seven "days" of the G enesis creation account 29 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to m ean seven "ages" or "epochs." This theory, how ever, by no means satisfied everyone. In the early decades of the nineteenth century a strong contingency of the faithful w ere still attem pting to justify the trustw orthiness of a literal reading of the biblical account of creation and the contiguous descendency of the hum an family. M any steadfastly believed the word "days" m ust be interpreted narrow ly and took great pains to square the account. The catastrophists, a relatively strong holdout group of literalists theorized th at radical upheavals of the geological structures and compositions of the earth occurred in a relatively brief period of tim e and w ere authored by the biblical creator. But even the catastrophist argum ent w aned in the face of increasing scientific evidence. By 1830 [the year Lyell published his Principles of Geology], no serious scientific catastrophist believed that cataclysms had a supernatural cause or th at the earth was 6,000 years old. Yet these notions were held by m any laymen, and they w ere advocated by som e quasi— scientific theologians. (Gould, ESP 149) Interestingly, for m any believers, some evidence in the fossil record seem ed to support the C atastrophist's telling. M arine fossils found on inland hills, giant boulders found hundreds of miles from "w here they should be"— though now seen as sim ple results of glacial activity— suggested to some that G od's hand had been quick, strong and far-reaching. As scientists have steadily filled in the plot gaps in the m odem version of geological history, they have concluded that "quicker" is a relative term w hen describing changes in the earth. 30 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The first w riter to set forth a m o d em scientific view in geology w as H utton, whose Theory of the Earth was first published in 1788, and in an enlarged form in 1798. He assum ed that the changes w hich have occurred in past times on the surface of the earth w ere due to causes which are now in operation, and w hich there is no reason to suppose m ore active in the past th an in the p re se n t. . . . [all] scientific geologists since his d ay have accepted his general m ethod of interpreting the p a st by m eans of the p re se n t. . . the upholders of Genesis m ade vehem ent onslaughts on H utton and his disciple Playfair .... (Russell 62-63) Bertrand Russell sets this conflict out sum m arily in Religion and Science w herein he m entions som e of the various battlegrounds necessarily resulting w here the progress of science clashed w ith traditionally interpreted scripture. He m entions that, in addition to the issues surrounding geological upheaval and the age of the earth, scripturalists felt them selves attacked by questions raised regarding the num ber of extinct species (found in the grow ing fossil record), the "inconsistency" of the Diaspora of species (Why were animals newly discovered in North America not to be found "intermediate" to Mount Ararat?), and the increasingly difficult to believe argum ent th at anim als before the Fall had not preyed upon each other (an argum ent m any discovered fossils did not support). Even issuing such questions calmly and rationally, seemed to raise the blood pressure of m any believers. They, after all, felt the plates beginning to move far below their feet. The theologians, however, saw w h at w as involved more clearly th an did the general public. They pointed out that m en have im m ortal souls, w hich m onkeys have not; that Christ died to save men, not m onkeys; that m en have a 31 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. divinely im planted sense of right an d w rong, whereas m onkeys are guided solely by instinct. (Russell 77) By I860, the year after D arw in's The O rigin of Species came out, and less than a decade after the publication of Mobv-Dick. such reasoning on the part of theologians m u st have seemed rather desperate and hysterical b u t perhaps also inevitable. By the m id-nineteenth-century, evolutionary theory had changed and developed m uch. For centuries, those w ho bred and cultivated plants and anim als h ad been aware of w hat w e m ight call a naive argum ent regarding "natural selection." They had b een cultivating an artificial version of selection as they h ad bred and selected various plant and anim al breeds, species, etc. Form al articulations of evolutionary theories followed. Lam arck, u ndoubtedly the m ost fam ous of the early evolutionists, believed in a form ulation of evolution predicated upon the idea that the anim als them selves possess some internal quality— a "desire" or "w ant"— that initiates and enervates the progressive changes science has noted. Others, on b oth sides of the issue, such as the evolutionist Haeckel and the great system atic classifier (but opponent to the idea of evolution of species), Georges C uvier published their theories and enjoyed significant popular success, especially am ong the educated. W e now look back and see D arw in's w ork as the fulcrum on w hich the great C reationist/E volutionist debates turns. Long before the Scopes trial, how ever (and even two generations before D arw in), the increasing persuasiveness of evolutionary theory w as actively eroding the orthodox and m ore literal interpretations of the Genesis account. 32 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. D arw inism was as severe a blo w to theology as Copem icanism . N ot only w as it necessary to abandon the fixity of species and the m any separate acts of creation w hich Genesis seemed to assert; n o t only w as it necessary to assum e a lapse of time, since the origin of life, which w as shocking to the orthodox; n o t only w as it necessary to ab andon a host of argum ents for the beneficence of Providence, derived from the exquisite adaptation of anim als to their environm ent, w hich w as now explained as the operation of natural selection— b u t w orse than any of all these, the evolutionists v entured to affirm that m an was descended from the lower anim als. (Russell 75-76) Evolutionary theory, in its early form s, also added pressure and perhaps som e urgency to the debate centered aro u n d the Genesis account of creation. Pre-D arw inian evolutionary ideas certainly did n o t achieve the profoundly subverting influence w e now com m only see evolutionary theory to have had in regard to Judeo-C hristian "N atural H istory." But this branch of scientific inquiry h a d gained a significant foothold and h ad begun legitimately to call into question m any traditional beliefs. The paradigm that frames hum ans and (other) anim als as m utable creatures th at have changed over m illennia as a result of independently natural (and not divinely vitalized and m anaged) phenom ena is in patent opposition to the G enesis account that describes creation as h aving been orchestrated by G od in several days. In his essay, "D arw in's Delay," Stephen Jay Gould argues that D arw in's extended delay in not publishing m aterial of w hich he himself w as confident was caused b y the naturalist's astute aw areness of the public punishm ent he w ould probably receive for w hat w as undeniably heresy. Darwin chose to continue his research and to strengthen the foundations of his theories rather than to offer u p his young and undeveloped theories to mob sacrifice. "H e 33 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. was not about to compromise a prom ising career by prom ulgating a heresy that he could n o t prove." (Gould ESP 23) But though D arw in's form of evolution w ould rem ain away from the public's eye for a time, other versions of the infant science w ere well known. O ne im portant factor that played into anxiety over the subversiveness of evolutionary theory was that intentionally or not, evolutionary science seem ed directly aim ed to underm ine, not biblical authority in some vague, indeterm inate w ay, but rather Genesis itself: the first book of the Bible. The greatest m iracles described in biblical text, after all, are those of the creation account. In addition, Genesis was (and is) seen by m any as a foundational cornerstone to the "living word of G od." Believers w ere w ell aware that Skeptics, Atheists and others w ould continually exploit developments in evolutionary theory by relentlessly firing the broadside challenge: If God proves to be a liar in the first passages of His great book, how can we trust him on any matter after? The stage w as set for conflict. We m ust, however, look back p ast the "M onkey Trial," and past the courtroom histrionics set forth in Inherit the W ind. In the early 19th-century every m other's son was not being exposed to evolutionary theory in the classroom. Evolutionary theory was, how ever, som ething m ore substantial and threatening to biblical authority than the pseudo-sciences of Physiognomy and Phrenology; the superstitions of inventing spiritualists; or the abstract, m athem atical w orld of A stronom y. . . . contrary to popular belief, evolution was a very com m on heresy during the first half of the nineteenth 34 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. century. It was widely a nd openly discussed, opposed, to be sure, by a large m ajority, b u t adm itted or at least considered by m ost of the great naturalists. (Gould ESP 23) If anxiety w as the order of the day, panic certainly w as not. Educated and w orldly Christians had long m anaged to accommodate n ew discoveries in science. Some ante-bellum Christians found little difficulty in incorporating ideas from the new science into biblical interpretation. O ther evolutionists spoke of vital forces, directed history, organic striving, and the essential irreducibility of m in d — a p anoply of concepts that traditional Christianity could except in compromise, for they perm itted a C hristian G od to w o rk by evolution instead of creation. (Gould E SP 25) A Christian— in com prom ising, or in m aking a dialectical m ovem ent for example— could accept the notion of G od inspiring Lam arck's evolving anim al g w ith its "desire" to evolve. It is interesting to note that Darwin had already produced notes in 1838 and 1839 (The M and N notebooks) that perhaps signal what m ay come to be a more thoroughly subversive force to biblical authority than anything contained in evolutionary theory as w e have commonly known it for the past few generations. When we look around us now at the scientific (and especially medical) bias to consider the human body and m ind as little more than an elaborate chemical carnival, we have to wonder if Darwinian theory is yet to enjoy its most transgressive influence against Judeo-Christian orthodoxy. Regarding Darwin's notes, Gould writes: They include many statements showing that [Darwin] espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism— the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. ESP 24) Such a theory articulated here and now (despite the implications of the theory) fails to shock us. Such heresies, today when authored by the "hard" sciences— no matter the extent of their subversiveness— have become the norm. Science is now our predominant religion. 35 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WITH A GRAIN OF SALT: THE PATH OF ACCOM ODATION In the face of "progress" as it is represented by iconoclastic scientists w ho seem ever ready to contradict "authorized" biblical w isdom , the biblical literalists, perhaps suffer the greatest num ber of pains and defeats. A nd just in case they d o n 't feel sufficiently pained, Melville, through M obv-D ick and its, irreverent, skeptical hero, Ishm ael, heaps a host of new indignities upon them as he lam poons their various efforts to reconcile biblical text w ith secular history and science. Ishm ael's w it, of course, is leveled against both the pseudo-scientist and the sophistic Christian. M obv-Dick presents several characters w hose logic is less than logical a nd whose faith is less than faithful. But if M elville and Ishm ael b rin g such characters into their narration, they do so by holding up funhouse m irrors to reflect the v ery real and sober struggles m an y progressive C hristians faced. A m ong others, two prom inent pathw ays of reconciliation open to believers are brightly illum inated in M obv-Dick. One is the path of unconditional faith (called the path of zealotry by liberal believers an d the path of denial b y Infidels), and the other is the path o f accommodation (called the path of compromise by the faithful and the path of retreat by the Infidel). O ne form of reconciliation results from reinterpreting biblical history as loosely allegorical or as symbolic rath er than as literal. Such a path, however, alw ays seem s (at least at first) to be m arked by erosion: the kind of erosion that illicits its ow n form of anxiety. Perhaps the m ost fam ous exam ple of such 36 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a n accom m odation concerns reading the Genesis account of creation as having occurred over a period of seven epochs rather than over seven 24 hour days. There m ay have been a general slide in this direction, but one m an, George Louis-Leclerc Buffon, gets the nod as the historical catalyst for this change. A fter having convinced himself— through scientific observation and experim entation— that the earth was far older than any biblical scholar was w illing to admit, he refined his history of the earth and "discovered" that tire earth h ad come into its present condition after passing through seven phases. Meeting the theologians on their ow n ground, he undertook an exegesis of the Creation narrative in which days w ere expanded into epochs. His argum ent w as that in a text such as "darkness w as upon the face of the abyss and the spirit of G od m oved upon the face of the w aters," the verbs w ere placed in the imperfect tense, allow ing long duration. (Brooke 237) Buffon's conclusions in m any of their particulars w ere branded as antithetical to biblical authority, b u t Buffon had opened up an allegorical possibility that seem ed to m any to satisfy old orthodoxy and new science. In the first half of the nineteenth century such revisionist readings of the Bible w ere commonly offered and debated. Even today such assimilations of scientific theory into traditional faith systems can be hot topics. In many ways, w e have complicated the creation story to save it. Some, for example, have attem pted to accom m odate Darwinian evolution w ithin the Judeo- C hristian framework. Elaborate theories are explored in w hich God orchestrates or at least instigates the changes in species we have been able to docum ent so far. One result of this thinking, that some believers lament, is 37 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that God is portrayed as an editor more than an as an Author. The im portance of God's ideas and "interventions" becomes increasingly m arginalized in the planet's story, eliciting the concept of a "God of the Gaps": a God w e only credit for intervening during those "gaps" in the story science has been unable to confidently explain. In post-enlightenm ent, ante-bellum America, G od's role in the dram a had not yet been so reduced and m arginalized. The individual hum an's role in the interpreting of G od's great story, how ever, w as very different than it had been through m ost Judeo-Christian history, if for no other reason than virtually every literate person had direct access to a Bible. Various denom inations of C hristianity em phasized the individual hum an's role in his or her personal relationship w ith God. M ost pertinent to the study of M obv- Dick. perhaps is that the Q uakers (the Religious Society of Friends) placed great im portance on the believer's active participation in his or her unm ediated relationship w ith God. This preoccupation w ith the semiotic process and the am biguity or valency of signs, is one of the very rich currents ru n n in g through M obv-Dick. Ishmael and Ahab are very m uch concerned w ith the individual exegetical burden. They both also are interested in noting an d extrapolating m eaning from the panoply of signs and events they see around themselves. In this regard they are m odem explorers in the vein of certain notorious historical heretics. A nd like earlier heretics, they found signs in nature that seem ed to conflict w ith orthodox history. 38 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But for the ante-bellum American these new heretical offerings w ere som ething significantly different than C opernicus and Galileo produced. The heresy of the heliocentric universe was a heresy against church orthodoxy more th an against the Logos. Very few believers h ad direct access to the scriptures, w hereas virtually all believers h a d direct (and often inescapable) access to the church. O ne could argue that Galileo proved the church's exegesis as fallible and n o t necessarily the Bible itself. And by that tim e, the church h ad already p roven itself to intelligent persons as alm ost habitually fallible. In later tim es of increased literacy, w h en m ost believers could read the sign "seven days" in their privately ow ned copy of the King Jam es Bible, it became m ore difficult in a general, if not necessarily political w ay, to introduce to believers w h at seem ed a direct heresy. In such a time, the scientific assertion th at G od did not create th e w orld in seven "days" seem ed an obvious heresy against the Logos in its plain, clear, accessible, virtually self-evident articulation in the scriptures. M any believers, how ever, whose exegetical conclusions w ere less th an carved in stone found th at progress, and w h a t it prom ised, could be seen as constructive and not necessarily heretical. In p erhaps their strongest form ulations, argum ents of accom m odation appear to be genuine synthetic results of a reasoned dialectic: a combined consideration of biblical W isdom and Scientific W isdom. Such a process and result w ould have pleased the 39 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. post-enlightenm ent thinker alm ost as m uch as it still satisfies ou r need to feel secure u n d e r th e gaze of our divine and secular godheads. Some believers in Melville's tim e w ere able to see "progress" as G od's providence m anifested in a form, surprising and new, b u t still consistent with prophecy. It [science] is conferring on us that dom inion over earth, sea and air, which w as prophesied in the first com m and given to m an by his Maker; and this dom inion is now em ployed, not to exalt a few, b u t to m ultiply the com forts an d ornam ents of life for the m ultitude of m an. (Charm ing in Struik 277) A second form of reconciliation or accom m odation requires an act of faith and "accom m odates" new critical discoveries by ignoring or dism issing them as irrelevant w hen such new know ledge does not harm onize w ith what one know s by faith. This path requires the believer to hold faith in convictions not rationally derived and to take pains to refuse critical assertions that seem contrary. A hab, m ore than Ishmael, seem s ready to follow such a path. He can believe in th e unseen but he cannot relinquish faith in him self and his own divining abilities. In a sense, he is a protestant Q uaker w ho accepts the burden of struggling in his ow n m ind to understand his w orld. Unlike the proper and hum ble Quaker, however, he trusts his ow n critical thought process as m uch as (or more than) he trusts in the authority of the Logos. Ahab is unw illing to surrender his subjective and critical view point: to resign him self as Kierkegaard w ould say. A t m om ents d u rin g the novel the captain seem s able to achieve a level of peace that seems to accom pany a resignation. Ironically, however, these m om ents seem to trigger in him a new 40 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. dive into a black m ood. Just after falling into a reverie in "The Sym phony" for exam ple, Ahab seems to violently reject the calm m om ent as if to reassert his rational conviction that he is pushed up o n his reckless path. Ishmael illustrates the m om ent, choosing N ew ton's fruit as his m etaphor. " Ahab's glance w as averted," he writes, "like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil." (444) In one sense, Ishmael's resignation is more com plete than Ahab's. But Ishm ael's resignation is that of the Agnostic not that of the Believer: he resigns him self to the awareness that he m ay never be sufficiently "certain" to posit faith. That is, he is only able to posit— if not as a belief then as a functional philosophy— the rational conclusion that he cannot know (or at least cannot know w ith certainty) God. In doing so, Ishmael turns his back on a possibility offered by Kierkegaard— a possibility of sim ply and heroically positing faith in complete disregard of w hat rational and skeptical thought informs him . Of course to do this, Ishm ael w ould need to "unlearn" his ow n skeptical habits and turn his back on the legacies bequeathed to him by Luther, Rouseau, Descartes and Hum e. In Fear and Trembling w ritten in 1843, Kierkegaard sets forth his m etaphors of the Knight of Infinite Faith and the Knight of Infinite Resignation. In conjuring the K night of Infinite Faith, K ierkegaard writes, W ould it not be better to stop w ith faith, and is it not revolting that everybody w ants to go further? . . . W ould it not be better that they should stand still at faith, and 41 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that he w ho stands should take heed lest he fall?. (Bretall 118) Such a believer w ho m ight stop w ith faith is som eone com pletely ignorant of the rational tradition or som eone capable of the heroic act of renouncing the process of rational enquiry and analysis— an absolute intellectual L uddite. Kierkegaard recognizes that an act of positing absolute faith is predicated on the resignation unto an external authority. H e also recognizes that a h u m an capable of such an act m ay not exist— so difficult to perform w ould be the action. "Faith therefore is not an aesthetic e m o tio n /' Kierkegaard w rites, "but som ething far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition ..." (Bretall 126) Kierkegaard uses the w ord resignation for he sees that a hum an w ho could w orship and believe by virtue of faith alone— a m odem for exam ple, fully expert in the rational process— m ust resign from his or her agency an d role as sem iotidan and signifier and allow G od sole proprietorship over m eaning. For the act of resignation faith is n o t required, for w hat I gain by resignation is m y eternal consciousness, and this is a purely philosophical m o v em en t. . . (Bretall 127) Such is the nature of Ishm ael's thought at the conclusion of his grand narrative. H e has not m ade the giant leap that resignation prom ises w ill carry him safely over rationality. In fact he describes in his narrative a period of tim e w herein he h ad begun to m ake such a m ovem ent— a time in w hich he found him self bound into A hab's quest— and h ad rejected the m ovem ent in 42 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. horror after seeing the d ark extremis to w hich complete resignation m ight lead. In fact, Ishm ael goes beyond rejecting such an act of resignation. He attacks to the point of hum iliation som e of those w ho w ould resign themselves to faith, especially those w ho w ould claim faith and yet insist upon attem pting to "rationalize" their beliefs. For m y m oney— an d I apologize to D uyckink— the m ost delicious fare of this sort can be h ad in Ishm ael's hilarious chapter, "Jonah H istorically Regarded." The chapter is a sm all m asterpiece of M elville's ironic hum or. In it, Ishm ael poses (w ith a nudge and a w ink) as a staunch apologist of the biblical account of Jonah's cetacean incarceration. H e is posed as if a law yer in a courtroom against an "old Sag-Harbor w halem an" who goes by the nam e (as Ishm ael assures us) of "Sag-Harbor"— an ignorant old w halem an w hose " chief reason for questioning the H ebrew story w as this:— H e had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, em bellished w ith curious, unscientific plates." (307) We m ight note here that Ishm ael's lam pooning of biblical apologists in this chapter is entirely predicated on a fundam ental (and traditional an d specious) reading of the Jonah story. M elville's Bible read "N ow the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. A nd Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days an d three nights." (Jonah 1:17) The translation of "fish" to "w hale" w as effected b y interpreters an d by tradition. Ishm ael is aw are of the tradition and aw are th a t the tradition is inaccurate. W ith tongue profoundly 43 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. poised in his scuttle cheek, however, he announces (in of all places his "scientifically" titled chapter, "Cetology"), "Be it know n that, waiving all argum ent, I take the good old fashioned ground that the w hale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back m e." (119) Ishm ael declines all argum ent on this m atter for he know s that a rational discussion can only sever the m etaphoric identification betw een Jonah's Fish and Jonah's W hale. Melville here, like the old m an in Benito Cereno, knots his knot. A nd should we ask, "W hat is it for?" we can expect no m ore than the old m an's m utter: "For someone else to undo." Ishm ael m ay w ish to rem ain am biguous and indeterm inate in his ow n way. H e is, how ever, greatly interested in this public "lyceum " of rationalization because he sees here a conjunction of two favorite subjects: semiotic investigation and sophistry. A nd if his own w ord effort through his chapters is a desperate, but good faith cam paign to try-out and dis-cover truth, he does not see the biblical apologists as engaged in the sam e honorable and pragm atic effort. And so, poor old Sag-Harbor is dragged to the bar of this m oot court. Satire often communicates by inversion, and Ishm ael, in this chapter w ants it to be clear that the apologists (and not the ignorant, well-intentioned old salt, Sag-Harbor) are the crazy old m en jousting at w indm ills. In Ishmael's story, these Quixotics are w ithout honor. Those w ho w ould em ploy sophistry to prove in the m inds of the feeble or ignorant what seem s obviously absurd 44 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and untrue to the rational m ind, are covering rather than dis-covering the truth. Ishm ael begins to skin his fish, starting at the anim al's m outh and w orking tow ard the legendary tale. H e offers first a practical observation, real w orld evidence whalers w ould see as indisputable. Ishm ael, how ever, brings in expert testim ony to (de)construct his ow n rational case. The fisherm en have this saying, "A penny roll w ould choke him [the Right Whale]"; his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb's anticipative answ er is ready. It is not necessary, hints the Bishop, that w e consider Jonah as tom bed in the whale's belly, b u t as tem porarily lodged in som e p art of his m outh. A nd this seem s reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale's m outh w ould accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and com fortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah m ight have ensconced him self in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right W hale is toothless. (307) The entire chapter is strategically oriented tow ard such "second thoughts" and the toothless nature of Literalist sophistry. Ishm ael carries the debate directly into the m aw of rhetoric w hen he indirectly dem onstrates that perhaps the account offered by the prevailing exegetes is literally true in regard to Jonah being taken up by the "whale." Ishmael engages more learned sages to enlighten Sag-Harbor. It has been divined b y other continental com m entators, that w hen Jonah was throw n overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightw ay effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel w ith a w hale for a figure-head; and, I w ould add, possibly called "The Whale," as som e craft are now adays christened the "Shark," the "Gull," the "Eagle." (307) 45 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ishm ael gives his sorry Infidel, Sag-Harbor, a sound beating as the chapter progresses. B ut in all fairness w e m ust adm it that the old salt gets m ore than his share of opportunity. Ishm ael lists for us, all of "Poor Sag-H arbor's" reasons "for his w ant of faith"— n o t neglecting a single argum ent of w hich w e are m ade aw are. A nd in the end, the Infidel's ow n actions— his skeptical and heretical effronteries— dam n his effort. But all these foolish argum ents of old Sag-H arbor only evinced his foolish prid e of reason— a thing still m ore reprehensible in him , seeing that he had b u t little learning except w hat he h ad picked up from the sun an d the sea. I say it only show s his foolish, im pious pride, and abom inable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. (308) O f course, Ishm ael know s how to task an Infidel. H e, himself, is that type of Skeptic w ho arrives, after a thorough search for certainty, at infidelity. His entire narrative, the chapters them selves, m ay be read as the exams for the various courses he takes in the fishery he calls his Yale College and his H arvard. Those chapters em body the m odem , skeptical quest— a quest that grants validity to no previous ideas, beliefs, philosophies, or system s— a quest that alw ays begins and w ell m ight end w ith a hero w ho is both orphan and infidel. THE ANXIETY OF ORPHANS In a review contem porary to the launching of M obv-Dick, Evert Duyckinck in his Literary World com plained of Ishm ael's infidelism — his "going 46 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. d o w n on his knees w ith a cannibal to a piece of wood." The narrator is one Ishm ael, w rote Duyckinck, whose w it m ay be allow ed to be against everything on land, as his h a n d is against everything a t sea. This piratical running d o w n of creeds and opinions . . . is out of place and uncom fortable. We do not like to see w hat, under any view , m u st be to the w orld the m ost sacred associations of life violated and defaced. (H ayford 615) W hat dism ayed the staid D uyckinck was to become one of Melville's signature habits— the running dow n of creeds and opinions. In Mobv-Dick. Ishm ael's "chapters" m anifest that effort. W here Ishmael spots a creed or opinion, he m u st sound it, run it dow n, an d render it out to discover any value and rew ard it m ight offer. Ishm ael does not, however, do so directly as a pirate w ould— to plunder a victim m erely for horde. His effort is the archetypal h u m an search for know ledge and for a sense of certainty that m ight offer at least a m om entary stay against the sucking vortex of m eaninglessness. All his efforts are predicated upon this search an d self-education. The "creeds and opinions," held sacred by his contem poraries and his ancestors are n o m ore or less to him th an curricula. But to his dism ay, m any of those ideas offered by others, that seem at first to prom ise such assurance, fail to pass exam ination. A nd w hat cannot be trusted, Ishm ael know s, m ust be rejected as dogm a that encum bers. It seems little w onder th a t so m any of M elville's contem poraries rejected the book and to some real effect, rejected Melville him self. Mobv-Dick. after all, offers no soft celebration of the "sacred associations of life" held dear by his 47 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. peers. Melville w as very m uch a w riter of his time— b u t a w riter perhaps so critical of his tim e that h e w as not m uch welcome in it. W ith Mobv-Dick. M elville/Ishm ael is striking through masks in his ow n irreverent way. And. his w ay is no less radical th an A hab's, for he is perfectly willing to strip the fig leaves from any naked em perors he m ight encounter. And, perhaps, for certain of M elville's contem poraries, the novel could be read as nothing m ore th an a thinly veiled relentless heresy— a Divine Travesty dram atizing the spiraling absurdity of G od's W ord and the tragedy of G od's death. Reread the first chapters w ith this in m ind. D on a believer's hat if need be and notice Ishm ael's relentless burlesquing of Christians and Christian practice. Ishm ael is surrounded by those who claim a know ledge inspired by a divine authority, m any of w hom are willing to im pose their will over others w ho do not share faith in their "knowledge." Such people are offensive in Ishm ael's eyes for two reasons. First, he discovers their knowledge to be false w hen he examines it, an d second, he sees the hypocrisy of such false witnesses g to be further dividing th e hum an family he w ould have united. Ishm ael looks out across his world and sees the prom ise and the reality, that perhaps "all deified N ature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose 48 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. allurem ents cover nothing b u t the charnel-house w ithin." (170) Ishm ael sees and m ust contem plate both sides of this doubloon. The reverberations of irony in the sequence of chapters beginning w ith "The Castaway" and ending w ith "The Try-W orks" are complex and m anifold. C aptured whales and abandoned sailors, blue skies and drow ned souls, squeezed han d s and am putated toes all point to a w orld rich in prom ise b u t frighteningly careless of hum an wishes. (G renberg 103) In a telling m om ent Ishm ael shows that he, like A hab, is concerned w ith the "m asking" he finds in the world. H e is interested in im m ediate appearances as they suggest or m isrepresent the character of w hat lies behind the mask. M any of Ishm ael's m aster m etaphors hover around the notions of "m asking" and of "appearances that bear false w itness" (such as the "good Christian" of cannibal countenance and the sperm w hale's head that gives false w itness to the shape of the enclosed brain). A nd no mask, perhaps, is as im portant in M obv-Dick as the Logos of the Bible— a "m aterial" m anifestation of God. Some of Ishm ael's m ost biting barbs are aim ed at Christians w hose conduct ill represents the exam ple of their professed deity. Before the Pequod sails, Ishm ael gleefully paints a num ber of C hristian hypocrites, m en w hose Ishmael sees that we humans exist in an interdependent "joint stock company" and that "every mortal that breathes. . has this Siamese connection with a plurality of other mortals." (271) He demonstrates that he would praise "equality" and the "Democratic God" (105), an considers himself ready to be counted a Christian where Christianity is defined as inclusive as the church to which he and Queequeg belong: "the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’ s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief.. . . ” (83) 49 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. actions belie their m antels. Perhaps the first is Peter Coffin, nam ed after the fisherm an disciple. Coffin, though generous in some generals, yet com m ands a deceptive tax on the drinkers of his establishm ent: "A bom inable are the tum blers into w hich he pours his poison. Though true cylinders w ithout— w ithin, the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered dow nw ards to a cheating bottom ." (21) Ishm ael and Q ueequeg encounter other questionable Christians in the first chapters: the judgm ental captain of the ship at dock, the bum pkin, and the ship owners, Peleg an d Bildad (positioned and acting som ew hat as m oney changers before the entrance to their tem ple, ready enough to break the Sabbath.1 0 In contrast, Ishm ael relates Q ueequeg's various actions of dow nright "C hristian" behavior. Q ueequeg is show n as self-sacrificing, generous, non-judgm ental, hum ble. A nd, perhaps m ost im portantly to Ishm ael, Q ueequeg is genuine in his actions and w ords, a "good C hristian" by action and deed— w ithout pretense or bold claims of know ledge or faith. There he [Queequeg] sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in w hich there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. H e was; a very sight of sights to see .... A nd those sam e things th at w ould have repelled m ost others, they w ere the very m agnets that thus d rew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since C hristian kindness has proved b u t hollow courtesy. (53) Interestingly, we meet Queequeg only after he has spent hours attempting to sell his souvenir head before the Sabbath. This is soon contrasted with the words of the Quaker ship owners— Peleg and Bildad— w ho would reinterpret the dictum against work on the Sabbath bv reminding the men of the Pequod, "Don't whale it too much a' Lord’ s days, men; but don't m iss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven’ s good gifts." (96) 50 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. By evidence of these barbs, it seems that particularly vexing to Ishm ael is the sophistry perform ed by self-proclaimed believers as they utilize text from the bible to grant authority to their own intentions. Ishm ael (and arguably M elville) seem m ost im patient w ith professed Christians who fail to act according to C hristian ethics. "Better sleep w ith a sober cannibal th an a d ru n k en Christian," Ishm ael tells himself, apparently placing m ore stock in individual character th a n in professed credos. Ishm ael even relates that Queequeg had once tried-out C hristianity so far as h e m et it m anifested through Christians, but had found it w anting For at bottom — so he told me— he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to m ake his people still happier th an they were; and more th an that, still better than they were. But alas! the practices of w halem en soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so than all his father's heathens. (57) Contrasted to this is the stereotyping of Q ueequeg as a "savage" and a "cannibal." Even Ishm ael, having had no actual exposure to such a "heathen" assum es Queequeg to be a blood-thirsty "savage." As he watches Q ueequeg enter the bedroom at the Spouter Inn, his trepidation evolves into a panic. It was now quite plain that he m ust be som e abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a w halem an in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too— perhaps the heads of his ow n brothers. He m ight take a fancy to m ine- -heavens! look at that tomahawk! (30) A t least Ishmael, how ever, is open-minded. As Q ueequeg has given C hristianity a chance so also w ill Ishmael give Q ueequeg's religion a chance. Ishm ael, despite the discom fort of his readers, will go "dow n on his knees 51 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w ith a cannibal to a piece of w ood." As he justifies the action, Ishm ael further travesties the Christian cam paign by offering this absurd rationalization. I was a good Christian; bom and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. H ow then could I unite w ith this w ild idolator in w orshipping his piece of wood? But w hat is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the m agnanim ous G od of heaven and earth— pagans and all included— can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But w hat is worship?— to do the will of God? that is worship. A nd w hat is the will of God?— to do to m y fellow m an w hat I w ould have m y fellow m an to do to me— that is the will of God. (54) In his argum ent, he exploits the language of the w ord m uch as the ship owners play semantic gam es to justify their directive to take w hales on the Sabbath. Ishm ael's actions here, however, are very un-Christian precisely because Christianity is profoundly exclusionary. C hristianity enjoys the appearance of an all-embracing philosophy of democratic openness. But the G od of M oses is a Jealous God and will have no followers w ho w ish to heap their assurances of w orldly and after-worldly success by cross w orshipping. As am ateurish (and often even burlesque) as Ishm ael's efforts are, they nonetheless present m uch information, suggest m any conclusions, and perhaps m ost im portantly are conveyed in the sam e rhetorical voice that had for decades (on some issues, centuries) shouted heretical subversions of Judeo- Christian tenets. 52 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The destabilizing attacks on divinely inspired knowledge h ad com e in forms both tenaciously chronic (lasting even for centuries such as the heretical attacks on the biblical C reator's trustw orthiness) and as potently acute (such as the increasingly focused argum ents for evolution proffered by Lam arck and ilk). Ishm ael's project can easily be read as an organized attack, as the culm ination of a cam paign that included the m arshaling of argum ents and the collecting of "facts" that suggest, even prove by virtue of their w helm ing cum ulative effect th at the Logos as expressed in the Bible is fallible, perhaps even an intentional lie foisted upon the h u m an family. M any things in ante-bellum A m erica called into question the substance undergirding th e authority of the Judeo-C hristian God as described in the Logos of the Bible. If the ages of Galileo, C opernicus and N ew ton h ad sent shudders th ro u g h the gothic columns an d vaults of the C hristian church, this new age that suggested that the W ord m ight be w orse than a hollow , deceptive m ask seem ed to threaten all reliability in the Logos. A nd even should believers continue to believe, w h at dam age m ight this heresy cause? W hat layers of obscuring skepticism w ill be added to the m ediating heap betw een us and God? Does this infidel effort not pnt up a veil (as Ishmael calls it) betwixt humans and their Christian Deity? Does this arrogant attack on the Logos not further distance believers from their God? 53 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fears and frustrations are im passioned, n o t sw addled or com forted, when such veiling fabrics are pulled across our eyes. They are vexed and come to bear an acute anxiety: an anxiety th at is progeny and penance for both the optim istic, hopeful hum ans, intoxicated by confidence in "m an an d m achine" and for the frightened, ludditious dissenters who recognize th at the hum an progress (by its nature) intends to u su rp the role of God. G reat voices such as that of Carlyle and others— thinkers w hose efforts seem ed in ten d ed to subvert blind "progress"— fed the grow ing anxiety. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833) (a w o rk that exerted m uch influence on Melville) is concerned w ith the m etaphor of clothing. Just as Carlyle invoked the im age of the "tailor," Melville also uses an image that could not fail to strike the ante-bellum reader. Ishm ael calls God "The W eaver G od." The m etaphor evokes an image of an active god working together the w arp and w oof of the w orld. By 1851 textile w orkers had come to sym bolize resistance to the m achines of progress that w o u ld replace them. As Ishm ael spins his m etaphors of weaving, he cards w hat substance he draw s forth, never forgetting to m ention the im portance of color in the pattern of his chapters. H e will see how the fabric of knowledge holds together or unravels. W hen Ishm ael seeks to establish the radical dialogic th at governs his chapter "The W hiteness of the W hale" he invokes the scientific interpretation of the composition of w hite light, thereby rem inding the reader of the seem ing paradox of light: th at it appears to the hum an observer as pure and unalloyed b y color yet it is really com posed of all colors and for it to be 54 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pure, all colors m ust be present- This rem inder has the potential to illicit in the reader's m ind a m om entary pause to examine w h at h ad seemed obvious, an invitation to take a skeptical look at som ething as seem ingly obvious (and trustw orthy) as the "w hiteness" of light. The paradox Ishmael illum inates is that All Colors combine to form their ow n Absence. They are— in the sam e m om ent— present and absent. Of course this paradox is only a blighted w itticism of language, one of the tiny w orm holes th at w e encounter occasionally as we travel across the spaces betw een w ords. In one sense Ishmael seem s to recognize that by inverting his pun, he draw s the paradox. In another sense, however, Ishm ael sees that trusting in w ords to carry the thinker to know ledge makes the thinker susceptible to such em pty paradoxes. This seems a great danger to Ishmael: to be led by all thought an d inquiry to a heaped total that equals naught.1 1 T. Walter Herbert, in Moby-Dick and Calvinism offers some very strong argument regarding Ishmael's understanding and demonstrations that meaning can be heaped diligently— even desperately— and yet m ay not add up to "certain significance." The eerie dread awakened in Ishmael by the whiteness of the whale yields a complex spiritual meaning that compels Ishmael powerfully for a time, and then loses its force. Ishmael's participation in Ahab's quest is temporary; it is a stage on his journey toward final skepticism. But it is a critically important stage, since it dramatizes the way in which a world without final religious Truth appears to a consciousness that expects such Truth to be discoverable. Ishmael, as his earlier ambitions make clear, demands that life should somehow yield itself to a theocentric formulation. The "Whiteness of the Whale" chapter reveals what happens when that demand is frustrated. (128) I cannot follow Herbert so far as to agree that Ishmael— who is telling his complete tale in retrospect— ever really demanded "that life should somehow yield itself to a theocentric formulation" but I agree that Ishmael— during his investment in Ahab's quest— goes through a "stage" of sorts, another in the string of Ishmael's efforts to seek truth by "trying-out" all possibilities (and piratically running down various creeds when such a activity is necessary). 55 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER II - AUTHORS You hid your face I zuas terrified. — Psalms 30:8— Christianity suffers from an essential historical problem, in that it is a religion based on historical events. The incarnation of God takes place in the particular man Jesus, at a particular time; it is not repeated in each generation. All religions posit some kind o f separation betzveen the believer and God; indeed, religions and myths are grammars o f absence; they are complex verbal formulas that bring into consciousness that zohich is beyond the limits of phenomenal perception .. . (Kemp 5) HERALD (Anxiously) : GOD IS DYING "G od is Dead" has come to be a familiar phrase— one w e m ost often ascribe to Nietzsche though others including H egel and John Stuart Mill used it before him. Some see the phrase as m ean-spirited blasphem y, others as begging threat, others as histrionic hubris and bluster. I use the phrase, I suppose, because it is all those things and more. M any (especially perhaps those patronizing fideists w ho see all Infidels as joyful embracers of disbelief) see the phrase only in its literal, dem onstrative m ode. They hear Nietzsche's angry voice shouting an anno uncement: GOD IS DEAD. But there is a sober lam enting quality to the phrase also. A quality that belies the anxiety of the absence im plied. 56 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. God is dead. God is as if dead. God is as if dead . . . to me. God is as if dead to us. In early 19th-century America and Europe, God him self (even as m uch as his w ord) h ad been a long pilloried object of public interrogation and, at times, hum iliation. O ften this resulted from very public debates concerning narrow interpretations of the nature of the m eaning of biblical text. Skeptic: Hozv coidd all terrestrial animals have descended from animals on Noah's ship, the scientists ask. Believers: We don't knozo the details; zve take it on faith. In ante-bellum America and in the W est generally, the resurgence and fresh developm ent of theories related to new articulations of the deity or godhead— E m erson's "O versoul" and less specifically articulated Transcendentalist versions of a pervasive, unifying spirit, for exam ple— can reasonably be seen, am ong other things, as reactionary efforts that satisfy unfulfilled needs regarding present articulations of the n atu re and provided bounty of the divine. O f course this reasoning is predicated on the notion th at h um ans feel a need to know (and possibly worship) a higher pow er. That h u m an s do have this desire seem s to m e obvious. I reference it here only to d ra w a distinction 57 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. betw een such a need or desire and the existential, ontological realities of a higher pow er. Forem ost comes the reassuring idea that a god does exist— that w e share a w orld w ith som e sort of divine p arent or power. But to feel the presence of a god's im m inence and interestedness is som ething else/ its ow n issue. God m ay exist an d yet rem ain distant from hum an activities and hum an desires for contact. Perhaps m ore pointedly— from the hum an perspective— G od m ay be so disenfranchised as to be irrelevant to hum an life— to be, as if dead to us. M elville, am ong others, saw evidence of the irrelevancy of the Christian god— at least for m any humans. In M elville's Religious T hought. W illiam Braswell articulates this nicely: U nlike m any of his countrym en, Melville did not feel that m en h ad to be converted to Christianity in order to m aintain a highly ethical relationship. O n the contrary, he h ad seen so much evil am ong m en in lands nom inally Christianized that he deplored the invasion of the South Sea islands by W esternized civilization .... (Braswell 32) Ishmael, throughout Mobv-Dick. calls into question w hat h um an benefits, if any, are gained from the supposed presence and interestedness of the deity. A lfred K azin notes, while com paring M ark Twain to Melville and other American authors, that "Jefferson in Paris, Emerson in Rome, Melville in the South Seas w ere respectful and even curious about religions not their ow n." (Kazin 179) Ishm ael never claims to be a true expert on w orld religions. He does, how ever, often draw in passing references to concepts from various w orld religions to em phasize his points, perhaps most often to illustrate the 58 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. idea that the C hristian custom, regarding som e particular issue is n o t the only custom possible. Ishm ael w eaves this message into the fabric of his narration. U pon first reading Mobv-Dick. Evert Duyckinck reacted conservatively declaring Ishmael's ap p aren t attitude tow ard C hristianity to be unpalatable: This piratical running dow n of creeds and opinions . . . is o u t of place and uncom fortable. We do not like to see w hat, u nder any view, m u st be to the world the m ost sacred associations of life violated and defaced. (H ayford and Parker 615) Lost on Duyckinck w as Ishmael's very "fairness" to other religions, his open- m inded curiosity regarding various other religious beliefs and practices: an open-m indedness that strikes m any of us now as foreshadow ing the current celebration of "cultural diversity." D uyckinck's critical reaction w ent beyond his dislike of Ishm ael's "falling dow n to other idols." Duyckinck w as also aghast at Ishm ael's/M elville's transparent tendency to travesty C hristianity and Christians. "There is a jaunty, defiantly lower-class hum or in M obv-Dick .... " Alfred Kazin writes (95), probably referring to lines such as those Ishmael uses to satirize the respected elder businessm en Q uakers w ho m anage the Pequod while ashore. "Thinks I," Ishmael claims," C aptain Peleg m ust have been drinking som ething to-day." (95) But, of course, such burlesquing is aim ed at the w orshippers and not tow ard the deity or the Logos. It is alw ays possible that a god m ay "die" of the w orshippers' neglect. 59 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Such a dynam ic relationship betw een the hum an and the G od is exactly pertinent to a reading of M obv-Dick. The epistemological effort had always been configured by believers as an exercise in which hum ans struggled and God rew ard ed (or did not rew ard) those w ho struggled w ith know ledge He already possessed. A t the historical center of this issue (as it pertains to this essay) is the religious falling aw ay from D ivine Revelation, that is, the general and popular reconfiguration of the notion th at h u m an knowledge has been and alw ays will 12 be m ost accurately and efficaciously supplied by the deity. Literal interpretations of the H ebrew Bible held that G od, thousands of years ago, actually spoke to hum ans directly, w ithout the m ediation of m essengers or the need for exegetical go-betweens. Such an age of proxim ity gave w ay progressively to ages w herein the G od-hum an relationship became increasingly m ediated by com m unity leaders and scholars w ho served as conduits betw een God and the m ass of hum ans. Such go-betw eens as the old testam ent "prophets," the new testam ent "witnesses," and scholars such as A ugustine, L uther, even Calvin becam e seem ingly necessary to the believer. 1 2 One historical point that must be addressed concerns the contemporaneity of the great Age of Revivals w ith what I along with others claim was actually an age of doubt and fear. How, the reader m ay ask, could a diesis be accurate that claims ante-bellum America as a time of anxiety stem ming from doubt regarding the presence and relevancy of God when ante-bellum America was also the cradle of the Great Revival. The Great Revival was a popular m ovem ent that by all accounts revitalized the faith of many believers. But to claim that it profoundly affected the minds of the intellectual leaders of America— from the Seminarians to the scientists— would be overstating the case. Of course it is also important to note that the historic impetus for "the Great Revival" was partially the very anxiety am ong the believing community caused by a very public and very noticeable waning of faith. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Interestingly, despite the establishm ent of elaborate m echanism s of m ediation, the notion of individual an d direct com m unication w ith the G od flourished— especially during the Enlightenm ent. O ne notion that inevitably conflicted w ith orthodox practice was a legacy of the Enlightenm ent holding that all personal belief m ust be invented o r at least examined by each isolated, individual m ind. Such an individual connection to G od gained currency— especially as Protestantism — over the highly stylized, "mediated" connection (of Catholicism etc.). Philosophers such as D escartes and others— now burdened with the constraints of logic and reason— found it necessary to justify the prim ary tenets of their philosophies, w ithout relying on inspired (and therefore other than reasoned) validation. In this "age of reason" visions, epiphanies and inspirations were accounted w orthless: the a priori tenet becam e the philosopher's stone. D escartes' heroic cogito ergo sum — w ith its concrete centering of the individual hum an subject— becam e the distilled articulation of a profoundly new w ay of ordering and im agining knowledge. The form ulation of the essential com m unication of knowledge now requires the hum an subject. G od, and that w hich G od know s, m ay still exist— b u t H e is now marginal, incidental, no longer necessary. H um ans m ay or m ay n o t still enjoy the benefits of subordination to G od or even of an equitable covenental partnership. 61 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But such a partnership is not necessarily workable. While a believer grants complete faith in the intentionality of the deity, that believer can devote all effort tow ard exegesis, tow ard understanding and articulating the interested purposiveness of the deity's actions. But if a believer considers himself or herself to be actively involved in authoring the experiences of a life, the relationship w ith the deity is im m ediately transfigured from an hierarchical relationship to a partnership— and granted the deity's habit of rem aining silent on m any issues— not necessarily an equal or comfortable partnership. DEUS ABSCONDITUS AND THE ANTE-BELLUM ORPHAN The "need" or "desire" for a parent is presented in Mobv-Dick as allegorical to the "need" or "desire" for a present and intentional creator. The m etaphor turns again in Ishm ael's narrative to connect to the notion of "family" especially the family as guided by a fatherhead. Melville parades before us familiar families composed of parent and child (hum an and cetacean), b ut also others: hum anity as a family, and the shipboard crew as a family. But if a family or a shipboard crew is to be strong and auspicious— so goes the m etaphor— the fatherhead m ust be an authority worthy of his fam ily's devotion (and the captain of his crew's obedience). A t the least it seem s, such a captain should be attentive to his or her duties and those duties include seeing to the welfare of the subordinate crew. This conflation of m etaphors is centered in M obv-Dick (and in other works by Melville). Ahab, especially, 62 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. becomes a vivid incarnation of this conflation: he is a father in search of a father, a captain in search of a captain. The im m anence of the creator, of course, seem s to relate directly to the praisew orthiness or blam ew orthiness of God for any events w hich affect hum ans. Calvinists and some others w ould take issue w ith this. The doctrine of original sin allows for the claim that hum ans are com pletely culpable for their ow n suffering. It also allows for the idea th at that w hich causes pain may originate from G od, b u t if so, it is a punitive m easure hum an s have earned or a corrective m easure, necessary to H is benevolent plan. But for the believer an d non-believer w ho reject the argum ent for original sin, the presence of evil in the w orld does not jibe w ith the image of a n all-powerful, loving god. God as absent creator can seem to suffering hum ans as God-the-Foresaker. Much of this difficulty arises because the W estern image of the biblical deity typically posits G od as Omniscient and O m nipotent. If God can see all and if God can do all, the children of Job m ust reasonably ask, Why did God create or enable this pain and evil and ivhy does God allow this pain and evil to continue? God-the-Omnipotent-Creator, after all m ust be the direct genetic im petus of any event th at occurs even eons after creation. If God has not produced an event, G od has at least tacitly enabled it. 63 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Even m ore necessarily connected to events, perhaps, is God-the- Omniscient, w h o has seen the future and the results of all events. A hab's fam ous line, "be the w hite w hale agent, or be the w hite w hale principal" show s the captain's determ ination to hold the deity accountable no m atter the depth or opacity of the m edium set betw een him self and th at deity. O rthodox Calvinist doctrine w ould hold that God sh o u ld not be blam ed, for hum ans h ave brought u p o n them selves all discontents and m iseries they know. A hab, how ever, refuses to allow God an out: he refuses to excuse the creator or to g ran t the creator an y degree of separation from life's events that m ight m itigate the deity's culpability and accountability. A hab, in fact, seems acutely pained b y G od's ap p aren t unw illingness to face him directly. Ahab w ishes to end or leap across the void or m ediation betw een hum ans and G od, or to "strike through" the m ask set betw een hum ans and God. H e aggressively hunts d o w n G od's extended servant. H e voices his disgust at the m ask w ith violent descriptions of striking th ro u g h the "inscrutable m alice" that "sinew s" it. H e likens the m ask to a prisoner's walls and claims, "T hat inscrutable thing is chiefly w hat I hate." W hat heaps Ahab here is a difficulty w ith w hich all w ho posit faith in the W estern deity m ust struggle: the inscrutability, the unintelligibility, the hiddenness of God. A hab's convictions on this p o in t are strangely begged in biblical scripture. In the H ebrew Bible, G od chooses to retreat aw ay from hum an sight, choosing (as Richard Elliot Friedm an skillfully docum ents in The D isappearance of God, to progressively distance him self from hum ankind). 64 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. G od disappears in the Bible .... The Bible begins, as nearly everybody know s, w ith a w orld in w hich G od is actively and visibly involved, b u t it does not end that w ay. Gradually, through the course of the H ebrew Bible . . . the deity appears less and less to hum ans, speaks less and less. Miracles, angels, and all other signs of divine presence become rarer and finally cease .... A m ong God's last w ords to Moses, the deity says, "I shall hide m y face from them . I shall see w hat their e n d will be." (Friedman 7) A hab's long discussed com m ents regarding the "pasteboard masks" and Ishm ael's frequent troping on m etaphors involving appearance-incongruent- to-reality (such as Christian cannibals or sharks m ade by a supposedly loving God) center the notion of the hum an connection to God as profoundly and confoundedly m ediated; not only does G od appear in deceptive disguise but His actions and involvement w ith hum ans are manifested indirectly as through signs and through the actions of agents and m essengers. Ahab becom es determ ined to strike through the mask. Ishmael, however, seem s m ore cautious, know ing that the presence of a m ask does not necessarily guarantee the presence of a w earer. Ishmael then is perhaps less vulnerable to the disappointm ent of finding "naught behind the m ask." He has not so specifically named the object of his search as has A hab and therefore he is not so likely to discover that his objective tru th m arker does not exist. Perhaps this tactic offers the Skeptic some avenue of escape from Pyrhonnism ; for the searcher who does not define the goal of the search, may seek after it indefinitely. Friedm an m akes it clear that the Bible itself is concerned w ith the anxiety suffered b y those w ho discover their god to be receding or h iding or missing. 65 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Above all, the narrative books [of the Old Testament] depict the dim inishing of the apparent divine presence step-by-step, and the poetic books depict the em otional responses of individual hum an beings to divine hiddenness. They convey the gam ut of h u m an feelings in reaction to the phenom enon: boldness to flaunt the law, piety to hold on to the law, w onder, confusion, anger, faith, uncertainty, terror. These books com m unicate that the disappearance of G od is a more terrifying condition th an divine punishm ent, in the way that children w ould be less afraid of their parents' punishing them than of their parents' leaving them . (Friedman 75-76) G od's existence is one thing. G od's im m inent presence and interest in hum an affairs is another. It is quite possible (and at tim es has been fashionable) to believe in a divine creator w ithout believing that that creator has stuck around to watch over and perhaps m eddle in hum an enterprise. W illiam Paley's w ork was w ell-know by the time M elville w rote Mobv-Dick. Paley m ade infam ous the clock m etaphor for the w orld's nature and genesis. As an exam iner can obviously see the design in a w atch, Paley held, the exam iner can also deduce that a designer presupposed the watch. The w orld itself, he claim ed is so artfully constructed that it m ore than begs— but rather essentially guarantees the existence of a creator. Deists and others were quick to appropriate this m etaphor and offer the challenge th at the one time existence of a creator in no w ay supports the idea of a present and im m anent creator. THEODICY: SIG N S OF A N IMPERFECT GOD One character w ho certainly sees G od as im m anent is Father M apple. His serm on, early in the narrative, is centered around the story of Jonah and 66 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. serves as a kind of sym phonic prologue introducing m any of the them es to be repeated and varied throughout Ishm ael's narrative. The fam ous biblical tale also serves to im m ediately m arry, in the reader's m ind, G od and the W hale. In so m any other ways, how ever, Mobv-Dick (and especially A hab's story) finds m ore telling inspiration in the book of Job. The book of job has alw ays been a sticking spot for m any believers and those w ho w ould criticize Judeo-C hristian ideology by em phasizing the im portance of the "problem of evil." It is very difficult for m any believers and non believers to understand the basic prem ise in the book of Job, that God invites Satan to visit pain and suffering on the m an Job and m em bers of his extended fam ily. A nd the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all th at he hath is in thy pow er . . . So w en t Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and sm ote Job w ith sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crow n. (Job 1:7 and 2:12) O ver the centuries the biblical G od has come to be celebrated m ore and m ore as an all-benevolent, all-pow erful deity. This is probably the result of the enorm ous popular success of the Christian m ovem ent. Especially am ong C hristians and curious (but usually fairly ignorant) outsiders, the Old T estam ent God is generally view ed through the C hristian lens— that is through the recorded teachings of Jesus (the Christ) whose follow ers stressed the m essages of love and forgiveness. O ne line, for example, from Tob that strikes m ost C hristians as difficult to reconcile w ith their "preferred" im age of their God is Job's question of his wife, "W hat? shall we receive good at the hand of God, an d shall we not 67 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. receive evil? (Job 2:10). M any Christians see their G od as w illing to allow evil in the w orld, but the d eath and suffering th at surround Job during his trail is acute and tacitly invited b y God. Later in the story Job cries out, "For the arrow s of the Alm ighty are w ithin me, the poison whereof drinketh up m y spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against m e." (Job 6:4) There are other instances in Judeo-C hristian text that beg explanation for those w ho find it difficult to reconcile "The G od of Love" w ith the w rathful, violent and jealous God of the O ld Testam ent. The grand exam ples, of course, are the deluge and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, all related in the book of Genesis. The "Problem of Evil" h ad plagued believers and philosophers since long before the 19th-century. Despite this, M elville in his early fiction, entered a dialogue w herein the p roblem of evil w as still one of the m arquee debates w ith w hich every thinker interested in G od-stuff h ad to contend. In fact, those w ho sold their skeptical case on the currency of the "problem " w ere enjoying a new ly vitalized relevancy in the climate of intensified scientific progress. G od as the Prom ethean supplier of know ledge w as becom ing less and less trustw orthy and relevant. The hum an m ind and the m echanism s created and em ployed by that m ind seem ed increasingly (and amazingly) able to gather and catalogue the inform ation that through the blasting furnace of hum an reason w ould yield know ledge and perhaps even "truth." 68 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Herschel's telescope (despite the m essages in W hitm an's poem )1 0 seem ed to be carrying us into the very heavens. Geology and archeology w ere becoming increasingly articulate in their telling of the earth's story. And m any of the new discoveries appeared inconsistent w ith traditional interpretations of G od's w ritten "truth." To the believer, such daunting evidence m ight prove disturbing, perhaps threatening, perhaps even persuasive. To the Skeptic, however, such a possibility that we are governed by an im pure god, a jealous god, a tyrannical god only solidifies the notion that God cannot be trusted-feared perhaps but not trusted. And the possibility of a deceptive god? With zohelming evidence that God's words have been lies . . . well, this is something of a final proof that humans are on their ozvn in their campaign for knozuledge and for meaning. W ith such an argum ent of God's untrustw orthiness the Skeptic does not need proof of God's death or absence. The Problem of Evil as it so often is called has always plagued those w ho w ish to believe in a good god, and it plagues in proportion to the intensity of the insistence that "G od is Good" or "God is Love" and according to the perceived intensity of the evil encountered in the w orld. Of course m any believers find no need to insist that God is all good. M any such believers have their ow n understandings concerning the value of evil or the purpose or 13 "When I Heard the Leam'd Astronomer" 69 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. usefulness of evil in G od's plan. N evertheless as Christians struggle to center the lessons of Jesus or as Jews and C hristians find it necessary to reconcile w orldly events such as natural disasters, plagues or the N azi H olocaust, the Problem of Evil again returns to center stage. One long-standing and com m only leveled criticism of G od provides one of the answers to the question of evil. The question has been "If G od is all good, then w hence cam e evil?" One answ er held that G od could only author evil if he had evil inside himself, therefore God is som ething less than purely good— he is at least alloyed w ith evil— his very nature is corrupt. M any Gnostics insisted this w as the case. Yet even w ithout em bracing the conclusion that G od is Less than all G ood, im agining the im plications of such a scenario is disturbing to many. If God is capable of evil, how much more precarious is our situation? I f God is capable of deception hozo can zue trust the Logos as it is presented in the Bible? Certainly m any believers had no problem accepting that a p u rely good god could rule over a w orld veined w ith evil. God is mysterious— zuho are zue to know his zvays? God allows Satan to introduce evil to the w orld because hum ans deserve to suffer for their disobedience, or perhaps H e does so sim ply to test the faith of hum ans. To true Skeptics, such argum ents seem , at best, very slight rationalizations. To grant that a single god is the author of all th at w e know 70 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (indeed all th at is), is to grant that God is w illfully responsible for all events and their attendant joys and suffering. I can see at least tw o ways to escape this form ulation. O ne is by apologizing for G od's authoring of evil and pain by renam ing G od's culpability as m ere "enabling." T hat is, th at God has m erely supplied the paint and that w e hum ans have created an d illum inated o u r ow n agonies. Another reconciliation can be reached by positing the hypothetical possibility that God is lim ited (and not om nipotent), fallible, an au th o r n o t fully in control of his or h e r creations. Melville, him self, grew up am ongst debates that directly engaged this issue. If Evert D uyckinck and others w ere disturbed b y M elville's aggressive challenging of the goodness of God (especially as the challenge is em bodied in Ahab), they could n o t have seen Melville as a unique or even radical voice on this issue. Perhaps they m ight have view ed the challenging h u m an as heretical or even m ad, b u t they could not have seen M elville or Ahab as creatures of an entirely new type. GNOSTICISM: SIGNS OF A LESSER G O D One set of answ ers to the nagging issue of Theodicy is provided by Gnostic theology. Stephan A. H oeller (Tau Stephanus, G nostic Bishop) has this to say regarding one of the basic tenets of Gnosticism today. ‘ All religious traditions acknow ledge that the w o rld is im perfect. W here they differ is in the explanations w hich they offer to account for this im perfection and in w h at they suggest m ight be done about it. Gnostics h av e their 71 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ow n— perhaps quite startling— view of these m atters: they hold that the w orld is flaw ed because it was created in a flaw ed manner. (Hoeller, Dec. 1999. c h tt p : // w w w .gnosis.org/gnintro.htm >.) The im portance of Gnosticism (as a religion, as a philosophy, as a sect of Judeo-Christianity) is debated. Gnosticism still enjoys advocates today and if one believes the confident claims of those w ho non Gnosticism W eb Sites, the religion is once again growing as people today see the relevancy of Gnostic tenets to their ow n lives. Generally, how ever, we use the label "Gnosticism" to refer to a loosely formed grouping of early Judaic and C hristian sects that w ere shouted dow n by early church leaders and excluded as heretical. In other w ords we, as did Melville, generally think of Gnosticism as a "dead" religion. W illiam Braswell casts one definition in the past tense: In prim itive Christian times the Gnostics urged rebellion against the Creator of the universe. They taught that H e is an em anation from a higher pow er, that he is ignorant of H is genealogy, and that HE tyrannically governs the w orld in the belief that He is the Suprem e God. (62) H istorian Frederick Copleston (him self a Catholic priest), in his great, sw eeping, H istory of Philosophy series abbreviates his introduction to Gnosticism thusly: O f Gnosticism suffice it to say here that, in general, it was a m onstrous conflation of Scriptural and Christian, Greek an d O riental elements, which, professing to substitute know ledge (gnosis) for faith, offered a doctrine of God, creation, the origin of evil, salvation, to those w ho liked to look upon themselves as superior persons in com parison w ith the ordinary run of Christians. (Copleston 20 Bk. I, V olII) 72 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Copleston's com m ents here strike m e as biased in m ore than one way. First, w hile historians note the "elitist" and "exclusivist" qualities of Gnosticism, it should be rem em bered that the early C hristian church excluded the Gnostics w hen they "catholisized" the C hristian canon. Christianity is profoundly exclusivist is som e ways. Secondly, C opleston's phrasing that Gnosticism w as "professing to substitute know ledge (gnosis) for faith" seems nonsensical to m e unless one predicates the claim on an assum ption that "knowledge" and that w hich w e take "on faith" is different. The Gnostics were not advocating a rationally based system of know ledge. One of the best critical pieces on Melville's use of the Gnostic m ythos is the essay "Gnostic M ythos in Mobv-Dick." by Thom as Vargish. In his essay, Vargish notes that Gnosticism finds its entry into the fram ew ork of Mobv- Dick especially as it offers interesting alternative w ays of dealing with Theodicy. As Vargish does, I see the quarrel w ith G od as em bodied in Mobv- Dick (especially w hen Ahab is his author's m outhpiece) to be distinctly Gnostic in timber. M elville's ow n exposure to G nosticism w as limited, especially w hen w e consider that an estim ated 90% of available prim ary Gnostic w ritings w ere not discovered until the m id-tw entieth century. But as Vargish and others have show n, Melville did have access to and awareness of several fundam ental Gnostic tenets. And given M elville's protean abilities to weave tapestries from a sm all few threads, perhaps he only needed several Gnostic ideas to haunt the whole of his novel. 73 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A hab, as d id the Gnostics and others, has the brazenness, the tem erity to question the very character, integrity, ev en the "goodness" of God. In doing so, he has strong company: G od's enem ies are as storied as He himself. Some readers of M obv-Dick w ould love to reduce such an antagonistic relationship as Ahab has w ith his G od to the sim ple form ulation of a Good (but m ysterious God) against H is opposite, thereby often arriving at an idea that A hab's intentions a n d actions are m indlessly "contrary," "Satanic" or "evil." A nd certainly w e can find interesting parallels betw een Ahab and Satan (especially w hen w e see Satan as Milton created him ). W e reach a fuller, more com plicated reading of Ahab, how ever, w hen w e note som e of the "Gnostic" conclusions A hab seem s to arrive at as he m editates on the character of the God he believes he knows. Ahab sees signs and tracings th a t lead him to extrapolate and speculate upon the nature of God. In his conclusions he draw s together w hat seem to him to be evidence of "evil," of "duplicity," of "m alevolent intent," and perhaps even of "incom petence" and "ignorance." Vargish m akes a strong case that close-reading dem onstrates that Ahab has passed beyond sim ple pagan fire-w orship, the M anichean H eresy and Zoroastrianism into som ething m ore G nostic in tone. Ahab seem s to know the pow ers of fire of w hich Ishmael w arns us, b u t he seem s to have m oved on (as Ishm ael does) to an awareness that fire is b u t a dangerous Siren that m ust be resisted and passed, for it is a consum ing distraction. Past the w orship and false prom ise of fire, Ahab finds m ore unansw ered questions regarding evil in 74 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the w orld a n d regarding the creator of th at evil. Vargish notes that a fam iliarity w ith Gnosticism possibly dis-covers some of the m ysterious (and I w ould argue, anxious) heapings of Ahab and Ishmael. U nless a reader of M obv-Dick possesses som e fam iliarity w ith this m ythos, certain of A hab's speeches, especially in "The Dying W hale" an d "C andles" chapters, are explicable only as m ad ranting. (277) . . . an acquaintance w ith the Gnostic doctrine of evil as inherent in m atter an d the consequent untrustw orthiness of sensory perception, considerably expands the m eaning an d assists in u nderstanding the chapter called "The W hiteness of the W hale." (277) W e know that Melville him self w as interested in the id ea of G od's possible ignorance. M ost fam ous, probably, is Melville's rem ark in a letter to H aw thorne. "W e incline to think," Melville wrote in 1850?, "th at G od cannot explain H is ow n secrets, and that H e w ould like a little inform ation upon certain points himself." (Braswell 62) Irenaeus, in his attack against Valentinianism (one of the m ost popular and strongest form s of Gnosticism) presents one of the Gnostic heresies, an account th at casts God (the O ld T estam ent Creator) as an inferior to His m other (M other Sophia). The Dem iurge supposed that he m ade these things of him self, but he m ade them after Achamoth projected them . H e m ade H eaven w ithout knowing H eaven; he form ed m an in ignorance of m an; he brought earth to light w ithout understanding earth. In every case he w as ignorant of the ideas of the things he m ade, as w ell as of the M other; and he th o u g h t he w as entirely alone. (Iren. 5.3 in Bamstone 287) 75 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In her book, Adam. Eve and the Serpent. Elaine Pagels centers some of the questions a Gnostic, in a relatively naive but direct challenging, m ight ask in response to w ritten scripture. W hat kind of G od is this? First, he envied A dam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge .... A nd secondly he said "A dam , w here are you?" and G od does not have foreknowledge, since he did not know this from the beginning Surely he has shown him self to be a malicious envier. A nd w hat kind of G od is this? (69) A hab's fam ous scenes atop the quarterdeck, his references to fire, his blood ritual have begged critics to discuss A hab's paganism , perhaps even Satanism. Certainly w e can see specific references that allude to Zoroastrianism and we can read the drinking of blood as a corruption or inversion of Christian ritual. We can also see A hab's m utinous hubris in light o f Gnostic heresy— especially perhaps, w hen w e consider the claims of knowledge that undergird Ahab's challenges against the divine. Braswell in Melville's Religious Thought draw s out an interesting distinction regarding the "crazy" captain's forms of w orship: a distinction that incorporates the Gnostic claim of G od's (the biblical Creator's) ignorance. Ahab brings w hat seems to be a definitely Gnostic accusation against God w hen he says to the symbolical corposants: "Thou know est not how cam e ye, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, w hich thou know est not of thyself, oh, thou om nipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is b u t time, all th y creativeness mechanical. T hrough thee, thy flam ing self, m y scorched eyes do dim ly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou herm it immemorial, thou too hast thy incom m unicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief." (62) 76 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A hab's com m ent regarding mechanical creativity m ay be a dig at the N atu ral Religion proponents (especially Paley and his ilk) w ho w ould find m echanical w orkings in nature and gladly leap tow ard the conclusion that an intending cause m ust be behind the m achine. Ahab w o u ld have us question the authority of the craftsm an w ho designed this w orld and ask if there is not evidence that the w ork has been done m echanically, perhaps by an apprentice or other still ignorant journeym an. Such a challenge can reify the philosophy espousing the evident o r self- evident "Design" in nature w hile also calling to the b ar the Creator w ho w ould design such a w orld full of m ystery, p ain and evil. One Gnostic answ er is that God w as ignorant; another adds to this that the m aterial w orld is evil precisely because it w as created by a god w ho w as less than good, w hose intentions and abilities w ere corrupt. V argish notes that A ndrew s N orton's Evidences for the Genuineness of the G ospels14 articulates this Gnostic precept. they regarded the principle of evil, w hether anim ate or inanim ate, as inherent in m atter .... They believed the antagonist principle in the universe to have been by nature bad and resident in m atter. (Vargish 277) A nd lest it be thought that the Gnostic idea th at there is an "antagonist principle in the universe," be w holly contrary to Judeo-Christian theology, w e m ust rem em ber that from a Calvinist view point, the antagonist principle is 14 Melville, w e know, read extensively in Norton's Evidences. Among others, see Thomas Vargish's "Gnostic Mythos in Mobv-Dick." referenced several times in this essay. 77 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. very real and present for it is nothing m ore than w hat hum ans have invited by their sinfulness. One of the argum ents that enlivened the debates concerning the G enesis account of creation versus an evolutionary account w as the contention held by m any that before the fall of A dam and Eve anim als coexisted w ithout p reying upon each other. M any naturalists, of course, found this to be a confounding superstition. H ow else could one explain the cutting teeth of a lion, for example, unless one w ere to accept that God created the lion w ith such teeth, in expectation of the predeterm ined Fall? Father M apple rem inds the reader that, "all the things that G od w ould have us do are h ard for u s to do— rem em ber that— and hence, he oftener com m ands us than endeavors to persuade." (45) Ahab embraces this idea but refuses to accept the idea th at an all-loving G od w ould visit upon H is children such evil as the captain him self has met. Like so m any things in Mobv-Dick. M elville/Ishm ael's use of "exotic" m ythos can be seen as another form of heaping. If A hab embraces certain Gnostic doctrines, he does so w ithout necessarily excluding certain Judeo- C hristian doctrines. This is n o t to say that Ahab indiscrim inately "borrow s" from various faith system s to serve his vagaries of m ind and intention. If Gnostic doctrine held th a t the forces of nature are set in antagonistic relation (which w ould include relations w ith hum ans), Calvinist doctrine also found the m aterial w orld dangerous to hum ans. The profound difference here is 78 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that the Gnostic m ight argue that the evil is inherent in m atter w hile the Calvinist m ight claim that God uses the m atter according to his w isdom . Both claims enliven our reading of Ahab's famous line: . . . be the w hite whale agent, or be the w hite whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him . Talk not to me of blasphem y, 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. (144) One of m any w ays to read "the sun" here is to consider it yet another m aterial creation sharing the w orld w ith Ahab. If the Sun, rather than the whale, had authored A hab's pain, Ahab, perhaps w ould be on quest against that orb. A nd for A hab, should he consider the w hale a product of the Creator, rather than a w holly sovereign creature; be the w hale agent or principal, the w hale is evil and the w hale is "jealous" in the image of his creator. In his w onderful essay, Vargish also rem inds us th a t: The O phites "honored the Serpent for having thw arted his [the C reator's] narrow purposes, w ithdraw n our first parents from their allegiance to him , induced them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and thus brought them the know ledge of "that Power w hich is over All." (273) The O phites here cast the Serpent as a Prom etheus; b u t whereas Prom etheus gave hum ans fire, the Ophitic Serpent gave w hat is m ost im portant in the eyes of Gnostics: know ledge. The invested m etaphor of parent and child rem inds us again of the distance and m ediation set between hum ans and their God(s). In the Ophitic mythos the Serpent, know ing that the Creator is less than our "first parents" seeks to reunite the orphaned mortals w ith their original parents. 79 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Issues regarding the perceived "paradox" or "im possibility" or "m ystery" of evil in the world are predicated on the view of G od as All- Powerful and All-Good. Mobv-Dick opens u p a more com plicated w orld. For if G od is less th an All-Powerful or less than All-Good, then those forces arrayed against hum ans— be they corruptions inherent in m atter or entities of malicious, sovereign intent— act as independent players in our w orld and not necessarily as governed agents. Ishm ael/M elville may have found inspiration for allusions to the idea of evil having its origin in the Theogony, in Gnostic mythos. But issues regarding the fam ily of God and G od's flaw ed husbandry of that fam ily can also be found in other sources hinted at by A hab. The Book of Tubilee and the Book of Enoch are intertestam ental w orks of Jew ish Pseudepigrapha that share w ith Gnosticism an argum ent for the presence of evil in the w orld as authored by the heavenly host. Ishmael stabs at the possible origin of the m ysterious Fedallah in chapter 50, "A hab’ s Boat and Crew, Fedallah," H e w as such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the tem perate zone only see in their dream s . . . the like of w hom now and then glide am ong the unchanging Asiatic com m unities . . . which even in these m odem days still preserve m uch of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's prim al generations, w hen the m em ory of the first m an w as a distinct recollection, and all m en his descendants, unknow ing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantom s, and asked of the sun and the m oon w hy they w ere created and to w hat end; w hen though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted w ith the daughters of m en, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in m undane amours. (199) 80 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ishm ael's phrase, "the uncanonical Rabbins," has been read by critics as a 15 reference to early Rabbis w ho w ere outside orthodoxy an d Ishm ael's m entioning of the "first m an" and "m undane am ours" in proxim ity gives us strong evidence that Ishmael is eliciting rem inders of the Book of Tubilee and the Book of Enoch, texts in w hich G od's angels (called "W atchers") copulate w ith h u m an w om en and thereby bring corruption into the w orld of G od's creation. The notion that Angels (w hether fallen or not) consorted w ith mortal hum ans can also be found in orthodox scripture. A nd it cam e to pass w hen m en began to m ultiply on the face of the earth and daughters were b om to them . That the sons of God saw the daughters of m en that th ey w ere fair and they took them w ives of all w hich they chose. (Genesis 6:1-2) O ne of the reasons m any of the heretical works and un-canonized Judeo- Christian texts are "unwelcom e to" and "inconsistent w ith" orthodox scripture lies in their painting of God as clearly and significantly less than "All-Powerful." The God of the Book of Enoch, for exam ple is show n to be a captain not in com plete control of his crew. In the text, G od directs Enoch to speak to the w atchers of heaven Go speak to the W atchers of H eaven .... [Ask] them . . . W hy did you leave lofty, holy H eaven to sleep w ith w om en, to defile yourselves w ith the daughters of m en an d take them as your wives, and like the children of the earth to beget sons, in your case giants? (Bam stone 487) (Beaver 802) "the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins Such as the Book of Enoch or Book of Tubilees (the 'Little genesis").... Rabbinus/ the medieval latin form of 'rabbi/ was used chiefly to designate Talmudic authorities. 'Uncanonical here, however, suggests not only Jewish but Christian authorities outside the Scriptures and Canon Law." 81 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The corruption found in the m aterial w orld is specifically show n in the Book of Enoch as having resulted from these acts of m isbehaving angels and not as is so often described in C hristian orthodoxy, as having originated in h um an disobedience. The text continues: A nd now the giants, offspring of spirit and flesh, w ill be called spirits on the earth, and earth shall be their dw elling. Their bodies em itted evil spirits because they w ere b o m from hum an w om en and the holy W atchers. The giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack over the earth. (Bam stone 487) Ishm ael's narrative hints that Fedallah m ay be one of these "spirits" or a descendent of these "giants." Ishm ael also offers the reader another possible rationale for A hab's monomania: the possibility that A hab is (in the language of Enoch) "afflicted," "oppressed," "destroyed" by Fedallah's "half-hinted influence," perhaps even "authority" over the man. Fedallah rem ained a m uffled m ystery to the last. W hence he came in a m annerly w orld like this, by w h at sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced him self to be linked w ith A hab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some so rt of a half-hinted influence; Fleaven know s, b u t it m ight have been even authority over him; all this none knew. (199) A hab directly questions G od (or asks a question of "no one"~the punctuation leaves the issue am biguous), asking if he an d his fellow m ortals are truly free agents. H e senses the possibility of external force. "Is Ahab, A hab?" he cries. "Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? . . . Look! see yon Albicore! w ho p u t it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish?" (445) W hen w e rem em ber that strict Calvinism grants no free-will to the individual an d Protestantism in general allows for the h an d of God to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. irresistibly move the m ortal creations, we see that Ahab is (as he does several times in the novel) invoking the alibi of divinely guided determ inism . Ahab is testing the loophole that m ight exonerate him for the actions and sins his m aterial body commits. Im portantly, Ahab is also suing for all hum ankind; for if the arms of A dam and Eve w ere controlled by G od and determ ined to pick of the fruit, their comm ission of original sin was compulsory. The Book of Enoch draw s a significant radius, m aking room for the idea that m uch of the evil that hum ans do, m ay have deeper and m ore pow erful anim ating causes than hum an free-will. And the archangel Uriel said to m e [Enoch], "H ere shall stand the angels w ho have been attached to wom en. Their spirits, assum ing m any different form s, are defiling m ankind and will lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods. (Bamstone 488) The passage ends on a note, Gnostic in tone, hinting at the feminine influence and asserting the secret nature of Enoch's Gnosis: "[Uriel continued], 'A nd the w om en of the angels w ho w ent astray shall becom e sirens.' Only I, Enoch, saw the vision of the ends of all things, and no one w ill see as I have seen." (Bamstone 489) Ahab senses the source behind the m asculine God he know s (and loathes) to be a fem inine pow er. Vargish notes A hab's boast that, "While I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights." The allusion appears to be to the H indu queen . . . the Indian analogue of the Gnostic Sophia, w hom Ahab invokes in her ancient role, as the divine cham pion of the spiritual in m an against the creator of m aterial evil. (V argish 275) 83 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The "Gnostic Sophia," m entioned by Vargish, is (in various articulations of the Gnostic mythos) the m other of God: that is, the m other of the O ld Testam ent Creator G od w ho claims— out of deceitfulness or ignorance— to be the one true God. This issue of G od's parentage is a starting question for the Agnostic. The very fact that Judeo-Christianity is so strongly invested in the parent-child m etaphor seems to beg the Skeptic to ask about G od's pedigree. It is interesting to note that in the traditional fram ew ork G od can be seen as an orphan. He is alone (even as H e is of three m anifestations/nam es!). H e is w ithout parent. A nd H e is, after all, an orphan in o u r eyes for, from our vantage, we cannot discern H is "parents." O ne of the m ost interesting ideas that emerges from Mobv-Dick in relation to Gnostic thought is the idea that perhaps H e, the G od-Creator of the Bible is not only som ething less than the ultim ate pow er b u t that He him self is ignorant of his ow n origin an d therefore another o rphan p erhaps even a disinherited, cast-out child— an Ishmael. Gnosticism weaves th e issue of God's parentage directly into the G enesis account. God is presented b y som e Gnostics as ignorant of his origin. Ishm ael's narrative also alludes to the Book of the Secrets of Enoch and The Book of Tubilee. both w orks of Jew ish Pseudepigrapha th at present the C reator G od as less than fully in control of the universe. Entertaining the possibility that the Creator G od is actually a subordinate or lesser A uthority invites profound im plications. If science can 84 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. threaten G od's sovereign and infallible authority, im agine w hat G od's parents can say in regard to their progeny's "om nipotence" and prodigal hubris. M elville's contem poraries did not com m only concern them selves w ith this issue of authority as it is predicated on ideas from heretical sources. M elville's great heroes, Ahab and Ishm ael, how ever, are sensitive to these vagaries in the shifting w ind. If M elville's contem poraries struggled generally w ith a destabilization of canonized authority, his characters (and he himself) struggled acutely. T hey w ill try-out som e of the stranger notions regarding the origins of w orldly suffering. They see in the events of their ow n lives, in the pleasures and pains they encounter, questions begged regarding the origins and possible reasons and intentions behind such. The seeker w ho extends the heretical argum ent that the C reator is corrupt and lim ited, and the seeker w ho draw s the sam e conclusion from experiential data, m ust ask the questions: If God did not do zohat the Bible records, then zuhat did He do? A nd by zuhat means and visible signs can zue confidently knozu Him and His Work? Ahab has little patience regarding the niceties of these questions. In m any w ays Ahab seem s over-w earied of respecting and obeying a G od w hose authority cannot be verified and w hose intention does not seem forthrightly honest and just. Ishm ael's suffering over this question only occasionally reaches to such acute vexation. U nable or unw illing to still see G od, Ishmael m ust desperately 85 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. struggle to avoid succum bing to the nausea that overtakes those such as Pip w ho catch a glim pse of themselves alone in a vast and m eaningless w orld. M ODERN HUBRIS: THE PROM ISE OF SCIENCE A N D O F HUM AN M ACHINERY If the hum an is alone as an orphan, the h um an is not w ithout siblings to lend comfort, and certainly not w ithout resources. M an's confidence in his ow n unaided resources has seldom been carried farther th an during that era in this country. The strong-willed individuals w ho seized the land and gutted the forests and built the railroads w ere no longer troubled w ith A hab's obsessive sense of evil, since theology had receded even farther into their backgrounds. (M atthiessen 459) Leo Marx, in his invaluable tome, The M achine in the G arden , interestingly rem arks upon w hat strikes us now as a naive response by Thomas Jefferson in 1790 to the prom ise of new technology, Curiously enough, his [Jefferson's] very devotion to the principles of the Enlightenm ent obscures his perception of causal relations we now take for granted. Assum ing that know ledge inescapably is pow er for good, he [Jefferson] cannot imagine that a genuine advance in science or the arts, such as the new steam engine, could entail consequences as deplorable as factory cities. (150) In the century that passed betw een Jefferson's naivete and the bitter apocalyptic scenes that end Twain's Connecticut Yankee. Am ericans w ould experience a full range of emotions regarding progress and technology, from elated anticipation to an alm ost m ournful reflection. 86 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mobv-Dick. again is poised over the fulcrum of this societal shift. Twain and other Am erican writers, only fifty years later w ould w itness and chronicle the early fruits of the industrial com ponent of this shift. They w ould give witness to how "progress" and its prom ises m arked the life of the young nation. Gentlem en inventors such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin m ay have m idw ived the birth of the Union, but the m en w ho constructed the railroads, m ined the land, devoured the forests and built the factories were of a different cut. It w as accompanied by a search for new values of life and for a new outlook on nature, society and m an, in an am azing variety of aspects. All this inspiring, unfettered and often ruthless and utterly uncontrolled activity w as truly a continuation of the Am erican Revolution, bursting now into its full flower after an incubation period lasting for m ore than a generation. (Struik 264) Marx continues in his book w ith a line that illuminates ante-bellum America as a time (unlike our own) w herein people m ay have been too busy to slow dow n long enough to exhaustively label and criticize their ow n activity. By 1829, Coxe's notion that the aims of the Republic w ould be realized through the pow er of m achine production was evolving into w hat can only be called the official American ideology of industrialism: a loosely com posed scheme of m eaning and value so w idely accepted that it seldom required precise form ulation. In the w ritten record it appears chiefly as rhetoric in hom age to "progress." W ith this w ord the age expressed a faith in m an's capacity to understand and control history w hich is now difficult to recapture. (181) I read M arx's last line here as alluding to our more current skeptical view tow ard the w ord "progress." We still are excited over the possibilities of new 87 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m achines to help us "un derstand and control" b u t have grow n skeptical as w e have w itnessed byproducts of progress. Consider, for exam ple, our favorite new m achine: the personal com puter. M any believe that the internet will profoundly aid in the dissem ination of inform ation to those who have been traditionally disenfranchised. O thers see a future of increased division betw een those w ith the m oney to exploit the technology and those w ithout. O ver tim e we have also seen the horrific em ploym ent of machines such as gas cham bers and atomic w eaponry and we find it im possible to embrace the w ords "progress" and "technology" w ithout cringing som ewhat. A nte-bellum Am erica, how ever, was m ore a tim e w herein the m achine could be seen as the greatest liberating force hum anity could rem ember. Those w ho had been fighting the tooth and nail struggle to create their City on a H ill w here before there h ad been wilderness, could see the machine as a rew ard for hard w ork and a prom ise that the w ilderness w ould not win. A nd the secular Am erican could view machines as the latest developm ent to dem onstrate the self-sufficiency of the reasoning hu m an and the irrelevancy of God. Leo Marx notes that, By 1844 the m achine h ad captured the public im agination .... In the leading m agazines, w riters elaborate upon the themes of W alker's essay. They adduce the pow er of machines (steam engines, factories, railroads, and , after 1844, the telegraph) as the conclusive sanction for faith in the unceasing progress of m ankind .... the m achine is used to figure an unprecedented release of h u m an energy in science, politics, and everyday life. (191) W hile som e machines prom ised to aid Jefferson's "stu rd y yeom en" in their earthly labors, others prom ised to extend the vision an d reach of scientists into 88 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. realms as yet unseen a n d untouched by m ortals. H erschel's telescope, for exam ple w as perfectly suited as machine and m etaphor. A m ateur astronom y flourished and H erschel's m achine em pow ered th at flourishing. In the p eriod betw een 1830 and 1860 p o p u lar discussions of technological progress assum e that inventors are uncovering the ultim ate structural principles of the universe. (M arx 198) In Mobv-Dick. technology often receives com plicated (and perhaps confounding) treatm ent. Ishm ael's w ords at tim es seem to celebrate to the point of fetishizing various tools and techniques of the chase. At other tim es Ishm ael relates dark, portentous secrets of the h u n t such as w hen he explains that whaleflesh becom es the very substance that stokes the fire of the try- w orks so that, "like a plethoric burning m artyr, or a self-consum ing m isanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his ow n fuel and b u m s by his ow n body." (353) Ishm ael celebrates the w haling enterprise for its ability to "light the w orld," b u t he also fills his pages w ith the dangers of the fishery, illustrating the ravenous hunger of the industrial m achine for the blood and souls of those caught in its w orks. In the w hale fishery, if a shipboard accident d id n 't get you, and you som ehow slipped past the dangers of disease, drow ning and shark bite, you still m ight get killed by the very p ro d u ct you were being (barely) paid to pickle. Yet I w ill tell y o u th at upon one particular voyage which I m ade to the Pacific, am ong m any others w e spoke thirty different ships, every one of which h ad h ad a death by a w hale, som e of them more than one, an d three that had each lost a boat's crew. For God's sake, be economical 89 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w ith yo u r lam ps and candles! n o t a gallon you bum , b u t at least one drop of m an's blood w as spilled for it. (176) Mobv-Dick is filled w ith such com m entary o n the industrial effort: com m entary that throw s on-stage m any of the goods and evils of progress. The "ideology of industrialism " (to use M arx's words) undergirds Ishm ael's early lionization of whaling. As the novel progresses, Ishm ael takes pains to reverse the prejudices am ong the public against the w halem an and his effort. "This business of whaling," Ishm ael writes, "has som ehow come to be regarded am ong landsm en as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit." In chapters 24, "The Advocate," and 25, "Postscript," Ishm ael tucks his tongue into his cheek and sallies forth to canonize the whale fishery as am ong the m ost noble institutions of the hum an. No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the south! No more! D rive dow n your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a m an that, in his lifetim e has taken three h u n d red and fifty whales. I account that m an more honorable than that great captain of antiquity w ho boasted of taking as m any walled towns. (101) Melville m ay have foreseen some of the hum an costs of ram pant technology. C oncerning whales, however, his im agination proved to be less expansive than the progress of his century. The chapter, "Does the W hale's M agnitude Dim inish?— W ill He Perish?" seem s quaint and som ew hat tragic to us now. Ishm ael show s his awareness of ram pant progress and its ability to grind a resource into nothing, but he seem s unw illing to see his great beast as w ithin the reach of the advancing hum an. 90 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Though so short a period ago— n o t a good lifetime— the census o f the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the census of m en n o w in London, and though at the present day not one h o rn or hoof of them rem ains in all that region; and though th e cause of this w ondrous exterm ination w as the spear of m an; y et the far different n atu re of the whale- h u n t perem ptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. (383) Perhaps Ishm ael is stubbornly refusing to accept w hat the progress of his tim e is proving as he does w hen he insists that the w hale is a fish despite his understanding of scientific classification. O r perhaps Ishm ael w ishes to further m agnify leviathan in the im aginations of his readers. O r then again perhaps M elville him self could not by 1850 im agine the tools that w o u ld be developed that w ould transform the w hale h u n t into a m uch m ore efficient and less dangerous confrontation (for the hum ans). LIBERAL HUBRIS: THE PROMISE OF REASON By 1851, the year of Mobv-Dick's publication, Melville had not developed w hat m ight be considered a consistent or thorough philosophy (and arguably, he never would). It is de riguer in Melville studies now to praise the author for his intelligence w hile sheepishly adm itting his lack of discipline and thoroughness as a researcher an d philosopher. It is true; his creative productions cannot stand up to rigorous scrutiny as (traditional philosophy) any better th an can those of his rainbow sw inging contem porary, Emerson. A nd as w ith Em erson we probably do Melville m ore justice w hen w e label him a Seer rath er than a Philosopher— or, as he w ould probably prefer, a Diver. 91 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But if M elville w as not particularly well-versed in classical philosophy, he w as at least w ell jugged in the second generation vintages of the fruit. He read all his philosophy (that w asn 't originally w ritten in English) in English translation. H e rapaciously sacked the dictionaries and secondary sources available to him (be they in the form of Bayle's daunting D ictionary or of a genial conversation partner aboard a transatlantic ship). To becom e the fascinating pilot w e now enjoy reading, he begged, borrow ed and stole ideas (some as recognizable species from ancient schools, and som e as free-fish) from an array of sources. M obv-D ick m ay be seen as a w restling (Thompson uses the w ord "Q uarrel") w ith m any of the religious a n d philosophical questions (and possible answ ers) th at would inspire an d torm ent M elville for the rest of his life. Yet if the philosophy em bodied in Mobv-Dick is not thoroughly baked it is certainly richer an d more substantial th an w hat w e find in M ardi, Melville's first serious attem p t a t philosophical fiction. Later M elville w ould continue to explore the sam e confounding territory through Pierre. Clarel. The Confidence M an. Billy B udd and the shorter works. The religious questions w ould h a u n t him throughout his life. H aw thorne's fam ous line concerning M elville's God H aunted dem eanor is apt: a m an w ho "can neither believe or be comfortable in his unbelief." By the tim e M elville was bom , D escartes and K ant h ad attem pted to grow philosophical system s rooted only in unim peachable a priori tenets. 92 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. D avid H um e had sabotaged all efforts tow ard "proving" know ledge as absolutely certain and H egel h ad struggled to develop a m onster system (a precursor to w hat Husserl (esp.) w ould later call philosophy that is scientific) that m ight solidly reclaim the tru th as knowable. This collective enterprise w as a bold (hubristic?) effort to articulate a hum an-authored, rationally grounded, and internally consistent m onum ent of m eaning. To varying degrees— essentially determ ined by w hat a priori tenets each philosopher was willing to accept— these system builders attem pted to satisfy the Cartesian im perative that hum ans cannot, w ithout validation, accept the sensory w orld, the constructions of the m ind, even the apparent trustw orthiness of God, as certain. D escartes' first experim ent w ith a hum an authored system concluded w ith the fam ous assertion cogito ergo sum . Perhaps the m ost profound result of D escartes' effort is the centering of the hum an "subject." Descartes, for the first tim e, sketched out a version of reality that appears as a w orld of the m ind, or perhaps more accurately, as countless worlds, each one existing in the m ind of each individual (each subject). D uring the early half of the nineteenth century, a loose b ut vocal band of young A m erican intellectuals em braced idealistic philosophy (especially G erm an Idealism), a philosophy that after H um ean empiricism and H egelian idealism centered the individual as subject-actively-seeking the Ultimate. A m erican transcendentalists coupled this legacy to a particularly Am erican em phasis on the individual as both integrally connected and willfully 93 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. separable from his or her collective com m unity. The Yankee Idealists extended their confidence in the self-reliant subject to the point of claim ing that each subject w as capable of the transcendental connection, the union of subject and object. Emerson is the m ost popularly know n A m erican Transcendentalist. But Emerson, though the historian's favorite player, never produced a legitim ately consistent and rationally defensible philosophy. Frederick Copleston, after rem arking that "Em erson, like Carlyle, was a Seer rather than a system atic philosopher" rem arks that, Em erson's philosophy was im pressionistic and w hat is sometimes called "intuitive." It conveyed a personal vision of reality, b u t it was not presented in the customary dress of im personal argum ent and precise statement. Some, of course, m ay consider this to be a point in its favour, b u t the fact remains that if w e are looking for a systematic developm ent of idealism in A m erican thought, we have to look elsewhere. (265) Colpeston notes that Em erson was aware that he stood in a long and illustrious line leading back to Plato. "W hat is popularly called Transcendentalism am ong us is Idealism," Em erson announced, "Idealism as it appears in 1842." (263) We know that M elville was exposed to and developed an interest in Germ an Idealism. But as w ith so m any other things Melville did not study Kant, Hegel or any other representative in any disciplined or thorough m anner. Melville's G erm an Idealism came to him through the conduits of Carlyle and Coleridge— both w onderful m inds b u t not advanced and consistent idealist philosophers. Melville's attraction and subsequent 94 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. repulsion to transcendentalism has been heaped by 20th-century critics into an epic literary q uarrel (with M elville blasting the Sage of Concord thro u g h satire and travesty especially in Pierre a n d the Confidence M an). Before entering the creative w hite furnace of M obv-Dick, how ever, Melville called E m erson a "diver"— a serious com plim ent from Melville b u t som ething that strikes m any now as a dam ning w ith faint praise. As Melville p u t Transcendentalism through his try-works, the Idealism melted dow n a n d w as rendered into a philosophy based upon transitory and deceptive psychological "m om ents" of reverie. Melville (and Ishm ael) did not— as M elville said himself— oscillate in Em erson's rainbow. For the increasingly scornful Melville . . . w riters like Em erson or Goethe or Carlyle quickly became that "guild of self-im postors, w ith a preposterous rabble of M uggletonian Scots and Yankees, w hose vile brogue still the m ore bestreaks the stripedness of their G reek or G erm an Neoplatonical originals." (Horsford 237) Melville did, however, find rich substance in the w riting of D avid Hum e. William Braswell, in Melville's Religious Thought makes note of the novelist's awareness of an d respect for H um e. He praised H um e's skepticism in a w ay to show that he understood and adm ired it. H e m arked heavily a passage in Schopenhauer saying that "From every page of David H um e there is m ore to b e learned than from the collected philosophical works of H egel, H erbart, and Schleiermacher together." (Braswell 14) It's no surprise th a t Melville found an interest in H um e. Though som e readers have tried to claim Melville for the transcendentalist camp, Melville him self felt an im perative to distance him self from such. A nd H um e, then as now , 95 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. enjoyed a statu s as the bugbear, the behem oth and the leviathan of idealist philosophers. O ne m ust answ er (or ru n an d hide from) H um e's Skepticism before m oving on to claims of certainty. H ow ard C. Horsford, in his essay, "The Design of the A rgum ent in Mobv-Dick rem arks that Melville and his contem poraries, decades before Darwin, w ere already aware of strong forces driving counter-bores beneath the faith-based systems. T hough religious faith and Biblical literalism h ad m uch to suffer from science later in the nineteenth century, M elville grew up w ith the generations still w racked by the n ew theory of know ledge developed m ost fully by David H um e. (234) H um e's theories still carry m uch w eight. But for the rational Enlightenm ent paladin, the new ly anointed A uthor, H um e's ideas w ere fresh and powerful "proof" th a t faith w as rationally unsupportable. In fact H um e dem onstrated through rational argum ent that faith and reasoned-certainty w ere rationally unsupportable. H um e announced the death of philosophy. H e created a vacuum in his path, like a stroke of lightning that sucks the oxygen into the absence it creates. T he success of H um e's destruction of the certainty of know ledge, together w ith all its devastating im plications for thought generally, including religious belief, eventually set off w hat has been called a m ania for epistem ological investigation. (Horsford 236) H um e's w ork is particularly interesting, not only for its inveterate skepticism, b u t also for the practical conclusions he often outlines after detailing h o w w e are doom ed to ignorance and uncertainty. W hen Hum e 96 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. recognized th at reason alone m ust fail by its own intrinsic qualities and limitations to achieve epistemic an d ontologic "truths" w hich w e m ay consider "certain," he rounds o u t the argum ent by rem inding us that life m otivated by a positive investm ent in such "uncertainty" is im practical (it w ould drive u s m ad) and therefore w e fall back to a life lived according to habit and custom . H um e's conclusion is, of course, less than reassuring. It is, however, enorm ously im portant and, in a strange sense I w ould like to explore, liberating. W ithout certainty, the rational being m ight conclude that life w ithout m eaning is life w ithout value, life w ithout purpose, life w ithout anything that m ight sustain or m otivate m oral action. O n the other hand, the rational being m ight conclude that life w ithout m eaning authored and validated by a dictating higher pow er is life characterized by the opportunity to determ ine m eaning according to H um an dis-covered or invented values. For m any thinkers, even today, H um e's statements seem to p u t a stranglehold on all efforts to ground ontologies, theologies and perhaps m ost im portantly, m oralities on certain footing. Some have used such assertions as reconfirm ation that because w e are n ot able to reach certainty through reason, only "faith" can save. But H um e's statem ent— specifically because of the announcem ent that we reach a term inus before we reach certainty— clears space and allow s for an exam ination of habit and custom and thereby an exam ination of concepts now fam iliar to us such as "value" determ ined by 97 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. social contract, com m unal negotiation etc.: that is, value and m eaning determ ined by hum ans and n o t necessarily dictated by a divine pow er. If we are n o t inform ed by divinely revealed an d sanctioned m orality, w e are then both free to determ ine our own ethical values and systems, and responsible for the efficacies and failures of those values and systems. In o u r tim e, m any of the faithful lam ent the unm ooring o f m orality from inspired sources. In ante-bellum A m erica, however, m an y saw this as a necessary consequence of a fundam ental incom patibility betw een this idea of freedom to create an ethics and certain tenets underlying m an y orthodox beliefs. Calvinism was particularly a t odds w ith such a h u m a n authoring. The liberal protest in favor of hum an "freedom " gained its force from the recognition that the C alvinistic view of G od's sovereignty bleaches all the m eaning o u t of hum an activity, that it dissolves the m oral tangibility of the self. (H erbert 142) Reading Mobv-Dick. of course, is nothing like w ading through H egel's Phenom enology or any other traditionally presented philosophical system . G ood readers, how ever, cannot escape the m achinations of Ishmael, this novel's accidental allegorist. Philosophy is logged into the grain of each chapter as w ater logs into an oaken barrel— and it sw ells all the seams. M elville's tendency tow ard the rational effort m u st have tortured him in a tim e w herein both the spheres of religion and the secular w orld expected a hum ble Christian fealty. C opleston remarks on w h a t H aw thorne virtually scream ed at N ew Englanders: that their w orld in all its particulars w as still b randed by the often severe religious impulses th a t cam e coincidentally w ith 98 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. H ofsteder's capitalism, on. those first ships. "The retention of Puritan virtues in a secularized dress" C opleston writes, "w as of considerable historical im portance in the developm ent of the A m erican outlook." (Copleston 259) Im portant to rem em ber is also that d u rin g M elville's youth the C alvinist dictum virtually forbade aggressive enquiry as inherently heretical. Such a dictum m u st have been particularly frustrating to a sensitive intelligent and curious young m an. His efforts to understand w h a t he did not understand w ere n o t welcom e (in fact w ere heretical w hen voiced as rational challenges) sim ply because they w ere fram ed according to the values of his ow n Enlightenm ent heroes. But if Ishm ael and his creator Melville w ere virtually com pulsive in their rational habits, neither w as a blind zealot for the cause. Ishmael presents some of the dangers of follow ing the rationale p ath. The rational path, he finds, leads possibly to a sucking vortex of m eaninglessness no less frightening perhaps than the m eaning-laden w o rld governed by a m alevolent God. Ishm ael's fam ous allusion to the D escartian vortices that threaten us despite o u r illusions that w e are buoyed by the "gentle rolling ship; by her, borrow ed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of G od" is his cautionary tale to those w ho w ould choose h a rd rationality over soft intuitionism and the prom ising cradle of the em bracing Oversoul. But w hile this sleep, this dream is o n ye, m ove your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; a n d your identity comes back in horror. Over D escartian vortices you hover. A nd perhaps, at m idday, in the fairest w eather, w ith one 99 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. half-throttled shriek you drop th ro u g h that transparent air into the sum m er sea, no more to rise for ever. (140) Left unresolved b y Enlightenm ent philosophers and by Melville is the question: Can we hope that the world as "created" by the rational effort of humanity will be any better than a zvorld created by the flawed God. Ahab and Ishmael both proffer incomplete answ ers of a sort to this question. A hab's acceptance of the post Enlightenm ent im perative to critically analyze and test his ow n beliefs is a great part of w h at creates his quarrel w ith God. W ere he able to "stop at faith" as Kierkegaard w ould p u t it, perhaps he could accept w ithout profound resistance all of w h at he finds in his w orld that seems m ysterious and confounding. America h ad already created literary heroes cut from that cloth. One need only read the poetry of Anne Bradstreet (especially some of her poem s of loss and heartbreak) to hear a voice alm ost unerringly "stopped at faith." Ishmael, perhaps, answers the question w ith silence. He neglects to paint for his readers an im age of a w orld governed by a rational m echanism alone. Mobv-Dick rem ains throughout, G od-H aunted. And the images of God, as presented by Ishm ael are at most, unsure, and at least, untrusting. Mobv-Dick does no t present m anifestations of the possible w orld governed by the loving God. That world never achieves anim ation in IshmaeTs chapters. The two options presented in the pages are those of a 100 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w orld w ithout a G od and a world w ith a flaw ed God. Ishmael leaves no room in his narrative for th e honest, forthright, good-father G od of Starbuck. A nd as w e read Mobv-Dick w e follow a post-enlightenm ent paradigm . Ishm ael neglects to advance any sophisticated, com plex illustrations of the Good- Father G od or the G ood Captain God, because he finds no evidence of that G od in the w orld he sees as perm eated by "universal cannibalism." H e sees evidence of hypocritical, ineffectual, bigoted hum ans (created in His image?) and he sees suffering, "universal cannibalism " an d universal slavery. W hat he finds that seems good to him does not appear to him as having come from God. IN LOCO PARENTIS: THE W ORLD W ITHOUT A GO D In his landm ark w ork, American Renaissance: A rt and Expression in the Age of Emerson and W hitm an. F.O. M atthiessen refers to the w aning of faith in ante-bellum America a "spiritual decadence" in degree to the shifting of loyalties from the O ld God to the New. Anyone concerned with orthodoxy holds that the spiritual decadence of the nineteenth century can be m easured according to the alteration in the object of its belief from God-M an to Man-God, and to the corresponding shift in em phasis from Incarnation to Deification. Melville did not use those terms, but he had been responsive himself to that alteration, from belief in the salvation of m an through the m ercy and grace of a sovereign G od, to belief in the potential divinity in every man. (446) O ne set of questions raised im m ediately by an assertion of the "divinity in every m an" is the sam e set of challenges offered by Theodicy. If evil and 101 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. suffering does not em anate from God, w h at then is the source? A hab know s th at one possible answ er carries us back to a form ulation that shares w ith C alvinism the notion that hum ans cause their ow n suffering. Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or w ho, that lifts this arm? But if the great su n move not of him self; b u t is an errand-boy in heaven; n or one single star can revolve, but by som e invisible pow er; how then can this one small heart beat; this one sm all brain think thoughts; unless God does th a t beating, does that thinking, does th at living, and not I. . . . Look! see yon Albicore! w ho p u t it into him to chase an d fang that flying-fish? (445) Unbelievers and Skeptics cannot try G od in absentia. The D eists suggested that, perhaps, God was m erely "on-holiday." For m any, how ever, G od is guilty or G od is naught. If the w arriors of the Age of Enlightenm ent did not actively seek to hurl G od into Oblivion or into His sickbed, they certainly did seek to center the hum an subject as a sovereign. John D onne's "N o m an is an island unto him self," despite its w arm glow as a redem ptive palliative of h u m an society, strikes a som ew hat naive tone to the philosophical m ind after D escartes. Perhaps every m an is an island, the Frenchm an cried out. It is a curious paradox that in our progressive defining of the notion of "freedom " w e have come to m ean by the w o rd both individual sovereignty over our choices and freedom from entanglements. In his notes on H egel's Phenom enology, critic Robert C. Solomon points out wryly that H egel's notion of freedom is m ore or less em bodied in a single line by Kris Kristoferson in "Bobbie Magee": "Freedom 's just another w ord for n o th in ' left to lose." 102 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Freedom from fealty to a governing G od m ay be w hat hum ans desire w hen G od w ould directly task his subordinate mortals. But be there a G od or not, freedom from p ain and suffering is m ore directly desired. Ahab suffers as fob suffered. If there is no God to blame, how shall we respond to suffering? Buddha had a response, but his universe had its super-material components. Can toe actually survive the suffering we invite when we conclude that the zvorld is material only, that there is no God? The w orld of Ishm ael's chapters is a dangerous w orld w herein hum ans can be destroyed m entally and physically in a m om ent. So w hat then happens to our understanding of th at w orld if we rem ove the "God Hypothesis"? W e can leave the w orld "god-haunted," but for argum ent's sake let us im agine that there is no God. Who then is to blame? Who then is to praise? Who then is to lead? Some of the Gnostics h a d a firm answ er to this question. In the G nostic Gospels Pagels notes, Some Gnostic Christians w ent so far as to claim that hum anity created God— and so, from its own inner potential, discovered for itself the revelation of truth. This conviction m ay underlie the ironic com m ent in the Gospel of Phillip: . . . G od created hum anity; [but now hum an beings] create God. That is the w ay it is in the world— hum an beings m ake gods, and w orship their creation. It w ould be appropriate for the gods to w orship hum an beings! (122) 103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the universe of Mobv-Dick. m uch of the issue of God's presence and intentionality is w rap p ed into the presence and intentionality of the w hite whale. M any readings of Melville's novel have used as connective tissue the reductive interpretation that Moby Dick is a som ething of a golum created by G od a n d /o r A hab an d acting only in unconscious reaction to the cues given by a directive G od or b y a threatening m an. M elville's symbology seem s cleaner, easier to discuss w hen the interm ediary creature is defined as such an unthinking autom aton. O ne m istake th at has been m ade often by those interpreting Mobv-Dick, how ever, is the accusation that Ahab projects an intelligence and personality onto a dum b brute, an unreasoning natural "thing" incapable of m alevolent intention. Interestingly, since 1851 w e have learned m uch about great w hales and now credit them w ith an intelligence and sensitivity. In fact we have learned m uch about som e of the "higher" animals that seems to support one of D arw in's fam ous quotations: that the differences betw een "hum ans" and "anim als" is quantitative rather than qualitative. W hales we now know are capable of acting in w ays w e can only describe as altruistic and considerate of others, but also as harassing, even cruel. O f course w e always risk anthropom orphizing w hen w e seek to understand the non-hum an, but w e also risk succum bing to denial and ignorance w hen w e refuse to adm it sim ilarity and shared-qualities. W e have, however, w itnessed events of actions b y cetaceans that w e can only describe as "gang-rapes" (of cows by groups of bulls), torture games (played by orcas tossing helpless, 104 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. terrified seals for hours before killing them ), even attacks u p o n hum ans. W here once w e struggled to apologize for this behavior by treating animals as incapable of ethical or unethical behavior by virtue of their "anim al lim itations," now we as often struggle to open our m inds to th e possibility that m any anim als are to a degree capable of and therefore to a degree culpable for ethical decision m aking. But note how Ishm ael's narrative expands and folds onto itself again w hen w e consider Moby Dick to be a thinking and rational creature who shares the w orld with other thinking and rational creatures. H e is, perhaps, less intelligent than his hunters and he is afforded by his circum stances only an occasional and limited view of his pursuers and their m ysterious, m alevolent w ays. His decisions are his ow n. His volition is his ow n. But as a sentient being now , w e can see the whale as actively involved in the quarrel betw een himself, the crazy one-legged hum an, and this God-thing that m ay or m ay not exist. To see M oby Dick as another sovereign citizen of the w orld, the reader need n o t cast backward an idiosyncratic, "privileged" know ledge. As he was in m any other matters, Melville (and thereby Ishmael) w as ahead of his time in his aw areness of the "higher" abilities and intelligence of w hales. Ishm ael takes some pains to p resent to his reader the real possibility that M oby Dick willfully and know ingly attacks Ahab and the P equod as 105 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. recognized enem ies.16 In relating the w hite w hale's previous encounter w ith A hab (the encounter of A hab's injury), Ishm ael reports th at only after Ahab refused to accept defeat w hile hunting the w hale, d id M oby Dick turn to level his acute attention to the individual m an, Ahab. His three boats stove around him , and oars a n d m en both w hirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, h ad dashed at the w hale, as an A rkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking w ith a six inch blade to reach the fathom -deep life of the w hale. That captain w as Ahab. A nd then it was, th at su ddenly sw eeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him , Moby Dick h a d reaped away A hab's leg, as a m ow er a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or M alay, could have sm ote him w ith m ore seem ing malice. (159-60) It is in "The A ffidavit" that Ishm ael (at once b o th hum orously and w ith a certain transparent efficacy) seeks to set dow n a factual groundw ork regarding the possibility of a given w hale intentionally attacking a given m an or ship. Ishm ael's voice through this chapter is often hilarious in its m ocking of a kind of form al legalese. Through the chapter generally, however, Ishm ael seem s sober and sincere in his desire to prove w ith facts an d empirical observation a phenom enon that his readers m ight n o t see as possible. So far as w hat there m ay be of a narrative in this book; an d , indeed, as indirectly touching one o r two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as im portant a one as will be found in this volum e; b u t the leading m atter of it requires to be still further an d more Ishmael did not need to convince his readers that a whale could attack and sink a ship. Owen Chase, in 1821, had already published his popular Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex .... his account of the fated sinking of a whaleship by a battering sperm whale. 106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. familiarly enlarged upon, in ord er to be adequately understood, and m oreover to take aw ay any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject m ay induce in some m inds, as to the natural verity of the m ain points of this affair. I caxe not to perform this p a rt of m y task methodically; b u t shall be content to produce the desired im pression by separate citations of item s, practically or reliably know n to m e as a w halem an; and from these citations, I take it— the conclusion aim ed at will naturally follow of itself. (175) His m anner of exaggerating his apologia and of impeccably qualifying his claims grant us a nudge and a w ink and set us up for one of Ishmael qua M elville's m ost delicious self-reflexive jokes. Later in the chapter: For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are m ost landsm en of som e of the plainest and m ost palpable w onders of the w orld, that w ithout some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they m ight scout a t M oby Dick as a m onstrous fable, or still w orse and m ore detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. (177) As w ith several other chapters, this one can stand alone as a delightful piece of ironic proselytizing. But as w ith so m uch of Ishm ael's prose, it serves m ore than one purpose. In the "The Affidavit" Ishm ael pauses m om entarily and allows us a clear glim pse of him as a storyteller well-aware of our presence. M elville's chapter, in its metafictional self-awareness presents Ishmael as a shaper concerned that his audience will try him and find him a fabulist. The ironic joke concerning allegory, reminds us that Ishm ael is an allegorist. A nd as an allegorist, Ishm ael m ust be concerned that should the symbolic activity w ithin his tale seem unreal, his readers w ill rem ain too easily em pow ered to 107 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. dismiss the lessons of the story as irrelevant to the m undane concerns of real w orld readers. Ishm ael hopes th at w e rem ain engaged w ith his tale but also hopes that we set aside our incredulity. A nd if his "Extracts" and "Etymology" beg our confidence early in the novel that he is a w idely read m an of science and of the hum anities, this introduction to "The Affidavit" seeks to curry our tru st in him also as a trustw orthy (even conservative) clerk and inductionist. But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Sperm W hale is in some cases sufficiently pow erful, knowing, and judiciously malicious, as w ith direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and sink a large ship; and w hat is m ore, the Sperm Whale has done it. (178) H aving established the sperm whale as capable of som e display of intelligence and will, Ishm ael can proceed confidently know ing that the reader should be ready to accept M oby Dick's later attacks upon the Pequod's crew and upon the ship itself as a reasonable event— one not necessarily resulting from the instinctual muscle-flexings of an automaton, or from the actions of a m indless creature, divinely directed. Ishm ael/M elville describes the actions of the w hite whale in such a w ay as to leave unresolved the idea of Moby Dick's intentionality. Moby Dick is another character in the dram a. His actions re-invoke the m atter that C alvinist doctrine so problem atically handles. Moby Dick m ay or m ay not be a free- thinking agent. H e m ay or m ay not be ineluctably directed by a god. By creating the w hite w hale as such, Ishmael gathers in slack to leave loose the 108 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. notion that the w orld m ay be "peopled" w ith o u t being governed or influenced by a god. In such a w orld, hum ans still suffer, b u t the genesis of such suffering m ust be located in unintentional nature or in the choices and actions of other m ortal beings. Of course, such a notion that hum ans are alone w ithout a divine p aren t brings us full circle to the "joint-stock com pany" Ishm ael celebrates. If hum ans are alone to search for or establish m eaning, they are alone to validate and com fort each other. Ishm ael com m unicates this indirectly throughout the narrative w ith a m yriad of instances in w hich interdependency and social connection save the sane individual from loneliness, terror, even death and oblivion. Q uequeg's arrival in the bridal bed grants Ishmael his first com fort of the novel. L ater Ahab assigns his harpooners and m ates the dangerous chore of em ploying the "m onkey ropes" for he know s that rem inding his m en of their interdependency m ay literally save them. To be alone— w ell w ithin striking distance of the jaws of hypos— is precarious at best. W hat m ay be needed, should a sufficient father not be found, is that joint-stock interdependent society that proffers som e degree of comfort. God, in Mobv-Dick, is very obviously presented in the paternal m etaphor, and Ishm ael takes great delight at tim es in his troping on G od as 109 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. parent and H um ans as children. But som ew hat less obviously (yet perhaps m ore pervasively), Ishm ael portrays the m aster/slav e, captain/subordinate paradigm as the governing m etaphor for the relationship betw een hum ans and their God(s). M any readers seem to see in Ahab an inventing predilection. A nd this seems a reasonable reading. W here Ahab sees G od as "m alevolent," "jealous," "petty," another believer m ay see H im as "distant," "m ysterious," and "deserving of unalloyed worship." A hab's configuration of the God he seeks is m odeled u p o n the Calvinist God w ith w hich he (and Melville) grew up. Such a G od, before all things, dem ands obedience. Such a G od is a Ship's Captain. A nd that C aptain— described as A ll-Pow erful and All-Loving— is certainly a C aptain to follow. But A hab cannot find that God. H e cannot find sufficient evidence of a God w herein the qualities of Om nipotency A N D All-Lovingness are reconciled. A nd he cannot imagine a godless w orld. Ahab shrinks from the idea of a solely m aterial w orld, but he does n o t shrink from declaring the w orld to be a killing field, and he hints strongly at w ho he sees as the m ost likely suspect. H ow then can this one sm all heart beat; this one small b rain think thoughts; unless God does th at beating, does that thinking, does that living, and n o t I .... Look! see yon Albicore! w ho put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? W here do m urderers go, man! W ho’ s to doom , w hen the ju d g e himself is dragged to the bar? (445) Ahab cannot seem to live w ithout the "G od-H ypothesis." A nd so his confidence th at the C alvinist God exists, w hen m arried to his convictions th at 110 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the m aterial w orld is set against him, force him into (re)creating and (re)writing a god w ho is either Less-than-Om nipotent a n d /o r Less-than-All- Loving. Ahab seem s to believe as Q ueequeg does: "de god w at m ade shark m ust be one dam Ingin." Ishm ael is n o t so overburdened by such a narrow ly im agined deity or tradition. He is ready to run dow n such creeds. His awareness of the diversity in hum an articulations of the divine— though expansive com pared to the average yeom an before the m ast— is rather limited. Ishmael seldom wanders far aw ay from the conception of the deity offered by C alvinists and by most other Jews and Christians. U nlike Ahab, however, Ishm ael seem s able to imagine a w orld w ithout a god— at least he is able to im agine the possibility of such a w orld. To carry o ur godless experiment to an extreme end, we can m editate upon the postm odern hubris that we create the world around us and all m eaning that exists. But what then is the nature of a zuorld ofoivn ozvn authoring? Perhaps where the God-hypothesis is left out of the algebraic ontology, values are determined and weighted by the only present mathematicians. In his book, Post-Secular Philosophy. Phillip Blond remarks on such an hum an created, godless w orld It was H usserl who, by w ishing to locate the ground of Being w holly in beings, forbade God to 111 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. phenom enolo gy For H usserl had, in order to ascertain and reveal the h um an foundation of phenom ena by the Ego, bracketed out or placed under an epoche any naive belief in an external w orld existing independently of the m ind. (195) So long as w e are the only free-thinking, sovereign creators of m eaning, all validation of m eaning (all authority) originates in us. Perhaps A hab is aw are of this and am ong his other demons this aw areness cajoles him onw ard: that in his quest for truth, one possible outcom e (should he find n o th in g beyond the wall) is his ow n self-establishing aw akening as Author— an au th o r w hose first utterance is that G od is n au g h t M elville's pervasive (and at times aggressive) centering o f the notion of Subject and Object, from the seemingly naive repetitious m entionings of appearances (which presum e an observer) to som e of the novel's m aster m etaphors (the "m asks" and "walls" that separate the subject from som ething external), locate M obv-Dick and it's heroes as proto-phenom enologists, inheritors of philosophical constructions such as that of H egel, b u t also precursors to such "self aw are" phenom enologists as H usserl a n d Sartre. One interesting facet of Ishm ael's phenom enology is his self-correcting habit of rem inding him self of his physical presence and connection to the m aterial w orld. Ishm ael takes pains to declare that he is no Platonist. After Tashtego dangerously falls into the w hale's upended case, Ishm ael likens the m an's m isadventure dow n a slippery slope to a fall both sw eeter and m ore 112 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sinister. A nd then he likens th at fell of a m aterial m an to the m etaphysical death of the one who w ould pick fruit from the tree of idealism . O nly one sw eeter e n d can readily be recalled— the delicious death of a n O hio honey-hunter, w ho seeking honey in the crotch o f a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died em balm ed. H ow many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sw eetly perished there? (290) In chapter 35, "the M asthead," Ishm ael/M elville provides a skeptical lam poon of naive Platonic Idealism . The transcendental m om ent is likened to a d ru g g ed stupor (as is the transcendental m om ent in the "Squeeze of the H and" chapter) and the cause of the unconsciousness is sensible nature itself, as sensory perception, processed in the m ind, becomes indistinguishable from thought. .. . b u t lulled into such an opium -like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-m inded youth by the blending cadence of waves w ith thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible im age of th at deep, blue, bottom less soul, pervading m ankind a n d nature; and every strange, half- seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him ; every dim ly-discovered, u p risin g fin of som e indiscernible form, seem s to him the em bodim ent of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul b y continually flitting through it. In this enchanted m ood, thy spirit ebbs aw ay to w hence it came; becomes diffused through time and space. (140) Ishm ael denies "those thoughts" any perm anence. They "people the soul by continually flitting through it." These are the tracings: the vapor trails, the flat w ater th a t suggests a w ake th at in tu rn suggests a w hale. The now famous lines b y Ishm ael regarding the precarious and fragile state of confident, 113 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m etaphysical reverie reiterates Ishm ael's condem nation of idealism as a will- o-the-w isp that can seduce us to a dream y, dangerous dem ise. There is no life in thee, now , except that rocking life im parted by a gentle rolling ship .... But w hile this sleep, this dream is on ye, m ove your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. O ver Descartian vortices you hover. A nd perhaps, at m idday, in the fairest w eather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the sum m er sea, no m ore to rise for ever. (140) Such a state of consciousness, untethered by m aterial concerns, Ishmael implies is not a norm al or constant state, but rather a "rarefied" (Nirvanic) state, a place at which one m ight arrive, or more likely, a place at which one falsely believes to have arrived. M elville is calling to task the philosopher w ho w ould quickly follow Descartes from a claim of cogito ergo sum to a confidence in the position that I think about things and therefore they are. In this chapter Ishm ael links hum an, m aterial existence to an external material w orld. Ishm ael implies that we are b o u n d by m aterial limits and by our subjectivity. This fam ous statem ent, hanging the Platonist over Descartian vortices, foreshadow s existentialism in that philosophy's insistence that existence precedes essence and foreshadow s the existentialist troping on nausea and vertigo. Im portant to rem ember here is that the m ast represents in Mobv-Dick (and arguably on all sailing ships) a practical as well as sym bolic object/location from which a sailor "looks out." In Ishm ael's telling, of course, the m ast serves as a nexus, an objective correlative for m etaphors (of the SUBJECT) about "looking out" or "away" and for m etaphors (of the 114 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. OBJECT) about being looked at and examined. Into the m ast, remember, is nailed the doubloon (onto the m ast is crucified the confounding idol), and m any are the comments from Ishm ael regarding sailors gazing upon that m arker. As m editation and w ater are w edded so are "looking" and "the m ast." This is the epistemological conjunction of phenom enology and existentialism . "I know noble accents/ And lucid, inescapable rhythm s" w rites W allace Stevens. "But I know, too,/ That the blackbird is involved In w h at I know ." Ishmael too, knows that the m ast, the doubloon and the w hiteness of M oby Dick are involved in w hat he know s. But he is skeptical of his abilities to truly decipher w hat those things suggest. Ishm ael displays his herm eneutic skills and lim itations in chapters 79, "The Prairie," and 80, "The N ut." As he lambastes the pseudo-scientific phrenologists, he makes very serious statements concerning the hum an ability to decipher and interpret the things of our w orld. Ishm ael assays to read the w rinkled brow of the sperm whale. To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bum ps on the head of this Leviathan; this is a thing w hich no Physiognom ist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise w ould seem alm ost as hopeful as for Lavater to have scrutinized the w rinkles on the Rock of G ibraltar, or for Gall to have m ounted a ladder and m anipulated the dom e of the Pantheon. (291) Ishm ael adm its that som ething m ysterious seems suggested. H ad he his ow n Professor Teufelsdrockh to help him understand the w hale's vestments, perhaps Ishm ael m ight find sufficient detail to draw out conclusions. But in 115 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the en d he declares that he has found "nothing": "no one point," "none proper." But in the great Sperm Whale, this high an d m ighty god like dignity in h eren t in the brow is so im m ensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view , you feel the D eity a n d the dread pow ers m ore forcibly than in beholding any o th er object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or m outh; no face; h e has none, proper; nothing b u t th a t one broad firm am ent of a forehead, pleated w ith riddles. (292) Ishm ael rem inds his reader of the hiddenness of G od: O f the "high and m ighty god-like dignity," an d "dread pow ers" of the deity that we feel though no "distinct feature is revealed." (292) He asserts that "nothing" is zuhat one finds zvhen gazing at the zohale's brozu. A nd "nothing" causes him to think of nothing more than God. Ishm ael calls attention to th e distance betw een the w hale's brain and the bum ps visible at the o uter layer. If the phrenologist w ould divine truth of the inner self as suggested by th e outer self— the brain b y its correspondent b u m ps— Ishm ael w ould have him know that deep an d deceptive m ediation separates the brain (and m ind) of the whale from the signs it displays. It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, n o r feel any. The w hale, like all things that are m ighty, w ears a false brow to the com m on world. If the Sperm W hale be physiognom ically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geom etrical circle which it is im possible to square. 116 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In full-grow n creature the skull w ill m easure at least tw enty feet in le n g th . . . . The brain is at least tw enty feet from his ap p aren t forehead in life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks ..." (293) PIP ADRIFT AND THE UNWELCOME GNOSIS The m etaphor of the orphan is rife w ith the suggestion of the h u m an alone, of the child w ho needs— perhaps craves— the presence of a creating, nurturing parent. The "aloneness" of the orphan also serves as a rich conceit (but only one of many) that helps Ishm ael explore the ideas an d practicalities related to the limits of individual "subjectivity." Ahab sees the hum an condition as one of forced separation. H e compares the "inscrutable m alice" of Mobv-Dick to walls that enclose a prisoner. "If m an will strike, strike though the mask! H ow can the prisoner reach outside except b y thru stin g through the wall? To m e, the w hite w hale is th a t wall, shoved near to m e." (144) In this instance A hab em phasizes a m etaphor that presents the h u m an as trapped inside a restricting and possibly constricting shell— a claustrophobic space that m ust be escaped. This m etaphor, of course, splices in M obv-Dick w ith m etaphors of ignorance and know ledge. The hum an sphere of know ledge is subm erged in dark, profound ignorance and the sphere is uncom fortably small; for the "m erm an, W isdom " is a "m iser." (347) The process of gaining individual sovereignty and of reaching an independent Gnosis is show n in M obv-Dick to be a confounding and virtually 117 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. irresistible enterprise, b u t also to be a potentially terrifying and spiritually suicidal campaign. Pip is draw n b y Melville as the acutely suffering stand-in for all others who come to recognize their astonishing aloneness. Pip suffers and ultim ately succumbs to the traum atic nausea that visits him as he floats alone in the black ocean. In dram atic fashion, Ishmael qua M elville paints the scene as Pip, lost at sea, learns w hat h e w ould never w ish to know . Pip’ s ringed horizon began to expand around him m iserably .... The sea had leeringly kept his finite body up, but drow ned the infinite of his soul. N ot drow ned entirely, though. Rather carried d o w n alive to w ondrous depths, w here strange shapes of the unw arped primal w orld glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the m iser-m erm an, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and am ong the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the m ultitudinous, G od-om nipresent, coral insects, that out o f the firmament of w aters heaved the colossal orbs. H e saw G od’ s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; a n d therefore his shipm ates called him mad. (347) W hat Pip "sees," we do not know. Ishm ael, w ith this passage and its poetic approxim ations, seems more interested in conveying the idea that "Pip sees" som ething than in describing exactly w hat it is that Pip "sees." As the "m iser-merman. W isdom , revealed his hoarded heaps," Pip receives a vision too strange and true for sane mortals to recognize or accept. The incidental, physical abandonm ent of Pip is treated by Ishm ael as a less than surprising event— a m atter of course in the dangerous whale fishery. And Pip's existential trial, th at he is actually abandoned and lost is treated as almost normal: "The thing is common in that fishery," writes Ishmael (347). 118 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The com plete unhinging of Pip, how ever, is treated by Ishm ael as a significant and p ro fo u n d event. One reason m ay be that Ishmael later suffers a sim ilar fate. H e only hints at the nature of his shared experience, stating "... in the sequel of the narrative, it will th en be seen w h at like abandonm ent befell myself." (347) Ishmael does later describe his escape from the Pequod and his rescue by the Rachel; but he does so in the briefest of m anners and w ith few details. R eaders are left to draw their ow n inferences regarding the possibility that Ishm ael him self may have becom e unhinged by his ow n deep sea abandonm ent. Ishm ael also leaves open to the reader's im agination the "source" of the know ledge Pip "receives." Ishm ael personifies "W isdom" and describes it as a "m iser-m erm an" but leaves the nom ination vague. Ishm ael creates a G od- haunted passage with "G od-om nipresent, coral insects" and G od's foot u pon the treadle of the loom" and "heaven's sense" and a rem inder that God is "indifferent," (347) The reader m ay conjure imagery from these strange and not necessarily cooperative allusive m etaphors, but the reader w ho desires to receive from Ishm ael a clear im age or articulation of the overw helm ing, transform ing "thing(s)" that Pip comes to see and know, will be frustrated. Though he suggests that Pip gains a kind of Gnosis during his trial, Ishm ael seems less th an prepared here to directly essay to give his readers the sam e. Also left un w arped is the idea th at Pip "sees" som ething his shipm ates will not or cannot embrace. Perhaps Pip has approached his ow n doubloon and w hat he h as seen in it and then "speaks" will not register as sensible or 119 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. coherent to the other m en. P ip's articulation is rejected. Ishmaels w rites, "So m an's insanity is heaven's sense; and w andering from all m ortal reason, m an comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic." (347) P ip's spiritual trial evokes both a literal and Calvinistic reading (that hum ans are indeed n o t capable of taking in the truths of God and a m etaphoric reading th at treats Logos as a truth unbearable and as an awareness of Logos-as-a-Gnosis w e w ould not w elcom e, for even w here God is "om nipresent" the w orkings of the universe are indifferent to us. So m an's insanity is heaven's sense; an d w andering from all m ortal reason, m an comes at last to th at celestial thought, w hich, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels th e n uncom prom ised, indifferent as his God. (347) This passage darts hom e th e idea of the profound dislocation betw een h u m an reason (and perhaps h u m an needs and desires) an d the w orkings of G od. The dark center to this m essage is that we are indeed estranged from tru th and from God. If we are incapable of understanding a n d accepting the Logos— "heaven's sense" and "the celestial thought"— w ith o u t going m ad, then w e are indeed doom ed to ignorance or m adness. Ishm ael rem arks o n th e isolation of such ignorant or m ad hum ans using his ow n m arker— "Isolato"— to nam e their tribe. H e draw s in Pip as a stan d ard bearer. They w ere nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such . . . now , federated along one keel..., accom panying O ld A hab in the Pequod to lay the w orld's grievances before th at bar from w hich n o t very m any of them ever com e back. Black Little Pip— he never did— oh, no! he w ent before. Poor Alabama boy! O n the grim 120 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Pequod’ s forecastle, ye shall ere long see him , beating his tam bourine; prelusive of the eternal tim e, w hen sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he w as bid strike in w ith angels, a n d beat his tam bourine in glory; called a cow ard here, hailed a hero there! (108) Pip is the bell ringer w ho sounds a toll for others aboard the Pequod, b u t Ishmael and Ahab are cast as orphans of sorts. They each stand representative of the necessarily self-reliant seeker. This is, perhaps, one of the reasons Melville keeps them separate all through the narrative. Each leading character 17 seems desperately set on a private quest. If Pip is undone by w hat he learns, perhaps so also is Ahab— but in a w ay Ishmael, their attendant bard, m ay never experience. Ishmael observes or invents the trials of "m ad Pip" and the "crazy old captain." He is arm ored in his skepticism. We read his chapters and w onder, w ould Ishmael, as his captain has done, have grappled directly and self-destructively w ith the issues of Theodicy. In "Loom ings" he hints that he w elcom es sea life (and therefore the dangers of whaling) as a "substitute for pistol and ball." (12) He w ould engage death indirectly and force God or N ature to play a hand in his fate. The individual suffers m ost from the vexations and implications of Theodicy w hen that individual is convinced of the existence and presence of a deity. For w hen one is aw are that an A uthor exists, one can at least assum e a The narrative itself is told in the first person (but interestingly— not consistent as reportage of what has been immediately witnessed). Critics have long debated how to interpret Melville's passages in which Ishmael seems to be narrating events he could not possibly have witnessed. One way of reading the novel is to read Ahab's quest— his anger, his occasional doubt, his ineluctable tragic path as a projection on his ow n part of "the path not taken"— of what Ishmael imagines as the pitch-poled extremities he might have reached had he clung to faith rather than embraced skepticism. 121 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m ethod behind the w orldly meanness. Ahab hunts his author assum ing his prey will take a fam iliar form. Ishmael, unlike Ahab, is able to look elsew here for the geneses of h u m an suffering. He also enjoys the luxury of the Infidel: he bears not the heavy yoke of the believer. H e m ay never have to confront an unwelcome Gnosis for he m ay not recognize it as "truth" should he find it. ABANDONM ENT: THE RACHEL A N D THE SYMPHONY In Mobv-Dick M elville uses the m etaphors of "the orphan" and "abandonm ent" for rather formal constructions. O ne of the m ost striking symbols in the novel is, of course, Ishmael as an orphan cast adrift after the encounter of the destruction of the Pequod and its crew. But Ishm ael, as a narrator, also uses these notions as master m etaphors throughout his y a m and as central ideas in som e of the m ost sentim entally affecting passages of the novel. In two instances, especially, that of the Pequod's encounter w ith the Rachel and that of A hab's and Starbuck's gam as they gaze dow n into the ocean in the Sym phony chapter, Ishmael indulges in some of his m ost operatic prose, effectively begging the reader's attention to his theme of desperate loneliness w hile also illustrating Ahab's aw areness of the pain created in the wake of abandonm ent. In "The Rachel," the Pequod encounters a ship captained by a father desperately searching for a son he has reluctantly abandoned in order to rescue another son. Both boys have lowered earlier for whales in separate 122 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. boats and the captain, forced to look for one before the other, has m ade a choice, successfully gathered in one child b u t now seems doom ed to lose the other. A hab, in perhaps his m ost egoistic, m ost heartless m om ent, refuses to help the other captain and instead leaves to search for M oby Dick— for am ong the w hales espied d u rin g the Rachel's tragic search was the w hite w hale. "M y boy, m y own boy is am ong them . For G od’ s sake— I beg, I conjure"— here exclaim ed the stranger C aptain to A hab, w ho thus far had b u t icily received his petition. "For eight-and-forty hours let m e charter your ship— I w ill gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it— if there be no other w ay— for eight-and-forty hours only— only th at— you m ust, oh, you m ust, and you shall do this thing." "His son!" cried Stubb, "oh, it’ s his son he’ s lost! (434) At this m om ent in the narrative the reader m ay not be surprised to find that Ahab's m onom ania w ill allow him to refuse to help another m an, or that his sentim ents to w ard other suffering hum ans have become so dim inished. But as the scene plays out, Ishmael introduces the reader to a fact th at advertises the depth of A hab's dissociation from others and the size of his new capacity for egotism. "I w ill n o t go," said the stranger, "till you say aye to m e. Do to m e as you w ould have m e do to you in the like case. For y o u too have a boy, C aptain A hab— though b u t a child, an d nestling safely at hom e now — a child of your old age too— Yes, yes, you relent; I see it— run, run, men, now , and stan d b y to square in the yards." "Avast," cried Ahab— "touch not a rope-yarn"; th en in a voice th at prolongingly m oulded every w ord— "Captain G ardiner, I w ill not do it. Even no w I lose time, Good-bye, good-bye. G od bless ye, m an, and m ay I forgive m yself, b u t I m u st go. (435) 123 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A hab recognizes the m oral potent of his action, and interestingly he hopes that G od w ill help C aptain Gardiner, b u t for his ow n needs h e hopes only that he m ay forgive himself. Ishm ael does not give us inform ation or m any clues to judge accurately the R achel's probability of success. If w e knew for exam ple, that the Rachel's efforts w o u ld be seen by virtually every seam an as futile o r absurd, we m ight judge A hab less harshly. But as the chapter is w ritten, w ith little detail except for the general plotting, the story takes on som ething of the sim ple moral pow er of a parable. Readers leave the episode know ing th at Ahab, a father, refuses to help another father or to extend him self in the service of a lost boy. To enhance the m elancholy suasion of his fiction, Ishm ael personifies the Rachel beyond the begging significance of her fem inine a n d historically inform ed nam e. The reader has m et the desperate searching captain, just rebuffed by the m ad Ahab whose fellow feeling has been subm erged beneath his obsessions and now the reader leaves the Rachel, her ow n frantic efforts accented by Ishm ael's bathetic prose. Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel w as in view, she w as seen to yaw hither and thither at every d ark spot, how ever sm all, on the sea. This w ay and th at her yards w ere sw u n g around; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; n o w she b eat against a head sea; a n d again it pushed her before it; w hile all the while, her m asts and yards w ere thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, w h en the boys are cherrying am ong the boughs. But by her still halting course and w inding, woeful w ay, you plainly saw th at this ship that so w ep t w ith spray, still rem ained w ithout comfort. She w as Rachel, w eeping for her children, because they w ere not. (436) 124 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Rachel's efforts are Ishmael's ow n— b u t inverted. Ishmael is the child searching, yaw ing hither and thither at every dark spot that m ight answer his anxiety. Ishm ael recognizes that his ow n nam e couples him to the biblical orphan, cast o u t and abandoned by a parent. Ishmael also tells this story of the Rachel in retrospect after he know s that the same ship will come to collect him later, but n o t as an intending parent, happy to discover and embrace a lost prodigal b u t rather in a disinterested act— "in her retracing search after her m issing children." (436) The last line of Jshm ael's chapter, "She w as Rachel, weeping for her children, because they w ere not," is severally provocative. One reading, that the lost are dead, com pletes the prophecy voiced by the Manxman: "[The boy has] drow ned w ith the rest on ’ em, last night.... I heard; all of ye heard their spirits." (434) A nother implication is that the lost "children" are not w eeping for their m other. Perhaps because they refuse to weep. Perhaps because they have severed in their m inds and hearts their attachm ents to an abandoning parent. Another telling interpretation of this chapter is that the father w ho searches for a lost son com m ands Ahab to search inside himself and seek som e degree of redem ption by agreeing to go forth in service of the lost boy. "I conjure," exclaims the Rachel's captain, "you m ust, oh, you m ust and you shall do this thing." But Ahab refuses. It is as if he is being offered an opportunity to turn aw ay from his sinful and blasphem ous cam paign to gain a 125 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. salvation through this son w ho has b een left out, exposed in the w o rld by his father. This is a strictly Christian, allegorical reading. And to extend it w e can note that Ishm ael is eventually saved b y that sam e ship's father in his efforts to reclaim the sacrificed son. Ishm ael is redeem ed only after another son has been sacrificed. The reader of Mobv-Dick learns m ore about Ahab's fam ilial relations and the choices he has m ade relevant to his ow n earthly offspring in chapter 132, "The Sym phony." That glad, happy air, th at w insom e sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-m other w orld, so long c ru e l- forbidding— now threw affectionate arm s round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him , as if over one, that how ever w ilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save an d to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab d ro p p ed a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such w ealth as that one wee drop. (443) For a m om ent at least, Ishm ael casts A hab as the orphan now retu rn ed briefly as the Prodigal Son. In this m om ent the reader sees Ahab as Starbuck does, as a pathetic prodigal perhaps not too far lost to save himself. Ahab gazes dow nw ard and sees not the "universal cannibalism of the deep" b u t rather a domestic, alm ost forgotten w orld. "By the green land; by the bright hearthstone! this is the magic glass, m an; I see m y wife and m y child in thine eye." (444) A hab's recognition of the near sacred duties and joys of the earthly entanglem ents of parent and child are voiced in some of Ishm ael's m ost sentim ental prose. But despite the hopes of the gentle Starbuck, A hab slips his 126 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. hold and h u rls back dow n into the vortex of that w o rld w herein he sees himself as a frustrated subordinate to an unw orthy captain. H e reaches tow ard his favorite rationalization for com m itting this earthly crime. He invokes Fate, an entity the existence and pow er of w hich he is at best a skeptical a n d inconstant acolyte. W hat is it, w hat nam eless, inscrutable, un earth ly thing is it; w hat cozening, h id d en lord and m aster, a n d cruel, rem orseless em peror com m ands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep p u shing, an d crow ding, and jam m ing m yself on all the tim e; recklessly m aking m e ready to do w hat in m y ow n pro p er, natural heart, I durst n o t so m uch as dare? (444) In so doing this he casts him self as victim: as a subordinate agent of some greater force, ineluctably guided to com m it acts that contradict his "natural" will. T. W alter H erbert points o u t that A hab's claim h ere is consistent w ith a strong vein of anti-Calvinist criticism popular in M elville's day. The G od of Calvin's theology was not only arraigned as the "author of sin." U nder such a God, it w as also charged, m an could n o t be a m oral agent. If a m an's eternal destiny and his everyday actions are determ ined by decrees set forth before the w orld w as created, then h u m an life becom es a m ere m echanical w o rking o u t of w h a t has already been decided. (142) The captain of the Rachel has abandoned his son m ost im m ediately because of practical, m aterial dictates: he could search first for one or the other son, and only after h e h ad found the first, d id he lose his heart in the gleaning for the other. A hab has chosen to leave his family; he has n o t been forced. We 127 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. readers know this in p art because we see that Ahab him self in moments seem s honest enough to adm it it. . . . away, w hole oceans away, from that y oung girl-wife I w edded past fifty, and sailed for Cape H o rn the next day, leaving b u t one d en t in m y marriage pillow — wife? wife?— rather a w idow w ith her husband alive? Aye, I w idow ed that poor girl w hen I m arried her. (443) A hab, later in the narrative, seem s to glimpse one last possibility of redem ption through this fam ilial model. As the "step-m other w orld" had throw n "affectionate arm s round his stubborn neck," he also reaches out to an orphan: the now over-stressed Pip. Ahab's treatm ent of Pip, after the boy's traum atic experience alone at sea, takes on a familial quality: Ahab "adopts" him by prom ising to take him into his own "home." There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look dow n here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him , ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip’ s hom e henceforth, while Ahab lives. T hou touches! my inm ost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords w oven by m y heart-strings. Come, let's down. (428) The relationship of Ahab to Pip has been likened to th at of Lear to his fool and certainly that comparison is rich and valid; for as Lear has lost his family and finds his fool to be som ething of a surrogate, and as he recognizes his ow n fragility in the seemingly feeble-m inded fool, so also does Ahab place Pip in the role of a foundling son, and so also does he recognize his ow n desperation in the "crazy-w itty" speech of Pip. "Now, then, Pip," Ahab says "we’ll talk this over; I do suck m ost w ondrous philosophies from thee!" (433) Ahab notes 128 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his em pathetic connection to Pip, who has becom e psychologically unm oored during his episode of abandonm ent. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in m an all ill, lo you! see the om niscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and m an, though idiotic, and know ing not w hat he does, yet full of the sw eet things of love a n d gratitude. (428) Ahab pulls Pip closer to him and speaks assuredly of protecting the boy. O nly during the final chases does he push the boy aw ay and only in a protective gesture. Lad, lad, I tell thee thou m ust not follow Ahab now. The hour is com ing w hen Ahab w ould n o t scare thee from him, yet w ould not have thee by h im .... Do thou abide below here, w here they shall serve thee, as if thou w ert the captain. (436) For the sake of the Pequod's crew, w ould th at Ahab were such a father to them all. In Pip he sees the lonely, abandoned, broken heart that he recognizes as akin to his own; and for Pip he becom es som ething of the im m ediate parent that he him self craves. But tow ard the other m en in his charge, he rem ains the distant, unfeeling p aren t the likes of which he claim s to despise— a heartless captain (ne deity) form ed in the likeness of his created creator. 129 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER III - AHAB Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason zuith God. Job 13:3 For man to demand a hearing of God and, worse, to argue with him at it represent the very embodiments of human arrogance. Humble obedience is the only pathway to God's court. John Calvin A H A B'S CHARTING: A WILL TO G N O SIS1 8 Essentially M obv-Dick is a record of a h u n t— a hunt predicated on a faith that THERE IS som ething to be hunted, som ething that m ight be tracked dow n and m astered, killed or questioned. B ut it is also a hunt urged on by the fear th at the "som ething" so carefully tracked and m easured and charted is "Nothing." A hab's quest is not merely to m eet w ith the whale but to satisfy his hunger to u n derstand som ething m ysterious about the whale: to attain an elusive Gnosis. M elville's character takes the m etaphor one crucial step further: he sees the h u n t as a "strange tie" of another sort— a tie betw een Man and G od— an d all his efforts are predicated on the essential paradigm of this m etaphor. All his m eans, his ship, his m en, his m ind are tools tow ard that end. A m ong the tools he employs, A hab's "charting" deserves a peculiar scrutiny. Ishm ael takes pains to show that A hab's efforts to locate the w hite 130 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w hale are, at best, unlikely to secure a reunion betw een the captain and his foe. Ishm ael also, however, needs to dem onstrate the possibility of Ahab's success. For w ith the charts of all four oceans before him , A hab w as threading a m aze of currents and eddies, w ith a view to the m ore certain accom plishm ent of th at m onom aniac thought of his soul. (171) In the Calvinist tradition n atu re itself manifests the Logos. If one cannot look u p o n the face of God, one m ay still look upon nature and "see" God; for w h at is visible in nature is a divinely fashioned m edium through w hich w e experience Logos. Ahab's chartings an d tracings are an exercise in "seeing" w hat cannot be seen. He w ho interprets the charts m ust extrapolate from the given tracings and create in the m ind w hat cannot be seen. By inference (and by a form of m etaphysical phrenology of sorts), the object projected by the tracings can be "know n" by the interpreter. Ishmael w rites of A hab's hopes, turned to expectations through this psychological alchemy: A nd w here Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been m ade to w hatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects w ere his, ere a particular set tim e or place were attained, w hen all possibilities w ould becom e probabilities, and, as A hab fondly thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty. (173) W hat I am describing is a divining effort akin to a "verbal triangulation" that seeks to locate~to determ ine— an object by "heaping" determ ination. Just as Ishm ael em ploys w ords in his effort to h u n t and capture "w hiteness," Ahab em ploys his charts to h u n t and capture the white whale. 18 For more on Ahab's charting and "scientific" methods, see Smith, page 117. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. . . . Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also calling to m ind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surm ises, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey. (171-172) A hab's bad faith here is akin to the intentional fallacy w rit large. Ahab w ould know the cause by its effects, regardless of the m ysteriousness of those effects. In m odem parlance A hab w ould "backward engineer" his w orld so that he m ight know the engineer. This is the favorite induction gam e of the N atural Religion proponents w ho alw ays m anage to find G od exactly where they have placed Him . Ahab's inductive exercise is predicated on the existence of an intentional creator as a given. Such a pattern of search is an absurd variation on a game of hide-and- seek w herein only two players play, and the seeker assigns a "hiding spot" to the "hider." This may be a reasonable pattern for finding a schoolm ate hidden behind a tree or for finding a w hale incognito in the sea— Ahab, after all knows that the w hale is real— but should there be no God, the searcher m ay quest in vain forever, finding anything b u t the shadow creature the searcher has conjured. For Ahab, Moby Dick is God-the-Creator, God-the-Destroyer, God-the- M ysterious. A nd as critics have long noted, the one legged w haler hunts to kill m ore than a whale; he hunts to find God to see G od to kill God to become God. To do so, he follows the traces he believes God has left, calculating and 132 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tim ing his travels to arrive at the grounds in the seasons w here G od (at least the physical m anifested im age of God) has earlier show n a face. For there an d then . . . Moby Dick had been periodically descried . . . There it was, too, that m ost of the deadly encounters w ith the white w hale had taken place; there the w aves w ere storied w ith his deeds; there also w as that tragic spot w here the monomaniac old m an had found the awful m otive to his vengeance. (173) The voyage of the Pequod is for Ahab the active an d real— yet spiritual and intellectual— attem pt to experience the intelligibility (symbolically incarnate in M oby Dick). H ow ever, for Ahab the only true m eaning he desires or concentrates his m ind u p o n is that everything else excepting The W hale of his hu n t is secondary, accidental. Ahab himself, in his m ore rational m oods, adm its that there m ay be no face behind the mask. But he does so reluctantly- -as a tem perate and reasonable admission (and m anum ission) ap pended to his passion play. H ark ye yet again,— the little lower layer. All visible objects, m an, are b u t pasteboard masks. But in each event— in the living act, the undoubted d eed — there, som e unknow n b u t still reasoning thing puts forth the m ouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If m an will strike, strike through the mask! H ow can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To m e, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Som etim es I think there's naught beyond. (144) In Mobv-Dick. A hab’ s positing of a willful creator is presented as an indulgence or succum bing to the intentional fallacy. A hab's actions— m ore than those of his m en— are invested in the tracking a n d hunting dow n of objects unseen but suggested. These objects are som etim es physical (such as 133 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w hales suggested by their w akes) and som etim es u n real (such as m alevolent intending presences suggested by the sufferings of h u m an s in "this world"). But w hat m otivates this desire to invest in such a hunt? A hab's will to "strike through the m ask" is so often interpreted as a w ill to exercise a physical violence com m ensurate w ith the violence b y w hich the whale took the m an's leg, that w e often neglect another object o f A hab's hunt. He WILL know w h at is behind the m ask. The mask, of course, has been a m aster m etaphor fruitfully discussed by m any M elville scholars. M ost typically, perhaps, the "m ask" is seen as a nam ing of the m aterial w orld— the w orld as it presents itself im m ediately to hum ans. But an "understanding" of the m ask or an "understanding" of w h a t is behind the m ask (i.e.: an understanding of the articulate nature of the m asks) is som ething decidedly m ore than substantial that catching a glim pse of the mask. It is one thing to ow n copies of the Bible, the Koran an d the Talm ud, quite another thing to "understand" such texts. A hab's study of the w o rld — be it ever so intense if not careful— has not yielded him reassuring results. H is peers, raised in the Calvinistic tradition, w ould counsel him to correct him self and accept the m ystery and G od's prerogative to rem ain m ysterious to hum ans. They w o u ld counsel the suffering m an that his anxiety and duress is a thing of his ow n making. They w ould rem ind him, perhaps, w ith Father M apple's w ords: "all the things th at G od w ould have us do are h a rd for us to do— rem em ber that— and hence, he oftener com m ands us than endeavors to persuade." (45) They w ould counsel 134 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the w ounded m an as Job's counselors had counseled him: suggesting that obeisance be given to G od unconditionally. A hab, however, is a practiced son of Job and he w ould n o t take such "ignorant" or "Agnostic" counsel. Ahab will m arry his Protestant conviction to com m une w ith God directly w ith his Enlightenm ent confidence in his ow n hum an abilities to dis cover the truth. W ould that the captain had counselors to w arn of the dangers he invites through his irrational faith. Thoreau, for exam ple m ight invoke his anecdote of the sounding of W alden Pond. The Thoreau of W alden was aw are that the depth of the m etaphysical pond is precisely as deep as w e may sound. W hen hum ans first attem pted to m easure the depth of the Marianas trench (the deepest of underw ater trenches), they sent concentrated waves of sound dow nw ard and received no reflected reply. The trench was apparently bottomless! U nderestim ating the actual depth, they had drifted forw ard past the returning signals: they had failed to m atch their imaginations w ith their practical experiences. In W alden. Thoreau describes m en guilty of the reverse mistake: Others have gone dow n from the village w ith a "fifty-six" and a w agon load of inch rope, b u t yet have failed to find any bottom ; for while the "fifty-six" w as resting by the way, they w ere paying out the rope in the vain attem pt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for m arvellousness. (189) As w e readers im agine Ahab's charts w ith organically curved lines veining the m aps (or better, the globe) w e easily re-im agine the physiognom y and phrenology m etaphors already introduced by Ishmael. As a phrenologist 135 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w ould chart the vagaries and patterns evident on the hum an skull— such a mask!— w hile positing faith that such charting belies a knowable nature beyond the form , so also does Ahab create his ow n charts to "divine" for him self the nature or being behind the sensible form. But w hat Ahab suspects, he cannot accept. H e finds, in his study of the m ask, the suggestion that w hat lies behind the m ask is, perhaps, the author of his suffering, the author of all suffering, nothing, or at best a m ysterious an d indifferent author. Ahab determ ines to know w hat is behind the m ask. H e cannot accept any of those discovered possibilities as a w orthy authority— a captain w orth his obedience. George Steiner (as well as others) recognizes A hab's hunt to be the archetypal h u n t of all hum ans— and he recognizes in the mythic "tracings'' a pow er suggesting an author. In M elville's M obv-Dick. . . the m etam orphic energies of the m y th fiction almost appropriate to themselves the authority, the reassuring centrality of the scriptural- theological source. Even w ithin a dom estic, secular genre, w hich is that of the m odem novel, the great exemplars continue to ask... the one question ineradicable to man: Is there or is there not God? Is there or is there not m eaning to being. (Steiner 220) For Ahab— this novel’ s Fisher King— the only m eaning w ould be the presence of an answ erer. As Leon Seltzer notes, Ahab "needs desperately to assum e a significance in the workings of nature." (Seltzer 39) He has set himself upon a h u n t and he has locked him self into the pattern of that m etaphor. Sartre drew this conclusion also. M elville suddenly realized that there w as an idea in the w hale hunt; he saw "in a w hite heat" that strange tie 136 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. betw een m an and anim al, the hunt. A relationship of dizziness and death. (Sartre 96) A hab becomes determ ined to know that authority and to expose it as illegitim ate if it be so. In this regard Ahab invests in w hat to his Calvinist peers is a heresy, but w hat to som e early Christian Gnostics w as a central m atter: the possibility that the G od of the catholisized bible is n o t the ultim ate pow er and source but rather an inferior and corrupted dem iurge. Ahab invests in the Gnostic prom ise: th at a true authority exists b ehind the familiar biblical god (He who is jealous, H e w ho has allowed evil in the w orld) and that any h um an can come to know th at authority (or as V alentinus, a Gnostic of w hom M elville was aw are, nam ed it: the depth). A hab recognizes in the m ask a projection of som ething corrupt, som ething inconsistent w ith the supposed pow er and character of the Judeo- C hristian deity. Still determ ined by his faith in an all-powerful, loving god, he has com e to know by his "phrenological" readings of the m ask before him that some other thing than— som ething less than— that true and deserving Father— casts forth the corrupt m ask and therefore some greater thing m u st lie beyond. A hab fails to examine his ow n herm eneutic process. H e fails to consider the possibility that the m ask m ay refract the image behind, thereby presenting to the view er an image distorted by the m edium of the m ask itself. Ishmael u nderstands w hat Ahab does not. In his satirical underm ining of phrenology (in "The N ut") Ishmael provides the exam ple of the sperm w hale's great m elon as such a deceptive covering of the w hale's brain and skull: a m edium so thick and m isrepresentative of the underlying structures that it w ould 137 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prove a grossly inaccurate relief m ap for the phrenologist who w ould read the sperm w hale's bum py scalp. Ahab seeks a true an d deserving father, hidden behind the im postor w ho heaps him. H e cannot see the reductio ad absurdum of his effort. The Agnostic sounding of G od's origins is an exercise already perform ed by Thoreau's yeom en surveyors. As the surveyors w ould play out rope to sound W alden's depth, the A gnostic w ould play out hope and seek the creators of the Creator, only to then find a need to reiterate the search ad nauseum . In G nostic-Christian m ythology the creator of the physical w orld is presented as a creation him self. In The G nostic Gospels. Elaine Pagels w rites, T hrough the initiation V alentinus offers, the candidate learns to reject the creator's authority and all his dem ands as foolishness. W hat gnostics know is that the creator m akes false claim s to pow er (I am God, and there is no other") that derive from his ow n ignorance. Achieving gnosis involves com ing to recognize the true source of divine pow er— nam ely, "the d ep th " of all being. W hoever has come to know that source sim ultaneously comes to know him self and discovers his spiritual origin: he has come to know his true Father and M other. (37) A hab's faith in his prophetic charting— in the efficacy of the traces— goes far beyond Ishm ael’ s pragm atic conclusions. Ishm ael recognizes in the points on a chart (the "Season-on-the-Line") a prom ise of a conjunction, w here, "all possibilities w ould becom e probabilities, and, as Ahab thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty" (173). But Ishmael, unlike Ahab, seems to rem ain soberly aw are that a "prom ise" is vitalized only as potential energy— a prom ise articulate only in the future (and therefore "im perfect" tense). 138 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A true Gnostic believes in a special know ledge, in a transcendental knowledge experienced by the individual. A hab w ould hunt dow n such an experience, w ould seek such a Gnosis or epiphanic awakening— w hatever truth m ight be found at the end of his suggestive tracings. His ability to believe allows him to imagine an achievable goal; his occasional skepticism allows him som e freedom (even humility) to w onder at the nature of that unseen goal. And perhaps, it m ight be argued, Ishm ael is engaged in his ow n charting, that his chapters m ark out the tracings of his own devious cruising in search of his ow n Gnosis. Ahab is a believer and a skeptic. H e believes in the existence of a superior being— ev en one who is actively interested if not im m ediately present. Ahab is skeptical, how ever, of the m anifold presentations of such a being. Ahab w ould have this god, who girds him self in deceptive m askings and half truthful signings, stand before him for a reckoning. This, of course, is hubris. Ahab is refusing to grant God His right to remain m ysterious— His right to do as He sees fit— w ith or w ithout reason. A nd it is a hubris w ith an especially m odem tw ist. Ahab is not m erely disobeying his god by putting his ow n desires and w ishes first. He is claim ing that his god is not w orthy of obedience and that his ow n thoughts and actions are w orthy of equal m easure and contention to those of the deity. A hab's "arrogance" in this m atter is particularly outstanding w hen one considers the religious tradition he is supposed to have come from. In the 139 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Calvinist and Q uaker traditions, God is to be granted His right to rem ain m ysterious to the m inds of hum ans because H is w ays and thoughts are infinitely beyond the ken of m ere mortals. Such an expectation, that w orshippers m u st defer to "God's w isdom " even w hen it seems im penetrably confounding or irrational, is a burden increasingly heavy to the children of the Age of Reason. Ahab is su ch a m an— both traditional a n d m odem — who w ould have his thoughts and his reason in direct dialogue w ith those of his God. T hat G od, however, is not op en to such discourse. Critic T. W alter H erbert rem inds us that A hab's "arrogance" w ould strike against C alvinist doctrine as a ram against a wall. C alvinist theory proposed a universe in w hich independent thought is tantam ount to m adness, since the truths of G od infinitely transcend m an 's earthly reason. (H erbert 123) In Ishm ael's narrative, Ahab and Ishmael are b o th guilty of such m adness. Ishmael's actions— the very habits that disturbed M elville's friend, Evert Duyckink— are no less a transgression against the Calvinist G od's prerogatives than are A hab's shouted challenges. If they are different it is only in the pitch of their heretical rantings and in the fact that Ishm ael typically challenges the actions of believers on earth, while Ahab m arches directly against the deity Himself. In his cam paign, Ahab shows him self to be the fiercely practical m o d em Yankee, all the w hile indulging in his ancient an d grand superstitions. H arold Bloom, in O m ens of the M illennium, rem arks u p o n Ahab and sees the 140 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. C aptain's "arrogance" as som ething that has g ro w n to be essential to the Am erican character. H erm an M elville in Mobv-Dick. the m o st apocalyptic of m ajor A m erican novels, astonishingly prophesied just such a retu rn [to Zoroastrian origins] w h en he portrayed C aptain A hab n o t as a Q uaker C hristian (w hich Ahab m u st have been in his youth) b u t as a Z oroastrian fire- w orshipper, w hose ow n w haling b o at is staffed by Fedallah and other Parsis, still the w o rld 's last Z oroastrians. A hab's great outcry ("I'd strike the sun if it insulted me!") rings on as the ethos o f the current United States. (221) In m any w ays, A hab’ s hunt represents the m o d em hum an (and perhaps especially A m erican) enterprise of constructing an d utilizing tools and weapons to track an d perhaps capture or destroy the object of the chase. A hab uses the steel an d w ood and rope of his ship to aid his effort; he uses his charts and his experience; b u t he also uses the m inds a n d bodies of his men. A hab is scientific and m echanical in his m ethods, yet he is ready to call upon pow ers from dark and m ysterious forces, invoking w hom ever or w hatever m ay lend support to his single-m inded enterprise. W hether w e view his actions as logical or m ad, h e is alw ays ready to offer som e derivation to justify his intentions— som e articulation of the theorem s u n d erw ritin g his choices. This habit m arks h im as the post-enlightenm ent thinker. H e w ould have (or at least desire) reasons for acting, for following, for w orshipping. Though he is "m onom aniacal," "obsessive," and "dysfunctional" in a host of other w ays, he rem ains practical and logical in m ost of his actions. From his charting to his gam m ing to his secreting Fedallah on board, he shows m uch m eth o d in his madness. Even w h en he is described by Ishm ael 141 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as appearing to be consum ed by his ungodly ritual fires, as in the fire serm on or in his invitation to the corposants and the "clear spirit," his actions beg a certain practical rew ard. Am ong A hab's desires is that of bonding his m en in service to his quest. With his publishing of the doubloon to the m ast, w ith the m idnight ritual of blood, and through his frequent rem inders to the crew regarding their com m on venture for oil, Ahab m otivates his m en by appealing to their practical greediness w ith prom ise of material rew ard, all the while binding them to his service through their senses of duty and their acquiescence to the traditional m aritim e hegemony. There is a rabid cynicism in A hab's use of Christian ideology and ceremony. As he recognizes that w hich dissatisfies him — and in his m ind begs disrespect— he cynically turns that disrespect onto those around him still "entranced" b y the superstitious and pyrotechnic trappings of A hab's campaign. A hab is perfectly w illing to use the charisma of religious promise and cerem ony as a tool to influence his men. As he seeks to bind his m en to the task of hu n tin g and killing M oby Dick, he gives aw ay hints of his method. As he turns to his harpooners to have them drink from their sockets, he plants in their m inds a holy purpose to overcom e their trepidation. D isdain the task? W hat, w hen the great Pope w ashes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, m y sw eet cardinals! your ow n condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye w ill it. C ut your seizings and d raw the poles, ye harpooneers!" (146) As they begin to obey, Ahab apparently takes note of the razor sharp blades, probably only inches away, now turning in the hands of those he w ould 142 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. control. H e remarks u p o n the blades then seem s to reassure himself of his present purpose concerning these men. "Stab m e n o t w ith that keen steel! C ant them ; cant them over! know ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket!" (146) H is words, "C ant them; cant them over," are literally directed tow ard the m en. They seem equally appropriate, how ever, w hen im agined as directed by the captain tow ard himself. H e is rem inding himself of his purpose— his intention to persuade his m en to his quest and overcome their hesitations. If Ahab is rational in his intentions he does not appear so to his men. Ishm ael rem inds us that, "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true m ethod." (304) W hatever his actual beliefs in the efficacy of his abom inable rituals, Ahab rem ains aw are of the practical uses of his cultivated paganism . Ahab uses the strange rituals to both untether his m en from convictions (religious or otherwise) they m ight already have and to bind them as brethren to his purposes. To effect such a seduction, Ahab forgoes rational argum ent and begs the com pliance of his m en by appealing to their greed (with the doubloon) and their pride. H e even throws dow n a gauntlet of sorts, just after nailing the doubloon to the mast: "It's a w hite w hale, I say," resum ed Ahab, as he threw dow n the topm aul: "a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white w ater; if ye see but a bubble, sing out." (142) Once he is sure he has seduced all the m en save Starbuck, he turns upon the first m ate w ith a rem inder that Starbuck is now alone am ong the crew, then he offers both a rational argum ent and an appeal to the m an's pride. 143 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Stand u p am id the general hurricane, thy one to st sapling cannot, Starbuck! And w hat is it? Reckon it. ’ Tis b u t to help strike a fin; no w ondrous feat for Starbuck. W hat is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance o u t of all N antucket, surely he w ill not hang back, w h en every forem ast-hand has clutched a w hetstone. Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, b u t speak!— Aye, aye! thy silence, then, that voices thee. (144) Ishm ael does not tell us exactly w hy Starbuck stands silent. Is it from fear of the captain's or the m ob's authority and strength or has he been convinced by A hab's appeals? W e learn only that Ahab senses Starbuck's resignation. Ishm ael offers this to us in an aside m uttered by Ahab: "Som ething shot from m y dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is m ine; cannot oppose m e now , w ithout rebellion." (144) In this m atter, how ever, there is a little low er layer. A hab, in this scene, is a Hamlet: one w ho acts m ad for a public purpose— one w ho m ay or m ay not actually be m ad. By providing this narrative "aside" Ishm ael gives us to understand that Ahab is n o t so fire-consum ed as he m ay ap p ear to his men. He is certainly n o t so overcome by irrational im pulses that he cannot keep his m ind to his purpose and strategy. In another chapter, how ever, Ishm ael raises the question of A hab's sanity and intentions in the m inds of readers by invoking the m ysterious Fedallah. But did you deeply scan him [Ahab] in his m ore secret confidential hours w hen he thought no glance b u t one was on him ; then you w ould have seen that even as Ahab's eyes so aw ed the crew's, the inscrutable Parsee's glance aw ed his; or som ehow, at least, in som e w ild w ay, at tim es affected it. (438) 144 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The m ysterious influence of Fedallah serves the narrative b y holding Ahab fast and loose betw een the m aterial and spiritual w orlds. M elville/Ishm ael provides very little in the w ay of detailed or specific explanation regarding the degree to w hich Ahab falls u n d e r the spell of the Parsee. Perhaps here w e see M elville's m asterful hand at w ork. By show ing Ahab to be in the grip of som e superstitious reverie— and that superstition not a C hristian one— A hab's antagonistic relationship to his dom estic deity is left clearly defined. Ahab, living u p to the reputation of his biblical nam esake, is 19 investing in other idols. Even Ishm ael— the outsider— the one who w ould have us believe in his ow n sensibility, is m ost draw n into A hab's siren song w hen the excited old m an's cant plays upon his heartstrings. Ishmael is not seduced by the reasoning of A hab, b u t rather b y som e force aw akened d u rin g the fiery mob ritual presided over by the charism atic captain. He is called by the sirens and he slides involuntarily forw ard only checked because he rem ains tethered to the m ast of his skepticism. Ishm ael adm its slipping. "I gave m yself up," he says, "to the abandonm ent of the tim e and the place; b ut w hile yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute b u t the deadliest ill." (163) In the m inds of his crew, A hab m ay be less suspended betw een the m aterial and spiritual w orlds th an he is betw een the G odly an d the Demonic. 145 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. W ith little knowledge o f any "proper" religion represented by Fedallah, Flask and Stubb discuss the Parsee and locate him in a m ythology they understand. "But I som etim es think he’ ll charm the ship to no good at last. I d o n 't half like that chap, Stubb. D id you ever notice how th at tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake's head, Stubb?” "Sink him! I never look at him at all; b u t if ever I get a chance of a d ark n ig h t I take that Fedallah to be the devil in disguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been stowed away on b oard ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason w hy you d on't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. (275) A reader w ould be h a rd pressed to find any actions o n A hab's part that m ight legitim ately be labeled Satanic. Ahab has set his cam p against the Judeo- Christian God but he has n ot chosen to revere Satan. It is not, however, surprising that Stubb and Flask identify the shadow y figure of Fedallah as the devil. Such a fiction, invented in the minds of the m en of the Pequod serves Ahab well. Ahab know s w hat Ishmael w ould rem ind us: that "whalem en as a body [are] unexem pt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors," (156) and he w ould use such pre-rational superstitiousness am ong his subordinates to forw ard his ow n reasoned purposes. For all its tragic suggestings, this thinking is rational. Ahab is a fideist AND a rational m an. H is tragedy is that he floats on the sw ell between an older less rationally constructed time of faith (represented by the dark rituals 19 From Walter T. Herbert's Mobv-Dick and Calvinism: "The m ad sea captain, whose 'quenchless feud' Ishmael for a time wholly shares, is named for an old testament king whose major crime was that he reinstated the worship of the excluded canaanite divinities in the midst of the holy land." (106) 146 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and superstitions of his men) and a new er tim e of hum an calculation (represented by his Hamlet-like self-awareness). AHAB: HIS SKEPTICISM But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that zvinsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother zuorld, so long cruel— forbidding— nozu threw affectionate arms roimd his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however zvilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. (The Sym phony, 443) The m ost obvious form ulation of A hab's contention w ith God is that If God IS, then G od has authored A hab's pain o r G od has authored the agent of A hab's pain. I am interested in a subtle variation on this them e. W estern believers often start w ith the presum ption that G od is all-pow erful, all knowing, etc. and they then see the suffering in the w orld a n d seek to reconcile the two disparate "tru th s." Philosophers have long d ebated this "problem of evil" and m any of that cloth have presum ed that God exists— is om nipotent— is good— and is m ysterious. Ahab, how ever, comes to the debate a n d im m ediately cuts through the tangled knot w ith the edge of his ow n heretical skepticism. W ith rare, m om entary exceptions (and h e adm its this) Ahab is not skeptical of G od's existence. He is, how ever, skeptical regarding the nature and pow er and integrity of God. H e is skeptical of G od's character and 147 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. therefore of G od's claims and dem ands of obedience— of G od's w orthiness to com m and. A hab is skeptical of G od's authority. Ahab accepts that G od IS, but he refuses to accept that God is w o rth y of hum an obedience. He raises the question of w ho should w orship w hom . Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in m an all ill, Io you! see the om niscient go d s oblivious of suffering m an; an d m an, though idiotic, a n d know ing not w hat he does, y et full of the sw eet things o f love and gratitude. (428) M elville and Ishmael give us a delicious multiplicity of readings for A hab's unw illingness to obey God: — Ahab is too invested in the hierarchical structure of the maritime tradition he has grown up zoith. — Ahab is a simple obsessive zuho is unable to recognize any fellow-feelings and duties and responsibilities toward others. — Ahab is mad, untethered from the anchors that hold fast our ozun reasonings and motivations. — Ahab is a capitalist automaton. — Ahab is blinded by his ozun hubris. — Ahab is God's puppet, — Ahab is . . . All too often, Ahab is draw n as "w rong-headed," "crazy," insane, not only foolish or doom ed because he fights against an overpow erful foe (God or 148 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nature) b u t m ore significantly th at he is m orally w rong for doing so— that God is g o o d /N a tu re is N eutral and th at Ahab refuses to accept such truths. To posit a god who is "author of all" is to necessarily adm it that that god is connected to all and at least indirectly culpable for all that occurs. To extend the claim and say that th a t G od is "om nipotent," is to allow that God is always capable of alleviating suffering and always a voluntary, causal agent or perm issive witness to all continued suffering. I believe that A hab's thinking follows this path. The Calvinist tradition of course allows for the idea that God is author of all hum an pain. Calvinists, how ever, w ent one step further to claim that God, how ever, is n o t morally culpable for such suffering because hum ans have called that p ain and suffering onto them selves by virtue of their willful sinfulness. To illustrate the vitality of A hab's skepticism, Ishm ael skillfully sets Starbuck against Ahab (literally and figuratively). Starbuck recoils from A hab's w ords several times but never m arries action to his supposed beliefs. In one scene from chapter 132, "The Sym phony" Ahab begins to explain the w eight he believes God has assigned him to carry and the profundity of the schism now dividing him from his God. I feel deadly faint, bow ed, and hum ped, as though I were A dam , staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!— crack my heart!— stave m y brain!— mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let m e look into a hum an eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. (444) 149 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A m om ent then passes betw een the tw o m en in w hich A hab's resolve seems w eakened and Starbuck sees the m om ent as an opportunity to sw ay his captain aw ay from the fated course. But in that m om ent Starbuck seems to grossly underestim ate the d ep th of A hab's convictions and the complications of his captain's skepticism. A hab begins to ask— perhaps of Starbuck, perhaps of himself: W hat is it, w hat nam eless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; w hat cozening, hidden lord and master, an d cruel, remorseless em peror com m ands me; that against all natural lovings an d longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jam m ing myself on all the tim e . . . (444-45) Ishm ael never provides Starbuck's reasoned or faith-inform ed response. He sim ply describes Starbuck's visible reaction: "blanched to a corpse's hue w ith despair, the M ate had stolen aw ay." (445) Starbuck is, perhaps, m ost typically read as a rational m an who witnesses the desperate actions of m ad Ahab. He is seen by m any as one w ho fails to screw his courage u p to act in concert w ith his faith and conviction. If doubt flashes in his heart, it is a m om entary doubt in him self that w eakens his resolve. But can we not also read Starbuck as one possibly struck dum b, not only by A hab's apparent m adness b u t also by the "truths" Ahab m ay represent— by the truths that A hab's actions may dis-cover? Starbuck is presented in the dram a as the one closest at hand to A hab's stabbing at God. Starbuck is close to Ahab and yet kept away. Perhaps Ahab understands w hat has happened to Pip and w hat will h ap p en to Starbuck. As the chase nears its end, A hab em braces Pip emotionally to grant w hat sm all 150 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. com fort his fraternity m ight offer. But Ahab repels Starbuck. Ahab, m ore th an anybody perhaps, u nderstands the fall Starbuck w ill take should the faithful first m ate come too near a tru th for which he has not allow ed room. Ahab, himself, never w aivers in his faith that an object of real presence sw im s and laughs som ew here in his world. H e has assigned to the w hite w hale all culpability for his pain, confusion, ignorance, and fear. In a strong sense the white w hale of M obv-Dick is perhaps the m ost invested objective 20 correlative in literature. The whale is the signifier/ object/intelligibility standing in for w hat A hab seeks. A nd though A hab, in his m ore lucid, rational m om ents, recognizes the w hale to be the m ask of God and not G od itself (a "pasteboard mask") he succumbs to the seduction of his im m ediate perceptions, the tangible accidentals, and his ow n hum an will to know . This is Ahab's fatal confusion: he loses his pow ers of distinction to separate the w hale from those things accidental to the w hale (including his ow n m etaphoric and allegorical heapings). Moby Dick— the corporeal, concrete animal— IS NOT w h at A hab seeks and therefore cannot satisfy his quest. Were Ahab to have articulated his quest as the "searching for" or 20 It is always worthwhile to remember that Melville's investment of the correlative is in the tradition of biblical literature and criticism itself. Calvinists of Melville's time insisted upon the idea that the "second text" of God is nature itself. 151 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "hunting of" (i.e.: an act in the present progressive), he m ight have realized before his destruction th at he "w as satisfying" his quest.- Ahab seeks an ideal W HALE now grow n to Godlike proportion in his ow n m ind. The real w hale has no pow er to satisfy his quest; the real whale, the m aterial anim al, can only end it— by ending Ahab. This is not Ahab's search— abruptly ended w ith a horrible discovery. Ahab fails long before h e m eets the whale; he fails even before the Pequod sails w hen he unknow ingly substitutes a new object for the original object of his search. H e begins his search (probably as Ishmael suspects, in his sick-bed just after losing his leg) chasing one object— an Idea— and ends it finding another— a reed entity. Those things w hich he has projected onto the living w hale are horrors better left attached to som e ideal object. But Ahab has transferred these unreal objects onto a real entity— onto an object located in a place and time. W hen he arrives at that place and time he fails to realize, as Ishm ael does, that M oby Dick (the object found) is only a w hale— a living brute— perhaps a sovereign other w ith an intentional intelligence but som ething other than the ideal object Ahab has been seeking. Ahab cannot recognize a new object; h e sees only void, an em ptiness in that location w here all his chartings and reckonings had draw n (as certain) a W hite Whale, The Face of God. 21 More than one hundred years later Hemingway would construct his own fictional hero struggling against a great fish. And the hero would fail to bring his fish in so that his companions might "make a banquet of him" and "part him among the merchants?" But the hero would not fail despite being broken, for Hemingway's old man knows by the end of his narrative that he has fished well. 152 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Melville dem onstrates at one brilliant stroke, by m aking the Idea a living, breathing leviathan, the point Benjamin tirelessly argues: the idea cannot be directly presented to the consciousness. The conceptualization inherent in allegory, how ever, becomes its leading epistemological advantage once one sees that the notion of "manifesting the Idea" is a delusion. For phenom ena in their base state cannot participate in truth; they m ust first be broken up into concepts, becom ing accessible to the intellect. . . the concepts do not present real know ledge but only m ap o u t the configuration of the idea . . . (Cow an 110) Ahab's fatal m ovem ent of 'bad faith” is n o t the hubris of his logocentric conviction that there is a w hale at the end of the wake, but rather his inability to survive the vortex (for Sartre the Nausea) he finds where he had hoped to find HIS whale. A hab's quest is extinguished w ith his life. Literally, of course, he is killed by a w hale— but this is only incidental. More im portantly, a Calvinist m ight say, Ahab has brought his fate u p o n himself. T hough God m ay have sparked the w hale's actions, H e did so only because Ahab (and all hum ans) "have asked for it." Literally, Ahab does m eet a whale. All the m en m eet the w hale— his hum p like a snow-hill— and they are satisfied, satisfied they have reached the goal (for they have established a concrete and real object as their goal). But they do not heed Hegel's w arning that "in the event [sense]-certainty proves itself to be the m ost abstract and poorest truth." (Hegel 58) They have m et a living, breathing w hale b u t not the object of A hab's hunt— not the W hale that haunts their C aptain— there is no true "gam" effected, no m onkey-rope secured between. 153 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The m en seek n o t— desire not— th e W hite Whale; they w ant the doubloon if anything, and w h a t they believe it m ight offer them. O nly Ahab seeks dow n into the "little low er level" and desires that w hich is beyond the sensible. The m en show trepidation about facing th e w hale and this belies the fact th at they have invested the w hale w ith supernatural portent. They w ould claim their captain is m ad. But it is Ahab who, a t one m om ent in the narrative, rem inds Starbuck that M oby Dick is m erely a w hale, a flesh and bone anim al. By the final chapters, the crew are m ore than ready to see Moby Dick as som ething more than anim ate w haleflesh; they have allow ed the w hale to grow in their m inds into terrible Proportion and Possibility. But the little low er level is an Ideal w orld filled w ith Ideal things. Ahab tells the pragm atic Starbuck— a m an read y to battle a real w hale w ith a crooked jaw — that he "requirest a little low er layer," im plying that Starbuck connects not w ith M oby Dick in any m etaphysical way. Starbuck, him self asserts his choice to confront the Real and not the Ideal: "I came here to h unt whales, not m y com m ander's vengeance." (143) Starbuck does not w ish to open his m ind to the low er layer, for only in that realm can he m eet A hab's Whale— the beast of Idea and m etaphor. Starbuck's telling claim is w orldly, practical, and pragm atic— an d perhaps, in a w ay, less than faithfully Christian. He is w illing to chase the whale if it should com e in his line of sight. "I am game for his crooked jaw ," claims Starbuck, "an d for the jaws of D eath too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the w ay of the business we follow ..." (143)— that business being a 154 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m aterial exercise. Interestingly, Starbuck is often read as th e "secure" Christian— the m an of faith. H e seem s, how ever, less likely than any m an on board the P equod to consider the idea th at M oby Dick m ig h t actually be an agent of the very G od, he Starbuck w orships. Starbuck d o esn 't seem to entertain the possibility that his G od is testing Ahab as his G od once tested Job. In this regard Starbuck rem inds us again of the advisors to Job. His council to his suffering friend is em pty (and misses the m ark) in its orthodox parochialism . The arg u m en t that Moby Dick is b u t a dum b brute— separate from his creator is predicated on a belief passed dow n through orthodox Christianity that there is a G od and He is essentially separate from his creation. But in a strong traditional sense, Moby Dick is G od— at least G od in a m aterially m anifested presence. W alter T. H erbert notes that, "The presence of God in the w hale m akes it sacram ental, a theophanic object." (141) This is the sense in w hich A hab succeeds and Starbuck fails to recognize the "G odly" in Moby Dick. If the faithful— characters such as Starbuck, M apple a n d others— can believe th a t G od sent the whale to sw allow up the m an Jonah, they should also be open to the possibility that G od sent M oby Dick to to rtu re and test the m an Ahab. A hab's faith is expansive enough to allow for him to believe this. Starbuck's faith, how ever, is the m ean faith of C hristians w ho believe that once— no longer, b u t rather back in ancient tim es— God shew ed his face and visited h u m an s directly or at least physically through m essengers. 155 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Starbuck will keep his w hales and his ideas separate: he w ould read the story of Jonah as fiction, perhaps as an allegory. H e w ould, perhaps, carry the m essage of M apple's lesson w hile considering the pulpiteer m erely a fabulist or a "hideous and intolerable" allegorist. For the Calvinist, all events are preordained and all things originate from Him . Calvin w ould agree w ith Ahab that God d id send Moby Dick to reap aw ay the m an's leg. Ahab how ever, indulges in the lower layer; he invests in the notion of preordination, connecting the idea w ith the flesh, cem enting the sinister pair w ith m etaphor and allegory consistent w ith Calvin's system . W here Ahab m ust part w ith Calvin is w here C alvin abandons all prom ise in the efficacy of hum an, rational effort. Ahab adm its w orth and influence to the sovereign m ind of God. But he also adm its of the w orth and sovereignty of the w ill of hum ans. AHAB: HIS M ADNESS Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty woidd answer me. Job 31:35 Is Ahab m ad, or is Ahab m erely Ahab? The m onom ania, the "insanity," the obsessiveness of Ahab is a favorite topic of Melville readers. M any readers of M obv-Dick judge Ahab to be "m ad" for he seem s to see it as reasonable to pit him self against the all pow erful God they them selves worship. Ishm ael calls him "crazy." W ithin a fram ew ork predicated u p o n the existence and im m anence of an all-powerful God, A hab's actions are at most, Psychotic, and 156 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. at least, a w ager placed at infinitely long odds. W alter T. H erbert, in Moby- Dick and Calvinism , identifies and contextualizes the actions of a hum an under the eyes of C alvin's God. The orthodox considered such conscious resistance to divine w arnings as an exam ple of reprobate fury in its distinctly intellectual aspect: reprobate m adness .... G od ordains the insanity of rage to confound the reprobate, to check his potential destructiveness, and to bring about his ruin in a w ay that will provide a salutary lesson for the faithful. The destruction of the reprobate, while it is fully ordered and controlled by God, is nonetheless arranged so as to m ake it evident that the reprobate has brought his destruction u pon himself. (121) One reading of A hab's mania that has received too little attention is that Ahab despite his obsessiveness is not m ad in his intentions b u t rath er that, in his situation, "right w orship is defiance": that Ahab knowingly, w illingly and freely chooses to heap and stab at the heart of the God who has heaped and stabbed at him. I do not m ean that Ahab is practically wise in his decisions or that the outcom e for such activity (w ithin the logic of his world) could (or should) be any different, I am sim ply forw arding the hypothesis that Ahab is honorable and even heroic in his contentiousness w ith a deity that is, at best, disinterested and at w orst, evil in intention. We can see A hab's "m adness" from a different but valuable perspective by focusing our attention around the w ord "m adness" as it alludes to anger. Critic Raymond P. Scheindlin notes that as the book of Job progresses, "in the course of the exchange of speeches w ith the friends, he [Job] has m ade emotional progress, m oving from despair to defiance." (Scheindlin, N otes 207) Job is defiant and Job is angry— angry at his peers for their counsel b u t also 157 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. angry that h e is not being forthrightly told w hy and for w h at sins he is suffering. Job also seems angry at God. Such anger is w hat allow s us to understand the sarcastic tone of G od's voice as it em erges h o rn the w hirlw ind. T hen the LORD answ ered Job out of the w hirlw ind, and said, Who is this th at darkeneth counsel by w ords w ithout knowledge? G ird up now thy loins like a m an; for I will dem and of thee, and answ er thou me. W here w ast thou w h en I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou h a st understanding. (Job 38:1-4) In the biblical story God proceeds to chastise Job for his presum ptuousness indirectly b y asking rhetorical questions of Job— questions th a t sarcastically rem ind Job of his insignificance and ignorance in relation to the pow er and w isdom of the Creator. Scheindlin summarizes: "Yahweh begins his second speech w ith the sarcastic dem and that Job defend him self an d dem onstrate his right and pow er to challenge Y ahw eh as he has done." (Scheindlin N. 219) Job is stunned into silence b y the rebuke. But after G od speaks again Job answers an d adm its that he has been prideful in his challenges to God. . . . Therefore have I u ttered that I understood not; things too w onderful for m e, w hich I knew not. H ear, I beseech thee, and I will speak .... I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: b u t now m ine eye seeth thee. (Job 42:3- 5) . . . the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My w ra th is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of m e the thing that is right, as m y servant Job hath. (Job 42:7) "The thing" th at Job has spoken that seem s to placate G od is Job's acknow ledgm ent that he is separate from and inferior to G od the Creator. 158 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Yahweh's invocation of the m etaphors rem ind Job that he is the created, ignorant child and not the creating, all-knowing father. Like Job, Ahab is angry th a t G od will not show H is face, that the deity w hom A hab sees as culpable for h um an suffering w ill n o t answ er to charges. Unlike Job, A hab does not enjoy an unm ediated conversation w ith God. Job hears the voice out of the w hirlw ind. A hab's intercourse w ith God, however, seems (at least to Ahab) to be despicably confounding a n d opaque. M ost Christians probably w ould argue that G od's voice and message to the prideful is available in the w ritten Logos. This is a v ery fair contention. In a time such as I have been describing, however, w hen the very authority of the W ritten W ord seems com prom ised, perhaps even specious, the "believer w ith questions" m u st see it as justified to seek unm ediated discourse. Such a believer w ill hope for A hab's subpoena to be met. "'If the gods choose to speak,' he claims, 'they w ill honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old w ive's darkling hint.'" (452) Ahab is torm ented by om ens and prophecies, by faintly perceived hieroglyphics, by suggestions w hispered into his listing ear, b u t also by the very m ystery and indeterm inacy of the signs around him . — The Parsee— the Parsee!— gone, gone? and he w as to go before:— b u t still w as to be seen again ere I could perish— H ow ’ s that?— There’ s a riddle now m ight baffle all the law yers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:— like a hawk's beak it pecks m y brain. I'll, I'll solve it, though!" (459) As it is w ith Job, the fact of "n o t know ing" seems to be the b u rd en most straining on Ahab. M elville w as sensitive to such palpable duress— to the pain 159 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that accompanies ignorance— the pain that nags at the sovereign hum an, granted free-will b u t cast dow n into ignorance. The original readers of Mobv-Dick also w ould have had their own unique vantage point— a view of the narrative that m ight enliven their identification w ith Ahab. Ante-bellum Americans w ere Post-Enlightenment citizens of a young Democracy. W here ignorance m ight have been an acceptable (even at tim es praisew orthy) personal quality to the follower of Ancient A uthority, such ignorance seemed anathem a to a system wherein each citizen is an authority. The concept of democracy (as it is tied to enlightenm ent liberalism) is predicated upon the ability of citizens to govern themselves. But in turn, the ability of citizens to govern them selves well is predicated on the idea th at citizen choices will be em pow ered by sufficient knowledge and not ham pered by the ignorance that grinds the significance of "free w ill" exceedingly small. M any early Christians (as well as Jews before them ) raised m any such issues related to the "know ledge" of "God" available to or secreted away from hum ans. The Gnostic Christians w ere a diverse group of "believers" who supported various ideas and texts eventually to be suppressed by church authority. W hereas several sections of the canonized Bible (such as Job's torture, the haw kish dem eanor of G od and his Old T estam ent armies) contain stories or elem ents difficult to jibe w ith the more generally accepted image of God as the beneficent G od of Love, m any of the Gnostic texts forthrightly 160 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contradict ideas w e have com e to consider as essential to an understanding of the Judeo-Christian m ythos. Ishm ael's narrative contains very few overt an d specific references to Gnosticism. W hen A hab's m adness is considered in its particulars, how ever, a striking num ber of contentions and ideas prom ulgated by the Gnostic C hristians become visible in the text of M obv-Dick. In a substantial sense A hab's m adness can be read as a form of Gnostic w orship and his quest m ay be seen as a journey in search of Gnosis. Of course this in no w ay dim inishes the seriousness of A hab's heresy and pridefulness. The "Gnostic" elem ents of A hab's cam paign are still heretical. But the w ord "m adness," perhaps seem s a less than accurate depiction of Ahab's voicing into the w hirlw ind. In Mobv-Dick. A hab entertains the idea th at som ething exists behind the "m ask" or "wall." If the Gnostics were correct, a n d a "truer" God exists behind the creator w hom w e know only by our m aterial connection (the m ask and other signs encountered in nature) and by the Logos of the Bible, then A hab is guilty only of heresy— or reprobate m adness— a gainst that lesser god and not necessarily against the ultim ate god. In fact his effort to strike through the m ask to dis-cover w hat is beyond m ig h t be interpreted as a refusal to honor the "false" god who stands betw een hum ans and the greater god. A refusal to honor a false god is a conviction and value derived from Old Testam ent scripture, and Gnostics generally considered the God of the O ld 161 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Testam ent, the G od of A braham , to be the false, o r lesser god. Some G nostics considered H im to be the deceptive god and the m alevolent God. Of course this d o esn 't exonerate the G od beyond the creator regarding the nagging questions of Theodicy. Again, if the "D epth" as V alentinus called it did not directly au th o r the evil that hum ans encounter and suffer, the D epth at least tacitly enabled it. W e are again back to the essential problem s of Theodicy. O f course if w e entertain the m ythos o f the Gnostics w e need rem em ber that the C reator, the Depth, the C reator's M other— indeed the entire pantheon of higher beings— is not saddled by the h u m an expectation th at "H e is the One True G od" an d "H e is the God of Love" as is the Judeo-C hristian D eity in conventional C hristian worship. Melville w as probably aw are that invoking th e Gnostic idea of a h id d e n G od behind the h id d en G od ad d ed w onderful, terrible levels to his m etaphors exploring the opacity of the m edium set betw een hum ans and their deities. By invoking this idea Melville, am ong other things, opens his narrative and the entire set of m etaphors vivified by the Judeo-C hristian m ythos to som e radically alternative allusions. In the m ind of a conventional C hristian reader (such as D uyckink), A hab's/M elville's use of references to Gnostic Scripture in a m anner th at seem s to grant the G nostic Deities and m ythos m ore or less equal validity to the Deity and m ythos of the canonized bible, is blasphem ous at least. To the unbelieving reader (or to the believer w ho is less sensitive to, or m ore forgiving of, the fiction w riter's prerogative to take "poetic license"), how ever, Ishm ael/M elville is sim ply following long edified 162 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. literary conventions by draw ing from the prevailing religious m y thos— in this case the Judeo-C hristian mythos. The only novelty here is that Ishm ael/M elville reaches back and draw s forth some of the m ore obscure, often neglected "heroes and villains" of the ancient Judeo-Christian m ythos. The O phites (one group of Gnostics), for example, described the Genesis story in dram atically different fashion from that of the canonized O ld Testament. Some of them said that the serpent, ophis. was really Sophia, the m other of the C reator God, and like the Lum inous Jesus in other Gnostic sects she gave A dam and Eve the fruit of knowledge, gnosis, to help them com bat the tyranny of God. (Bamstone 659) D raw ing upon the ideas of the O phites is particularly apt here. Thomas Vargish, in his terrific essay, "Gnostic M ythos in Mobv-Dick." notes that we have little to go on regarding M elville's exposure to Gnosticism. In M obv-Dick itself, M elville's single direct reference is to a Gnostic sect called the "O phites." In Chapter xli, he pictures them worshipping their "Statue-Devil" and com pares them w ith Ahab w ho had personified all the subtle demonisms of life and thought" in the w hite w hale. (Vargish 273) V argish continues to say that A ndrew N orton's Evidences of the Genuineness of the G ospels w as probably M elville's prim ary source for inform ation about the Gnostics and that in the Evidences. w e learn that the Ophites held the common gnostic opinion that the creator of the w orld was not the Suprem e G od, nor was the creator even thought to be at all spiritual, but opposed to the spiritual principle in m an. (V argish 273) 163 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A hab grapples w ith som e of the very same issues m any early Christians (before the catholicization of the prim itive church) faced. Elaine Pagels, one of the leading scholars on Gnosticism, argues in The Gnostic Gospels that early church politics, probably m ore th an any other m atter invited the expulsion of various texts and teachings from w h at was then only the scattered and heterogeneous elements of the future canon. Most of the Gnostic texts now available to us were not available to Melville. The N ag H am m adi texts, for exam ple— a collection that m akes the vast majority of the present Gnostic archive w ere first unearthed in u p p er Egypt in 1945. The "heresies," however, in their generic forms w ere know n to many. Interestingly, some of the Gnostic beliefs were know n only indirectly, during the centuries w hen the original texts w ere lost but scholars had access to various preserved "answers" an d denouncem ents to the "heresies." M uch of the "Gnosticism" in M obv-Dick. therefore, should be seen as naive or coincidental to original Gnostic beliefs. Or, at best, w e can say that Melville extrapolated profoundly from the Gnostic ideas available to him in 1851- arriving through his own philosophical m eanderings at m any of the same conclusions reached by early Gnostics. In either case, the degree to which A hab's skepticism and "reprobate m adness" coincide w ith ancient Gnostic practice seem s more than casually superficial and m ore than accidental. A hab's Gnosticism seem s an unstudied response to various "problem s" not adequately reconciled in the scriptures or by believers through history. His contentiousness w ith the biblical G od m ust be seen (w ithin the fram ework 164 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of canonized Christian doctrine) as heretical disobedience. From w ithin a broader fram ew ork, how ever, A hab's challenging of G od, his insistence that G od m eet him as an equal, his suspicion that the God of his youth (The Old Testam ent C reator God) m ay n o t be the suprem e G od, th at the God he has encountered (as m anifested in the events of his life an d as indirectly m anifested through the suffering w orld Ahab knows) is less than an O m nipotent God, less than a Loving God, and possibly even a hum an- despising G od; show Ahab to be a Gnostic Christian, m ad only in the sense that all heretics are m ad in the eyes of the orthodox. AHAB: HIS M UTINOUS ANSWER TO GOD As A hab is the new Job, em boldened by the P rotestant Prom ise (that he m ay know G od imm ediately) an d by his Enlightenm ent Confidence (that he is the center of his world), w e can im agine his conversation w ith the creator. The voice out o f the w hirlw ind: Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook. Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin zuith barbed irons? Or his head zoith fish spears? Ahab: I can. A s A hab stabs at the heart of M oby Dick two of the strongest lines of M elville's m aster m etaphors splice together. The paradigm of "God as the father of th e hum an family" a n d "the Captain as the father of a shipboard fam ily" reach a conflation as M oby Dick and Ahab are b ro u g h t together. As h e declares and acts in m utiny against the G o d /F a th er he sees as undeserving of obedience and w orship, he becomes the C aptain/F ather 165 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. undeserving of obedience. A hab's great crime, for m any readers, is not the heretical act of disobedience he so famously com m its against God, b u t rather that in his self-centered cam paign, he dooms his m en— all b u t one alone— to death. Ahab has come to realize w h at for him is a truth: a rational conclusion draw n together from the chartings and tracings he has m ade of G od's destructive path on earth. A hab's G od— the biblical G od, be H e the agent of a G reater God or be H e principal— is undeserving of obedience. His God, Ahab has come to realize is an u n fit captain. Therefore Ahab achieves the truest and deepest expression of his ow n being by coming to the furious conviction th at for him "right worship is defiance." (Herbert 147) A hab's m utiny against his God can be justified according to a long established calculus set d o w n b y skeptical philosophers. But perhaps Ishmael w ishes to tell a different story of hum ans and their gods. A hab's tale m ight easily have ended w ith his death. But the captain's m onom aniacal rage takes in m any m ore victims as M oby Dick sinks the Pequod. In his unchecked arrogance Ahab fails to escape the very paradigm of m aster and servant that he claims to despise. All those around him suffer for his deeds. His "children" suffer for the self-consum ing rage of their "father." In M elville's Q uarrel w ith G od Lawrance T hom pson makes a w onderful com m ent about M elville's authoring of Mobv-Dick. 166 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Again his ultim ate goal was to tell a story w hich w ould illuminate, obliquely, his personal declaration of Independence n o t only from the tyranny of Christian dogma, but also from the sovereign tyranny of God Almighty. W ith appropriate irony he tu rn ed to the Bible for inspiration, particularly to the book of Job. W ithout any great difficulty he could identify him self w ith the suffering Job, and could join Job in blam ing G od for all the sorrows, woes, evils which distressed and perplexed him. (14 7) Thom pson levels this charge against Melville b u t as w ith so m any other com m ents in his book, it certainly applies m ore accurately to Ahab. A nd yet even regarding Ahab I w ould rew rite this som ew hat from a "differently biased" perspective. The italicized text that follows is mine. Ahab's ultim ate goal is to live a story w hich w ould illuminate, directly and honestly, his personal declaration of Independence n o t only from the tyranny of Christian dogma, but also from the sovereign tyranny of God. With appropriate efficacy he turns to the Bible for evidence, particularly to the book of Job. W ithout any great difficulty he identifies himself with the suffering Job, and can join Job in blam ing God for all the sorrow s, woes, evils which distress a n d perplex him— except th at Job in the end resigns him self to the will of the brutal, undeserving god and Ahab wills him self to act otherwise. I say Ahab intends to "live" a story because A hab is always self consciously aware that he is filling a role in a great dram a. To Starbuck Ahab exclaims, Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act's im m utably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and m e a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am Fate's lieutenant; I act under orders. (459) Ahab (and Melville) is exploiting the ghastly conceits of Calvinism (and hurling this problematic notion into the face of the faithful Starbuck): the very 167 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. claim that our acts are predeterm ined; that no actions we m ight w ill o r comm it can invite grace and that we are deserving victims of a G od w ho deceives us and pains us precisely because w e deserve it. Melville w inds his skein w ith this gran d conceit and then draw s out for us two heroes desperately struggling to disentangle them selves from it: the faithful tragic figure, Ahab; an d the faithless, liberal, free-thinking, comic hero, Ishm ael. Ahab draw s up o n this notion m ore th an once during the narrative. Readers see evidence th at Ahab— at least at tim es— feels that som e external pow er forces him to do w hat his m ind and h eart w ould not. But do w e take him at his w ord? Is he merely voicing one of the possible truths he sees? Is he being sarcastic? Exploiting a sticking point of Calvinist doctrine to insult the deity? Is he simply waylaying the fears of others, by telling them that he is not mad for he is not freely choosing to follow this mad path? It is difficult to believe that Ahab buys into the idea that his actions are predeterm ined. The strongest, clearest m om ents in the narrative w herein Ahab invokes the notion of determ inism are m om ents Ahab shares w ith Starbuck. O ne possible reading then is that A hab's com m ents m ay be direct challenges offered to the faithful Mate— challenges that beg Starbuck to contradict or sue for A hab's interpretation o f Calvinist orthodoxy. Should 168 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Starbuck do either, Ahab will have successfully draw n him into the skeptical quarrel w ith G od. W e do see A hab in a critical m om ent questioning Starbuck (and perhaps himself) reg ard in g forces he feels are driving him onw ard, virtually anim ating his limbs. W hat is it, w hat nam eless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; w h at cozening, h id d en lord and m aster, and cruel, rem orseless em peror com m ands m e; that against all n a tu ra l lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crow ding, and jam m ing m yself o n all the time; recklessly m aking m e ready to do w h a t in m y ow n proper, natural heart, I du rst not so m uch as dare? . . . w e are turned ro u n d and round in this w orld, like yonder w indlass, an d Fate is the handspike. (445) Perhaps A hab is heaping another insult u p o n his God, using The W ord against its A uthor, b y blam ing the deity for A hab's ow n disobedience. Is A hab, Ahab? Is it I, G od, or w ho, th at lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of him self; b u t is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, b ut by som e invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one sm all brain think thoughts; unless God does th at beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, m an. (445) In B eneath the American Renaissance M atthiesson m akes a com m ent concerning M elville and Ahab that seeks to draw together possible causes for M elville's a n d A hab's frustrated grappling w ith Fate, Original Sin, and Heresy. T he length to w hich the captain carried his belief in the fixity of Fate makes a searching com m ent on the theological decay that conditioned M elville's thought. H e recognized the inadequacy of transcendentalism on m ost o f the essential problem s; b u t w hen he tried to reassert the significance of Original Sin, there w as no orthodoxy that 169 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he could accept. W hen he exam ined the dying Calvinism in w hich he had been brought up, his m ind could discover there only the M anichean heresy, which its founders had staunchly repudiated. Its determ inism became for him the drastic distortion th at he projected in Ahab's career, w herein there w as no possibility of regeneration since there rem ained no effectual faith, in the existence of divine grace. (Matthiessen 458) I cannot follow M atthiessen so far as to read Ahab as believing in the fixity of Fate. A hab in character, as I read him , is more akin to Beowulf w ho faces the serpent aw are of the serpent's overw helm ing strength, unconvinced of his ow n possibility for victory, b u t also unconvinced of his ow n probability for failure. M uch good w ork has been done (by W right, H erbert and others) regarding A hab's identification w ith either Jonah or Job. In a very im portant way, A hab is both Jonah and Job. Both biblical m yths are predicated on the ability of each m an to choose to obey or disobey God. Each, of course, is under duress (Father Mapple w ould rem ind us we are alw ays under such a duress). I say that each m yth is predicated on the m ortal's ability to freely choose because each m yth loses all im port w hen we read it w ithout granting the idea of free choice. They become, instead, illustrations of predeterm ined actions, cautionary tales of a sort recorded for an audience of hum ans who them selves have no freedom to ignore or learn from such tales. N o m atter the protestations of Ahab and those others w ho w ould believe in the fixity of fate; it seems relatively clear to most of us today that, in the Genesis story, hum ans have been granted by their creator the ability and burden of free-thought— that is, the ability to make choices of their ow n 170 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sovereign volition. The entire concept of original sin hinges upon the idea that hum ans (A dam and Eve being the first) were able to choose to obey or to disobey God. Believers have struggled for centuries to reconcile the idea of G od's foresight w ith the idea of hum an free-will. Ishm ael's narrative is greatly concerned w ith obedience and the possibility of rebellion. Early in the novel Ishm ael relates father M apple's serm on and therein M apple's version of the Jonah story: As w ith all sinners am ong men, the sin of this son of Am ittai was in his w ilful disobedience of the comm and of God— never m ind now w hat that com m and was, or how conveyed— which he found a hard com m and. But all the things that God w ould have us do are hard for us to do— rem ember that— and hence, he oftener com m ands us than endeavors to persuade. A nd if w e obey God, we m ust disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, w herein the hardness of obeying G od consists.(45) W ithin such a framework Ahab cannot escape culpability for his actions. The im plication in M apple's w ords is that we are instructed by God to act in w ays we— w ithout His guidance— w ould not have chosen. A hab's wilfulness then is an action of free will no m atter the "hardness" or w eight of duress God w ould place u s under. In the search and charge after his abstract an d vague hobgoblins, Ahab m akes the w hale into a "thing" in his m ind— a thing that is both means and end. Likewise, he makes all m en and harpoons an d lines things also, but only things as m eans. For Ahab, they are tools, utilities subordinate to his will— just 171 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as the w hite w hale (and all it represents) will one d ay be subordinate to his w ill. To assert that will, he uses and destroys a thing to prove control over it. A ll his actions, how ever, are not absolute. To nam e a thing is also to posit som e degree of control— to lay som e claim u p o n the object. But just as w e claim the thing through language, w e also reify its presence (in the subjective m ind, if not in the real w o rld ). Ahab's ultim ate error is that he believes in the identity of names and things. H e calls the w hite w hale evil, then affirms that it is evil. The violence w ith w hich he speaks of the w hale as a w all and a m ask th ro u g h w hich he w ants to sm ash is a m anifestation of his annihilating egoism. (Tanner 22) A hab’ s error here goes beyond th at of the logocentric speaker (who adam antly claim s continuity betw een the m arker and the m arked). Ahab claims continuity between the body an d the idea. H e has gone beyond com m on projection. By nam ing the objects— projecting onto them , fetishizing them , hyper-determ inizing them — A hab (in his m ind) carries into his ow n physical w orld, all the heaped fears an d horrors that can live only in the ocean of the ideal and unreal. For Ahab, those horrors ride the w hale's body like barnacles. Ahab's error is very m uch an error of language. He believes he can hold M oby Dick in the present tense. But time itself has no reality in the sam e sense as a whale does. The notion and language of tim e cannot strap the real, cannot as Hegel w ords it "cope w ith that sheer u n rest of life and its absolute distinction." (Hegel 27) Time is a convenient (perhaps necessary) m etaphorical system invented to help us m ap ou r perceptions of change. It is a series of wrinkles on a chart, wrinkles on a m an, w rinkles on the brow of a 172 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. whale. But tim e and the tenses of language cannot capture the real. Ahab forgets this. A dead whale is m ere m atter; its essential reality has departed. The w hale is m ost real w hen it is actually plunging through the sea, and then it cannot be appropriated, only appreciated, as M elville (qua Ishmael] appreciates it in som e of the m ost beautiful prose in Am erican literature. It is an illusion to think w e can ever "catch" reality. (Tanner 22) Despite this limitation, language (w ith its tenses of time) is valuable to us in that it can trace the object for us, noting changes and m ovem ents. It can provide us w ith intelligible patterns (vapor trails around ions, wakes behind whales) w ith which w e m ight come nearer to connecting, nearer to achieving the transcendental m om ent. This "language error" on A hab's part lies at the center of his hubris. The ability to author a Logos w herein things and nam es are one and the sam e is a God-like ability. A nd God said Let there be light; and there w as light. (Genesis 1:3) In the beginning w as the W ord, and the W ord w as with God, and the W ord w as God. The sam e w as in the beginning w ith G od. (John 1:1-2) A hab's hubris goes beyond his refusal to obey and his verbal challenges to a G od he w ould confront directly. This intention on A hab's part, this attem pt to usurp a pow er of a transcendent G od is m anifested in a m ore w orldly w ay in A hab's relations w ith his m en. A t m om ents during the novel he displays a Gnostic arrogance despite his occasional acknow ledgm ent th at he is not certain in his beliefs. To 173 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Starbuck and to the crew of the Pequod, Ahab attem pts to m aintain a confident, resolute demeanor. H e w ants that his m en believe that despite any devious tacking o n the captain's part, Ahab knows well w here he goes. His cerem ony on the quarter-deck is an initiation of his m en into a Gnostic pact. H e introduces strange, m ysterious rituals. H e prom ises a rew ard and asks his m en if they know their w ay to that rew ard. H e is the M ahayana m aster assigning a koan, the rabbi w ith the begging query. Do you recognize it zvhen yon see the signs. Do you knozu Him? "Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale m ust be the sam e that som e call M oby Dick." "M oby Dick?" shouted A hab. "Do ye know the w hite w hale then, Tash?" (142) Each harpooner know s some partial elem ent. (Tashtego know s th at the white whale fantails curiously; Dagoo that his spout is bushy; and Q ueequeg that he carries iron, tw isted like a corkscrew). As the proverbial blind m en w ho each know an elephant only by a specific quality they can touch (a tru n k like a rope, a leg like a tree stum p), so do the w halers recognize M oby Dick by parts, Ahab brings the signs together and teaches his men the fuller picture. "Corkscrew!" cried A hab, "aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all tw isted and w renched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a w hole shock of wheat, and w hite as a pile of our N antucket w ool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen— Moby Dick— M oby Dick!" (143) Like a Gnostic leader he hints that he possesses special know ledge, that he knows secret rituals, that he, w ith his "ow n electric thing," has gone before. Ahab gathers his m en and pilots them through his nebulous rites. H e offers a, 174 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "God bless ye, m en /' as they gather and he offers devilish fare for their consum ption: "Short draughts— long swallows, men; 'tis h o t as Satan's hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks o u t at the serpent- snapping eye." (145) A nd they follow him. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, w ith their harpoons in their hands, while his three m ates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's com pany form ed a circle ro u n d the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every m an of his crew. But those w ild eyes m et his, as the bloodshot eves of the prairie w olves m eet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison (145) Ahab understands the seductive charisma of m ystery and secret; but he also know s the pow er and influence of the voice of the stentorian father. H e understands the profound p ow er of words and signs to inspire and motivate. It seem ed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, he w ould fain have shocked into them the sam e fiery em otion accum ulated w ithin the Leyden jar of his ow n m agnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and m ystic aspect. (145-146) Starbuck, m ore than m ost, senses Ahab's intent. In chapter 38 the first mate rem arks u p o n Ahab's grow ing hubris: "W ho’ s over him , he cries;— aye, he w ould be a dem ocrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below!" (148) W hen A hab himself fears that his men m ay refuse to follow him again after M oby Dick, he hears Starbuck exclaim, Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy v ery leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil sh ad o w gone— all good angels mobbing thee w ith w arnings:— w hat m ore w ouldst th o u have?— Shall w e keep chasing this m urderous fish till he sw am ps the last man? Shall w e be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall w e be 175 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. tow ed b y him to the infernal w orld? O h, oh,— Im piety and blasphem y to h u n t him more!" (459) Before the m en too thoroughly heed Starbuck's interpretation, Ahab seeks to replace in the m en a m ythology that m ore efficaciously serves his purpose: Believe ye, m en, in the things called om ens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drow n, drow ning things w ill twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for everm ore. So w ith M oby Dick— tw o days he's floated— to-m orrow will be the third. Aye, m en, he'll rise once m ore,— b u t only to spout his last! (459) Ahab is neglecting to m ention that if the w hale has risen twice to the surface in two days, so has he him self, lifted from th e w ater and back up onto the Pequod. A hab heartens his m en as w ell as him self w ith new, self-serving prophecy. Then as the m en w ent forw ard, he m uttered on: "The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the sam e to Starbuck there, concerning m y broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in mine! (459) But these sophistries, these m anipulations of ignorant underlings show Ahab to be no better than the "m alevolent" G od he claim s to denounce. H is resolve to take upon him self to seek out and annihilate the source of m alignity, is god-like, for it represents hum an effort in its highest reach (M atthiessen 448) One great irony of A hab's hunt for G od is that in his m onom aniacal quest he becom es the very thing he claims to hate. I do not m ean this in a glib way. Yes, it's true that Ahab projects onto the w hale, and that in a strong sense it is A hab w ho heaps the whale w ith the significations that tau n t the m an himself. W hat I m ean here is that Ahab, a m an w ho w ould see G od as 176 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. another personage— as an entity of hum an-like qualities and failings— comes to try God and concludes that the Old M an is unjust, malevolent, and rabidly dem anding and jealous of hum an obeisance. Many of the accusations Ahab levels at God m ay be reasonably leveled by A hab's m en tow ard their captain. Ahab does not becom e the kind of God th at he himself w ould suffer and obey. 177 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER IV - ISHMAEL What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might zuell appal me. "Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have szvam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales zuith these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. Ishm ael in "Cetologv" Like a man who walks alone in darkness, I resolved to go so slozvly, and to use so much circumspection in everything, that if I did not advance speedily, at least I shoidd keep from falling. Descartes, 1637 Where am I, or what? From zuhat causes do I derive my existence, and to zuhat condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and zuhose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on zuhom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium . . . H um e, Treatise ISHMAEL'S CABINET: TRYING-OUT AND CUTTING IN The conceit th at a whale-ship has served as Ishmael’ s education— his Yale and his H arvard— is som ething more than working-class bravado posturing and som ething less than true. Ishmael is well-read. In fact, by all evidence (the eclectic cabinet he opens to his reader), he respectably plays the role of 178 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. librarian, encyclopedist, classical scholar, and field researcher. Ishm ael brings to bear in M obv-D ick an expansive, catholic, seemingly exhaustive num ber of intertextual references that play o h h is ow n imm ediate concerns w ith the search for know ledge. This allows h im to weave the threads of his ow n search into the com plicated tapestry already in progress. The varied enorm ity of his catalogue, d raw n from sources ancient and contem porary, assert the strongest argum ent th at Ishm ael's searching is m uch m ore than a personal exercise— that it is in fact kin to, if not archetypal of, the Great Search: the search for absolute certainty, an d for the peace or respite o r em pow erm ent w e hope accom panies such certainty. Ishm ael's lonely effort also locates him as a hero of early nineteenth century A m erica, a hero of a time w h en m any had lost faith in the assurances of traditional religions and philosophies. H e is driven by an im pulse to dis cover or create a philosophy and religion of his own, one that m ight fill the vortex left b y the sinking ship of divine revelation and ideal philosophy. Ishm ael is, of course, telling the tale of Moby Dick and A hab in retrospect. The authority and trustw orthiness of his narrative voice begins w ith the fact that he has w itnessed th e events and grows in p ro p o rtio n to the chapters he heaps w ith well-collected and well-learned w haling lore. But tho u g h Ishmael's presentation is "scientific" in m any w ays, the overriding m ode of his exploration is one of m editation, of the fluid and tum escent indulgence of the hum an m ind in associative and im agistic thought. It is to Melville's credit th at Ishm ael's rhetoric, a m ock-free 179 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. association, still often com es across as reasoned (if n o t sustained). Ishmael achieves the voice of a super-articulate narrator, his self-conscious m onologue often appearing to em body the dialectic in motion: the voice of the pilgrim in progress, som ething very m uch more m ethodical th an the ranting of a freely associating m ad prophet. This voice can confound the lazy reader; for even as Ishm ael presents his sober catalogue, he obviously undercuts his ow n authority and trustw orthiness w ith b o th glaring and subtle acts of authorial sabotage. A longside authentic historical information about the fishery, Ishmael places invented inform ation; alongside a passage of sober intensity, he places a scene of slapstick hum or. But for all his tongue-in-cheek scuttling of his own authority, the sheer m ass of information presented in good faith still serves to w helm or overw helm the reader. Such is the nature an d influence of "scientifically" heaped know ledge on the post E nlightenm ent thinker. If w e im agine the entire narrative w ithout som e of the infamous "narrative problem s" such as the truncation of B ulkington's story and the narration of events a n d dialogue Ishmael could not possibly have witnessed directly, w e can see the unalloyed pow er of Ishm ael's "N atural Historian" voice: a voice that gives the im pression that Ishm ael's trying-out of his w orld is as m echanical and efficient as the processing of a w hale aboard an expertly crew ed N antucket w haler. The narrative form of the novel, its varied m odes, its encyclopedic breadth characterize the exhaustive effort, the search b y w hich no possible ISO Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. avenue is left untried. Ishm ael's running dow n of creeds, if it seem s piratical, is also "scientific" in its deductive m ethod. H e attem pts to render truth through a process of calculated w innow ing. H is rhetoric, in this regard exploits the persuasiveness of good "scientific reportage" in that it strikes the reader first as rational and cogent in its essential articulation and it continues to validate and reinforce its "authority" as m ore evidence and confirm ing enquiry is published. Ishmael w ould, perhaps, aspire to be a scientific oracle of the kind described here by R upert Sheldrake. The experim ental m ethod is best seen as a m odem form of divination. In Roman times people cut open animals and exam ined their entrails. N ow adays scientists cut open animals an d examine their physiology. You do an experim ent, you look at som e feature of the world, and you ask for an answer; that's just w hat diviners did and w hat the purpose of oracles w as (Sheldrake in Kayzer 143) In her essay "M oby Dick: Jonah or Job's W hale" Nathalia W right calls attention to the difference betw een A hab's and Ishm ael's point of view regarding the whale. She remarks upon Ishm ael's treatm ent of nature as m aterial.22 Above all, the cetological chapters of Mobv-Dick m ay be considered the expression of Ishm ael's Job-like point of view .... They are to A hab's pu rsu it of Moby Dick w hat Jehovah's reply is to Job's complaints: an oblique denial that m orality is inherent in the creation. Like Jehovah, Ishmael bypasses the whole problem of evil in hum an Steven Jay Gould in "Nonmoral Nature" comments on the logical conclusion the materialist must reach: "Our failure to discern the universal good we once expected does not record our lack of insight or ingenuity but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms." (426) 181 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. experience w hich obsesses both Job and Ahab, and describes a natural w orld . . . (192) In M obv-Dick the argum ent seem s resolved in favor of a physical rather than a m etaphysical universe. M oby Dick is indeed a Job's w hale rather than Jonah's. The sheer density of tine cetological chapters is overw helm ingly persuasive. (194) W right is directly focussed here on the relationship of M obv-Dick to the biblical books of Job and Tonah. She is indirectly concerned w ith the treatm ent of nature in all three texts. W right w rites "overw helm ingly persuasive" and I w ould add possibly "overw helm ingly distressing" in their m aterialistic suggestings. W right is asserting th at Ishm ael's view is predicated on a m aterialist view of nature— a view in w hich a creating, intentional or governing intelligence is superfluous and unnecessary. In this regard Ishm ael's "scientific" view can be far m ore frightening than m any m ystery laden belief system s as it suggests the absence of a higher authority. For some, having a flaw ed creator or a less-than-all-loving god is better than having no god at all. 24 Ahab shrinks from the idea of a solely material world: "... how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I... W ho’ s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?" (445) 24 One characteristic of Mobv-Dick that perhaps rankled believers more than others was not Ishmael's essential infidelism but rather the apparent delight he takes in burlesquing many of the characters in the novel who profess their Christianity. In several early scenes Ishmael paints his Christians as clownish con-men (Bildad and Peleg), crackpots (Elijah), and cheats (Peter Coffin). Even Father Mapple, who may be read as a sober and genuine patriarch, is described as such a theatrical presence that it is difficult to judge whether Ishmael's tongue (which seems perpetually split) may also be planted firmly in cheek through m uch of "The Pulpit." 182 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. B ut this is the m odus operandi of science, to study the m achine and to p resu m e no ghosts in its w orkings. Ishm ael, as Ahab does at times, accepts the conventional rules of scientific investigation and discourse. T hough often w axing m etaphysical, Ishm ael ever forw ards the tangible object and the physical event that comprise the em pirical, observable phenom ena. W right goes so far as to suggest th at this preoccupation w ith the physical w orld is, perhaps, w h at saves him in the end. "The know ledge of cetology w hich he acquires," she writes, "seem s calculated to save him from a fate sim ilar to A hab's b y persuading him of the purely physical nature . . . of the universe." (193) The im plication here is th a t if the w orld be purely physical, a "m aterialist" such as Ishm ael (and w e m ight add Darwin) "w orships" rightly and sees the tru th more clearly. Ishm ael's collecting, cataloguing, and studying is his creation of his ow n cabinet. H is venture is a post-E nlightenm ent enterprise. If w e credit the "sheer density of the cetological chapters" as significant, w e m ay consider th at W right is n ear to the idea that those chapters are "overw helm ingly persuasive" because the com pilation of hum an discovered facts— even should their cum ulative conclusion im ply th at the w orld is inscrutable— overw helm s our confidence in the traditions inform ed by m ysteriously articulated, divinely revealed know ledge o f the O ld God. This usurpation of Evidence over Providence is the G od of Reason and Science erected and edified b y a m onum ent of em pirical evidence, evidence 183 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that w hen properly understood an d sufficiently m arshaled m ight comprise "truth." For this is the m odem alchem ical quest: to transform knowledge into truth. After all, the implicit goal of science is to produce an articulation--a script— of all things m aterial— a script so mimetically perfect in its relationship to the w orld as to be Logos. For zuhat if humans should learn or dis-cover a language with which zue might articulate truth— zuith zuhich zve might write the Logos even if we are too late to invent it, even if we must plagiarize? If w e consider Logos to be the articulated logic, language, and w orking pattern of the world, perhaps w e can ask, When Humans gather sufficient and consistently reaffirming knozuledge, should zue not ask if the human is the true Author of Logos? O f course prior to phenom enology and "Post M odernism " we would have easily and instantly answ ered such a question w ith either, the secular assertion: that zuhich zue believe zue author is at most only zuhat zue have dis-covered from among what was already present. or the believer's assertion: that at best zue are only learning zuhat God has knozun, zuhat God has created, what God has authored. 184 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ishm ael's labor is such an exercise that em bodies the "scientific" act of triangulation and the "scientific" act of amassing, confirm ing and re confirm ing data. These acts play out in Ishm ael's narrative as "heaping," one of the great m aster-m etaphors of Mobv-Dick. But is heaping not what seduced Ahab to his madness? Does this very heaping and overdetermination not whelm and lead the listener to bad faith? Ishm ael recognizes the pow er of this "heaping." H e sees in his captain the danger w rought by the projection and reinforcem ent of self-confirmed significances. He sees w hat Ahab has done to Ahab. God help thee, old m an, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prom etheus; a vulture feeds u p o n that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates. (175) The piling up of suggestions and bits of im plicating evidence do draw the reader. The great system of detail seduces us a n d the sheer mass of integrated knowledge m akes it virtually im possible for us to disbelieve that there is a semantic m arker present around which all these details m ust turn.23 Ishm ael recognizes that Ahab seizes upon the pow er of such "reasoned" rhetoric. But he is not so m anipulative and unscrupulous as to follow his captain's example. Ishm ael w ould w arn his readers aw ay from the fires. He is well aw are that his language experim ent m ight be as dangerous to naive This power is the same that seduces humans into faith in natural religion. "All this apparent order and all these patterns," the believer would claim, "do they not prove an ordering pattern maker?" 185 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. readers as A hab's quarterdeck speech is to the Pequod crew. R hetoric and sophistry can seduce beyond reason. This is one of the lessons Ishm ael w ould teach, and to do so he m u st dem onstrate the p ow er of language ev en as he dem onstrates the lim itations of language. Ishm ael's confidence in his project is n o t unbounded and h is faith in appearances is never naive. He rem inds us in chapter 42 to rem ain vigilant and to be skeptical of appearances and to be skeptical of evidences that shine too sm artly and collaborate too easily. The sw eet tinges of sunset skies a n d w oods . . . the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, n o t actually inherent in substances, b u t only laid on from w ithout. (169) In his narrative, Ishm ael will have it b oth ways: he will rem ind us of the limits and inefficacies of logic and language while he does his best to capture his w hale w ith those same tools. It is as if he is driven to see for him self (and thereby M elville to dem onstrate for us) the ultim ate possibilities and played-out ends of language. As Ahab w ill follow his chartings and tracings to their im plied extremities, Ishm ael w ill follow the lines in his chapters. Variously, d uring the narrative, Ishm ael pauses to rem ind the reader of the efficacy of his m ode of presentation to convey accurate and sufficient (if not thorough) inform ation that will em pow er the reader to experience fully the events and significances paraded across the pages. Of course he often undercuts his ow n authority so that m any passages serve as both successful conveyances of accurate inform ation and also as successful parodies of a 186 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rhetorical m ode fam iliar to readers of the m id-nineteenth century. Mobv-Dick is, after all, p a rt T ristram Shandy, part King Lear and p a rt Scientific A m erican. By occasionally underm ining the persuasive force of his ow n voice, he rem inds us that "it m ay all be illusion." H e rem inds us that rhetoric can be as intoxicating as an y godly screed or m ystic siren call. To do so, Ishm ael poses as the laym an scientist w ith his facts in order and as the comic lecturer, his boots planted solidly against the scuttle, his tongue planted firm ly against the cheek. Throughout his opus, he both celebrates and pokes elaborate fun at the new rhetoric of his age: a scientific and arrogant rhetoric intoxicated by its ow n intention to envelop an d m aster the w orld and all things in it. This passage from "The Fossil W hale" displays a delicious m ovem ent from Ishm ael's comic (and w orking-m an) voice directly into his sober n a tu ra l historian voice. Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil W hales, I p resent m y credentials as a geologist, by stating that in m y m iscellaneous time I have been a stone-m ason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by w ay of prelim inary, I desire to rem ind the reader, that w hile in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of m onsters now alm ost com pletely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in w hat are called the Tertiary form ations seem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted links, betw een the antichronical creatures, and those w hose rem ote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil W hales hitherto discovered belong to the T ertiary period, w hich is the last preceding the superficial form ations. A nd though none of them precisely answ er to any kn o w n species of die present tim e, they are yet sufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking rank as Cetacean fossils. (379) 187 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. O f p rim ary im portance to Ishm ael's lectures on nature, language and epistemology, are Ishm ael's extraordinary passages in "O n the W hiteness of the W hale." Ishm ael claims the "w hiteness" to be "above all things" that which appalls him . He then proceeds (against his ow n w ishes, he implies) to m ethodically use his w it and w isdom to explicate the n atu re of the horror. At least he tells us that he will attem pt to explicate it. There w as another thought, or rather vague, nam eless h orror concerning him, w hich at times by its intensity com pletely overpow ered all the rest; and yet so mystical and w ell nigh ineffable w as it, that I alm ost d espair of p u ttin g it in a com prehensible form. (175) M any skilled readers have noted that if Ishm ael is indeed acting in good faith in this chapter, the "com prehensible form " he provides regarding "w hiteness" is ironically incomprehensible. W alter T. H erbert details the rem arkable fact th at Ishm ael's chapter, though typically read as a good-faith effort to heap "w hiteness" with significance, m ay actually be a strong and calculated dem onstration on Ishm ael's/ M elville's part to m odel the impossibility of com pletely and perfectly capturing the abstract concept w ith words. Even as Ishmael seems to be honestly approaching a m ore and m ore determ inate "capturing" of whiteness, he also seems to be progressively and dauntingly confounding his own readers. But as the m ind does not exist unless leagued w ith the soul, therefore it m ust have been that, in A hab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one suprem e purpose; that purpose, by its ow n sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils 188 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. (175) Read this way, chapter 42 seems the very display of the im potence of language as language touches upon the open system of the real w orld. T hat is, if w ords and phrases can carry m eanings, as m eanings are assigned and rendered w ithin the closed system of language itself, w ords cannot necessarily m aintain such an integrity of significance w hen w e attem pt to use them to m ark objects and ideas that exist in the "open" system of the real w orld. In m athem atics, for example, lines by definition are straight and w ithout ends. Finding an endless, straight line in the real w orld, how ever, is im possible (especially after Einstein!). Ishm ael's hum ility in the face of inscrutability and dam ning ignorance rests as a great counterw eight to Ahab's hubris. Ishm ael does not accept his ignorance as a Calvinist or ancient H ebrew w ould instruct him. H e does not resign him self to the idea that the com prehension of som e truths belongs to G od alone. He sim ply follows the machines of the new god Reason to the unfathom able depths and then turns away before he is annihilated (as is Pip) by the crushing depths that w ould destroy him a n d show him his ow n hollow ness. I have m entioned that Ishm ael recognizes th a t perhaps the m ediated experience is all w e ever have. In all cases of language this is so. The signifier stands as m ediating "symbol" betw een reader an d Idea— a conduit that ineluctably alters anything that passes through it. It cannot help b u t to shape, transform , or refract. Yet language and the constructions w e form w ith it m ay 189 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. be all w e have— the literal scripts of ou r second dream, w orld— w h a t w e typically label "the real w orld." W ords are to Ishm ael w hat harpoons and lines and killing spades are to Ahab. T hey com prise the m edium of connection. Both m en cast their respective tools tow ard their respective targets and both fail to strike hom e. O f the tw o, only Ishm ael u nderstands w hy his effort has been doom ed by definition. Ahab attem pts to strike an incorporeal enem y w ith a m aterial tool, w hile Ishm ael attem pts to barb a m aterial beast w ith an ethereal tool. Ishm ael recognizes that his activity w ith w ords may be a dam n ed effort. W ords, he knows, m ight seem substantial as they bum p up against other w ords, b u t can they actually capture an object? W ords seem reliable because the connections w e often see betw een w o rd s and ideas are typically verbal/logical constructions. We feel certain of the connections because w e have shaped our definitions of the "elem ents" and "relations" of an event. We m ake a m athem atics (an internally consistent system) of language. By defining "m urder" as the "im m oral killing of another hum an," w e establish the validity of the claim "m urder is alw ays m orally wrong." Such an investm ent in w hat is essentially a tautological form ula becom es potentially dam ning to our intentions w h en w e confuse the defined objects of our "invented" and possibly consistent w o rld w ith the m aterial w orld w e live in. A hab's story em bodies this lesson. A s John W enke says of A hab's quest: "A hab's m istake is that he fashions m etaphors w hich make his P rom ethean attem pt seem possible." (158) 190 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. David H um e, in his fam ous essay (against which every idealist m ust cut his or her teeth) "Of the Idea of N ecessary Connection," brings this discussion to the concrete w orld of objects in causal relation. He speaks of the discontinuity betw een the hum an m ind and the "Real" world. W hen w e look about us tow ard external objects and consider the operation of causes, w e are never able, in a single instance, to discover any pow er or necessary connection, any quality w hich binds the effects to the cause. (48) We m ay see the events occur and be "faithful" and "claim" that the events are connected, b ut w e cannot be "absolutely certain" and therefore w e cannot label that which w e cannot be certain is there. Labeling it, we m ust rem ind ourselves, w ould n o t in-and-of-itself cause it to be there. H um e continues under the self proclaim ed "malady" of his skepticism to say, "we cannot rem edy this inconvenience or attain any m ore perfect definition" ("Necessary Causation" 61). Then he ends his fam ous essay where Ishm ael begins. A fter adm itting that language fails to perfectly capture the object, or to prove the presence of that object, he does not dism iss language. He seeks only to clarify the lim itations of those definitions w e m ust use if we are to function at all. HUM E'S MELANCHOLY AN D DELIRIUM A philosophy such as H um ean Skepticism (that approaches Pyrrhonism ) necessarily begs a reactionary question: 191 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Without certainty, without confidence that reason is absolutely undergirded— how can we put faith in reason and logic and how can action be proven tn/ reason to be good and meaningfid? So also does an individual w ho cannot posit faith in a higher authority necessarily face a variation of that question: How then can I live with confidence that my actions are good and meaningfid? These are essential questions that Ishm ael asks (if not explicitly, at least indirectly) through his probing exam inations of various historical (and often religious) answers. David H um e, in his An Enquiry Concerning H um an U nderstanding, further attacks the notion that we can claim knowledge of causal events to the degree that w e can claim to know that one event caused another to occur. He adm its our ability to witness events and to infer from past experience that w hen such an event occurs, such an event will follow, but he only allows that we claim to "know " the causal event b y habit or custom. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning. Custom , then is the great guide of hum an life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and m akes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events w ith those w hich have appeared in the past. W ithout the influence of custom , w e should be entirely ignorant of every m atter of fact beyond w hat is im m ediately present to the m em ory and senses. (44-45) 192 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Such an "inference" th en is an "intuitional leap" or a "transcendental m ovem ent." It is a step m any feel perfectly comfortable in taking. H um e is m erely rem inding us that once w e have invested our confidence in reason— once w e have accepted the burd en s of logical consistency— w e cannot then adm it to o u r philosophies argum ents predicated upo n transcendental (or intuitively gathered) claims. To claim faith in an idea th a t is impossible to prove (such as that there is One an d O nly one God, or th a t G od is Om nipotent) requires the thinker to take that intuitive leap— to claim a transcendental Gnosis. A nd all those tvho admit they cannot take this intuitional leap? They are Infidels. They are orphans. THE PA TH OF DENIAL, THE PA TH OF STRONG FA ITH The unbelieving Infidel m u st of course live and function in the w orld. Each o rphan m ust choose his or her ow n path. A t least tw o of these pathw ays are illum inated in Mobv-Dick: the Path of Denial and the Path of Strong Faith. T he P ath of D enial— O pen always to the Skeptic Pilgrim is the path of denial. If one refuses to shoulder the burden of rational validation, one m ay believe in anything or everything. The thinker w ho disregards an inconsistency (be it a foolish one or otherwise) fits in this troupe. Such hum ans, if they are concerned at all w ith justifying their actions w ithin an authorized rubric follow a pathw ay of denial predicated on the 193 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. assertion that one never needs certainty. One response to the idea that w e cannot know is the naive assertion that w e n eed not know . Some of these hum ans invest in illusions or distractions that constantly preoccupy their tim e, living in a state of reverie, constantly distracted from the existential terrors of the m aterial w orld. Mobv-Dick is peopled w ith characters w h o display their eclectic, m ish m ash philosophies. Som e of the characters seem alw ays ready to grab w hatever they need from am ong Christian beliefs. They produce a form of individually hom e-spun, situational philosophies. As rigid or even consistent philosophies, of course, they d o n 't hang together. Melville gives the reader characters ready to place hope in the efficacies of C hristian w orship, dem onic rituals and of any num ber of personally gathered superstitious rituals and traditions. The path of denial is a path of illusion. The intoxicating pow er of the illusion of (or psychological state of denial) certainty is show n variously in Mobv-Dick to be very real and potent— a potion th at m ay charm the sim ple- m inded but also the intelligent Skeptic (such as Ishm ael) who follows Ahab for a while. Ahab, the true Infidel w ould argue, acts under the spell of his ow n illusion— the victim of a self invented Theodicy. Through Ishm ael's entire narrative Ahab believes in this distracting illusion. Readers are inform ed, how ever, that Ahab did n o t always believe as he does w hen we m eet him. A hab himself speaks to the corposants adm itting th at he had once followed the Zoroastrian prom ise long enough to be b u rn ed by it. 194 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Oh! th o u clear spirit of clear fire, w hom on these seas I as P ersian once did worship, till in the sacram ental act so b u rn ed by thee, that to this h o u r I bear the scar; I now know thee.... No fearless fool now fronts thee. I ow n thy speechless, placeless .... In the m idst of the personified im personal, a personality stands here. (417) Ishm ael also recognizes a danger in false and distracting belief. Such distractions, he know s seduce our attentions aw ay from the "D escartian 26 vortices" that threaten from below. O ther orphans w ho follow their ow n pathw ays of denial sim ply seize upon philosophies that meet their m om entary needs. These thinkers, we m ight call situational believers. Stubb is a grand example of the hum an dedicated to follow ing such a spontaneous philosophy. In his attem pt to interpret a dream he has had in which A hab kicked him, he displays a rather nimble rhetorical ability as he argues to himself. In a sense he hops like a frog, from lily pad to lily pad, in a seem ingly arbitrary m anner until he finds himself across the pond where he had w anted to go from the outset. D id n ’t he kick with right good will? it w asn't a com m on pitch pine leg he kicked w ith, w as it? No, you w ere kicked by a great m an, and w ith a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It's an honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and m ade garter-knights of; but, be y o u r boast, Stubb, that ye w ere kicked by old Ahab, and m ad e a wise m an of. Remember w hat I say; be kicked by him ; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb. (116) Melville's famous letter to Hawthorne regarding the tendency to mistake a passing moment for an eternal truth is generally read as a barb directed at the Yankee Transcendentalists. Melville's devastating criticism here forwards the idea that transcendental philosophy, in the end, merely provides an illusion to its adherents. 195 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. If his beliefs are in grotesque conflict w ith each other, if they are irrational a n d unsupported by tradition, they are yet functional for they provide the necessary stay against the nausea or m alaise of meaninglessness: they p ro v id e a guiding light, how ever dim or fleeting. T he P ath of Strong Faith— O f course there is som ething akin to faith that is n o t faith. It is the conviction that-seem s-good-enough or the belief that is very probably right. It is the conclusion a "reasoning" person comes to based u p o n the best available argum ent. This idea— th at reason carries one not to absolute certainty b u t rather to a position of em pow ering confidence— w as 27 articulated b y the Marquis de Condorcet in 1794. The sciences have likew ise taught us to ascertain the several degrees of certainty to which w e m ay hope to attain; the probability according to w hich w e can adopt an opinion, and m ake it the basis of our reasonings, w ithout injuring the rights of sound argum ent, and the rules of our c o n d u c t. . . . (Kf am nick 66) A nd perhaps w ith this comes a psycho-em otional state just short of absolute faith, a state in w hich the subject is virtually and effectually convinced of something, b ut in all honesty does not believe absolutely. "Strong Faith" is the best phrasing I know for this. Strong faith is not true faith. It is n o t a faith of certainty b u t rather a strong conviction that functions for the individual m uch as does "true faith." Hume was also sure that "rational thinkers" must keep in mind the limits of their enterprise. "If m en attempt the discussion of questions which lie entirely beyond the reach of human capacity," Hume wrote, "such as those concerning the origin of worlds...they may long beat the air in their fruitless contests, and never arrive at any determinate conclusion." C F n q n iry . Section Vm, pt I) 196 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. H ere I w ould borrow a p h rase from m y old religion professor J. W esley Robb. R obb spoke of "Functional Atheists," that is people, w ho regardless of their faith o r belief, function (or act) in daily life as if they are Atheists: they act u p o n th eir ow n desires and w ills, and according to their ow n counsel, or at least n o t according to the counsel of a deity. I find this a useful m oniker; not only for th e purpose of labeling the occasional (or even hypocritical) believer, b u t also for nam ing the unbeliever w ho is functional in the w orld and the A gnostic unbeliever w ho is y et open to the possibility of G od's existence. The Functional A theist is h e or she who regardless of professed faith in a god, acts in daily life as if there is no god. The Functional A theist does not consult o r consider a god's w o rd s before m aking choices. The Functional A theist, despite a professed belief in a god, does not devote tim e and energy to the stu d y and appreciation of th at god. Ishm ael is a Functional A theist rather than a True A theist. In his search for au thority to undergird his beliefs, he looks not tow ard a god for divine inspiration and revelation, b u t ou t into the m aterial w o rld and into the realm of h u m an thought. In his (hopefully tem porary) state of uncertainty Ishm ael recognizes that perhaps the m ediated experience is all we ever have and th at our conclusions regarding th at of which w e m ig h t be certain are only (in the phrases of his contem poraries) "strong," "lively" or "vivid" conceptions. Yet Ishm ael does not seem to suffer unduly for this. H e is not burdened w ith H am let's (and Starbuck's) tendency tow ard paralysis and indecision. Ishm ael allows his 197 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nature, his "functional realism ," to guide his actions. N ow here is this m ore delightfully illustrated th an in chapter 15, "C how der." As Ishmael learns the custom ary m ethod of ordering chowder at the "Try-Pots," the scene becomes a dram atization of practical reason, then transform s into a parody of abstract (and faulty) logic. O ur appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Q ueequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him , and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it w ith great expedition: w hen leaning back a m om ent and bethinking m e of M rs. H ussey's clam and cod announcem ent, I thought I w ould try a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word "cod" w ith great emphasis, and resum ed m y seat. In a few m om ents the savoury steam cam e forth again, but w ith a different flavor, and in good tim e a fine cod- chowder w as placed before us. We resum ed business; and w hile plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I to myself, I w onder now if this here has any effect on the head? W hat's that stultifying saying about chow der-headed people? "But look, Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? W here’ s your harpoon?" (65) This begs a question. Is Ishm ael's functional atheism any less arbitrary than Stubb's on-the-fly philosophy. Ishmael is frequently troubled by inconsistency in philosophy. He lives and thinks w ithin a post-Enlightenm ent fram ew ork that privileges the mathem atical and logical. W ithin such a fram ework, he will hold as suspect any inconsistencies and contradictions he finds. Such "scientific" an d "rational" thinking requires a preoccupation w ith the developm ent and consistency of the argum ent. Ishm ael becomes increasingly invested in this process that m ight (and yet m ight not) lead tow ard knowledge and certainty. 198 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Strong faith, how ever, may offer som e degree of reassuring structure to the life of an unbeliever. But such assurance m ust often prove inadequate. Investing strong faith in the best know ledge one can m uster often pales in comparison to the rainbow of colors prom ised by transcendental philosophies and religions. It requires a tacit acceptance of the instability and relative insignificance of such knowledge. So long as the individual m ust posit and "know " the very building blocks of his or her philosophy, he or she finds the effort to be deadlocked against Calvinism and other philosophies th at welcome the "m ysteries" on which the "God H ypothesis" is often predicated. W here Ishm ael w ould struggle "to know ," the Calvinist w ould celebrate the "m ystery." ISHMAEL: HIS SKEPTICISM, NIGH UNTO RESIGNATION The forem ost question m any unbelievers face is: Without divine inspiration to communicate and illuminate meaning, is there meaning and hozu should one live in the absence of certainty regarding the authenticity and authority of that meaning? Both Ahab and Ishm ael are draw n by Melville as aware of this question. Ahab's occasions of doubt wherein he adm its that his anger and effort m ay not find a target of substance dem onstrate th at uncertainty. In his ow n w ay Ahab creates a m ythos for himself, one that can and will explain his history and thereby identify and articulate a present enemy: an enem y w ith in his 199 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reach. In this m ythos he is not so separated from the other pow ers and players of his life's dram as. If I cannot reach God, Ahab seem s to reason, I can reach the w hite w hale. It is v ery im portant to note that although Ahab is often ram pantly heretical and defiant tow ard the deity, he is never (during the narrative), an avow ed Infidel. H e believes passionately (though perhaps n o t as his god w ould have h im believe) and he w orships grotesquely (and obviously not as the biblical G od commands). H erbert, in Moby-Dick and Calvinism , makes the interesting observation that Ahab seem s comfortable in his belief yet unable to em brace the deity he has m et.28 Ishm ael, how ever, is an Infidel. T hough he invokes the nam es of a num ber of deities and though he borrow s convenient m etaphors from am ongst various religious m ythos, on the w hole he m aintains him self as a loose fish, appreciative of m any of the trappings of the gods an d their religions, b u t ultim ately unable to posit true faith in any. Ishm ael is painted by Melville as a m an open to the possibilities of God's existence— open to the notion that he m ight discover som e prom ising artifact or m issing puzzle piece that m ight com pel him to believe. But he is also draw n out as a thinker who becomes skeptical of the very act of investing faith. He is chilled by his 28 Herbert points out with excellent economy, the usefulness of Freudian theory regarding the human need and formulation of religious belief (especially belief in a father-figure deity). This essay does not seek to improve upon Herbert's comments or upon those of others more versed in Freudian theory. I mention Freud here only to reinvest (backward in time, I suppose) Melville's fictional investment in the God as anthropomorphic projection of the fattier image." 200 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. aw areness th at for a time he fully believed in Ahab's quest— th at he becam e d ru n k on the sam e toxic nectar A hab supplied to the crew of the Pequod. T hough Ahab is the m ore m ercurial, Ishm ael is show n to be passionate in his ow n beliefs and skepticisms. The satiric voice he often assum es to lam baste the dogm atic, the orthodox, the hypocritical and all others w ho w ould lord their beliefs over others, show s him to be a passionate Skeptic if not a consistent and passionate believer. rshm ael's aggressive skepticism carries w ith it an enorm ous burden. W ithout a guiding principle, action seem s m eaningless or at best arbitrary. Melville, in Ishm ael, has created a character haunted by the sam e difficulties that faced m any of the Empiricists (who attem pted to seek full answ ers in observed reality) and others such as D avid H um e w ho took the issue farther, challenging the very idea of certainty and re-invoking, in his ow n w ay, the problem of the criterion. It is im portant to note here th at Ishm ael is not an A theist— n or an avowed Pyrrhonian. In fact Ishmael him self voices his conviction that a relentless skepticism — occasionally p unctuated by m om ents of suspicious insight— leads not directly to the abyss but only to .. .Skepticism. D oubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of som e things heavenly; this com bination m akes neither believer n o r infidel, but m akes a m an w ho regards them both w ith equal eye. (314) Years earlier D avid H um e had reached a sim ilar conclusion up o n recognizing that after all argum ents are exam ined and found w anting, the thinker necessarily em erges as a Skeptic.* 201 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The intense view of these m anifold contradictions and imperfections in hum an reason has so w rought upon m e, and heated m y brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as m ore probable or likely than another. (Treatise 268) H um e cam e to call the em otional state that accompanied (or resulted from) his deep skepticism a "m alady." Ishm ael, as w e meet him (not in "Loom ings" as a character b u t in Moby-Dick as a storyteller who has survived a traum a) suffers from a sim ilar m alady. This condition is not the depression alluded to in "Loom ings" nor the tem porary fever he finds himself in as he becomes caught up in A hab's mob posse, b u t rather the anxiety that drives the act of w riting the whale. The anxiety of the orphan. Beyond his "piratical" habits, beyond his "gathering"— his collecting for his cabinet— Ishm ael is driven m ore by som e unnam ed com pulsion than by the reasoned and pedagogical purposes he claims. His compulsions have been read by m any critics and interpreted variously. I see, perhaps, m ore anxiety and desperation in Ishm ael's voice than some others. I see him tenaciously m ining the w ord horde for individual w ords, phrases and stylistics that might som ehow be cast barb-like into a tru th that m ight then be brought closer. Such a tru th m ight serve as palpable sustenance for the hunger ravaged Skeptic.29 Ishmael's skepticism is further complicated (at least in the reader's mind) by his rhetorical use of the supernatural. Ishmael often casts "God" or "the gods" as players in his dramas even without settling onto a consistent affirmation that such higher powers actually exist. Like many philosophers who posit disbelief after failing in the honest attempt to posit belief, Ishmael finds the concept or notion of god to be valuable, at least as a rich and useful metaphor. Ishmael variously speaks of fate, the god of the Bible, and certain other gods as if they are real presences. He uses them in his hypothetical constructions and as tropes. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ishm ael's skepticism and anxiety leads him tow ard the Pyrrhonism of Absolute Resignation: the resignation that can confound an d nauseate and paralyze the Skeptic. But Ishm ael never truly falls, and it is in his ability to act— to function despite uncertainty— that marks him as a post-Enlightenm ent hero. Tw o ideas m ore than all others are centered in M oby-D ick as true horrors th a t can unm ake the self. O ne is the experience of being presented directly w ith the undeniable evidence of one's profound subjective aloneness. Pip is driven m ad by such an experience. The other horror is that of m eaninglessness— the idea that the m ask is em pty, the m arker is hollow. These horrors both are illum inations of insignificance and im potence. Ishm ael plum bs these horrors and searches for pathw ays of escape. H e does not abandon all hope. If m arkers are imperfect, he seem s to say— so be it— the w orld itself is no less so. You cannot capture me, Ishm ael shouts, you cannot come to absolutely know me— b u t you can call m e Ishm ael. The event of Pip's unhinging is rightly read by m any critics as integral to an u nderstanding of Ishm ael's narrative. As he floats alone at sea Pip is forced to recognize his aloneness, forced to m easure his ego against the infinite. As a story shaper Ishmael finds this "God Stuff" useful. Perhaps he is being Hume's "habitual" thinker, (offering his poetic deus ex machinal, substituting a mysterious divinity where he cannot divine a cause himself. But invoking a deity, by name or otherwise, does not necessarily demonstrate belief in such a deity. Ishmael's voice— it's cadences, timbers, even its vocabularian reach— is "God haunted" just as the events of the narrative are God haunted. Even as Ishmael resists investing strong or consistent faith in a deity, he gleefully invests in "God" or "the gods" as metaphor and useful hypotheses. 203 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As an answ er to this terrifying aloneness, Ishm ael seizes upon the life- preserving pow ers of fellowship. I think it is no accident that the m ost pow erfully frightening im age in Moby-Dick (that w hen the sea holds up P ip 's body, but, drow ns "the infinite of his soul") is set in direct symbolic opposition to the m ost reassuring images of the narrative (images such as the com m union in "A Squeeze of the H and" and the repeated rem inders of Q ueequeg's sentinel presence in bed and aboard the Pequod).J° In fellow ship, Ishm ael discovers m om ents th at seem mystical or transcendent. Such m om ents are instances w herein Ishm ael describes him self as losing his sense of disconnection— his sense of subjective separation— from the m aterial w orld and the w o rld of "others" w ho surround him. That is, he loses his aw areness of the m edia that separates him self from the w orld outside. O r to oversim plify, he loses his ego. Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the m orning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself alm ost m elted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unw ittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, m istaking their hands for die gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling d id this avocation beget; th at at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentim entally; as m uch as to say,— Oh! m y dear fellow beings, w h y should w e longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-hum or or envy! Come; Ishmael w ould break from his kinsman, the Thoreau of Walden here. Ishmael finds closeness and contact with his fellow humans to be the salvific ritual. If Thoreau would eschew the company of others (to gain some personal space at least) to front the essentials of life, Ishmael w ould join that crowded company. Ishmael's celebration of human communion, connection and fellowship, in fact can be read as an attack on American Transcendentalism more generally. Merton Sealts, in Pursuing Melville expresses this succinctly: "I am one of those readers w ho regard Ahab's story, with his "lonely death in lonely life," as Melville's explicit criticism of self reliance as carried to its ultimate secular realization." (264) 204 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very m ilk and sperm of kindness. (349) Ishm ael elaborates on the fellowship w ithout losing sight of the individual's subjectivity. H e nam es his shipm ates a "federation of isolatoes" and celebrates the inclusive and varied com m unity, lionizing the com pany as som ething akin to the m odel congregation he has m entioned earlier to Peleg and Bildad: "the sam e ancient Catholic C hurch to which you and I, and C aptain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every m other's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this w hole w orshipping w orld." (83) O ne of Ishm ael's m ost obvious m etaphors— m ost obvious in that it m ore than begs an allegorical reading (no m atter how "detestable," "hideous and intolerable," allegories m ay be to Ishmael him self)— is that of the "M onkey Rope." Ishm ael describes the peculiar custom aboard the Pequod of fastening one m an to another d uring the process of "cutting-in." It m ust be said that the m onkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to m y narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were w edded; and should poor Q ueequeg sink to rise no m ore, then both usage and honor dem anded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag m e dow n in his w ake (271) Of course, m ore often than one man dragging another into his wake, the m onkey-rope allows one m an to help his w edded partner. Ishmael notes, "I w ould often jerk poor Q ueequeg from betw een the whale and the ship— w here 205 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he w ould occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and sw aying of both." (271) Physically tied by a rope— one m an to his shipm ate, w ith the practical purpose of inspiring attention and diligence on the part of the shipboard sailor and of securing som e m easure of safety from sharks and drow ning for the sailor "cutting-in" — Ishm ael cannot help b u t philosophize o n the possible allegorical m eanings. So strongly and m etaphysically d id I conceive of m y situation then, that while earnestly watching his m otions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that m y ow n individuality was now m erged in a joint stock com pany of tw o .... A nd yet still further pondering— w hile I jerked him now and then from betw een the w hale and ship, w hich would threaten to jam him — still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of m ine w as the precise situation of every m ortal that breathes; only, in m ost cases, he, one w ay or other, has this Siamese connexion w ith a plurality of other mortals. (271) Ishmael continues and deepens his allegory by adding characters w ho are invested in the sam e campaign. Accordingly, besides the m onkey-rope, w ith w hich I now and then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the m aw of w hat seem ed a peculiarly ferocious shark— he was provided w ith still another protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen w hale-spades, w herew ith they slaughtered as m any sharks as they could reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, w as very disinterested and benevolent of them. They m eant Q ueequeg's best happiness. (272) Even w ith such a strong m etaphor of the equitable interdependency of hum ans, Ishm ael m anages to rem ind him self of his inescapable autonom y and 206 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. aloneness. "But handle Q ueequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would, som etim es he jerked it so, th a t I came very near sliding overboard. N or could I possibly forget that, do w h at I w ould, I only had the m anagem ent of one end of it." (271) Fellow ship and dem ocracy offer some com fort b u t they do not answ er 31 the lust for knowledge an d certain assurance. In fact such democratic bonding has its dark side. D em ocracy can prove a tyrant. Ishm ael, in "A Squeeze of the hand," provides a glim pse of a paradisiacal state of profound fellowship and unity. Elsew here, however, (especially in "The Q uarterdeck") he dem onstrates that the seem ingly beneficent bonding im pulse of hum ans also enables a m uch darker phenom enon, that of King Mob. The crew, m an, the crew! Are they not one and all w ith Ahab, in this m atter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! (144) Ishm ael also recognizes the transitive quality of such experiences and the possibility that such tem porary states are illusions— perhaps even dangerous distractions that m ight pull us aw ay from our necessary vigilance against the dangers of our Descartian vortices. U pperm ost w as the im pression, that w hatever swift, rushing thing I stood on w as not so m uch b ound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark, T. Walter Herbert notes Ishmael's and Ahab's mutual hunger for such knowledge and certainty. "The essence of Ishmael's allegiance [with Ahab]," he writes, "is a deep resentment aroused by the perception that his desire to achieve a comprehensive vision of divine truth cannot be satisfied." (127) 207 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. bew ildered feeling, as of death, cam e over me. Convulsively m y hands grasped the tiller, b u t w ith the crazy conceit th at the tiller w as, som ehow , in some enchanted w ay, inverted. M y God! w hat is the m atter w ith me? th o u g h t I. Lo! in m y brief sleep I had turned m yself about, an d was fronting the ship's stem , w ith m y back to her p ro w and the com pass. In an instant I faced back, just in tim e to prevent the vessel from flying up into the w ind, and very probably capsizing her. H ow glad and how grateful the relief from this unnatural hallucination of the night, an d the fatal contingency of being brought by the lee! (354) Ishm ael is also too m uch the dem anding Skeptic and existentialist to sit confidently atop that tem porary, transcendent rainbow . He offers telling rem inders that such egoless, dem ocratic/catholic experiences are som ehow inescapably m oored to one's m ortal and m aterial self. One m ay climb the m ast to gain an o'erreaching vista, b u t gravity and the hard w ooden deck or sea surface below alw ays serve as rem inders that, as the existentialists m ight say, "existence precedes essence" or as Babbalanja says in M ardi. "O ur souls belong to our bodies, n o t our bodies to o u r souls." C ontinuing one of A hab's favorite m etaphors, Ishm ael rem inds us to give our attention to existential needs, to "look not too long in the face of the fire." N ever dream w ith thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the com pass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, w hen its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-m orrow , in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those w ho glared like devils in the forking flam es, the m om w ill show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lam p— all others b u t liars! (354) The hum an ultim ately is left alone in his or her subjectivity, left alone to dis-cover a p ath of escape. Ishmael struggles alone w ith w ords in search of 208 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that path. H e doubts the very ability of language to carry us o n such journeys except, perhaps, in som e illusory way. H e recognizes that language is all we have, and he both trusts in and fears its very potentiality. For w h a t happens, he m ust ask him self, if a subject travels near enough to the object of his or her search (in language: the real and present m eaning of a signifier) only to discover absence— the void— that THE search of all hum ans is predicated upon, and irrem ovable from , a pattern/m etaphor/paradigm that is itself hollow— an artificial construct strutted to N aught. He will recognize the "probable" impossibility of the language effort. To delve into m ysteries in order to discover "meanings" is Ishm ael’s intention w ith language. But how will he recognize true m eaning if he finds it? If he does som ehow discover an articulation of truth, how will he know that utterance from those that miss the m ark? He faces the problem of "the ring." A meaning external to the subject cannot be judged valid except by a criterion posited by the subject ivhich itself cannot be validated. This is the problem of the ring or criterion articulated. Bound inside a faith in logic and reason, the subject m ust accept the uncertainty. Despite all this skepticism, Ishm ael finds himself driven as Ahab is driven. A nd just as Ahab wonders aloud w hat unseen forces carry him onward, Ishm ael seeks to understand his ow n impulses. A nd som e certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself b u t an em pty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do 209 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. hills about Boston, to fill up som e m orass in the M ilky Way. (358) As the narrative develops it becomes d e a r th at M elville's grand m etaphors of hunting and hooking are as apt in discussions of Ishm ael's effort w ith w ords as they are in discussions of w haling as a real, w orldly exerdse. The personality in Ishm ael's "voice" is characterized by a genuine compulsiveness. Ishm ael goes so far as to adm it being pulled or p u sh ed into certain actions m ore than actually choosing each path. H e refers to grasping "the tiller, but w ith the crazy conceit that the tiller w as, som ehow , in som e enchanted way, inverted," th at is grasping him. (354) Before that, of course, he w rites of finding him self "involuntarily pausing before coffin w arehouses," and needing to take to the sea as an alternative to suicide or other violence. . . . w henever m y hypos get such an u p p er hand of me, that it requires a strong m oral p rin d p le to prevent m e from deliberately stepping into the street, and m ethodically knocking people's hats off— then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is m y substitute for pistol and ball. W ith a philosophical flourish Cato throw s himself upon his sw ord; I quietly take to the ship (12) Driven, Ishm ael proceeds desperately, aw are of the dangers aro u n d him . First, he m ust avoid the false prophets. H e rem arks on the pow ers of external forces to seduce him , intoxicate him or frighten him into taking action he w ould not voluntarily choose. At one point in the novel Ishm ael seem s to have lost the ability to distinguish between his quest and A hab's hunt. In fact, he assodates Ahab's "m adness" w ith a dissociation from the living th at one m ay suffer w hen seduced by the "fire" of false belief. Ahab has, at som e 210 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. previous tim e, succum bed to the fire. "G ive not thyself u p , then, to fire, lest it invert thee, d eaden thee; as for the tim e it did me. There is a w isdom that is woe; b u t there is a woe that is m adness." (355) O ther prophets that w ould preach resignation are Predestination and D eterm inism . If one believes all actions are governed a n d anim ated by external forces, one's need to think a n d choose becom es suspended. The suspension is perhaps best articulated b y Ahab— a great m anipulator himself— w ho asks, "Is A hab, Ahab? Is it I, G od, or who, that lifts this arm ?"32 Each of his m en, including Ishmael, as they p u rsu e their C aptain's vengeance m ight well ask, "Is it I or is it Ahab's spell and A hab's w ill th at com pels me to do this action?" FEAR OF THE NAUGHT For Ishm ael, beyond the false prophets lies the abyss of em ptiness and absence. A bsence is configured an d contextualized in a variety of ways in M oby-Dick— as inscrutability, as m eaninglessness— but Ishm ael nam es it "naught." Free Will and Fixed Fate are notions at the center of Mobv-Dick. Ahab torments Starbuck directly by invoking the notion that some articulations of Christian thought virtually preclude and negate the agency, even the idea of free will. Ahab taunts the first mate with an ancient complaint. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand— a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’ s immutably decreed. ’ Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders (459) Starbuck, as a Quaker, does not necessarily believe in such a deterministic fate. He would, however, as a Christian, take his captain's barb. 211 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ahab is haunted (tasked and heaped) by that w hich he cannot im m ediately grasp or know . Ishmael, on the other h and, is m ore innocently fascinated by the u n seen/unknow n than he his haunted by it. Perhaps it is this fascination w ith m ystery, ambiguity, and indeterm inacy that encourages his hum ility, his acceptance of the limitations of the seeking hum an. Im portantly an d ironically, however, to resign oneself to the position that the w orld is inscrutable m ay be easier for the believer than for the Agnostic. The believer, after all, may take som e com fort that the creator— a responsible captain— is at the helm. The Agnostic is left blind on a possibly drifting ship. Interestingly, A hab, in his desperate grasping for w hat he does not know , seizes m ightily upon whatever seems to be m ediate— betw een him and . . . whatever. H e has a ferocious pragm atism tem pering his rage.- 3 - 1 If he cannot im m ediately engage that which lies beyond the m aterial; he will grapple w ith the m aterial at hand. Ahab claims that "sometimes he thinks there's n au g h t beyond." W ould that his actions conform to this philosophy of doubt. But his actions betray his w ords. His m onom aniacal quest which m ay once have been tow ard the object behind the m ask has come to be a quest to destroy the m ask itself and perhaps by doing so to strike against anything hiding behind. Even if we view Ahab's invocations of exotic mythos as cynical posturing (and not as genuine belief), we can see a practical value in the rituals. As Ahab binds his men into a fiery pact, as he places a golden idol before them, he effectively severs many of the chords that might bind them to their biblical God. 212 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A hab's manic cravings for "any signs" of M oby Dick and any reports by others w ho may have "seen the white w hale" show s Ahab as frantically driven b y this same fear. So long as any sign o r trace, no m atter how faint or indeterm inate presents itself or can be observed, the fantasy of the prom ise can be m aintained. A nd the fantasy seems m ore and m ore tangible as Ahab is able to "heap" the signs. A hab's urgency grow s as h e sees these signs and traces give "evidence" th at he is nearing the w hale. Ishm ael also thinks that perhaps "there's n au g h t beyond." To be m ore precise, he recognizes that perhaps "there's n au g h t inside." And Ishmael's actions do conform to his philosophy of doubt. A lways sw im m ing som ewhere in the w aters surrounding these notions is the Logos-Leviathan so demonized by the recent deconstructionists. "Presence," for such hunter-killers is a shark n o t w ell governed— always dangerous. But cannot the void, the absence of the intelligible signifier, be just as dangerous for the agents w ho m ust use language. Ahab hunts for m eaning and Ishm ael hunts for w orth. Ahab "heaps" his w hale, M oby Dick; and Ishm ael "heaps" his chapters, Moby-Dick. A nd both m en do so for the sam e reason: they fear their efforts aim at naught. In tw o critical passages, each m an, separately (but of course through Ishm ael's narration), uses the very w ord. Ahab in chapter 36: "How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white 21 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. w hale is that wall, shoved n e ar to me. Sometimes I think there's n au g h t beyond. " Ishm ael in chapter 42: "But h o w can I hope to explain m yself here; and yet, in som e dim , random way, explain m yself I m ust, else all these chapters m ight be naught." Mobv-Dick. taken as a whole is a tale a t the end of which "A bsence"— n o t the presence sought for— threatens and proves to be the Destroyer of M an, the harbinger of m adness. Ahab rem inds us: "There is a w isdom that is w oe; but there is a woe th at is m adness." (355) Always threatening is this N aught: this absence. Even the appearance of the whale contains the idea of naught an d heaps Ishmael as it tortures Ahab. For M oby Dick is a w hite whale— and "white" in the absent sense. The great albino beast is lacking in the skin pigm ent usually afforded his species. He carries the m arkers of the hum an— harpoons, scars, lines— b u t they still protrude from th at snow white hill of absence. Despite these m arks an d their collective scribings, the whale rem ains as indeterm inate as the doubloon, as enigm atic as Q ueequeg's tattoos— a taunting Gnostic promise. Perhaps the im pulse beneath Ishm ael's effort is one of anxiety— a certain fear that the effort is for naught (m uch of Mobv-Dick after all appears som ew hat m anic in its m editation). N o m atter this; for if Ishm ael's chapters w helm w ith detail, they also inspire w ith the prom ise of possibility. If m eaning can exist independent of the subjective "receiver" or "discoverer," an d if it can be bound or connected it m ust be b ound or connected to the referent— to the m ediating device, be it a w ord, an im age, a beast, a color. Ishm ael never seems greatly confident in the possibility that the 214 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. m aterial things in this w orld som ehow intelligibly recapitulate the ultim ate truths. In fact, he recognizes how easily a hum an m ight becom e intoxicated by, deceived by, or simply confounded and w helm ed by the effort to examine and draw o u t conclusions from the m ultiplicity of dis-coverable signifiers. Ishm ael is no Platonist. He is, how ever, very m uch enam ored of the 34 possibility th at w ords and other signs m ay carry meaning. The hieroglyphic— be it presented as a doubloon, a ranting dockside prophet, or a infortuitously nam ed captain— holds a prom ise, a kind of potential energy that perhaps m ight vitalize and dis-cover m eaning. Even should that referent prove "em pty" or suggest only the faintest possibility of handing forth m eaning, still it offers at least tem porary sustenance (in the form of hope) to the viewer or reader. The starving, thirst-m ad, desert traveler m ay curse at the torturing, em pty prom ise of a m irage— still the m irage offers som ething that draw s the traveler onw ard and perhaps vitalizes 34 Ishmael is perhaps also keeping "an open sea" for himself while helping his reader explore the possibility that the material world and the material things of this world (as some believers would posit) somehow intelligibly recapitulate the ultimate truths. 215 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his efforts for a time. Ishm ael is aw are of the pow er of language to bring into 35 being th e ethereal m atter to w hich m eanings cling. M oby Dick's w hiteness as absence confounds hope, prom ises nothing, appalls "above all things." "The W hiteness of the W hale" is Ishm ael's ow n m editation (In the sense that the previous chapter, "M oby Dick" explores w hat th e w hale might m ean to Ahab). Ishmael grapples w ith the confounding and alm ost overw helm ing sym bology of whiteness. As all colors come together to form w hat appears to us as the absence of color, so Ishm ael's horde of sym bols all come together an d seem to offer up som ething beyond words. In C hapter 42, however, Ishm ael's confidence seems som ething less than faith. It is here that Ishm ael offers his famous apologia for the indulgence of his readers. "H ow can I explain m yself here," he asks, "and yet, in som e dim, random w ay, explain m yself I m ust, else all these chapters m ight be Perhaps the answer that fits Ishmael and his creator, Melville, is that they are worldly men, sensitive and humane thinkers who recognize that worldly suffering can be one of the results of actions or policies undergirded by weak reasoning or irrational prejudice. They are both men who may tend to meditate upon abstractions but also men who refuse to abandon the conviction that abstract though it is, poor reasoning can justify brutal policy. Melville was aware of the Buffalo slaughter across the great plains, he had seen some of the suffering caused by the Christian missionary effort, the suffering caused by flogging aboard military vessels according to traditional policy, the misery of the disenfranchised in otherwise bountiful communities such as London and N ew York. Melville had even given the name "Pequod" for use by his alter ego Ishmael in order that the doomed whaleship might carry a testamental banner reminding readers of the now extinct tribe of Native Americans, wiped out according to Christian authorized policy. Perhaps this is Ishmael at his m ost heroic. Queequeg is described as ever ready to leap to the rescue of his fellow man and Ishmael— despite his objections that he is a poor lookout and a splenetic who occasionally finds himself in a mood to step into the street to methodically knock hats off— is a lover of men. 216 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 naught." Ishm ael adm its th at failing to make the effort to offer com prehensible conclusions w ill potentially doom his grand enterprise. By hedging his bets regarding his expectations of success, how ever, and then by producing such paragraphs th at seem to heap possibilities (while forgetting to m arshal strong conclusions), Ishm ael reifies the indeterm inacy as he scratches out ever m ore hieroglyphs. Effectively, in chapter 42, he prohibits the reader from too easily claiming Gnosis. If Ishm ael is to be our Champollian, it w ill not be here despite the prom ising title of the chapter. "The W hiteness of the W hale" and the w hiteness of the w hale are left to beg the reader's invested inquiry and to also confound the reader's expectations and efforts. In the m ore traditionally m etaphysical sense, M oby Dick's w hiteness (a referent for "color") is a secondary quality. It is accidental to the whale— another m ask set betw een M oby Dick as object and A hab and Ishm ael the subjects. But again it is a paradox shouted at Ishmael— a cipher for him to com prehend: A color is a secondary quality but M oby Dick's color is not a real color.37 Is it that by its indefm iteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and im m ensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind w ith the thought of annihilation, w hen His horror is related to that o f other heroes of existentialist literature such as Dostoevsky's Ivan Illych or Hemingway's Robert Jordan of "The Snows of Kilamanjaro": in the end he must face the fact that in too many ways, he has lived, perhaps, for naught— and in too many ways he may have postponed "living" (in the all?) for his fear of the naught. 37 For an interesting discussion that calls attention to Melville's allusions to the "scientific" nature and definition of color, see Millicent Bell's "Pierre Bayle and Moby Dick" PMLA. September, 1951. 217 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. beholding the w hite depths of the m ilky W ay? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is n ot so m uch a color as the visible absence of color, and at the sam e tim e the concrete of all colors . . . a colorless, all color of atheism from w hich w e shrink? (169) A gain the search for the w hite w hale stan d s as allegorical to the h u m an search for m eaning. W ithout revelation, w e can find only those m eanings that we ourselves posit. Perhaps this is w hy we anxiously project, w hy we so quickly jum p forw ard to assign the nebulous object w ith a m eaning that witnesses ou r presence. In the doubloon, one m an, Ahab, finds Himself; another, Q ueequeg, finds that which is already w rit on his body "in the vicinity of his thigh." O nly Pip— Bodhisatva to the crew, one foot in the m ad world, one foot in the real— sings dow n their arrogance. "I look, you look, he looks; w e look, ye look, they look" (362) Pip calls out the roster of the subjective seekers; and he condem ns them all to a life of "looking," never seeing. They find in the doubloon their ow n reflections, ghosts they have w ritten into the gold, specters never intended by the m an and the fire that originally m inted the coin. Like Stubb, w ho finds the zodiac in the m arkings of the doubloon, hum ans will find the elem ents— the rew ards and dem ons— of their ow n superstitions. A nd Ishm ael knows this; that in a w orld w here m ysteries cannot be solved, the m ysteries themselves are significant players in the dram a. O ne of the w ild suggestings referred to . . . w as the u nearthly conceit that Moby Dick w as ubiquitous; that he 218 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. h ad actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the sam e instant of time. N or, credulous as such m inds m ust have been, w as this conceit altogether w ithout som e faint show of superstitious probability. For as the secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged, even to the m ost erudite research; so the hidden w ays of the Sperm W hale w h en beneath the surface rem ain, in great part, unaccountable to his pursuers. (158) Ishmael tells us this. He tells us that w hat w e discover w hen w e research the mystery— unfortunately, is a mystery. As if traveling upon the surface of a rhombus: w e journey tow ard the center only to discover that w e are traveling away from it. A nd this is a critical moment in a critical passage. Each character w ho gazes upon the heuristoglyphs and attem pts to gather m eaning according to his ow n herm eneutical w it either confidently posits an interpretation that satisfies som e present need or is struck dum b, confounded by the glyphs. A nd neither does Ishm ael attem pt to play Cham pollian regarding the doubloon. If the w hale ship has been his "Yale College and his H arvard," Ishmael, the typically "obsessive com pulsive" diver does not rise to offer his ow n interpolated Gnosis to the crew. He recognizes the ritual enacted by the w orshippers of the m anna; he recognizes the self-serving w orshippers of the golden idol. They w ould have their rew ard now. They w ould see them selves w ith the gold, see themselves in the gold. They have no patience to w ait for the truth. Ishmael reads the men who read the doubloon. And zee read Ishmael. 219 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He has apparently resigned himself to the fact of his subjectivity and limited (corrupted) vision. H e is hum bled before the sign and recognizes some thing^) as he w atches the others—for watching them is Ishm ael's ritual of reading a doubloon: "There’ s another rendering now; b u t still one text. All sorts of m en in one kind of world, you see." (362) That is: When you look, you see all sorts of men, rendering one text, one zvorld. That is: When you look, you see one zvorld, rendered (and tom apart) by all sorts of men. That is: you see one zvorld rendered (and drawn up) by all sorts of men. That is: You see me see all sorts of men. FOLLOWING HUME'S LEAD: FUNCTIONING WITHOUT FAITH W hat often seems neglected by those reporting H um e's argum ents, is his conclusion regarding hum an behavior as it relates to unknow able causation. Recognizing th at hum ans must and will function despite an inability to "know" som ething— to have "certainty"— H um e appends the rem ark that hum ans w ould go m ad if constantly w orried over sim ple causation and that they survive and function by accepting causation as real (by becom ing functional realists, by investing strong faith). "We assent to our faculties," Hum e writes, "and em ploy our reason only because w e cannot help it. Philosophy w ould render us entirely Pyrrhonian. w ere n o t nature too strong 220 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 for it." (C happell 54) M ost im portantly, H um e asserted that "nature" assures th at w e function despite our inability to know . "Since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures m e of this philosophical m elancholy . . . " (Treatise 269) But is this the final word for the unbeliever? Does habit alone enable action? Ishm ael's project is very m uch involved w ith answ ering this question, w ith detailing, if possible, how a reasoning person can act w ithout a guide of certain authority. W e m ight state the issue thusly. In the absence of a higher authority, how does a Post Enlightenm ent A m erican function? Such a person functions, at least for a time, exactly as did H um e— by testing reason and by hoping that reason m ight help discover and prove som ething as certain. Until gaining certainty, how ever, the agent m ust still function, m u st still eat, drink, breathe and w ork. Ishm ael's narrative severally returns to the idea of functioning despite the constraints and burdens of belief or disbelief. Philosophies (especially religious codes) are often show n in M obv-Dick to be in frustrating conflict w ith the m undane and practical desires, needs and activities of hum ans. M ost obviously perhaps, is the business of collecting sperm oil, an activity for w hich the sh ip 's "pious" owners are w illing to break the Sabbath, an activity even This quotation is from An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature (Cambridge, 1938) and used by Richard H. Popkin in "David Hume: His Pyrrhonism." 221 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ahab knows m ust not be forgone before M oby Dick seems close by. Starbuck's fam ous line brings the issue to a head: "I am gam e for his crooked jaw , and for the jaws of D eath too, C aptain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the w ay of the business w e follow . . . ." (143) Ishmael, w hile concerned w ith h um an m otivation and m eaning, strikes into this w orldly territory of practical action. H e wishes to know how to live, n o t m erely how to think. H e claims to have gone to sea— to have sought out the activity and experience of whaling— in order to drive off his "hypos." This 39 hints at the pow ers of activity to occupy and distract the depressed m ind. But of course Ishm ael also begins im m ediately to reify the cam paign of whaling: he notes the practical, physical value of the enterprise (providing for the lam ps of the w orld); and he notes the heroic, the epic, the tradition-laden (in other w ords, the symbolic) values of the chase and collection. A ctivity for Ishm ael seems both a m undane solace and a potential m edium for salvation. Ishm ael even likens his creation of his chapters— his "cetological System " to the w ork done on the "G reat Cathedral of Cologne." (127) Of course w e m ust adm it that activity for Ishm ael seem s never to be m indless activity. H e attaches m etaphysical ponderings and m usings to even the m ost routine or m undane of shipboard activities: to clim bing the rigging, to coiling a rope, to scrubbing a cauldron. Ishm ael does not see these 39 If acting (in the sense of inventing, thinking, writing) is not meaningful, it at least "fills the time." I do not mean this in a glib way. Existentialist authors from Sartre to Camus to Dostoevsky have explored the idea of action providing a stay against what Sartre called "nausea." Hemingway, more than others directly connected the idea of writing itself as an activity that staves off the devouring void. While in the act of writing, the writer is in the "clean, well-lighted place." 222 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. anchored m editations as investments u p o n a naked object; he does not see himself so m uch as an observer projecting invented significances onto a neutral referent, b u t rather as an observer w ho recognizes and dis-covers meanings already present. But as he does so he does not posit faith that such meanings find their wellspring in som e creator's investment. Ishmael is som ething m ore akin to a thinker of our ow n late 20th- century. H e has collected "m eanings" from around the globe. From am ong the least and m ost educated; from the Fiji, the H indu, the G erm an and the American; from the verbal and the w ritten, he has gathered his w o rd horde. In his frequent invocations of "m eanings" found here and there; in his draw ing of com parisons and connections, his illuminations of coincidence, conflation and relation, Ishmael allows the referent/object to tw itch against the living web of m eanings already established and created by the population of signifying agents. H eaping is Melville's highly w rought m etaphor. H eaping is, am ong other things, sim ply the result of Ishm ael's collecting-his fascination w ith draw ing together the curios that are none other than the m anifest artifacts of language. The "Extracts" are Ishm ael's flam boyant presentation of som e of his gathered locutia. The collection of chapters covering w haling lore displays Ishmael's w ord horde, and the divers an d tenacious "piratical running dow n of creeds" m arks the wide range of his adventurous quest. 223 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ISHMAEL: HOLDING UP HIS IMBECILE CANDLE As Ishm ael, Starbuck and several crew mem bers are lost a t sea in a whaleboat, Ishmael w rites Q ueequeg as the standard bearer of "forlorn hope." There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that alm ighty forlomness. There, then, he sat, the sign and sym bol o f a m an w ithout faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the m idst of despair (195) Even "w ithout faith" Q ueequeg acts so that he creates the opportunity, the possibility, the chance that his party m ight be rescued. In the narrative of Mobv-Dick. such an action, though improbable alm ost to the point of impossible suffices in this w orld as an heroic act. Ahab is also draw n as heroic in this way. A gainst all apparent odds, he will defy G od. A nd against all apparent odds Ishm ael w ill defy the Demon Resignation. Despite the dam ning of all things around him , he will engage in an heroic action, entering th at storm -tossed territory beyond the sight of safe harbor. Glimpses do ye seem to see of that m ortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the w ildest w inds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God— so better is it to p erish in that how ling infinite, th an be ingloriously dashed u p o n the lee, even if that w ere safety! (97) The chapters of M oby-Dick stand as testam ent to Ishm ael's effort to turn his back to the lee shore and face the howling infinite. M oby-Dick is a singularly penetrating m editation on the possibilities an d inherent probabilities of God's existence and m anifest presence. B ut Moby-Dick is also 224 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a penetrating m editation on the possibilities o f creating penetrating m editations. Ishm ael's attem pt to set dow n the tale is a n act predicated on a hope nigh unto faith according to w hich he (as the existentialists advocated) struggles to create m eaning itself. The effort is perhaps doomed. (So be it! proclaim s Beowulf, Sisyphus, Quixote); Ishmael yet will try it out. He will use language to boil the fat d o w n to render, if possible, som e valuable comm odity. T hough he holds in great suspicion his v ery tools and m edium , Ishm ael m ust w rite the w hale. H e sees but one possible escape from the m adness of facing the absence— he m ust become m eaning (if possible)— he m ust becom e the author itself. Ishm ael cannot "prove" the existence of an objective reality. Instead, he does w hat any a rtist w ould do; he finds a rhetoric that will allow him to w ithstand the alternations of faith and doubt that his investigations of reality perpetually induce. For Ishm ael, that rhetoric is a voice of genial desperation. The philosopher becomes the artist (Bryant 199) A nd in tu rn the artist becom es the creating author. John W enke expresses Ishm ael's cam paign succinctly, noting that, "Ishm ael's process narrative— expressed through his self-actualizing voice— depicts his being in the activity of becom ing." (116) Ishm ael heralds his o w n quest— and the fear w hich m otivates his effort— in chapter forty-two. A side from those m ore obvious considerations concerning M oby Dick, w hich could not b u t occasionally awaken in any m an ’s soul som e alarm, there w as another thought, or rather vague, nam eless horror concerning him , which at tim es b y its intensity completely overpow ered all the rest; and yet so m ystical and w ell nigh ineffable was it, that I 225 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. alm ost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form . It w as the whiteness of the w hale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain m yself here; and yet, in some dim, random w ay, explain m yself I m ust, else all these chapters m ight be naught (163) H e has essentially lost faith in finding the transcendent experience b u t he has not fully resigned himself to the idea th at life without a G od is life w ithout validated m eaning. Call it hubris or liberal hum anism , Ishm ael is open to the possibility that som ething other than a divine power can reveal truth. All the creeds and opinions he trys-out prove to have hollow centers b u t they do not all prove w orthless in the m aterial w orld. O ur inability to be certain, perhaps, does not dam n us to oblivion. W hether w e can see H um e's "m issing" connection or not, w e can posit a "strong faith" that such a connection is very, very probably there. A nd then we can function as the naive (or functional) realist does and sit in the chair that is very, very probably as present and as real as the seat of our pants. A nd should we suffer acutely from the hypos that accom panies the uncertainty of the existential, present-tense verb, we still have the never ceasing present-progressive. The Everlasting Present Progressive. Perhaps this is w hy Ishm ael cries out, "God keep me from ever com pleting anything. This whole book is b u t a draught— nay, b u t the draught of a draught." (128) We can return to Descartes' assertion and remind ourselves that his famous form ulation is essentially a paean to the Present-Progressive or the Present-Unfolding. "I am thinking a nd therefore I am." 226 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Richard Dean Smith notes a challenge Ishm ael faces in the creating of "gospel cetology." Ishmael, as an author, cannot claim that past— and therefore static—articulations are yet attached to the unfolding truth. After the Rom antic revolution at the end of the eighteenth cen tu ry . . . the m eaning of nature is prophesied by men, not to them. "Extracts" forms an history of hum an ideas grappling w ith the riddle of nature u nder the rubric of cetology. The auth or cannot present his "Extracts" as "veritable gospel cetology" because the tru th about the natural world is in the process of unfolding new ideas. The history of ideas is die "long Vatican" from w hich "gospel cetology w ill issue as m an tries to come to terms w ith the natural w orld." (106) A nd w here past events m ight be examined, m easured, charted and judged, the future exists in a state of possible becoming. W e can speculate, postulate and triangulate according to o u r best rational chartings and tracings b u t we cannot try-out what is yet prophesied of the future. So long as hum ans are engaged in "creating" or "authoring" the world, and as long as they rem ain skeptical (Infidels) regarding the certainty of their theories, their postulations can survive the test that cuts into and renders out G od's Logos of the WAS and IS. In his uncertain effort— in his heroic yet hum ble positing— Ishmael creates a rhetoric of his time, a rhetoric that begs confidence in its rational and "scientific" muscle-flexing, a rhetoric that whelms persuasively w ith its determ iningly thorough collecting and cataloguing, yet also a rhetoric that is veined and vitalized by the constantly sucking vacuum of endless imperfection. 227 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ishm ael follow s his ow n voice as far as it pierces into the confounding obscurity. The rational effort traces suggestions, follows hints, and trys-out rum ors and at tim es seem s almost to dis-cover . . . something. Almost. Instead Ishm ael's effort merely illum inates the cliff edges and the vortex below. Ishm ael dis-covers those heights— those intoxicating, dizzying heights- -where one short leap seem s to promise to bridge the chasm and end the vertigo. Ronald E. M artin has noted Ishm ael's recognition of the lim its of knowledge w ithin a rational world filled w ith lim ited and subjective "knowers." M artin calls Ishmael. "a new kind of know er, aw are of the impossibility of absolute knowledge and aw are of the distortion of m en's visions that com es from their self-justifying belief system s." (37) Moby-Dick begins on such a keynote of hyperdeterm inacy. The "Etymology" an d "Extracts" taken together serve as an epigraph to the narrative— b u t w h a t an epigraph! Rather than supplying a single or at m ost sm all few prefatory notes of introduction (w hat the reader m ight expect from a more "orthodox" novel), Ishmael provides a plethora and the reader, probably unable to carry m any of the specifics forw ard into the narrative, still is left w ith a vapor in the m ind, a m ist that tints Ishm ael's entire project and a perm eating odor of books, stacked as they w o u ld be in a Yale college or a H arvard b u t now m ixed w ith an oppressive, inescapable briny tone. 228 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Perhaps the best, m ost concentrated, exam ple of Ishm ael's (and Melville's) attem pt to heap w ords into m eaning is that sam e incom sum ate effort: "The W hiteness of the Whale." C hapter 42 is after all the central exhibit in Ishm ael's cabinet: a collection of artifacts, the gathering im pulse of which itself is predicated o n a confidence th at the artifacts, w hen collected, labeled, and catalogued m ight yield up an intelligible tru th that separately, each item m ight not suggest. Ishm ael's voice in th at chapter belies the sam e confidence that inspired ante-bellum Americans (especially in the first two decades of the 19th-century) to invest in their ow n im pulse to collect as their prim ary method tow ard discovering the truths that the n atu ral w orld m ight yield up. But Moby-Dick, as a whole, is also Ishm ael/M elville's attem pt to convey a sense of "something" to the reader. Ishm ael/M elville, by painting the whale from every angle, b y doing the police in all the possible voices w ill bring the reader as near as possible to the whale (Not, so that the reader m ay suffer the horror of confronting absence but so th at he or she m ay experience the hunt and take aw ay som ething "near" to the whale). Should the w hale prove to be as m ysterious and seem ingly insubstantial as the vapors of "the fountain," then so be it. Perhaps an impression can be gained even should the w ord- exerdse prove unable to "capture" a m ore "solid" and "satisfying" trophy. Sartre interpreted Mobv-Dick’ s encydopedic, cataloguing qualities to be p a rt of this attem pt by Melville. All m eans are going to seem legitim ate to him: serm ons, courtroom oratory, theatrical dialogues, interior m onologues, real or seem ing erudition, the epic— the epic above all. The epic because the volum e of these 229 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sum ptuous m arine sentences, w hich rise up and fall aw ay like liquid m ountains dissipating into strange and superb im ages is above all epic . . . w hen the reader has finally gotten the idea, w hen he finds him self at last face to face w ith the unaccom m odated fate of m an, w hen he sees m an as M elville sees him — this fallen transcendence in his horrible abandonm ent— it's no longer an epic he thinks he has read but an enorm ous sum m a . . . (97) Ishm ael seem s at first to be applying his energy to a rational, comm on- sensible effort. H is voice is that of the "m an of science" and the "m an of reason" and the m an who is actively creating his w orld in case no G od shows up to clarify and validate those "certain significances." The encyclopedic heaping, the cataloguing and collecting is a strategy w ith which the reader of M oby-Dick becom es familiar— a form ula w ith w hich the m id-nineteenth century reader w as already familiar. It is the "m ethod" of the N aturalist creating his cabinet, and then of the scientific society collecting its cabinets. If A hab heaps his whale Moby Dick until it grows inside him , Ishm ael heaps his w hale Mobv-Dick. In his effort to p u t it "in a com prehensible form"— to locate the object— Ishm ael begins to triangulate by evoking m etaphor after m etaphor, allegory after allegory, all in the apparent effort to pass on to the reader som e sense of the "vague, nam eless horror." It is an attem pt (at least it appears to be such to the naive reader) to reach a determ inate m eaning through overdeterm inant m eans. The hollow language artifacts are being used to triangulate m eaning, 230 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. th at is to approach determ inate m eaning (or at least lessen indeterm inacy) by rediscovering, creating, an d conjuring w ords in the m ind of the reader.40 This aggressive heaping causes m uch of Ishm ael's project to become m anifestly w helm ing. Casual readers of M oby-Dick are often struck by the relentless "whaling-lore." They m uck through m inutia about rigging a ship, about coiling a rope, about row ing a boat, an d they conclude at first that the encyclopedic references serve only as unneeded blubber and bluster. Perhaps then they strike an ah-hah! and decide that the categorizing, detailing and encyclopedizing serves the reader by educating him o r her in the factual m atters of whaling. But Moby-Dick is m ore than "faction." All b u t the m ost cynical of readers does indeed leave the narrative w ith a great confidence that he or she now "knows" a great deal about whales and w haling. This heaping of factual detail lends an authenticity to a book that is ostensibly just a tale that details life in the w hale fishery. Moby-Dick like Tvpee and Om oo before it are w itness accounts and logs detailing expeditions as m uch as they are narrative stories. But this evidence and authenticity; zvhat does it add up to. One man's articulation of the truths he has found—is the subjective witness of another proof enough? 40 We understand this in its simple form. If we attempt to describe something ivithout a relatively precise word, we immediately begin to triangulate. We say "greenish-yellow" and know the listener "more-or-less" understands the meaning to be "chartreuse." 231 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This "proof' is enough— it is convincing— only for those w ho have already taken the intuitive leap— the leap of faith— an d such a leap, Ishm ael w ill n o t risk. Like the Thoreau of W alden Ishm ael w ill m ake all effort tow ard m eeting and experiencing "truth" w ithout ever allow ing him self to believe absolutely in that truth. To state that A hab, Ishm ael, and T horeau of W alden are all interested in the Transcendental effort is valid. Ishm ael an d Thoreau are functional realists w ho w ould be Transcendentalists should th ey discover the way. T hey w o rk daily tow ard transcendental knowledge. O nly Ahab, however, w akes each m orning u n d er the spell of faith that the subject and the object m ay truly m eet an d becom e one. O nly A hab fails to recognize the artificiality of his nam ing an d projection. Ishm ael finally holds back, for he recognizes the essential separateness of nam es and objects. H e knows that m an is bound to nam e the w orld, but he has a m uch looser and m ore flexible sense of how language relates to the w orld than anyone else. H e does not strap him self tight to the w hale as A hab so literally and fatally does. He know s there is a w hale; and he knows th a t it is m en who project m eanings onto it (Tanner 23) Ishm ael knows, for exam ple, that the "w hiteness of the w hale" is n o t a m aterial object. "W hiteness" is conceptual— "accidental"— predicated u p o n som ething else— already a step rem oved. To center the m arker "w hiteness" is to intellectualize and to create a separate a n d unreal w orld— a m athem atical w orld w here m arkers can be internally consistent, depending on the definitions assigned by the creators. In such a w orld it is not im portant to rem em ber w hat Ishm ael insists that w e keep in m ind in our m aterial w orld: 232 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Every stately or lovely em blazoning— the sw eet tinges of sunset skies and w oods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are b u t subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without. (170) The sym pathetic connection betw een Melville's "Ishm ael" and Thoreau's "Thoreau," I believe is profound. The "contemporaries" are brothers in many ways. Both m en w ill render the Face of God, using any and all tools available. Thoreau w ill use an axe and a hoe and w ords, Ishmael will use a knife-blade and a try-pot and w ords. And they will create the Face of God so that if they cannot find it outside themselves— they will still experience it. They will render m oot the blazon of deconstruction. George Steiner, in Real Presences, rem arks on Derrida's m eta-commentary on the nature of (and in) words. Deconstruction draw s the consequence. W ithout having either to affirm or to deny the "death of God"— such affirm ation or denial being m erely oratorical gestures on behalf of a vacant simile— deconstruction teaches us that there is no "face of God" for the semantic m arker to turn to, there can be no transcendent or decidable intelligibility. (Steiner 132) Thoreau, of course, in W alden dedicates himself to experiencing (seeing, smelling, feeling, knowing) such an intelligibility. Yet he also adm its the frustrating, elusive, slippery qualities of the object which m ay or m ay not "really" exist. For T horeau just charting the traces, just plow ing and planting rows of beans becom es its ow n end— its ow n object. And so also for Ishmael, the telling of the tale is an end in itself— a gesture of faith standing against Ahab's "need" for the object/center. 233 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Emerson, a prom inent heretic himself, sang into this debate a positive assertion th at the individual m ight seek know ledge and truth an d by a leap of will m ight realize a transparent connection. Emerson was aw are that he was advocating idealism — that he was attem pting to re-dress the em peror in old clothing Thoreau w as not so confident in his exam inations of h um an sight and seeking. H e w as less willing to separate hum an potential from hum an habit. But if Thoreau recognized that hum ans are, as he calls them in W alden, "poor students," Melville recognized that they are also often aimless searchers, m ad hunters, desperate encyclopedists, who invest their faith in the tools of the blacksmith, the cartographer, the tattooist, the skrim shander, the carpenter and the scribe in their desperate attem pt to set hooks into pieces of truth. Melville recognized this hum an habit of hunting after truth to be heroic. And so he drew his star narrator as such a "deep diver." Ishm ael is Coleridge's Ancient M ariner draw n out. He is driven as is that other survivor, by some haunting pow er that suggests that the telling of his tale m ay help him approach understanding. There is a strong proselytizing quality to the Ancient M ariner's narrative. His is a cautionary tale that w ould convert and therefore save the w edding guest. Ishm ael's voice only occasionally comes across as so directly proselytizing b u t his tale is no less cautionary. Ishm ael would w arn us that the conjunction w e imagine betw een the real and ideal— a conjunction that m ay appear as calm water, prom ising to sm ooth aw ay any distinction betw een the real and ideal is 234 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. actually and always a narrow strait that borders the vortex of m eaninglessness. The creator of Logos know s no border betw een real and ideal. The G od of the Bible, for example, is w ritten as able to w rite ideas th at sim ply ARE. H e calls o u t light; and there is light. But Ishmael has seen the tragedy of Ahab w ho assum es this creating p o w er and learns that it is illusion. Ishm ael w arns his readers of this illusory experience, w here the psyche is squeezed as it w ere betw een the Scylla of self-started Logos and the C haribdys of prom ised Gnosis. H e w arns against looking into the fire; he w arns against forgetting that w e hover above D escartian vortices; and, perhaps m ost stridently, he w arns against cutting loose the m onkey ropes that tie each of us to others of our kind. Ishm ael's (and therefore Melville's) ow n investm ent is in w ords— in signs and nam es and m etaphors, in sym bols and m arkers and allegories. In the Calvinist tradition the "Leviathan" of Job w as considered to be a w hale.41 A nd if at one tim e hooking, catching and dividing leviathan am ong the m erchants seemed an unthinkable task, beyond h u m an reach, no longer did this seem so im probable. Early nineteenth century h um ans hunted, killed, and m arketed leviathan as a regular enterprise. 41 "Calvin published sixty-five sermons on the Book of Job, and in the tradition that he established, the Leviathan was typically identified as the whale, and was invoked to terrify impudent sinners." (Herbert 112) 235 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ishm ael is the novel's Comic Hero. H e survives. He functions w ithout faith. M ore im portantly, perhaps, he also succeeds w here Ahab fails, finding a w ay to hook and parcel the leviathan. For just as A hab's Fisher-King quest is to h u n t dow n and bring back the white w hale, Ishm ael's quest is also to dis cover and render M oby Dick (and Moby-Dick). A nd w ith w ords he renders blubber to discover the oil of enlightenm ent. A nd w ith w ords he becomes the author of light. In stories of the aw akening of Siddhartha B uddha, the young prince is said to have learned that "life is suffering" to w hich he elegantly and sim ply responds, then the purpose of a life's philosophy is to lim it that suffering. Ishm ael paints the state of the hum an to be— despite w hat democracy and fellowship m ight som etim es offer— a lonely, anxious hovering above the vortices. A nd yet Ishm ael ends his narrative by proclaim ing that he has escaped. H e is alone, yes; b u t he has alw ays been alone. But who aint alone? It is one of M elville's m ost elegant images: the unbeliever, no longer capable of faith, yet still determ ined to hope, for only in such continued searching can the possibility exist that orphans be rescued. The "devious cruising" of the Rachel creates the possibility of Ishm ael's "physical" or "m aterial" rescue. Perhaps the devious cruising of Ishm ael's narrative creates the possibility of his "Psychic" rescue. In such a dark existence, wherein one flickering flame cannot be expected by the rational m ind to clearly light o ne's path or to be sufficiently 236 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pow erful to shine outw ard and discover other orphan pathw ays, Ishm ael holds up his candle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SOURCES CONSULTED Ahlstrom , Sydney E. A Religious H istory of the Am erican P eople. N ew York: H arcourt, 1956. 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Knopf, 1997. 245 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. K em p, A nthony. The Estrangem ent of the Past: A Study in the Origins of M odem Historical Consciousness. New York: O xford U niversity Press, 1991. K enny, Vincent. H erm an M elville's Clarel: A Spiritual A utobiography. An A rchon Book. H am den: Shoe String Press, 1973. K ram nick, Isaac, ed. The Portable Enlightenm ent R eader. N ew York: Penguin, 1995. Lee, A. Robert, ed. H erm an Melville: Reassessm ents. Totow a: Bames and N oble, 1984. Lehm an, David. Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and th e Fall of Paul de M an. N ew York: Poseidon Press, 1991. Leitch, Vincent B. Am erican Literary Criticism from the T hirties to the Eighties. N ew York: Colum bia UP, 1988. Levine, Bob. Conspiracy and Romance: Studies in Brockden Brown, Cooper. H aw thorne, and M elville. Cambridge: C am bridge U niversity Press, 1989. Leyda, Jay. The Melville Log: A Docum entary Life of H erm an Melville 1819- 1891. N ew York: G ordian Press, 1969. M acann, C hristopher. Four Phenom enological Philosophers: Husserl. H eidegger. Sartre, M erleau-Pontv. London: R outledge, 1993. M achor, Jam es L., ed. Readers in History: N ineteenth-C enturv American Literature and the Contexts of Response. Baltimore: The Johns H opkins U niversity Press, 1993. M ackie, J.L. The Cem ent of the Universe: A Study of C ausation. Clarendon L ibrary of Logic and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1980. M arsh, Clayton Knight. "Sabbath W haling in Moby-Dick." ESQ 36 (1990): 267- 93. M artin, Robert K. Hero. C aptain and Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique, and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of H erm an Melville. C hapel Hill: U. of N orth C arolina Press, 1986. M artin, Robert. "Sleeping w ith a Savage: D eculturation in M oby-D ick." ATO. N ew Series 5:3 (September 1991): 195-203. 246 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. M artin, Ronald E. A m erican Literature and the Destruction of Knowledge: Innovative W riting in the Age of Epistem ology. Durham: Duke U niversity Press, 1997. Marx, Leo. The M achine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. N ew York: Oxford U niversity Press, 1964. M atthiessen, F. O. A m erican Renaissance: A rt and Expression in the age of Emerson and W hitm an. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941. May, John R. "The Possibility of Renewal: The Ideal and Real in H aw thorne, Melville and Twain." Toward a N ew Earth" Apocalypse in the Am erican N ovel. Notre Dame: U niversity of Notre Dame Press (1972): 42-91. McSweeney, Kerry. Moby-Dick: Ishm ael's M ighty Book. Twayne's M asterw ork Ser. Boston: Twayne Publishers-G.K. Hall, 1986. McCall, Dan. The Silence of Bartlebv. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. McGinn, Colin. The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts. 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. —. Omoo: A N arrative of A dventures in the South Seas; A Sequel to 'Tvpee; or. The M arquesas Islanders." London: William Clowes and Sons, 1893. —. The Piazza Tales. N orthw estem -N ew berry Edition. Evanston: N orthw estern UP, 1987. —. Pierre: or the A m biguities. N ew York: M eridian Classic-Penguin, 1964. —. Redburo: His First Voyage. Being the Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman. in the M erchant Service. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 1986. —. Selected Tales and Poem s. Ed. Richard Chase. Rhinehart Editions. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and W inston, 1960. —. Tvpee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. H arm ondsw orth: Penguin, 1972. —. W hite Tacket: or the W orld in a M an-of-W ar. M eridian Classic. Canada: N ew Am erican Library-Penguin, 1979. Michelfelder, Diane P. and Richard E. Palmer, eds. Dialogue and Deconstruction: The G adam er-D errida Encounter. N ew York: State University of N ew York Press, 1989. 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Baltimore: John H opkins UP, 1995. Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of C hristianity. G rand Rapids: Baker Book H ouse, 1987. Moriarty, M ichael. Roland Barthes Stanford: Stanford U niversity Press, 1991. Morison, Sam uel Eliot. The O xford H istory of the Am erican People; Volume Two: 1789 Through Reconstruction. N ew York: Penguin, 1965. M umford, Lewis. H erm an Melville: A Study of His Life and V ision. Revised Edition. A H arbinger Book. N ew York: Harcourt, Brace and W orld, 1929. Myerson, Joel, ed. The Transcendentalists: A Review of Research and Criticism . N ew York: MLAA, 1984. NIV Study Bible, The. The H oly Bible, N ew International Version. G rand Rapids: The Zondervan C orporation, 1985. Norton, A ndrew s. The Evidences for the Genuineness of the G ospels. 2nd ed. London: John Chaman, 1847. (Microfilmed in 1976 by Xerox M icroform s Systems, U niversity Microfilms.) Num bers, R onald L. The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Ozick, Cynthia. Preface. The Book of Tob A Vintage Spiritual Classic. New York: R andom House, 1998. Packer, B.L. E m erson's Fall: A N ew Interpretation of the M ajor Essays. New York: C ontinuum , 1982. Packer, J. I. G od's Words: Studies of Key Bible Themes. G rand Rapids: Baker Book H ouse, 1981. Pagels, Elaine. A dam . Eve and the Serpent. N ew York: Vintage-Random , 1988. —. The Gnostic G ospels. New York: Vintage-Random , 1979. —. The O rigin of Satan. New York: Vintage-Random , 1995. 249 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Parker, H erschel. Herm an Melville: A Biography Volum e 1.1819-1851. Baltimore: Johns H opkins UP, 1996. —, and H arrison Hayford. M obv-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts (1851-19701. New York: W .W. N orton, 1970. —, ed. The Recognition of H erm an Melville: Selected Criticism Since 1846. 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Creator Keel, Lawrence Joshua (author)

Core Title Anxieties of absence: Authors, orphans and infidels in "Moby-Dick"

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag literature, American,OAI-PMH Harvest,Philosophy,religion, general

Language English

Advisor Kemp, Anthony (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Willard, Dallas (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-79950

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Legacy Identifier 3018096.pdf

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Rights Keel, Lawrence Joshua

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