The Try Pots: Food fit for a Beast

Melville devotes a chapter to Chowder, and well he should. Here's the recipe, much praised by Ishmael:

It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.

Now, at least one thing is missing here, which is potato; few chowders are served in New England today without potato in them, and, I would say, there is good reason. Ishmael's chowder is an inferior sort; Melville should have known better.

Here's the way to make chowder: First, start with butter. Many a debate is held over milk or cream, but the answer ought to be obvious: skim the cream, turn it to butter, feed the whey to the animals, and begin your chowder with as much butter as you can. It ought to lie thick in the bottom of the pot. Now, throw into that butter a minced potato or two and simmer it. Minced potato?! Most debates over potato and chowder revolve around chunks, and chunks are optional later in the recipe (I myself like them in moderation, especially when you don't have enough clams), but minced potato is critical to the whole chowder. Add some pepper here, too, for the spice is best cooked deeply into the food, not dashed on top.

Watch that butter and potato until you can see the starch oozing from the potato and thickening up the butter, and that's the point where you toss in some clams, so they can soak up the butter, and a little bit of finely chopped onion, to impart its flavor; after just a bit here, then add the brine or juice of the clam (that will be sufficient salt) and, if you so choose, chunks of potato and even a bit of celery, and any shredded pork (I leave out the pork, myself, but favor a small bit of celery or even celery seed where the vegetable is lacking, and my use of potato depends on the number and qualities of clams: potato is a stretcher), and then some milk, and simmer to thicken and soften. The idea is that the potato starch ought to thicken it up so your chowder is a solidly creamy and thick consistency without the use of any flour or floury substance and without any cream (which you've added as butter).

Potatoless ship biscuit chowder, on the other hand, will tend to be clumpy and watery, not properly thickened, almost as if you'd curdled the milk. And flour imparts a dry gluey taste to the clams.

Massachusetts' First Gay Marriage?

By chapter 3 of the book, Ishamel meets Queequeg in the Spouter Inn. Melville starts really laying it on by this chapter; Ishmael enters the Spouter as if it is the belly of the whale or, alternatively, the bowels of a whaling ship. The bar is a "rude attempt at a whale's head"; there is a "heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears". Ishmael painstakingly "reads" a besmoked painting, dimly and with difficulty through its layers of soot and grime finding a painting of a whale impaling itself on the three broken masts of a Pacific whaler. There are references to shades, shadows and the "stream of Time". The language is beautiful, flowing, and rich. We can feel this journey starting to take off, and sense an adventure in the air, and, once again, Melville is foreshadowing like there's no tomorrow.

It is, as we shall learn, just before Christmas, and there is no room at the Inn, but, after first experimenting (rather comically) with a rude board of a bed in the bar, the Inn-keeper sends him off to bed with a man with a fine harpoon and a useful smoking tomahawk, not informing him, of course, that this fellow is a man-eater, a cannibal.

After laying on the symbol-laden, foreshadowing imagery, Melville gets downright slapstick with the Ishmael-Queequeg relationship. Ishmael is full of fear at bedding with an unknown man, and he literally lies half-asleep in trepidation waiting for this unknown harpooner. When Queequeg arrives, Ishmael struggles to suppress shock and rage as he realizes his bedfellow is a dark-skinned, heavily tatooed pagan who carries his tomahawk pipe to bed, but fails to give Queequeg any notice of his presence, so Queequeg is shocked to discover any bedfellow when he jumps in bed:

...this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.... "Who-e debel you? ... you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying, the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark. "Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I.

So the madcap scene features a near-naked cannibal swinging a lit tomahawk pipe in the night talking in broken English while a half-clad green-horn hysterically screems for help. This is madcap stuff, worthy of the Marx Brothers, but very heavily charged with racial and sexual tensions. Nonetheless, by night two, they are a happy domestic couple, smoking together in bed, sharing their funds between them, and, as Queequeg says, becoming "married". The room, meanwhile, is a collection of phallic symbols capable of making a Freudian swoon.

What to make of all of this? While this may be a clean and sparkling narrative, we're being told a story full of naughty insinuations and tweaks at accepted moralities. Is the overwhelming gay-ness of the whole relationship acceptable in its time only because of its comic element and its intercultural element; the misunderstandings must be other than what they most seem, because what they most seem wouldn't be acceptable?

At the same time, the relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael is far from accidental. After a respite from the comic early bonding between Queequeg and Ishmael while Ishmael goes to church, we get to Chapter 10, "A Bosom Friend", and the following chapters, where the relationship deepens and is sanctified. Setting aside the cultural differences, Queequeg is a person who took the same voyage from home that Ishmael is now taking, for similar (not identical) reasons. He, like Ishmael, is alone in New Bedford, and, just as Ishmael goes to find his place of worship, Queequeg seeks out his. These two are anti-podes of the same person, and the fundamental sympathy of the two figures for each other is built on deeper ties than the superficial differences.

What has Melville done here? He has dared to depict the first loving and legal union between two men in Massachusetts, more than a century and a half before it became legal. And if he uses some slapstick to obfuscate any physicality in the relationship, he makes no bones about, and uses but gentle humor toward, the profundity of the connection between their souls:

...[T]here is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg -- a cozy, loving pair.

There is plenty of symbolism, imagery, references, and meanings lurking about these chapters; but there is something else, too, that is central to the novel's dramatic progress: a romance.

Review of Philbrick's "Why Read Moby Dick"

If you have a couple of hours and are looking for a pleasant read that can help you to appreciate Moby Dick, this lovely little homage is well worth a read.

Philbrick gives us an entry into Moby Dick that is personal and easily accessible, and so does Melville's book a great service. All too often, Moby Dick is read at too young an age*, an age where the wry, often sardonic and subtle humor is ill-appreciated and the references are difficult and obscure, and this has given the book a bad rap - a rap as a difficult, daunting work, one a reader must steel themselves for and endure. In reality, for those who enjoy the humor, and who have enough reading behind them so that a not-too-subtle dig at the philosopher Locke, mentioning him by name, or a joke about Jonah or Job, can bring a chuckle, this is a most readable and enjoyable book, and Philbrick gets that across. He demystifies the book.

Philbrick also gives you some tools to make the read easier. By pointing out some elements of Melville's humor, which is sometimes so dry you only spot it if you're looking for it, and some of Melville's approaches to writing and characterization, he sets up an easier reading of the book. He gives you tools to climb that mountain (and, again, the mountain really isn't as tall as it looks).

Philbrick's reading of the book will not be everyone's reading. Philbrick, like DH Lawrence before him, reads Moby Dick as deeply intertwined with the pre-Civil War American experience and particularly with slavery. I have never quite bought that reading, but am happy to acknowledge it is both an interesting reading and a supportable one, one worthy of more discussion. Philbrick is so open and easy going and approachable about his reading that this book almost feels like a start of that discussion. I almost feel that he's pulled up a chair hear me in a Nantucket Inn and poured us a bit of grog, and we are off reading the great Moby together, and that is comforting. He's a good soul, a sailor himself, and a boon companion like Ishmael.

Thank you, Mr. Philbrick. On first hearing of your book, I was ready to dismiss it. Luckily, I picked it up, read it, and am now deep into my next read of Moby Dick and appreciating the companionship. You have done your job quite well.

* Harold Bloom says he first read it at age 9 and still sees Ahab as a hero - a reading I can only attribute to a too-early reading with limited comprehension having too lasting an influence.

Loomings: the Opening Narrative

Moby Dick, a book chock-full of multitudinous multifaceted multicolored coral gems, begins its narrative simply and cleanly, as if Ishmael has gathered some friends before a fire on a wind blown winter day so he can spin his yarns. First, there is that famous opening line, that great lead which must be the envy of any prize-winning journalist, and what comes afterwards over the pages of the first chapters is the kind of sparkling clear prose that would have made a Hemingway proud. Melville begins with Ishmael the story-teller, in this chapter called "Loomings", setting down to tell the tale.

I love this opening. I set aside all thoughts of the profound and am once again a boy imagining an adventure. There will be time for the exotic and obscure and, particularly, the religious, but later; for now, we are here with Ishmael, leaving his city life, feeling a bit blue, and heading for the wealthy but worldly port city of New Bedford. Who does not feel "a damp, drizzly November in [their] soul" anonymously wandering city streets some time? And who, having adventured before, does not want to take the next adventure one step farther? Ishmael has sailed before, in the Merchant Marine, but is looking to up the adventure with a Whaling voyage. Hurrah! That would cheer any of us up on one of these gray wintery days.

Melville does not overplay his hand in these chapters. He will let us enjoy this time with Ishmael, and he will draw it out through the streets of New Bedford and Nantucket, fine places for a bit of a vacation and hearty good chowder (and when we get there, expect me to offer my own chowder recipe, very different from Ishmael's) and cheer. But right there in the title is the warning of what is to come: "Loomings".

Ah, something is looming is right! I spy two meanings to this "loomings" title: the first, the obvious, is the looming outcome of that adventure, this looming is Melville's foreshadowing, and, really, there ought to be a stronger word than "foreshadow" for what Melville will do here. He will fore-show, fore-picture, fore-tell - he will lay out in full color but in bits and pieces all that is to come. Yes, "loomings" refers to all that looms there, in the future (or, because this is a story Ishmael tells of his own past, perhaps we should say it looms in the past?).

Just as much, and just as importantly, however, the looming refers to a "weaving": the loom is a favorite metaphor of Melville's that ties much of the book together. We will beat this metaphor to death over the coming pages; shuttle-cocks tied with yarns shall be passed through the "warp", or sturdy set threads, pulling the "woof" or "weft" threads behind them. This metaphor plays out about a half dozen times in the book, my favorite of which led to the naming of this blog: in the "Castaway" chapter little Pip, whom we shall meet soon on this blog, when abandoned in the wide ocean, overwhelmed by the unfathomable infinite, sees God at the Treadle of the Loom and is driven mad. It is not a subtle metaphor, but we should watch for it.

Oh, well, I seem to be mucking up the beauty of that opening narrative already. Enough of that now. Let's let Ishmael spin his yarn and we'll get to the weaving soon enough. The boy is resolved to go aboard a whaler "before the mast", as a simple hand on deck, but he will be paid for his efforts, and that is a great thing. I can see him counting the coin already.

A Random Thought or Two on Etymology

Like many a reader of Moby Dick, I'm really not sure what to make of the frontsmatter, even now, having had half a life or maybe even more (I shan't know until I'm done, of course) to contemplate the matter. Is the little section labeled "Etymology", followed by the much lengthier section "Extracts", just a way to give us a heads-up that what follows may be a bit odd? Are these sections ways of introducing to us the dry humor and tone, what with his consumptive usher and sub-sub librarian, knowing that in the absence of a huge red flag as to what passes as funny in Melville some may just miss the humor? How many of you chuckled or guffawed at the careful distinction between the Fegee form of "Pekee-Nuee-Nuee" and the Erromangoan* form of "Pehee-Nuee-Nuee"? Or are these beginnings integral parts of the book, the first of our myriad, diverse, and generally unsuccessful and quizzical attempts to figure the Whale?

While I do not know what they all mean, I can say that one thing that is evident is Melville's extreme care with the red pen. Let us look at this first page, Etymology, and at one entry on it, the entry for Webster's dictionary. Here is Melville's entry in the Etymology for Webster's, a book which may well have been in the homes of, and available for consultation by, most American readers of Moby Dick's first edition:

"WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.

Melville focuses on the Swedish and Danish word from Webster's. Here is the full entry in Webster's for the etymology (excluding the actual definition):

WHALE, n. [Sax. hwal, hwæl; G. wallfisch, from wallen, to: stir agitate, or rove; D. walvisch; Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness, or from rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted; hvæller, to arch or vault, D. welven.]

Some of Melville's editorial omissions are supplanted by Melville's entry for Richardson's Dictionary:

WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; A.A. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.

I know not exactly what Melville is doing here, but he's telling us half the story and setting up an argument between two etymologies where none exists. And he's getting me riled and argumentative before even introducing his first character (though I know he's likely gotten some others bored and confused).

What sort of dramatic tension is built up by this odd mix of humor, confusion and low dudgeon before the narrative even begins?


* Erromango, for those without intimate knowledge of the South Seas, is an Island that is now part of Vanatu, and lies about 500 miles due west of Fiji, with little but water in between.

The Reading

Next weekend is the annual Moby Dick reading marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. I will miss it, but all reviews suggest it's a wonderful thing. Details of the marathon and the gathering of scholars and other events around it are here (click link).

We're off

Today, we begin the read. Follow this link for the discussion at the Salon. The map is from the Norman Levanthal collection at the Boston Public Library.

The Whale and What it is Not

In the chapter "The Affadavit", Melville steps out of his book and talks to us about its authorship. I will leave to the reader the question of whether this is Melville, Ishmael, or some other voice speaking, but the speaker vouches for the events being told being not just true, but reasonable and not fantastic. Our speaker begs us to neither misunderstand the story or the whale:

For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

Please, dear reader, do not mistake the Whale for an Allegory! How quickly these words were forgotten even after the book was re-remembered. Our poor blubbery friend is indeed taken as a hideous and intolerable allegory by all the most sophisticated readers, critics and scholars. Oh sophisticates! Oh learned readers and deep divers! What have you done? Have you become the butt of a grand recursive joke or have you found the treasure hidden behind the false clue?! How can this poor not-allegory possibly bear all the meaning to which you've attributed it?

The Whale and How to Know It

We know what the Whale is not (that is, he is not Allegory), but how do we learn what the Whale is?

We have already discussed Ahab, and the way Melville uses every traditional literary technique, those found in Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and all the other books of the prior three thousand years and those to be developed over the coming hundred and fifty years, to build Ahab up as a grand tragic figure. Ahab is a dramatic figure, and Melville plays this up with stage direction and dialogue befitting a great tragic hero. The Whale, however, is different; he is not built up as a grand hero through the usual literary techniques, and, in many ways, is the most creatively conceived character of the 19th century.

How does Melville build up the Whale, and turn him into a grand heroic figure worthy of one of the two central places in this drama? Melville uses a mixture of fable and science; he simultaneously makes the Whale the object of constant study in all facets, using every tool of inspection, detection, induction, deduction, and reduction possible, from Cetological classification to Phrenological speculation to dissection to a thorough review of the literature and the artistic renderings (the rendering here, by the way, is "The Whale Ship" by Turner). He also provides any number of stories of direct interaction with whales and their carcasses, and gives us the whaler's own empirical evidence.

All the while this analysis goes on, however, Melville also engages in a constant critique and ridiculing of each and every tool:

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

It is this ridicule of his own analysis that opens up the gates for his fabulistic and mythological accounts of the whale, stories interjected with some considerable questioning (driving home how inscrutable the Whale ultimately is) but also with no slight suggestions that some kernel of truth might be found here:

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.

This approach requires considerable patience from the reader, a patience Melville eases with humor and the many interjected minor dramas, often from our savages or the mates. Still, the pacing is more comfortable to the readers of Eastern epics than Western novels; there is a Thousand-and-One-Nights or Journey To the Westintegration of disparate stories that here emcompasses quasi-factual as well as quasi-fictional passages. All of which adds to the exoticism that builds up the Whale as a character. As you read this book, don't ignore the dramatic tension being built around the Whale, a dramatic tension that is built far more subtlely and uniquely than that built around Ahab. It comes slowly, deliberately, and very, very oddly, but it does indeed come.

How then do we know the Whale? Ultimately, we do not, we only learn of and never know of the Whale, and this incredible inscrutability of a grand but non-human character is what gains the Whale the role as title character, with a billing even above tragic Ahab.

Harpooners

The harpooners are a wild lot. Some describe them as a "chorus" of "savages" or "pagans", but Melville was more subtle than that, and each of the harpooners is carefully drawn as an individual, even when a bit player, and the four of them together display a wide range of characteristics. Besides Queequeg, already discussed, there is Fedallah, who is the last to appear in the book, Tashtego, and Daggoo.

Fedallah, the Zoroastrian (more specifically, Parsee), is the single most sinister and ominous character in Moby-Dick - just watch his eyes:

But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen that even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable Parsee's glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say - We two watchmen never rest.

Because Fedallah is a lightly sketched character, more of a foil to Ahab than a full character of his own, he lacks the softening depth of Ahab. Daggoo, by contrast, is a light-hearted charcater, though Daggoo is also a character of royal bearing and deportment. However philosophical Daggoo's scenes, there is usually a comic element, as when he lifts Flask on his back to get a better view of a whale sounding:

But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen- haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.

Like Queequeeg, who was born a prince in his native land, Daggoo will be seen throughout as an ennobled savage; good humor and regal bearing are almost always nearby when Daggoo appears. DH Lawrence makes much of the scene above, casting it as a commentary on American slavery, and Daggoo does overlap with a very different "chorus" of characters, the African-American characters, which include Pip and Cook, both notable in their own right and to be discussed in more detail later. However, I like to imagine that many of the paradoxical descriptions that abound in passages dealing with the "savage nobles" could be attributed just as much to the Jacksonian shadow that lay over Melville's America, and that that demagogic democrat (and Indian hunter) hides underneath the curtains of many a white characters' dress.

Finally, Tashtego is the last of the harpooners; Tashtego is sharp-eyed and attentive, and tends to spot things of the greatest relevance, whether they be whales or secrets. As a native American, you will find he also plays a role in Melville's thoughts on America and Americans. The fact that another native, Flask, of Tashtego's same mother island, Martha's Vineyard, is among the white officers is no accident.

Throughout Moby-Dick, the harpooners regularly serve as catalysts for deeper philosophic dives about the savage and civilized or the aristocratic and the democratic, though there is never a simple contrast and the harpooners are cast as the civil as well as the savage. In Typee, Melville consistently beat the drum that the civil were the savages and the savages the civilized. Here, however, those ostensibly civilized and ostensibly savage each engage in a complicated dance with good and evil, and neither has special access or monopoly to either. As Queequeg says when his hand is nearly bitten off by a shark:

"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."

The Cadet

We all know to call our friendly initial narrator Ishmael. He is full of good natured thoughts about the world and the voyage, though also a bit blue, brought to the sea as a cure for malaise, and philosophical, prone to meditate on each thing and person set before him. Beyond this, despite spending six hundred pages with him, we don't really get to know him as well as many of the people to whom he introduces us.

To read Moby Dick, however, we must read Ishmael, and he does provide a bit of advice on how to deal with the likes of him (from the "Masthead" chapter):

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent- minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates: - "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain." Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

Perhaps reading Ishmael's thoughts is not the most profitable endeavor for us, and we should heed the warning and reconsider the voyage?

Even the most careful of critics mistakes or misstates Ishmael's voice as Melville's, or for that of our more omniscient narrator who emerges mid-book; yet I would propose that we think of Ishmael less as the authorial voice and more as the reader. Ishmael is our guide, our Virgil, and his eyes are ours as we leave shore and enter this world. Perhaps, in some truly mystical way, he unifies us with the author and characters.

Ishmael's name, of course, is also of great significance. He is of the cadet branch of the Abrahamic tradition, Ibriham's forgotten and illegitimate son, telling us a book full of the biblical and the anti-biblical and the non-biblical, a sort of alternative universe to the great Christian mythology. I confess, I find this name an uncommon and extraordinary moment of brilliance, and an ongoing cause for "unseasonable meditativeness" as I read the book.

Perhaps, we need not know much more about this whaling rookie who brings such wisdom to bear. Perhaps our central character is really not of much import, anyway.

Notable Savage

Who doesn't love Queequeg? Queequeg is a good-natured and devout cannibal and an equally devoted friend, and he is the first character of any depth to whom Ishmael introduces us. Queequeg is generally fairly quiet and genial, with a good sense of humor, and, like Ahab, speaks with an accent. Queequeg's accent, from a place "not drawn on any map" as "true places never are", is sometimes strange to parse, and of carefully ambiguous meaning as a result. More often, Ishamel or Melville (as to Melville's voice: note that in parts of the book we leave Ishmael's narration, and I will generally refer to these sections as "Melville" speaking for convenience, making finer distinctions when warranted.) speaks for Queequeg, and we only receive the report of his actions and statements.

Queequeg's presence often sets Ishmael to musing on his own self and character, his religion, and his place in the world, or sets Melville off on a philosophic jaunt applicable to us all. Queequeg is a carrier of things; he always seems to have some totem in his hand: a harpoon, a hat, a shrunken head, a personal diety, his tomahawk pipe. Objects find interesting and often important associations and uses with Queequeg. In many ways, Queequeg is part of the glue that binds the more philosophical layers of the book to the more dramatic layers. Listen to Melville and Ishmael as they tell you about Queequeg's things, and you'll find some richness in the book that is easy to miss.

Melville was widely known as a man who lived among the cannibals, and his embrace of native tribes and his often bitterly sardonic criticism of the self-righteous misssionaries let loose on them was a trademark of a Melville book. Melville's readers would have looked more for Queequeg than Ahab. But Melville goes deeper here, and as you step back from the book and think about Queequeg and his objects, you'll find the simple and genial Queequeg to also be a critical part of a beautifully tortured id underlying the story.

Here's a nice example of a paragraph from the chapter about when Queequeg gets dreadfully ill, and expects to die, and has a coffin made for himself:

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. Rarmai (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock.

Yojo, Queequeg's totem that is actually a totem, is itself a minor character appearing periodically through the book to provide advice to Ishamel and Queequeg. This is a charmingly little curiosity of a tale, and a chuckle-inducing little image, but it is also a mythological little sketch, jam-packed with a variety of stuff if you're up for the deconstructing, and a fine passage to form the basis of any sunday sermon.

Comical Obligations

Moby Dick is about religion, that much is certain. Whether or not it is religious or anti-religious or just chewing on the fat of religion is a question I leave to each reader. Melville's own religion is a bit of cypher, despite much research on the subject. I trust the difficulty researchers have in figuring out his faith reflects Melville's own struggle with the task, and perhaps some of this endless going-on over six hundred pages is all just misery seeking company.

In Clarel, Melville writes of different religious impulses that Clarel first "marks", then is "awed" by ("Buddha, the Mongolian Fo, or Indian Saviour"), and then waxes on the "intersympathy of creeds" that confuses and entices the boy. But Melville then goes on to address not the sympathy but the hostility between creeds.

Are creeds hostile or sympathetic? This theme and question facscinate, but I find Moby Dick to tend toward the sympathetic, with much more attention to universal struggles of all creeds than to the particularities that may divide them. Still, there's stuggle enough in the book: don your favorite protective gear, grab your weapon of choice, and keep your guard up.

As a little aid to wending through the book, let's start by simply identifying the particular creeds that have adherants in the story. It's also a good chance to take notice of the main players (other than, of course, the Whale):

Ishmael: Presbyterian
Queequeq: Some form of south sea Pagan
Ahab, Peleg and Bildad, Starbuck: Quaker
Father Mapple: Congregationalist
Tashtego: Native American pagan
Dagoo: African pagan
Fedallah: Zoroastrian

I don't see Pip's, Flask's or Stubb's denomination identified quickly; we'll see if we come across them as we read. There will be more anon on each of these characters.

This is a small little beginning of a reading aid, and I will try to also focus on some of the places and discussions relevant to the interdenominational discussion, but it is good to keep each character's faith in mind throughout.

As Ishmael says in "The Ramadan" chapter:

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

And much of this book is about cherishing the comical obligations of varied religions.

By the way, who is that Mongolian Fo, anyways?

Enter Ahab

Enter Ahab. It is the name of the first chapter where Ahab speaks (following a chapter which bears his name in which he does not speak). It is also a stage direction that will appear again. Enter Ahab. Ahab more than any other character is a player on the stage.

Before Ahab appears, Ishamel learns of him from the boat's owners, gossips of him, speculates about him, and is even warned by a prophet, Elijah, about him. Before he speaks, the boat has been chosen, the sails set, and the ocean reached. As grand an entrance as it is, it is still only a way-station to higher points in the drama.

Many of Melville's minor characters - Fedallah, Pip, even Starbuck - serve as foils to Ahab, helping define him and magnify him. There are two characters at the core of this book - Ahab and the Whale, and to truly explore Ahab's character is to get to the heart of the book. We can only just begin here.

As an introduction to Ahab and Melville's painting of him, let's look at a just one great central moment for Ahab, one that drives right at his character: the forging of the harpoon that Ahab intends to use to kill the whale.

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.

"No, no - no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.

"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.

The Latin translates to "I do not baptize in the name of the father, but of the devil!" Melville was inordinately fond of this line - a longer version ("Ego non baptizo te in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Santi. - sed in nomine Diaboli") is found scribbled in the back of one of his Shakespeare volumes, and he wrote a letter to Hawthorne describing it as the "secret motto" of the book. But set aside what this passage might mean - we'll get there, but not for a long time. All we're interested in right now is Ahab the character and his presentation. What man should we prepare to meet?

Ahab is the central figure whenever he appears. Melville writes in short chapters, each a small tableau or drama, and if Ahab speaks in a chapter, expect him to be the focus of that chapter. His speech is always heavily laden with salty sailor and "thees" and "thous" Quaker, and there is often a significant contrast in tone between Ahab's speech patterns and those with whom he speaks, whether the plain-spoken wry Ishamel or the level-headed rationalist Starbucks. This helps him stand out. As noted earlier, there is often stage direction inserted to accompany him.

After his build up and grand entrance, Ahab will almost inevitably deliver one or more absolutely killer lines. "Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" The great lines are often heavily laden, referential and suggestive: by turns Melville will suggest Marlowe's Faust, Milton's Satan, or Shakespeare's Edmund. As you read, stop and admire the art of the framing of Ahab: all these techniques, all this build up, and all these wonderful lines are what make him one of the most powerful characters in literature. These one-liners are the greater part of the sheer bombast in Moby Dick. All too often, critics remember them as the whole book, and forget the less dramatic, contemplative, philosophical and humorous stretches that make up most of the work.

Outside of the chapters where Ahab is central, most chapters will fit into two other types: chapters that focus elsewhere but lead to a discussion of Ahab or flesh out some aspect of Ahab, and chapters that generally take a philosophical deep dive, often focused on the Whale or whaling, wholly omitting Ahab.

The chapter entitled Moby Dick, for example, is one of the first category, focusing first on the whale, but finally leading to Ahab and his key mates and crew:

Here, then, was this grey- headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals -- morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right- mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge.

For the most part, however, Ahab recedes into the background for the long less dramatic parts of the book; these are the territory of the whale and whaling, and of we mere mortals who concern ourselves with them. When Melville turns contemplative, Ahab and his Latin and his thees and thous step aside.

Interesting Review

This review caught my interest: Sjon's From the Mouth of the Whale, reviewed at Literary License.