Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I didn’t start Moby Dick’s more than two hundred thousand words expecting to be surprised. Herman Melville’s book has been on the shelf of my reading list for years, always as an intended but never open read. Its iconic status has always proven too great a barrier to its startup. However, the motivation eventually came from a particularly moving production of Benjamin Brittten’s opera Billy Budd, based on a story by Herman Melville, which led to the decision to start Moby Dick, the whale-sized book about the hunt for whales, and I had a whale for a while. A copy of Billy Budd, by the way, was not available at the time. This must be remedied.

Moby Dick’s bare whale bones are arranged very simply. The story is told by Ishmael, who is looking for a job as a sailor. Paradoxically, perhaps, we learn very little about Ishmael. It appears that he is depicted as an almost impartial observer, able to discern the motives of others, but usually unable to state his own feelings. He is, however, undeniably a character, not a mere vehicle for a writer’s declamation.

On Nantucket, Ishmael befriends Queequeg, a fellow sailor, who is ethnically and religiously different from him. Soon they share a room and even a bed. How cultural difference and male camaraderie are portrayed is one of the most memorable aspects of this thought-provoking book. Both men are recruited on the Pequod, a whaler under the command of the initially anonymous and even mysterious Captain Ahab. Apparently, they are joining a factory ship on a standard mission to capture whales for oil profits. The source of profit and the means to realize it may run counter to our current assumptions, but the capitalist nature of the activity remains central to our contemporary interactions.

However, once on board, along with the rest of the crew, they discover that their now-revealed captain has been nearly destroyed in an encounter with a huge animal called a white whale and that their ship, the Pequod, is embarking on a mission to save them. get revenge. Captain Ahab is determined—no, single-mindedly obsessed—to hunt down his attacker and return the compliment. A simple irony about Ahab is that, having lost his leg in his encounter with Moby Dick, he now stands on a false leg made of whalebone, tapered at the base to fit into a casing socket for stability. Thus anchored, supported by the very material he seeks to destroy, he surveys the sea for evidence of his prey. He finds his target and chases it for three days. Ishmael lives to tell about it. But those particular events are over one hundred and thirty chapters in the reader’s future after first meeting Ishmael looking for work on Nantucket.

In Moby Dick Herman Melville places us firmly in the middle of the 19th century. Modern readers should keep in mind that assumptions will be challenged by what has changed in the intervening decades. It was a time before electricity, before mass travel, before immediate communication at a distance. But it was also a time when the industrial exploitation of the earth’s resources, both animal and mineral, was not only under way, but was seen as an essential and desired end that could provide employment, generate wealth and benefit life. human. As today’s readers, we must therefore try, because that is all we can do, to free ourselves from our novel positions on the activity that the book describes. This was an era when killing whales for profit was quite normal, though, for most people, it was still a distant, dangerous, and even fabulous pursuit. Reading a whodunnit does not indicate acceptance of the murder, so exposure to Moby Dick does not imply support for whaling. And making this required mental shift will unlock the tremendous power, immediacy, and indeed wisdom of this masterpiece.

That whaling occurred, that a large industry grew and sustained itself from the activity, and that people lived the lives they demanded is indisputable. Like all history, we are never condemned to repeat it, but we are also reminded that although we are free to reinterpret it, we are powerless to change it. And this book, almost like no other, is packed with the whaling experience that is now so foreign to us. We, through Herman Melville’s magnificent narrative, enter that world, that chase of life and death, and the experience is not for the faint of heart.

But what is most striking about Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is its form, or even the lack thereof. The effect is surprisingly modern, since the novel is not presented as a linear narrative. Instead, Moby Dick presents facts about the whales, descriptions of the whaling process, details of their contemporary environment and, above all, portraits of the characters who inhabit the Pequod and are forced to collaborate in Ahab’s mission. In some ways, Moby Dick presents a total experience of a microcosm, often so focused that it makes its subject literally die, but in other ways so lacking in focus that a reader can profitably pop in and out of the book almost haphazardly.

And despite the theme’s location in a particular time, some of its themes are also relevant to our contemporary society. For example, through Ishmael’s narrative, Herman Melville addresses the question of what kind of animal the whale might be. He is aware of Linnaeus and of the modern concept of species. He is aware of the evidence that whales, unlike fish, give birth to and nurse their young with breast milk. The Bible, however, describes Jonah’s encounter as definitely with a fish, and that is all, and thus the question is inarguably answered. The whale has to be a fish, since God cannot be contradicted. What more perfect example of fake news ignoring the facts or conspiracy theory could one imagine?

Ahab is certainly a tyrant, but he may not be the totalitarian dictator some interpretations demand. He is driven by a personal mission and recruits others, perhaps deceitfully, perhaps stealthily, to further his ends. Now a flawed human, he uses the trained bodies of his recruits to pursue his ends and overcome his own limitations. But while he carries out his pursuit on his own terms and in his own autocratic fashion, he eventually leads his own manhunt, his personal vendetta and tunnel vision freeing him of his better judgment, whereas a modern dictator would have an exit strategy ready before any risk. he could be considered. Essentially, Ahab is the ultimate politician who recruits hardcore and loyal followers who become part owners of individual momentum. And then, like any politician who needs to apply pressure, he calls on his supporters to amplify, albeit to no avail. All political careers, we are told, end in failure.

Overall, once the paradigm shift in the reader’s assumption is made, Melville’s Moby Dick presents a completely modern and therefore completely amazing experience. The topic may not be in vogue today, but it reminds us that today’s preoccupations and assumed values ​​might soon seem worthless and, indeed, repulsive.