Was Melville alluding to wars with Native Americans in Moby Dick?

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I think it would be too weird using Ishmael and then relating him to Christ or Daniel.

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No, I wasn't saying that Ishmael was Christ (Moby-Dick is Christ/Leviathan, I suspect), just that his position in the wreck reminded me of a Christian fending for himself amidst the fragmentation of the Church. Similarly he has nothing to do with Daniel. But the description of sharks with padlocked jaws sounds miraculous, and that makes me wonder if Ishmael is being spared by God, and if so why? There doesn't seem to be any reason for him to have been the survivor.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Relate to Ishmael, who is the son of Abraham, who had to deal with pagans, so maybe it is all about survival over paganism (but not against it) amid the profane act of Ahab or watever act we find God getting pissed at those times.

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I thought of this, too, but it doesn't really work. For one thing, the name Ishmael likely denoted no more than a wanderer or outcast. (The Biblical Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast off by Abraham and had to wander the wilderness for a time). Yes, the Pequod is a pretty pagan ship. It's named for a group of American Indians, it is adorned in trophy whalebone and teeth and is referred to in this context as "a cannibal of a ship," and its captain is--well, Ahab.

On the other hand, Paganism doesn't come off very badly in Moby-Dick. Queequeg is an amiable, heroic pagan. Ishmael is in love with him and at one point participates in a pagan ritual with him. Ishmael is more sympathetic to other religious perspectives (including Paganism) than a pious Quaker like Starbuck would be. So even if God did strike the Pequod for its Paganism, there is still no reason Ishmael should have been spared. He was as guilty as the next man and probably more so. So why him?

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

How many times have God destroyed everything pissed in the OT and let alone a survivor? It may be a motif Melville followed.

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I can't think of a single time, can you? Noah survived the flood with his family; and Lot got out of Sodom and Gomorrah with his daughters (though minus his wife "Salty"). This was ascribed to Lot's righteousness, and there is at least one Biblical reference to Noah's righteousness (though it is not mentioned in the much earlier Mesopotamian version of the story). But okay, Melville would have been familiar with the general model. It's just that Ishmael doesn't fit the model. So why him?

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Queequeeg death is something unique too. Maybe we can relate Ishmael survival to Queequeeg death (Not that Melville could know, but Gilgamesh/Enkidu analogy - both also hunters that went in a profane quest).

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Yes, Queequeg is analogous to Enkidu--the wild man/other and comrade/lover; less so Ishmael to Gilgamesh (unless it's the wandering Gilgamesh after Enkidu's death). But their relationship is just the same, which is truly remarkable since the texts never had anything to do with each other. The Bull of Heaven (slain by Enkidu) is a divine monster loosed by the gods to humble them; so it is a bit like Leviathan and therefore a bit like Moby-Dick. But these things are coincidence.

For the rest, I don't know, ghosts are white, death rides a pale horse (both examples are used by Melville in Chapter 42), and those Puritan churches of my youth shone a blinding white in the snow. You might as well have been standing before the throne of God. Maybe appalling or awesome would be effective adjectives for the whiteness of the whale. I know that doesn't sound like the user-friendly modern Jesus who helps Mom, I mean Dad, strap the kids into the safety seats before daycare. But I don't think Melville 's grandma ever mentioned that one to him. Her Jesus was probably more like Leviathan. Or close enough that the Essex whale made Melville think about it.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Look, it's just more complicated than that, prendrelemick. The Hebrew Scriptures were influenced by the Babylonian myth of combat between Marduk, the king of the gods and a primal sea monster, preserved in the cuneiform text usually called the Enuma Elish. References to some version of this cosmic heavy appear in Psalms, Prophecy and elsewhere (including Job) under a variety of names: Leviathan, Rehab, the crooked serpent, the serpent that is in the sea, and others. Some of the references are quoted by Melville in the introductory section of Moby-Dick called Etymology. Etymology refers to "a chronological account of the birth and development of a particular word or element of a word, often delineating it's spread from one language to another and its evolving changes in form and meaning." So it is reasonable to suppose that Melville alluded to at least some aspects of the Hebrew version of this myth in his vision of Moby-Dick.

As far as nets and harpoons go, as I said above my conversation with JC and rereading parts of Moby-Dick has given me new ideas I am tentatively pursuing. I hope that's not a bad thing.

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Well yes, but I was trying to simplify and as Babylonian Cuneform wasn't translated until 1857, decided to stop at the bible. What I am trying to get at, is why does he use "leviathan" at all, unless he wants us to remember the references in the bible. It may be that leviathan was in common use for whale at that time. But it may be that he is purposely invoking the relationship between God and the beast as found in Job in particular.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

It may be that leviathan was in common use for whale at that time. But it may be that he is purposely invoking the relationship between God and the beast as found in Job in particular.

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The point is not whether Melville knew the Enuma Elish (he did not), but whether he was familiar with the combat myth as expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was, and demonstrates it (for example) in the Etymology/Extracts section by citing Isaiah 27:1:

"In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."

Yes, the word leviathan can mean a whale (Moby-Dick IS a whale, for goodness sake); but by citing this and other references to the word's mythological baggage Melville is showing that something else is intended, too. As I said before, resonances on a symbolic level do not in any way detract from the story of a literal whale hunt. But Moby-Dick is rich in symbolic meaning as well, and it seems to me that there is nothing wrong with pursuing that.

Just a little thought about this one which I read a few years ago. In my mind the main theme of the book was the obsession with an idea (in this case obviously the whale) and that the obsession leading to inevitable disaster. How exactly it was going to end was revealed in the end but I remember the writer hinting at the fatality of the journey all along the novel. Even if there were any reference to native Indians which never crossed my mind, I still don't see how the themes of obsession and destiny link up.

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Originally Posted by Offeror

Just a little thought about this one which I read a few years ago. In my mind the main theme of the book was the obsession with an idea (in this case obviously the whale) and that the obsession leading to inevitable disaster. How exactly it was going to end was revealed in the end but I remember the writer hinting at the fatality of the journey all along the novel. Even if there were any reference to native Indians which never crossed my mind, I still don't see how the themes of obsession and destiny link up.

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Hello again, Offeror. It is nice to have you join our conversation. Ahab is certainly obsessed, but it seems to me the real issue is choice. Ahab has lost a leg to Moby-Dick. A similar accident led another captain (Boomer) to decide that fate or God's will was against his killing the whale. He still wants to kill him for his own fame and riches, but he chooses not to do so. But Ahab, whom Melville closely contrasts with this other captain, chooses to defy fate or God's will and pursue Moby-Dick to the death. This choice places Ahab in the category of a Classical Greek or Shakespearean tragic hero, with his obsessiveness best understood as a fatal flaw (as indecisiveness was Hamlet's fatal flaw or jealously Othello's). But it is the choice that seals Ahab's fate.

My question, however, is: does Melville really believe this is how fate works? He seems to me to doubt it when he has Ishmael say:

"Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage...yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment."

And as you mention, there are hints of the fatalism from the start. When Ishmael and Queequeg reach Nantucket, the former reflects on what seem to be ill omens for the coming journey:

"Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses’ ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It’s ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel, and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?"

There is also Elijah, the prophetic madman who accosts Ishmael and Queequeg before the Pequod sets sail, telling them (among other things):

"Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Any how, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em!"

So Melville subverting his own notions of free will? Does he believe that will and fate can coexist? What exactly is Melville's theory of fate? These are things I am trying to understand now.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

No, I wasn't saying that Ishmael was Christ (Moby-Dick is Christ/Leviathan, I suspect), just that his position in the wreck reminded me of a Christian fending for himself amidst the fragmentation of the Church. Similarly he has nothing to do with Daniel. But the description of sharks with padlocked jaws sounds miraculous, and that makes me wonder if Ishmael is being spared by God, and if so why? There doesn't seem to be any reason for him to have been the survivor.

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I do not think there is any motive that is good (there is motives of all kinds anyways) to related Moby with Jesus. She is not a willing sacrifice (her sacrifice is not even relevant, clear), she is not a rethoric master, she is not a representative ideal of ethic man, as Jesus. Leviathan fine, i think it is clear one of her aspects. As Prendrelemick pointed, she either behaves as an animal or as an idea, never like a character. Again, I think Moby Dick ideas are more about OT, something more primitive than the nature of the Gospels. You have point some hints at that, the WIlliam Blake similarity for example or Gilgamesh similarity.

As he being the survival... Sometimes, the tell-tale survivor is just a tell-take survivor :D

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I thought of this, too, but it doesn't really work. For one thing, the name Ishmael likely denoted no more than a wanderer or outcast. (The Biblical Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast off by Abraham and had to wander the wilderness for a time). Yes, the Pequod is a pretty pagan ship. It's named for a group of American Indians, it is adorned in trophy whalebone and teeth and is referred to in this context as "a cannibal of a ship," and its captain is--well, Ahab.

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You are obviously forgeting Ishmael is a sailor. They are not part of society and they are wanderers. But would be disapointing to see Melville using something so dull, right? :D

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On the other hand, Paganism doesn't come off very badly in Moby-Dick. Queequeg is an amiable, heroic pagan. Ishmael is in love with him and at one point participates in a pagan ritual with him. Ishmael is more sympathetic to other religious perspectives (including Paganism) than a pious Quaker like Starbuck would be. So even if God did strike the Pequod for its Paganism, there is still no reason Ishmael should have been spared. He was as guilty as the next man and probably more so. So why him?

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God struk the Pequod for heresy, not paganism, but frankly, I do not believe the point as about paganism. I think, if there is anything, is that there are two survivors of Pequod: Queequeeg and Ishmael. Sure, Queequeeg dies, but his death is something unusual. He almost accepted his death (how easy is to make it the Comedy, he accepted to stop, just like Virgil did). I am not sure if it is something we can explain, but if there is a motive beyond the literary device for Ishamel survival, it is because of his relationship with Queequeeg.

I recall Borges again. He once said that perhaps the main theme of literature is friendship. The theme of the Comedy is Virgil and Dante friendship. Perhaps the theme is Ishmael and Queequeeg friendship. That would be nice.

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I can't think of a single time, can you? Noah survived the flood with his family; and Lot got out of Sodom and Gomorrah with his daughters (though minus his wife "Salty"). This was ascribed to Lot's righteousness, and there is at least one Biblical reference to Noah's righteousness (though it is not mentioned in the much earlier Mesopotamian version of the story). But okay, Melville would have been familiar with the general model. It's just that Ishmael doesn't fit the model. So why him?

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Well, he does and does not. The role is similar. Survive, tell the tale.

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Yes, Queequeg is analogous to Enkidu--the wild man/other and comrade/lover; less so Ishmael to Gilgamesh (unless it's the wandering Gilgamesh after Enkidu's death). But their relationship is just the same, which is truly remarkable since the texts never had anything to do with each other. The Bull of Heaven (slain by Enkidu) is a divine monster loosed by the gods to humble them; so it is a bit like Leviathan and therefore a bit like Moby-Dick. But these things are coincidence.

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yes, Arquetypical. Would be funny if it was possible for Melville to actually know the Gilgamesh myth, so we coudl say Ahab is Gilgamesh before Enkidu's death, Ishmael after and whole story was about the futile quest for immortality.

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For the rest, I don't know, ghosts are white, death rides a pale horse (both examples are used by Melville in Chapter 42), and those Puritan churches of my youth shone a blinding white in the snow. You might as well have been standing before the throne of God. Maybe appalling or awesome would be effective adjectives for the whiteness of the whale. I know that doesn't sound like the user-friendly modern Jesus who helps Mom, I mean Dad, strap the kids into the safety seats before daycare. But I don't think Melville 's grandma ever mentioned that one to him. Her Jesus was probably more like Leviathan. Or close enough that the Essex whale made Melville think about it.

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No, I think Jesus was more like Jesus. Billy Budd seems closer to Jesus/Judas allegory. Granted it was later, but I do not think he would go as far as turning Jesus in a monster without control. He knew Emerson, Dante, etc. I think Jesus is present in Moby Dick by absence.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I do not think there is any motive that is good (there is motives of all kinds anyways) to related Moby with Jesus.

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I guess the simple way to articulate my position (which as I said earlier is not my actual theology) is that Melville is exploring the idea that God's wrath and God's mercy are both realities of God (as, for example, Blake also did when he placed the Tyger in counterpoint to the Lamb). I suspect that, for Melville, Christ and Leviathan were opposite sides of the same coin, and both were aspects of God. And this idea, as I said before, that idea is manifested by the shocking image of Leviathan in Puritan white.

With that preface, then, please understand that I am not speaking of the human Jesus of the Gospels (to follow the Trinitarian principle that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, but the cosmic Christ--Christ Pantocrator, the Son of Man, Christ as a divine manifestation of God's wrath. So the willing sacrifice, the masterful teachings, and the ideal man are not relevant to Melville's analogy (as important as they are to Christian theology).

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

As he being the survival... Sometimes, the tell-tale survivor is just a tell-take survivor

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Yeah, maybe. I still feel like we're missing something, though.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

You are obviously forgeting Ishmael is a sailor. They are not part of society and they are wanderers. But would be disapointing to see Melville using something so dull, right?

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No, that's exactly what I meant. But the name has nothing to do with conflict with Paganism (which is something you tentatively suggested).

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

God struk the Pequod for heresy, not paganism

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So Ishmael is orthodox? He performs pagan rituals with his boyfriend! And how is Starbuck unorthodox? It still doesn't make sense.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Well, he does and does not. The role is similar. Survive, tell the tale.

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That's not the Biblical motif you suggested Melville would have been familiar with. Neither Noah nor Lot tell the story of their survival. Moses was the (traditional) author of those stories. Melville certainly knew that tradition. The sole survivor may be a literary motif, but how is it a Biblical one?

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Granted it was later, but I do not think he would go as far as turning Jesus in a monster without control.

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But the point of the marriage of Heaven and hell ideology would be that, as in the Jonah story, Leviathan is only doing God's work. However terrifying, he is a ultimately force for redemption (so not a monster out of control).

You are both making excellent points. I'm enjoying rereading bits of the book much more than I did in January.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

But the point of the marriage of Heaven and hell ideology would be that, as in the Jonah story, Leviathan is only doing God's work. However terrifying, he is a ultimately force for redemption (so not a monster out of control).

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But where is the redemption?

The Heaven and Hell and the absolute omnipotence of God are themes at the back of so many controversies and theological catch 22s. "If God's all powerful, why does he allow...? and what then of free will..? and so on.

Is claiming Heaven, Hell, God and the Devil (and why not the Pequod, the ocean, the land and the sky.) are different aspects of the same coin a kind of cop out? - like saying God is everything, we don't need to understand more than that or take any responibility. I think that Melville is exploring this question like many before him. But I'm not sure that's the model he builds his narrative around. I prefer the whale as an instrument, possibly The Son, probably just a whale, but not as the Devil. (It's not the devil who casts the damned into hell). Whereas I agree with the surrounding ineffable whiteness in the idea of the whale , I think his paranormal aura is quickly shed when he becomes manifest. He becomes all too effin effable as a sailor might say.

I was reading a few pages last night and came upon a very sexy, very pagan account of the day. (chapter132) We haven't discussed much the pagan themes of the story, but it is suprising how Christian and Pagan stories carry the same philosophical explorations. This chapter is I think one of the key ones. and is reminicent of all those Greek tragedies set in a pagan landescape, where the Hero is invited to turn aside one last time, he feels his doom approaching, but seems to choose his fate. (But of course he doesn't really - see paragraph above)

Back to Literature, I suppose it isn't a surprise that we can find so many parallels between Moby Dick and other classic works, from Gilgamesh to Harry Potter, because the themes of Tragedy and Hubris and people locked into their fate (as the Greeks had it )and also stories of Monsters, journeys, deeds and Deities, have been told for as long as people have sat down together.

Bt the way, isn't a narrator always omnipotent and immortal?

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

But where is the redemption?

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For Jonah, the redemption comes when he repents in the belly of the beast and is vomited onto the shore (nobody said redemption was pretty :) ). The beast is instrumental to his redemption. There is no redemption for Ahab because there is no repentance. But what's the deal with Ishmael?

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

Is claiming Heaven, Hell, God and the Devil (and why not the Pequod, the ocean, the land and the sky.) are different aspects of the same coin a kind of cop out? - like saying God is everything, we don't need to understand more than that or take any responibility.

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You can take that up with Blake. As I've said, it's not my theology. But I don't see Melville's ideas as pantheistic (which is what you're talking about) in any case. He is not a transcendentalist like Emerson and Thoreau (he even excoriates what he sees as dreamy pantheism at the end of Chapter 33). And as far as personal responsibility goes, isn't there a difference between what Jonah does and what Ahab does? Or between the way Ahab responds to his desire to kill Moby-Dick and the way Boomer does? The choice and responsibility are still ours. I don't see Melville's ideas interfering with that

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

I think that Melville is exploring this question like many before him. But I'm not sure that's model he builds his narrative around. I prefer the whale as an instrument, possibly The Son, probably just a whale, but not as the Devil. (It's not the devil who casts the damned into hell). Whereas I agree with the surrounding ineffable whiteness in the idea of the whale , I think his paranormal aura is quickly shed when he becomes manifest. He becomes all too effin effable as a sailor might say.

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That sounds like an interesting approach, and I wish you luck with it. My hypothesis that Moby-Dick is Leviathan and Christ rolled into one (again, not my theology) is certainly a shocking one, but I suspect that was rather Melville's point. While considering these ideas, I remembered a 1980s movie called Time Bandits. In it, David Warner plays a supernatural being who is more or less the devil. At one point he is complaining about what an incompetent God is. One of his lackeys says, "But he made you, Evil One, so he can't be totally..."--at which Warner raises a hand and blasts him into oblivion. I suspect Melville was looking for a better solution to the same problem.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

Bt the way, isn't a narrator always omnipotent and immortal?

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No, narrators are not omnipotent. They cannot bring a dead lovers back or make a smashed up ship reassemble itself and carry them to safety. But if you mean omniscient, few if any first person narrators are (note Melville has to change persons for scenes in which Ishmael is not present). I suppose first person narrators are immortal as long as they keep talking, but they can always announce their impending doom and secure their manuscript in a drawer of bottle or something. None of that explains why Melville didn't either write in the third person in the first place and kill Ishmael with everyone else or at least give some reason for his salvation (even a hint).

I love the last scene, though. There is a novel called The Middle Passage (about the horrific Atlantic slave trade) that has a consciously similar scene. The narrator is left bobbing for his life in the debris of a wreck with sharks all around--a metaphor for the predicament of blacks in the New World. He decides that if that is what it means to be a black man, then it is exactly what and where he wants to be. My feeling about Melville's ending are similar. Whatever the terrors, I would rather be a free individual taking my chances amidst the sharks and waves than the slave of a madman on a ship bound for hell.

As far as Paganism goes, yes it is a major theme in Moby-Dick. But Melville treats it so differently in various places that I'm often not sure I understand what his point is. I'll check out the passage you mention and see what I think.

P.S. "Effin effable" was pretty funny. :)

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

I guess the simple way to articulate my position (which as I said earlier is not my actual theology) is that Melville is exploring the idea that God's wrath and God's mercy are both realities of God (as, for example, Blake also did when he placed the Tyger in counterpoint to the Lamb). I suspect that, for Melville, Christ and Leviathan were opposite sides of the same coin, and both were aspects of God. And this idea, as I said before, that idea is manifested by the shocking image of Leviathan in Puritan white.

With that preface, then, please understand that I am not speaking of the human Jesus of the Gospels (to follow the Trinitarian principle that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, but the cosmic Christ--Christ Pantocrator, the Son of Man, Christ as a divine manifestation of God's wrath. So the willing sacrifice, the masterful teachings, and the ideal man are not relevant to Melville's analogy (as important as they are to Christian theology).

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But then, there is nothing about Jesus in the whale. We have other examples of God's mercy in OT (Albeit the rupture between the Gospels and OT is a historical complicated matter. We may argue there was any mercy before Jesus), I mean, even in Ishmael biblical history god banish him but sent an angel after him. In modern world, Islamic world may show Ishmael survives because he is the one linked to god :D (A side note, versions of Abraham sacrifice sometimes places Ishmael as the intented victim, so you could easily say his survival is the survival of the patriarch sacrifice, which is basically the convenant. Of course, such pro-islam bias is beyond Melville)

I do not get much white as purity, as a I said before, but I think it is more important is how Jesus is absent from Moby Dick. More or less, how progressively the pequod moves away from him. Jesus is in safe land and the Pequood is progressing back to the past where Jesus is not present yet. Maybe that is due to Melville bleakness, the romantic was first very optmistic, Melville generation is already a critic of all developments of XIX century half.

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No, that's exactly what I meant. But the name has nothing to do with conflict with Paganism (which is something you tentatively suggested).

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Not conflict, but simple evolution, abrahamic religions survived over the wrecks of paganism. Not that I really think Melville was giving that much importance to this.

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So Ishmael is orthodox? He performs pagan rituals with his boyfriend! And how is Starbuck unorthodox? It still doesn't make sense.

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Well, I meant exactly that Paganism (mostly I think, because Melville have a personal positive experience with pagans) is mostly benign in Moby Dick. It is challenging what was linked with God/Nature, which is the pursuit of Moby.

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That's not the Biblical motif you suggested Melville would have been familiar with. Neither Noah nor Lot tell the story of their survival. Moses was the (traditional) author of those stories. Melville certainly knew that tradition. The sole survivor may be a literary motif, but how is it a Biblical one?

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My suggestion is the "bear witness" that are in the bible, even if the authorship of those stories are not a first person narrative. (Honestly I do not think it was even something that development back then, first person narratives? I cannot recall any work such as this)

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But the point of the marriage of Heaven and hell ideology would be that, as in the Jonah story, Leviathan is only doing God's work. However terrifying, he is a ultimately force for redemption (so not a monster out of control).

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Yes, but Jesus and Leviathan are hardly the only beings doing God's work (The Pharoh with the harder heart, The angels, the Sinedrium leaders, most prophets) so we do not have to reduce this to Jesus/Leviathan only.

About Narrators, Melville is exactly developing the not reliable narrator, that would be better structured in first person by Dostoievisky, Nabokov, Henry James, etc. Ishmael is a mix between this omnipresent narrator (therefore, sometimes he tell us part of the stories he shouldnt because he was not witness of the events) and this psychological narrator. If you have the oportunity to read his other works, he will see how Melville uses the perspective of the narrator to "manipulated" the reader. Moby is a massive and ambitious work of literature, he is exploring the language, style and techniques all the time.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

But then, there is nothing about Jesus in the whale.

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Except insofar as the cosmic Christ/Son of Man can be said to have been in the Jesus who preached in Galilee (something I personally believe). I think the Christ-Leviathan that Melville envisions is more like the seven-eyed lamb who kills everyone at the end of the New Testament (talk about an ending I didn't see coming!), who is also identifiable with Jesus--and, come to think of it, is also pure white.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

In modern world, Islamic world may show Ishmael survives because he is the one linked to god :D (A side note, versions of Abraham sacrifice sometimes places Ishmael as the intented victim, so you could easily say his survival is the survival of the patriarch sacrifice, which is basically the convenant. Of course, such pro-islam bias is beyond Melville)

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Ishmael also has a miraculous deliverance while in the wilderness, but that tells me more about why Melville named him Ishmael than why he did not go down with the Pequod.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I do not get much white as purity, as a I said before, but I think it is more important is how Jesus is absent from Moby Dick. More or less, how progressively the pequod moves away from him. Jesus is in safe land and the Pequood is progressing back to the past where Jesus is not present yet. Maybe that is due to Melville bleakness, the romantic was first very optmistic, Melville generation is already a critic of all developments of XIX century half.

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If this is so (I respect your view even if I do not entirely share it), then the Pequod is journeying from Christendom into Paganism and not just the religion of ancient Israel. Ahab himself is named for an Israelite King who adopted the Paganism of his wife, Jezebel. And the drinking ceremony in which the Christian mates are forced to offer grog to the pagan harpooners in cups made from inverted lance heads, and Ahab touches the conjunction of three harpoons (and at one point talks about putting his electrical energy into things), is meant to portray a pagan/Dionysian ritual. If that is the kind of journey you mean, I can see it.

The problem, of course, is that other kinds of Paganism (especially Queequeg's brand) is treated by with sympathy, common sense, and humor throughout the novel. This goes to something prendrelmick and I discussed briefly above: Paganism was a theme in Moby-Dick, but Melville's attitude towards it is baffling. It is as if he needs it to be bad for the narrative he wants to tell, but personally he thinks it's pretty cool. His ambiguity is probably worth trying to understand.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Well, I meant exactly that Paganism (mostly I think, because Melville have a personal positive experience with pagans) is mostly benign in Moby Dick. It is challenging what was linked with God/Nature, which is the pursuit of Moby.

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Yup, that's the problem. Only it isn't "mostly benign," it's sometimes benign and sometimes malignant. So there's another mystery for us.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

(Honestly I do not think it was even something that development back then, first person narratives? I cannot recall any work such as this)

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Ecclesiastes (while admittedly not a narrative) is written in the first person. And there are smaller texts redacted into larger ones here and there. But I think we agree it would not have been a familiar Biblical motif for Melville.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Yes, but Jesus and Leviathan are hardly the only beings doing God's work (The Pharoh with the harder heart, The angels, the Sinedrium leaders, most prophets) so we do not have to reduce this to Jesus/Leviathan only.

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Melville used the symbol of the white Leviathan to demonstrate that the principle that good and evil function in unison. I don't see how that's reductive. But even if one doesn't agree with him (and I sure don't), it doesn't mean that wasn't his point.

Here is how the theology actually works:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jmS_hMnFNVM

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Moby is a massive and ambitious work of literature, he is exploring the language, style and techniques all the time.

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My favourite parts are the Shakespearian soliloquies, where characters speak out their thoughts and refer to themselves by their proper nouns. Also those spoken rhythmic poem/chants they voice as they are at some task or other. Those are things that lift the book out of the ordinary and, I think, lift the story out of the real world.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Ahab is certainly obsessed, but it seems to me the real issue is choice

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The underlying question most probably is about choice and I agree with all you've said however the tone of the novel (keeping aside the parts that sound encyclopaedic) as shown from couple of quotes you've shared is about the inevitable doom that was awaiting the Pequod. I don't know but I never felt that Ahab had a choice. He was portrayed like a madman with only one thing on his mind who couldn't do anything but get back at the whale. In the beginning Ahab sounded like a villain up to no good but I ended up being sympathetic with the old man who was only doing what had to be done for him to fulfill his destiny. Man wanted to subjugate Nature but this battle never favors him.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

My favourite parts are the Shakespearian soliloquies, where characters speak out their thoughts and refer to themselves by their proper nouns. Also those spoken rhythmic poem/chants they voice as they are at some task or other. Those are things that lift the book out of the ordinary and, I think, lift the story out of the real world.

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They also tie the narrative to Shakespearean tragedy and provide a kind of balance to the more Biblical elements. If it weren't for the special effects challenges, Moby-Dick would make a great play.