Tashtego's "Chapter"
As I read, I also wondered why chapter 122 was so short when it could have been incorporated into another chapter. In chapter 122, Tashtego thinks to himself about how the crew cares more about rum than the storm. It seemed like a strange chapter to have all on its own, especially considering its length, but I wondered if Melville made this chapter so short to bring the reader’s attention to it and keep it from being lost in the other details of a longer chapter.
Question: Is Tashtego condemning the crew for caring more about rum than the storm? Or is he commenting on his own, irresistable desire to drink?
Human Empathy and Divine Apathy
- . . . Pip and Ahab most likely hadn’t had any conversations while on the ship, especially not after Pip jumped ship those two times and lost his sense of self. When they finally interact Ahab becomes some form of gentle giant claiming that Pip has “touchest my inmost core” making me think that Ahab probably sees himself in Pip, lost at sea with no sense of identity except the one thing tethering them to where they are; for Ahab, Moby Dick; Pip, the ship (ch.125).
- Pip to Ahab: "Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together: the black one with the white, for I will not let this go.
"[Ahab to Pip:] Oh, boy, nor will I three, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient god oblivious of suffering man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by the black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's!" (ch. 125)
- Another surprise that caught me off guard was the intentional irony of the “lifebuoy” being made from a “coffin” (ch. 127). The two don’t often correlate as one is meant to help people survive when the other is meant to shelter people who’ve entered into eternal rest.
- ". . . if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun!" (ch. 126).
- From Ahab's perspective it is absurd to abandon the hunt to search for a "whaleboat" (Ch. 128). As he puts it, "Who ever heard of two pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat i nthe height of the whaling season?" (ch. 126). In fact, however, the point of the search would not be to find that "boat." It would be to find the people on the boat, including the son of the Rachel's captain, who might die if he is abandoned. His wilfull obtuseness blinds him to the callous inhumanity of his obsession.
Limitations of Human Empathy
- . . . we meet the Rachel [whose] captain, Gardiner, got separated from his son at sea and begged Ahab to help find him. When Ahab refused and departed from them it gave us the visual of sea spray falling from the ship giving the image that the ocean itself “was Rachel, weeping for her children” (ch. 128).
- Ahab repeatedly turns down the Rachel's captain's request to help him and his crew search the nearby waters for a missing whaleboat containing one of the captain's sons. The way Ahab denies Captain Gardiner's fatherly request is incredibly blunt: "'Even now I lose time. Good-bye, goodbye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go.'" In this way, we notice how Ahab's hunt has turned him against even his fellow man in his pursuit of revenge.
Remember the Pequod?
In Wordy Shipmates, the Pequot are portrayed as proud and unyielding, yet their end is tragic and gruesome. After being hunted down by now-rival tribes who “send their severed heads along to the English,” there was an “attempt to wipe out the Pequot linguistically[,]” by “forbidding the tribe to refer to themselves as 'Pequot'” (195-196). Regardless, the tribe still lived on, and their history was preserved in, as observed by Vowell, an ironic setting within the Foxwood Resort Casino, an “impressive edifice built for the sole purpose of taking the white man’s wampum” (200). In this, the pyromaniac Puritans failed in their task of burning the Pequot’s identity from existence. Though, I wonder how, or if, this is a viable connection to the naming of Ahab’s Pequod. It’s clear how Ahab’s vengeful monomania correlates to the entire Pequot massacre’s happening at the result of a single vengeful murder by a handful of Natives, but perhaps the existence of Moby-Dick as a book is Ishmael’s “impressive edifice” built for the sole purpose of taking the white whale’s glory, to preserve the bravery and stubbornness of the crew, which is so easily reflected in the Pequot’s last stand.
In Wordy Shipmates, the Pequot are portrayed as proud and unyielding, yet their end is tragic and gruesome. After being hunted down by now-rival tribes who “send their severed heads along to the English,” there was an “attempt to wipe out the Pequot linguistically[,]” by “forbidding the tribe to refer to themselves as 'Pequot'” (195-196). Regardless, the tribe still lived on, and their history was preserved in, as observed by Vowell, an ironic setting within the Foxwood Resort Casino, an “impressive edifice built for the sole purpose of taking the white man’s wampum” (200). In this, the pyromaniac Puritans failed in their task of burning the Pequot’s identity from existence. Though, I wonder how, or if, this is a viable connection to the naming of Ahab’s Pequod. It’s clear how Ahab’s vengeful monomania correlates to the entire Pequot massacre’s happening at the result of a single vengeful murder by a handful of Natives, but perhaps the existence of Moby-Dick as a book is Ishmael’s “impressive edifice” built for the sole purpose of taking the white whale’s glory, to preserve the bravery and stubbornness of the crew, which is so easily reflected in the Pequot’s last stand.
Trained to Read for Detail
When a red-billed hawk snatches Ahab's hat from his head, the crew are inclined to "read" special significance into what might otherwise be seen as a random event: "Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now, alsmost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight" (Ch. 130). The narrator suggests that the hawk's action might be seen as an omen, comparable to the occasion when an eagle flew three times around the head of Tarquin, the legendary last king of Rome, and then stanstched replaced his hat (6th century B.C.E.). The Pequod's search for Moby Dick, the whlate, has trained the narrator and crew to read meaning into events like this; reading Moby-Dick has trained readers to do the same. Both, in other words, encourage us to be alert, to pay special attention to small details, and to consider who they might have larger, even cosmic, significance.
The Humanist Prescription Falls Short
For a moment, Ahab suggests that value of sympathetic human contact surpasses the wonders of nature or any religious feeling when he says: "Starbuck: let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God." Yet any solace that he might take from such human interaction is ultimately overcome by his fixation on Moby Dick. This episode depicts Ahab as pitiable and sick, a victim of mental, emotional, and psychological forces that he struggles to manage in a way that would be most beneficial for his health. When he later asks, "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 crowdining, and jamming myself on all the time . . . Is it Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?" it is clear that he does not feel that he has the power to make a positive change in his life.
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