16A. Moby-Dick (1851), Chs. 54-55

"Ishmael tells the story of the Town-Ho" (1923) illustration by Mead Schaeffer

From Moby-Dick, Third Norton Critical Edition, edited by Hershel Parker.

Chapter 54 "first appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for October 1851, six weeks in advance of the book's publication in mid-November." By including the story (interpellating it) in the novel, Melville is able "to introduce the white whale in action without weakening the climax of Ahab's pursuit."

Aesthetics:  The Town-Ho Interlude

1) I think I can see the connection Melville was drawing between these characters and our main cast on the Pequod. Towards the end, the crew begin an uprising-like protest against their captain for mistreatment, with Steelkilt leading this attack.

Note how the narrative has positioned the reader with respect to Ahab's quest to find Moby Dick. Consider: do you align yourself with the monomaniac who cares about nothing else but the quest for the whale? Or are you inclined to stop for a "Gab" along the way?

Steelkilt at Ahab?

2) ". . . concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart" Steelkilt "kept his own counsel" and "systematically built the plan of his revenge" (Ch. 54).

Moby Dick = Symbol of Justice? Fate?

3) Moby-Dick acts as a divine intervening force in this tale. ... [The] men in [Moby-Dick] name the power of God or divine intervention as the way in which Steelkilt averted his fate as a murderer, [as when the narrator writes:] "...Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have done." . . . [But] it is in fact, Moby Dick who nestled himself into the cracks of Steelkilt’s plans and disturbed them as they were. This indirect characterization of Moby Dick . . . portrays the whale as an immortal, other-worldly creation who possesses a deity-like quality of elusiveness and a perceivable invincibility, also indirectly characterizing those who seek to hunt him as mere mortals, quantifiably smaller in size and capability.

• ". . . the fool [Radney, the mate] had been branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch, spouting blood like a whale" (Ch. 54).
• " . . . the boat . . . was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, pludged headlong again, and went down" (Ch. 54).

Ideology: The Compulsion to Belittle or Destroy

4)     "... it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of ours--watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightaway against that man he conceives and unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it" (Ch. 54)

• Herschel Parker footnote from the Norton Third Critical Edition:  "Melville saw himself as suffering at the hands of a speech-suppressing modern American Inquisition; he even thought of dedicating [his novel] The Confidence Man to victims of auto-da-fe, the ceremony in which heretics were burned alive" (Ch. 54).

Aesthetics: Humorous Euphemism

4.    "...the made commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large" (Ch. 54)

Aesthetics: Humorous Metaphor

5. The Lakeman [Steelkit] justifies his attack on Radney, the mate:  "I told him not to prick the buffalo" (Ch. 54)

Ideology: Human Folly

• "In 1836, [Frederick Cuvier] published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash" (Ch. 55)
• ". . . It may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape" (Ch. 55)
• ". . . you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last" (Ch. 55)
• No painting "can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what a whlae really looks like. . . Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan" (Ch. 55)