Melville, Herman
Moby Dick

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Forword:

The meaning of Moby Dick is so complex that it is impossible to approach the novel from one viewpoint only. Part of the greatness of the novel lives in the fact that no amount of discussion ends the possibility of additional meanings and as Melville would suggest, the meaning of Moby Dick lies not in the book itself, but in the reader.
It would be impossible to discus all the points of view of critics and therefore I will take only one approach to the novel.

List of Characters:

Ahab

The one-legged Captain of the Pequod who has sworn death for Moby Dick, the gigantic white whale who crippled him.

Ishmael

The narrator of the story who ships out on the Pequod as a simple seaman.

Starbuck

The first mate aboard the Pequod who adheres to the strict Christian view of life.

Stubb

The second mate who is concerned mainly with having a good time.

Flask

The third mate who is characterized by his mediocrity.

Queequeg

One of the harpooners who forms a friendship with Ishmael.

Tashtego

Another of the harpooners, descended from Indians.

Daggoo

The third harpooner, descended from African tribes.

Fedallah

The Parsee who becomes Ahab’s personal harpooner.

Peleg and Bildad

Co-owners of the Pequod.

Father Mapple

The minister who preaches in the Whaleman’s chapel.

Elijah

A strange man who prophesies doom for the Pequod.

Fleece

The cook aboard the Pequod who preaches a sermon to the sharks.

Pip

The Negro cabin boy who loses his mind when abandoned temporarily in the sea.

Perth

The blacksmith who forges Ahab’s harpoon.

Gabriel

The mad prophet aboard the Jeroboam.

Mayhew

Captain of the Jeroboam.

Radney

The brutal first mate aboard the Town-Ho who is killed by Moby Dick.

Steelkilt

A seaman aboard the Town-Ho who is persecuted by Radney.

The story:

We hear the story of Moby Dick form the lips of a man who, at the very beginning of the story, says simply, "Call me Ishmael." Ishmael, an inlander of Massachusetts, succumbs to the urge to go to the sea, not as a passenger nor as an officer, both of which he disdains, but as an ordinary seaman. There is the life!
One cold and wet December day he enters, a carpet bag on his shoulder, the shipping port of New Bedford, and finds a room at Spouter Inn. He shares his bed, at first in great consternation, with a massive South Sea Islander named Queequeg.
Queequeg is a heathen, and an expert harpooner on whaling ships. The next day a driving storm forces Ishmael to seek shelter in the Whalemen’s Chapel, a cold and austere place. Soon the pastor, Father Mapple, enters and, tossing off his greatcoat, climbs a rope ladder to the pulpit situated high above his listeners.
Father Mapple’s stirring sermon is upon Jonah and the Whale. Father Mapple exhorts his hearers to deny sin and to uphold the truth. But above all, the true delight of life and great achievement of man comes when he acknowledges no law, no force, but the Lord his God.
Ishmael and Queequeg become fast friends. The time arrives to leave New Bedford, cross the short expanse of sea to Nantucket, where together they will search out a whaling ship. On the packet boat en route to Nantucket a foolish landrubber, who had been making fun of Queequeg’s strange blank-and-tattoo coloring, is accidentally plunged into the icy water. Only Queequeg, of all aboard ship, dives into the sea and rescues him. They secure a room that evening in Nantucket, and the next day Ishmael, after carefully looking over the whaling ships being fitted for several years at sea, chooses the Pequod. When the ship’s owners are told of Queequeg, and subsequently see him, the gladly sign him on also. Good harpooners are scarce.
The captain of the ship, they are told, is Arab. Because of some vague illness he is confined to his cabin. A strange old wisp of a man later confronts Queequeg and Ishmael and alludes darkly and ominously to Captain Ahab and the Pequod.

On Christmas morning, a cold grey day, as Ishmael and Queequeg approach the ship, they see several dark figures scurry aboard. Shortly the Pequod sets sail upon a wind-swept Atlantic. Now, says Ishmael, the world of the Pequod is surrounded by the mysterious sea.
Ishmael introduces us to Starbuck, the chief mate, Stubb, the second mate, and Flask, the third mate; and their harpooners who are, respectively, Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. As the ship enters warmer air, some days after leaving Nantucket, Ishmael catches his first glimpse of Ahab, captain of the Pequod, standing on the afterdeck, his white peg leg anchored in a hole bored into the deck floor. A shiver of terror comes over Ishmael.
The focus is shifted momentarily from the crew to whales as Ishmael describes the various types. He points out that the most prized of all is the sperm whale, which yields valuable spermaceti oil which lights the lamps of the world and is also essential for perfume and other products. Ishmael aslo explains how the officers and seamen are housed and fed in opposite ends of the ship, and how whales are sighted by sailors called "lookouts" who perch precariously from the mast and, when they sight the sperm whale blowing mist from his spoute in the distance, sign out, "There she blows!"
The crew is commanded to come before Ahab and there he tells them that the sole purpose of the Pequod’s voyage is to hunt down the Great White Whale, which some crew members instantly recognize as Moby Dick. Ahab confesses is deep, burning, tormenting desire to strike back at the creature who took his leg from him. The crew excitedly accepts the challenge flung at them by Ahab and they all drink a pledge to it. The wine casks are opened and the crew revels through the night, drinking and shouting and singing.
And who is Moby Dick? Ishmael learns from the crew that he is a larger-than-usual sperm whale with a peculiar snow-white forehead, a deformed lower jaw, and a malicious temper which drives him to madness when attacked. No other whale approaches the evil Moby Dick. Indeed, Ishmael offers affidavits that the enraged sperm whale, such as Moby Dick, has the power to ram and sink a whaling ship!
Night after night, day after day, Ahab pores over the charts of the world’s seas, plotting a course which he hopes will take him to Moby Dick. Meanwhile the crew sights its first sperm whales as the lookout sings out, "There she blows!" he whale boats are lowered from the Pequod. At this moment Ishmael discovers that the mysterious dark figures who slipped aboard the ship the morning of sailing are East Indians who man the oars and tiller of Ahab’s boat. In the wild excitement of the first chase Ishmael’s boat capsizes. When it is rescued from the water he realizes the crew finds humor in this reckless adventure.
In a later lowering, Little Pip, a Negro, is tossed from a boat and presumably left to die. Although he is finally rescued by the Pequod, this harrowing experience turns Pip into an idiot.
The Pequod continues voyaging relentlessly through the South Atlantic, then the Indian Ocean and on the way captures, kills, dissects and extracts oil from the sperm whales. Ships are met, and on each occasion the gab-fest or "gam" opens with Ahab’s stern demand, "Hast seen the White Whale?"
The suspense of the chase for Moby Dick steadily heightens as the Pequod enters the Japanese sea, the area in which the White Whale is most likely to be found.
Then one day the Pequod meets the whaling ship Enderby, whose captain shows Ahab that he has lost his arm very recently to the White Whale. Ahab rushes back to his ship and in the process splinters his ivory leg. The carpenter and blacksmith hurriedly fashion a new one, and Ahab has a new harpoon fashioned from the finest iron.
The Pequod, now in full sail, enters the vast depths and expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Despite the efforts of Starbuck and Stubb to abandon the mad chase, the Pequod plunges ahead.
Suddenly a fierce typhoon descends upon the Pequod. The ship’s sails are ripped by the raging winds, her decks washed by mountainous waves. The three main mast tips suddenly spout fire casting an eerie glow over the ship. Still Ahab urges the vessel forward. He becomes increasingly impatient – devising a new compass when the storm ruins the regular ship’s compass.
The storm subsides and the Pequod meets the whaling ship Rachel, which has encountered Moby Dick and lost a whale boat bearing a crew including the captain’s son. Ahab ignores the Rachel’s plea to help search for the lost boat.
The tempo of the chase increases. At long last, the Great White Whale – Moby Dick – is sighted by Ahab.
The first day harpoons are driven into Moby Dick but the furious whale smashes Ahab’s boat. All the whalemen are rescued, but Moby Dick escapes.
The second day the harpoons of all three boats find their mark in Moby Dick’s huge sides and again Ahab’s boat capsized. But all hands are rescued save the Parsee, Fedallah.
The third day Ahab drives a harpoon into Moby Dick’s side. Two of the boats, in danger, are ordered back to the Pequod. Ahab’s boat remains alone to fight the whale. The angered Moby Dick drives his forehead into the side of the Pequod, splintering its bow. Ahab throws another harpoon into Moby Dick, but its rope catches Ahab about the neck and drags him into the depths. The Pequod sinks.
Only Ishmael survives. He is rescued by the Rachel.

CHARACTER ANALYSES

Herman Melville’s characters in Moby Dick, are not only recognizable blood-and-flesh individuals but are also symbolic of the varying degrees of strength and frailty of man.Yet it would be a mistake to assume that all of Melville’s characters are constants. By this we mean that an evil man, such as Ahab, was not always evil; and that a mild man, like Starbuck, was not always mild. So, when we talk about the individuals in Moby Dick we must realize that in many instances we speak not of black and white but grey.
Six characters will be examined here, not because the others are unimportant, but simply because these characters are pivotal. By this we mean that the main streams of Melville’s thoughts flow around and through them, in sufficient detail, to convey the essential meaning of the book.

Captain Ahab

Personal description:

We see Ahab for the first time some days after the Pequod has left Nantucket, and it is through the eyes of Ishmael. "…foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension….He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all limbs without consuming them, or taking away...from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad from seemed made of solid bronze…Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing tight down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-ile mark, lividly whitish." (It is not known whether this was a scar or birthmark) "…for the first few moments I hardly noticed that not a little of his overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood…Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication…of the moody stricken Ahab.

His role:

From the outset we are aware that Moby Dick has severed Ahab’s leg and that Ahab was determined to destroy that creature which had humiliated him, and caused him so much pain and suffering. "He tasks me, he heaps me," says Ahab, and the pagan ceremony in which the crew pledges to hunt until the end for the Great White Whale, he says again "Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" For Ahab, then, little else matters save plunging ahead from sea to sea until that moment arrives when he can destroy that evil which has made of him a vengeful, evil man. Yet Ahab, of whom we see much ugliness, has his "other sides." At first he intended only to hunt for Moby Dick. But Stubb it is who persuades him to the practical view that in the process the casks should be filled with the oil of other whales. In the unfortunate Pip he sees something of himself and for a moment he permits his love for Pip almost to dissuade him from his vengeful purpose. And then, before his fateful meeting with Moby Dick, Ahab looks back upon his life as one of folly and pities his "widowed" wife and child. Ahab is in the tradition of the evil man of fiction who seeks to destroy evil with evil, instead of with love and goodness. Indeed, Melville makes it clear that he is a "rugged individual" in the American tradition. It is a pity, Melville seems to say in portraying this great character, that Ahab’s individualism was selfish and greedy and evil rather than selfless and in some degree, helpful to his fellow man.

Starbuck

Personal description:

Starbuck, a native of Nantucket and a Quaker, was about thirty years old, somewhat handsome, tall, thin, and had a pure thight skin like a revivified Egyptian. His eyes reflected lingering images of all the perils of sea he had calmly confronted.

His role:

Starbuck in may ways is the oppositte of Ahab. He was courageous but had little interest in reckless, devil-may-care bravado. He was prudent and saw in the voyage of the Pequod the money its oil would bring and thus enhance the comforts of his home, wife and child. Indeed it was his family that bent him from the ruggedness of his nature. He is one the ship to kill whales for a living. Yet he is human. When Ahab seeks to pledge the crew to vengeance upon Moby Dick it was onlu Starbuck who raised his voice in protest: "Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous." But Ahab expains his frenzy and again demands that Starbuck speak. Starbuck, the moderate, says only, "God keep me!-keep us all!" Then later, reflecting on this, Starbuck says, "My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by a madman! Horrible old man! Who’s over him, he cries – aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable office – to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with a touch of pity!"
And, of course, so it was. Time and again Starbuck counsels moderation and Ahab responds with greater vengefulness, until that last day before the fateful encounter with Moby Dick. Says Starbuck to Ahab: "Oh, my Captain! My Captain! Noble soul! Grand old heart, after all! Why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! Let us fly these deadly waters! Let us home!" But there are some things, Melville suggests, in human life which cannot be met with Starbuck’s prudence. And so, Ahab fulfills that need with violent spirit.

Ishmael

Personal description:

Ishmael tells us little of his appearance, but if we are to believe, as some critics have, that Ishmael was the personification of Melville then he would be a young man in his teens, tall, broad – shouldered, and fair of complexion.

His role:

It is clear that Ishmael has understanding and compassion. He can live in and accept the natural world, yet his soul lofts upward. He says, " And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny… Doubts of all things earhtly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye."
To gain this understanding of man, and his universe, was after all, Ishmael’s purpose in going to sea.
And it was Ishmael who alone survived in the life – buoy coffin built for a savage (Queequeg). Perhaps it was because Ishmael saw the knowledge of life on earth, and heavenly wisdom, in balance, that, as Father Mapple said, "if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves."

Pip

Personal discription:

Small, youthful Negro, "with that pleasant, genial, jlly brightness peculiar to his tribe" who "loved life and all life’s peaceable securities."

His role:

Melville has cast Pip in a dual role. We first see him as a gentle jolly fellow set against the perilous task of killing whales from a small oarmanned boat. Pip, in fear, jumps from the boat twice, the second time to be left in the sea. By chance he is rescued but the experience has driven him to insanity and we see him after this as a babbling idiot. Ahab, the peg-legged man, sees in him the same suffering he experiences. But Pip does little to protest this cruel fate. This abjection contrasts with Ahab’s violent protest.

Fedallah

Personal description:

Tall, swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from his steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trousers of the same stuff. But strangely crowning his darkness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head.

His role:

Fedallah is the harpooner in Ahab’s strange Oriental crew. Melville has obviously cast him in the role of the Devil for he is always present to goad Ahab onward in his mad purpose, always fixing his strange gaze upon Ahab, and seldom speaking. He is at one moment mischievous and chuckling at Ahab’s anguish, and at another sloemnly abject when the forces of good seem to be swerving his captive from the fate Fedallah has planned for him.

Moby Dick

Personal description:

Moby Dick is a Sperm Whale perhaps 90 to 100 feet long (contrasted with the 150-foot length of the Pequod), has a snow-white wrinkled forehead, a deformed lower jaw, a high pyramidical hump, and a body streaked and spotted with the same whiteness of his forehead.

His role:

Moby Dick is cast in two roles by Melville. In one he is legendary, but real whale for the crew, the object of a wild and exciting chase through the seven seas. For Ahab, Moby Dick is not only the living whale which removed from him his leg, but a symbol of evil and the scapegoat for Ahab’s miserable existence. And to make this character even more obscure than ahab’s, Melville makes it clear that Moby Dick is capable of the greatest violence. But we also see the Great White Whale swimming tranquilly at sea unmindful of man until attacked. This coincides with Melville’s emphasis upon the whiteness of the whale for he suggests that whiteness has come to mean for man both tranquility and good, as well as terror and evil.