Shan’s Blog

And here we reach the end of our long journey at sea, shipmates. It was great sailing with you. But all kidding aside, there is something I wanted to talk about. Yes, there was Ahab’s prophecy coming true (which it always does… it was predictable) and yes, everyone did die in the end, except for our beloved Ishmael. But we all knew that would happen. So I wanted to focus on chapter 132, where Ahab himself actually claims himself to be mad.

We were all discussing how Ahab was crazy, and how everyone knew he was crazy, but wouldn’t say it. But have you ever heard of a deluded person who knew there was something wrong with them? That was certainly a twist.

“Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? … What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what is my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab?”

We see Ahab even questioning himself, which might just reinforce the state of his madness. He himself wonders why he is on this quest, and what he’s trying to accomplish by hunting the white whale, which he knows will be fruitless. On some level though, he cannot stop himself, and he knows that there is some unspeakable force that is keeping him from stopping. He asks why he is so obsessed, and what that nameless thing is that makes him keep going, and he cannot come up with an answer. If the great Captain Ahab does not know, then how are we, as readers, supposed to know? We could guess by deductive reasoning… but I don’t think that any one person could ever really know what’s going on through Ahab’s mind, or name that thing that is driving him on a pointless path. This is a great example of man vs. himself, and perhaps Ahab is not as strong as we would like to think, because he cannot overcome… himself.

In these chapters, we find a surprise twist to the storyline: the forming relationship between Ahab and Pip. It’s surprising, a little sketchy, and also completely unwarranted… I did not see this coming.

The two represents two different extremes. One is a black cabin boy (the lowest ring of the social ladder on the ship) and the other is the all-powerful Captain Ahab (the mightiest of all the crew). It’s weird that these two would suddenly become companions. In a way, I guess this does show the compassionate side of Ahab, since he’s befriending this young boy (in the most non-sketchy way possible). We were talking about Ahab’s family today in class, and this side of the captain does remind the reader that Ahab is human and reinforces the fact that he is both a husband and a father.

This really makes me wonder about Ahab’s family and how he acted before he met Moby Dick, and before he was consumed by revenge for his lost leg. If Ishmael was the annoying little nerd in school who always raised his hand and asked the most random questions, who would Ahab be? Would he be the quiet kid in the back of the room, plotting against the bully who took his lunch money? I don’t know, but either way, his pride must have always been extremely important to him, because he’s willing to risk everything to redeem himself. Although, really, he’s not proving anything to anyone else… He’s doing all this just to make himself feel better. All sailors know the great story of the white whale, and everyone who’s faced him has either died or been traumatized. So no one would really care if, after Ahab’s incident, he just gave up like all the others. I feel that that could possibly be another reason why he’s risking everything: because he doesn’t want to be like all the others. After all, how awesome would it be to be known as the man who battled Moby Dick and lived? And then have enough courage to go back and search for him again? We all speak about Ahab’s thirst for revenge, but (I could be totally off here) could it be a search for fame as well?

A lot happened in these chapters, but I’m going to mainly focus on Ahab’s increasing insanity and the Parsee’s (Fedellah?) prophecy of the captain’s death.

Ahab is told of his inevitable death and, from the reading, it doesn’t look like this is the first time he’s been warned. Only hemp will be able to kill him (a rope, I’m guessing) and he must first see two hearses on the sea, one not made by mortal hands, and one made of wood from America. Ahab believes then that he will not die on this voyage (although we all know that’s not true) and, if he should ever come face to face with Moby Dick, it won’t be the whale that will be his downfall and kill him. Ahab, I think, is being extremely naïve for a supposedly wise and great man. He doesn’t take the prophecy seriously and believes that he is essentially invincible on the sea. I don’t fully understand the hearse part, but there are ropes all over the ship, and I think Ahab should be weary of them. Perhaps that is why Ishmael spent so much time talking and describing, in great detail, the ropes on the ship. I sense some foreshadow?

After the incident with Starbuck, Ahab’s insanity seems to grow. He first throws away the quadrant, and then refuses to put up lightning rods, even though it puts the ship and crew in danger. He then makes his own compass and breaks the log and line. All these events represent Ahab’s growing need for power and control over the ship. He doesn’t listen to any of the other crew members, even though the suggestions they make may be for the best. When Ahab replaces the compass, he is increasing his own power. The route of the Pequod all relies on Ahab’s compass, instead of the standard one that everyone else used. He changes the ship’s course and, therefore, has ultimately changed the ship’s destination. The path and fate of the Pequod is now determined by Ahab, instead of by the conventional method.

We catch word of Moby Dick when Ahab meets the English Captain, who, strangely enough, is able to identify with him. Captain Boomer lost an arm to Moby Dick but, unlike Ahab, he’s not interested in mad revenge. But, I must admit, it’d be interesting if we could meet a character who was as obsessed and psychotic as Ahab, though… I think the whole book would explode.

The next couple of chapters are so Melville, when Ishmael goes on and on about the structure of the whales. I do find it funny that, to prove his point, he makes up a fake (at least, it sounds fictional and, knowing Ishmael, it’s very possible he made it up to prove his point) place called Tranque with a king named Tranquo (definitely made-up) and accounts how they used a sperm whale skeleton as their temple. One quote in chapter 102 in particular caught my interest:

“The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we heard the thousand voices that speak through it.”

I’m not exactly sure what this means, but I think it could potentially connect to Ahab and the loom the god is weaving could represent Moby Dick. The captain is so consumed by his work and range, that he is propelled by his hurt pride to do the impossible – kill the white whale. Everyone they meet thinks him to be mad, and they tell him to give up his quest and forget about it, but he is blinded by his need for revenge that he refuses to listen to reason. The crew too goes along with Ahab and his crazy schemes, though it’s not like they have a choice. If Ahab were to escape that feeling of vengeance, then he’d be able to hear all the warnings.

Ch. 96 was a typical Melville chapter, where he takes an aspect of whaling and turns it into a metaphor for life, then somehow makes it connect back to the story. One quote particularly caught my interest:

“There is wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny places. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”

I suppose this could be interpreted as many things, but I think the Catskill eagle represents Ahab, in that he is mad and crazy, but that madness makes him greater than all others. Wisdom is connected with madness, and Ahab was driven to madness because of his great woe for his lost leg and lost pride. However, because of his insanity he is considered a great and brilliant man and his conscious is higher than a normal person’s.

Next, I wanted to look at chapter 99, the last chapter we read for this assignment. We hear the different interpretations of the doubloon from the characters on the ship, and what the picture on the coin means. Ahab’s reaction struck me the most, when he said that a man can see himself reflected in it. I find this to be true, because everyone’s statement that they make of the coin reflects their character. For example, because everyone else had looked at the coin, Stubb takes another look at it when, originally, he thought of it only as money, because he wanted to add up to his superiors in supposed wisdom. Flask can only see the value of money, because he cares about profit. Pip thinks that it is the ship’s naval, which is like the center, which shows how naïve and innocent he is.

From these chapters, one quote that I thought was interesting was from chapter 86, when Ishmael, instead of talking about the whale’s head, goes off in the opposite direction and talks about the other end; the tail. He states that;

“Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven.”

In this quote, he says that the tail of the whale is always reaching towards heaven, which I interpret as the whale being a sort of heavenly creature. This is ironic to me, since Ahab, who is a well-known whaling captain, is portrayed as evil and as the devil. The whales and the whalers are complete opposites. Again, the theme of good and evil takes place here and (since the ending was given away that everyone dies, except Ishmael) there is the old fairytale ending of good battling out evil and winning.

Another part that I thought was ironic was in ch. 87. The Pequod chased after the whales and, in turn, were chased by the other boat of the Malays. I took this as another lesson in the book; that, in some way, the predator will, in one case or another, become the prey. The Pequod is chasing after the mightiest creature on the earth, and yet they themselves are being pursued as well. As a reader, you could take this in any way, but I think that it illustrates the “great circle of life” in that there is an endless cycle that takes place in the world.

The first chapter (81) was possibly one of the more exciting ones. In it, we follow the capture of another whale, which starts off as a race between the Pequod and another boat, the Jungfrau. I feel as if the crew of the Pequod almost showed off, because they wanted the Jungfrau to know that they were more experienced in whaling and, therefore, better. The race of the two boats turned into a game, in which one boat wanted to beat the other merely for pride.

This reminds me a lot of the game between Ahab and Moby Dick. Ahab wants to defeat the white whale to restore his pride. He feels that, as captain, he needs to maintain his status, and wants to show Moby Dick that he cannot be beaten. Moby Dick has also showed that he will not be defeated, from the countless, fearful stories that the seamen tell about him, and by the mere fact that he bit Ahab’s leg. You could almost argue that the powerful Pequod in the whaling race represents Moby Dick, and the weaker Jungfrau is Ahab. It’s not that Ahab is, by any means, feeble, but in the grand scheme of things, who is chasing after who? In reality, isn’t Moby Dick the one with all the power?

I’ll skip the normal rant about how much I absolutely cannot stand this book, and get right to the details. First of all, in the first chapter (73) we see how the crew is getting weary of Fedellah, and how their suspicion of him is growing. They compare him to the devil, and Ishmael even remarks on how Fedellah’s shadow blends and lengthens Ahab’s. I found this very interesting, as if the two of them (Fedellah and Ahab) were both evil and somehow connected because of it.

Then there’s more stuff about the difference between the sperm whale and the right whale. Ishmael explains the characteristics of their heads, which could be fascinating for some, but not exactly my cup of tea. The two whale heads are on either side of the boat, and balance it out so the boat isn’t tipping to one side anymore. Basically, the rest of the chapters (to chapter 80) is all about the sperm whale’s features, and how the whale’s head’s attributes show its genius and show that it is comparable to a god.