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

[Pompey Bum]

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.

I agree that there are strong fatalistic shadings in this novel, but they accompany a recognizable tragic hero motif. It is as if Melville gives his reader a choice about how fate works. Perhaps he was only trying give his tragic narrative an eerie, otherworldly tone, or perhaps he was ambivalent bout the subject himself. Even Elijah (obviously named for the Biblical prophet persecuted by King Ahab) hedges a bit when he says, "what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all." On the other hand this sub-theme of fate is the only explanation I can find for Ishmael's survival at the end. The only inference to draw is that it just wasn't his time.

You make a good point about Ahab's madness, too. He is said to have been raving after the loss of his leg, and even afterward his madness is described as coiled up deceptively within him. Using modern standards, one might conclude that since he was mad he could not have made a true choice (as opposed to the sane Captain Boomer, who could). But in 1851, Ahab's obsessiveness would have been seen as a character flaw (and artistically a fatal flaw) rather than "mental illness." Boomer was also dismembered, but he did not succumb to obsessive vengeance. Instead he chose to accept fate/God's will while Ahab chose to defy it. For Melville that would have been a choice, even if a modern jury would need to debate it.

I am curious what you mean by: "Man wanted to subjugate Nature but this battle never favors him." I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think it was Melville's point in 1851. In fact, Melville's America took great pride in defying nature. It had recently redrawn longstanding trade routes and supercharged the wealth of eastern cities by digging the Erie Canal system system and navigating the Great Lakes; and it had harnessed the power of steam for ships to transport people and goods over North American Rivers and built train tracks far into the wilderness. These developments (and radical new communication provided by the telegraph) were allowing America's vast interior forest to be hacked down for new settlement, much to most European Americans' delight. At the same time (as Melville proudly marvels) provincial eastern places like Nantucket and New Bedford were sending out fleets of whaling ships to circumnavigate the globe; they would butcher the ancient beasts to near extinction in a generation. It is tempting to read 21st century environmentalist values into Moby-Dick, but the mid-19th century zeitgeist was quite the other thing. Melville's conflict in Moby-Dick was man vs. fate or (in my opinion) man vs. God. Man vs. nature, I think, is something modern environmentalists tend to bring to the text rather than derive from it. But perhaps I misunderstood what you meant.

[prendrelemick]

What we would excuse as madness and obsession, Melville sees as the sin of pride. That is what Ahab is punished for (and the Greeks called that Hubris.) But Ahab vs Nature is something I thought was going on before following this thread. Now I accept in terms of this book "Nature" is a kind of modern Deity. So Ahab vs whatever name we wish to give our higher power will do.

As to whether or not he had a choice, that is a question at the heart of the plot. The Greeks would say not, man's life is in the hands of The Fates from first to last. The Christian view has been argued over for Millenia - we feel we have free choice, but if God is everywhere and knows everything how can we have?

This is why we read good books and why they are worth reading.

Now ,I'm typing this before the thought is fully formed, but here goes - Take a Greek tragedy with all the traditional ingredients (Gods Fates Furies Fatal Flaws ect.) and rewrite it to encompass an 1850's point of view of Christian Theology and morality. (taking account of Dante, Milton, Bunyon et al.) Would you end up with something like Moby Dick ?

[JCamilo]

Nature is there, but Pompey is correct that we are giving a modern reading if we think it is literary Man vs.Nature and not Man vs.Creation. For once, we can see Melville, despite his attempts to sound modern and aligned with the Evolution Debate, is hardly someone who understood it, as he seems to imagine an infinite supply of whales for hunting. And another point is that literary wise, the relation of America to Nature is different. We have the Feenimore Cooper books, the civilized man is heroic to face nature and find the good stuff there.

I would say, Melville reacts to this myth and this is something quite important to the book theme: Melville seems to make a critic about the romantic view of non-europeans, in the sense, despite the claim that civilization is corrupt and the selvages are the pure/good, the relation still to colonize and christianize the selvages and not exactly respect the diversity (an awful modern word, but in this an in many other works melville seems to adress to the point that civilization is not making the world any better or that world was nto that bad in first place).

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.

I understand the theology and the idea you propose. My point it is that is not necessary. An allegory inside an allegory, seems to be too much for Melville, I mean, beyond the Baroque, specially considering Melville is good crafter. If you remove the christ part, you still have all the same meaning. Why adding Christ? Is there anything else that make it necessary?

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.

Maybe that was imposed because of that. While I am not sure if there is a special meaning on Ishmael being the one that survives.

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.

Let's just play with your idea of Leviathan/Jesus coin. It even fits, if the pequod is traveling away from Jesus, journeying to the past, they are basically flipping the coin and it is more elegant than having to merge Jesus and Leviathan in Moby Dick (the whale) and not in the whole journey. Now, of course we are just playing with the interpretations, because I am not sure if everything in Melville resumes to religious symbolism. I think he is a writer with social concerns (and his bleak vision is a critical vision that allow him a different perspective from his peers, which give him insights to social conflicts and problems that were overlooked by the most optimistic vision) and also with a great literary "awareness". His message conveys a concious work to be writting against (if I am souding too much like Bloom, I blame him from reading D.H.Lawrence, but this against is a bit like those oriental martial arts, where you use the strength of the oponent to prepare your attack) the themes and styles from american literature (and english, italian, jewish, etc.). You have pointed that the approach of americans towards nature was positive, it was not a modern "we cannot domain nature", Melville certainly subverts this tendency. Whitman was positive towards diversity and paganism already, Melville was critical to a society that claimed to be democratic but was not so keen on diversity, and he seemed to be rather negative about the social conflicts being naturally solved by good will and love like Whitman. Even being a huge admirer of Hawthorne, he was a bit critical of moralism.

Sometimes I think the religious part is more in how it was done, as one of the literary influences for Melville, than what it means. Because of that I feel the references of Moby Dick have a tendencies towards Old Testament and not the New. The lack of carthasis you noticed is almost the lack of closing that the Gospels give with Jesus. (Not saying the OT didnt had carthatic momments inside their narratives, but OT was a work in progress, if you understand me). That is why the similarity of Kafka and Melville, both seem to address to the OT topics and God. It is part of the style, the not conclusive style and even the persistense of mystery.

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.

Well, good or bad, those are the worst words to use. I think Melville shows a great deal of tolerance, a groundbreaking tolerance, towards pagans (and therefore to other non-christian cultures) because he truly felt this way. His experiences taught this, so it would be impossible for him to paint the non-christian as naturally evil. In fact, it was not hard to paint non-christians well at that time. Rousseau give people this right, but what is groundbreaking for Melville and perhaps what makes you feel baffling is that Melville work is not a work trying to do a moral judgment on non-christians and therefore, there is no objective to convert them to a more tolerable light, which was the usual way they were treated before. Modern post-colonial reading is missing a huge twist on Melville, probally because he does not santify the non-christian to attack the christians, he leave it be. So, I think, the most positive thing is not paganism is good, it is that Ishmael tolerance is good.

Perhaps that makes Ishmael a good man and that is why he survives, but not that sure if we need to find such motive.

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

The link didnt open for me (I watched Time Bandits a long time ago), but I agree (not about the white) that Melville blends good and evil, that he almost plays with the gnostic idea of god, but my point, God as the source of good and evil is a Old Testament logic, Jesus is not there. If you just tell me Look the leviathan I will already understand this. I am sure, when you suggested the similarities with Blake is because you know that between christians and jews there is an essential philosophical difference about the nature of evil and God. I do not think Melville would blend in single symbol both things, albeit, as I suggested, he could suggest this in his narrative with different symbols.

[Pompey Bum]

What we would excuse as madness and obsession, Melville sees as the sin of pride. That is what Ahab is punished for (and the Greeks called that Hubris.)

I think you are correct, if you mean aligning choices to one's own will rather than God's (that's how I see the sin of pride in any case). In Moby-Dick, the idea may apply in both its Greek and Hebrew forms.

But Ahab vs Nature is something I thought was going on before following this thread. Now I accept in terms of this book "Nature" is a kind of modern Deity. So Ahab vs whatever name we wish to give our higher power will do.

I understand what you are saying, and if by modern you mean today's then of course anyone may bring their own notions of divinity to the text for any sort of elucidation. The scene from The Middle Passage I mentioned had nothing to do with Melville's intent, but the author managed to throw light on the black American experience by adopting Moby-Dick's ambiguous ending. A 21st-century author might very well want to write an environmentalist version of Moby-Dick. It would probably sell. Um, I mean resonate with a lot of people.

But if you mean that nature had become "a kind of modern Deity" by Melville's (comparatively modern) time, you are going to have problem. That is because the divinity of nature was actually a very ancient idea that came to be called Paganism (in distinction from the Abrahamic religions which worship the Creator to the exclusion of the created). As we have discussed, Melville's attitude towards Paganism seems rather schizophrenic at times. He uses it to foreshadow and doom the "cannibal" Pequod and the proud Ahab (named for the paganizing King who persecuted Elijah); but he finds Queequeg's sympathetic magic quaint and charming. Whatever his ultimate view, Ahab's sin of pride cannot be seen as failing to have aligned his choices to the will of a pagan "higher power." That is a book that will have to be written today.

This is why we read good books and why they are worth reading.

Asking these questions and looking for answers is exactly why I read literature. It's nice to know there are others.

Now ,I'm typing this before the thought is fully formed, but here goes - Take a Greek tragedy with all the traditional ingredients (Gods Fates Furies Fatal Flaws ect.) and rewrite it to encompass an 1850's point of view of Christian Theology and morality. (taking account of Dante, Milton, Bunyon et al.) Would you end up with something like Moby Dick ?

Perhaps. But they would not mix smoothly, and this may be why there are so many apparent contradictions in the novel.

[kev67]

Congratulations, Kev. And I beg your pardon. I (stupidly) did not even consider that you might not have known know how Moby-Dick ended. I'm glad to see that you stayed away from the site as you were finishing the novel, and I hope that I didn't spoil anything for you. I apologize if I did.



No doubt he'll use them as fishing lines. Squid love human flesh.

Thanks, I was not spoiled. I have not responded for a while because I was on holiday (cycling around Yorkshire) and could not work out how to post on this site with my smart phone.

I have read that Melville regarded Moby Dick as the hero of that book. I certainly did myself, and I suppose most readers rooted for him. That is a little odd since Melville used to be a whaler himself. Maybe he got sick of the enterprise. The same chapter in which he recounts the young whales coming up to be scratched, and then those horrible two ended cutting spades being stuck into other whales so that they thrashed around injuring each other might suggest so. I have read that the story may be an allegory for slavery. I suppose so in that it was a callously carried out enterprise on victims not considered fully human by people who had a profitable motive for not doing so. The end of the story does not really fit that analogy, but the book does not have to be an exact analogy. Anyway, maybe it was just a book about whaling.

Regarding Ahab’s views on Moby Dick. He obviously considers him exceptional. His behaviour has made him regard him as a thinking animal. Moby Dick’s malignity towards whalers is understandable if he is more than a brute creature that Starbuck thinks whales are. But if Moby Dick is exceptional just for being very aggressive or cunning, then he is still a whale. Only if he a demon can whales not be considered more than brute creatures. All that black magic hocus pocus with harpoons forged in blood make me think that Ahab thinks he is up against a supernatural being, but that is a more comforting thought than what he would other have spent his working life doing.

[prendrelemick]

I have a Mole in the medows that is exceptional, I cannot catch it, it has been avoiding my traps for a year - well not avoiding them but filling them with soil and uprooting them. I am becoming like Ahab - obsessed - but also like Melville in that I have a deep regard for it's supernatural cleverness. How will it end? I'm secretly hoping I never get it. But I have to keep trying as a matter of pride.

Thus life follows art.

[Pompey Bum]

Thanks, I was not spoiled. I have not responded for a while because I was on holiday (cycling around Yorkshire) and could not work out how to post on this site with my smart phone.

Welcome back, Kev. Glad I didn't spoil the ending for you. And I assumed your silence just meant you were deep into your next read. (After Yorkshire you may like Nicholas Nickleby). Anyway, thanks for inspiring my third reading of Moby-Dick. I notice new things everytime I read it.

[Pompey Bum]

I have a Mole in the medows that is exceptional, I cannot catch it, it has been avoiding my traps for a year - well not avoiding them but filling them with soil and uprooting them. I am becoming like Ahab - obsessed - but also like Melville in that I have a deep regard for it's supernatural cleverness. How will it end? I'm secretly hoping I never get it. But I have to keep trying as a matter of pride.

Thus life follows art.

Write the book, prendrelemick! Moleby-Dick, man vs. nature at last!

[prendrelemick]

Welcome back, Kev. Glad I didn't spoil the ending for you. And I assumed your silence just meant you were deep into your next read. (After Yorkshire you may like Nicholas Nickleby). Anyway, thanks for inspiring my third reading of Moby-Dick. I notice new things everytime I read it.

Let me second that. I'm rereading too even though I read it in January (Ok I'm missing out the whale facts sections this time). You should've called in for a cuppa while you were up here Kev!

[Pompey Bum]

I would say, Melville reacts to this myth and this is something quite important to the book theme: Melville seems to make a critic about the romantic view of non-europeans, in the sense, despite the claim that civilization is corrupt and the selvages are the pure/good, the relation still to colonize and christianize the selvages and not exactly respect the diversity (an awful modern word, but in this an in many other works melville seems to adress to the point that civilization is not making the world any better or that world was nto that bad in first place).

Yes, diversity is an awful modern word, but what Melville embraces approximates that idea. Obviously his version would not have been the same as Hillary Clinton's. Understanding Moby-Dick requires understanding Melville's thoughts. I know what you mean, though, and yes, Melville's diversity is a startling aspect of the novel.

I think Melville shows a great deal of tolerance, a groundbreaking tolerance, towards pagans (and therefore to other non-christian cultures) because he truly felt this way. His experiences taught this, so it would be impossible for him to paint the non-christian as naturally evil.

I agree that Melville tolerance was informed by personal experience. My impression is that he (like Ishmael) had seen enough of the world and its inhabitants to know the dread secret that we all bleed the same color. Melville seems amused that common sailors (and worse, whalers) should understand something their social "superiors" were ignorant about; but the comradeship of humankind was something he took seriously. Tolerance is an important theme in Moby-Dick (though only one of several).

I would add that Melville's religious tolerance is limited to his own times. The no-longer-existing paganisms of Jezebel and of Nero are still anathema. But that didn't affect his view of aboriginal animists in 1851. While I agree this was groundbreaking tolerance, I don't know how far he extended it. I am not aware of Melville's attitude towards Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, are you?

On reflection, I have decided that Melville's attitude towards pagans is confusing because he was really taking about three separate things: 1) ancient Paganism, which he saw as a morally corrosive influence; 2) aboriginal animism (like Queequeg's), to which he was sympathetic and tolerant; and the (essentially hypocritical) literary ideal of the noble savage, with you say he critiqued and I say he critiqued by lampooning. If these distinctions are kept clear, the many of the apparent contradictions vanish.

A word about the lampoon: I mentioned that the Spouter Inn bedroom scenes were a kind of farce. I think that Chapter 17 (The Ramadan) may continue the joke. It is a strange chapter in any case. Ishmael is usually not too subjective a narrator, but here his comments (if I am reading them as intended) hold an irony that probably lampoons the condescending sort of tolerance of others that you mention:

"I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical."

"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects."

"[I] could “could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool;"

If Melville is not being ironic, then he may be guilty of the very thing you say he was critiquing. But I think it's satire. Ishmael is made more foolish when, becoming alarmed that Queequeg does not answer their door, he smashes it in (much to his landlady' objections) only to find him sitting quietly in a state of religious devotion. Queequeg looks pretty silly, too, holding his idol on his head, but I think that's just another part of the overall joke.

I understand the theology and the idea you propose. My point it is that is not necessary. An allegory inside an allegory, seems to be too much for Melville, I mean, beyond the Baroque, specially considering Melville is good crafter. If you remove the christ part, you still have all the same meaning. Why adding Christ? Is there anything else that make it necessary?

What makes it necessary is the instrumentality of the whale in Jonah's redemption. The beast is not there to punish Jonah without hope of redemption but in fact to an be agent of his salvation. Moby-Dick (the whale, not the book) is not an allegory within an allegory but a dual symbol: Jonah's sea beast in holy white. That is elegant even for Melville, who as you know was stylistically baroque.

Sometimes I think the religious part is more in how it was done, as one of the literary influences for Melville, than what it means.

I disagree. Three chapters are laid aside for the Father Mapple episode, where the whole thing could easily have been handled in a paragraph. Each chapter foreshadows something essential to Melville's narrative. Chapter 7 (The Chapel), as Melville later admits, evokes the coming doom of the voyage, Chapter 8 (The Pulpit) presents a model of leadership in accordance with the will of God to which the narratives of Captains Ahab and Boomer stand in comparison. And Chapter 9 (The Sermon) presents the theology discussed above that Melville expresses in the central symbol of the white whale. Tolerance is an important theme in Moby-Dick, but so is Melville's religious vision. In no way was it contextual or a matter of mere literary influence.

I will say this, though. The idea that Christ could be presented as unified in some way with Leviathan, a figure that came to be considered demonic in normative Christianity, is understandably offensive to many Christians. It is also a deeply radical position. A very great many 19th century Christians would have seen tolerance toward aboriginal animists without thought of conversion as unacceptably radical and the idea of sleeping with one as just as offensive. My point is simply that Melville was capable of bucking the system that hard. You and I may have to agree to disagree about whether he is doing this in terms of religion in Moby-Dick, but it's not a particularly far-fetched hypothesis. I was not convinced when I began, but all I have found in my third reading of this novel has inclined me to think this was exactly what Melville was doing. He is not throwing flowers at a Blakean marriage of Heaven and hell, he is just trying to see if life and fate functions as an integral phenomenon. Avast, he is asking, Hast seen the white whale?

[JCamilo]

Yes, diversity is an awful modern word, but what Melville embraces approximates that idea. Obviously his version would not have been the same as Hillary Clinton's. Understanding Moby-Dick requires understanding Melville's thoughts. I know what you mean, though, and yes, Melville's diversity is a startling aspect of the novel.

Yes, in many aspects he is the only american that did what Whitman did. The true american novelist all the way.

I agree that Melville tolerance was informed by personal experience. My impression is that he (like Ishmael) had seen enough of the world and its inhabitants to know the dread secret that we all bleed the same color. Melville seems amused that common sailors (and worse, whalers) should understand something their social "superiors" were ignorant about; but the comradeship of humankind was something he took seriously. Tolerance is an important theme in Moby-Dick (though only one of several).

I would add that Melville's religious tolerance is limited to his own times. The no-longer-existing paganisms of Jezebel and of Nero are still anathema. But that didn't affect his view of aboriginal animists in 1851. While I agree this was groundbreaking tolerance, I don't know how far he extended it. I am not aware of Melville's attitude towards Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, are you?

Well, you have to consider that the "fog" Melville places on his works, his crazy personal life (he was not outspoken as his characters), have made him a victim of a lot of political correct interpretations. Some of his works are deemed racists, but I think it is only because he is a very hard writer, even considering how he is basically an adventure's writer. Anyways, again his experience helps him to approach Jews. After a trip to Jersusalem (he was a bit disapointed, eager to find signals of OT prophets and at some point wonder if the desolate city he found was like that because a tight embrace from a god) he seemed to develop a sympathetic view on jews (and muslims). There is a poem, Clarel, which is notable for his very positive and not steryotipical view on jews. No Shylocks here.

Muslims are more complciated. While he never seemed to held them on negative ways, he certainly knew little about them. At first, he used what he picked from literature, they are exotic or sensual, but at the end, he was also neutal, even changing the way he spelled Muhammad to something closer to the arabic pronouce. In other words, he was quite the nice chap. Probally, would be the nicest writer of XIX century if there wasnt Robert Louis Stevenson (funny enough, both with a few similar traits). I suspoect that besides the obvious over literary experience (Somehow, Moby was the Finnegans Wake of XIX century), Melville tolerance was a bit of slap on the face of the public.

Now, I do not know much else about his public life (his alcoholism made him a bit of coward) and he came from a conservative family. So, he was never very strong about political positions, which may explain how protected he felt by the allegories.

On reflection, I have decided that Melville's attitude towards pagans is confusing because he was really taking about three separate things: 1) ancient Paganism, which he saw as a morally corrosive influence; 2) aboriginal animism (like Queequeg's), to which he was sympathetic and tolerant; and the (essentially hypocritical) literary ideal of the noble savage, with you say he critiqued and I say he critiqued by lampooning. If these distinctions are kept clear, the many of the apparent contradictions vanish.

Somehow, i think that in his mind, the new american (the americans) are different from others, because they werent exposed to the Bible, so they couldnt be blamed, as Ahab. The point about the Heresy here.

A word about the lampoon: I mentioned that the Spouter Inn bedroom scenes were a kind of farce. I think that Chapter 17 (The Ramadan) may continue the joke. It is a strange chapter in any case. Ishmael is usually not too subjective a narrator, but here his comments (if I am reading them as intended) hold an irony that probably lampoons the condescending sort of tolerance of others that you mention:

"I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical."

"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects."

"[I] could “could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool;"

If Melville is not being ironic, then he may be guilty of the very thing you say he was critiquing. But I think it's satire. Ishmael is made more foolish when, becoming alarmed that Queequeg does not answer their door, he smashes it in (much to his landlady' objections) only to find him sitting quietly in a state of religious devotion. Queequeg looks pretty silly, too, holding his idol on his head, but I think that's just another part of the overall joke.

Yeah, i agree there is an attempt to make the reader feel the ridicule of the sittuation, a bit because of Ishmael reactions.

What makes it necessary is the instrumentality of the whale in Jonah's redemption. The beast is not there to punish Jonah without hope of redemption but in fact to an be agent of his salvation. Moby-Dick (the whale, not the book) is not an allegory within an allegory but a dual symbol: Jonah's sea beast in holy white. That is elegant even for Melville, who as you know was stylistically baroque.

If I remove Christ from Jonah tale, the whale still is his salvation. Also, I am not quite sure about Ishmael redemption (unless telling the tale is redemption), but no point having this argument back and forth.

I disagree. Three chapters are laid aside for the Father Mapple episode, where the whole thing could easily have been handled in a paragraph. Each chapter foreshadows something essential to Melville's narrative. Chapter 7 (The Chapel), as Melville later admits, evokes the coming doom of the voyage, Chapter 8 (The Pulpit) presents a model of leadership in accordance with the will of God to which the narratives of Captains Ahab and Boomer stand in comparison. And Chapter 9 (The Sermon) presents the theology discussed above that Melville expresses in the central symbol of the white whale. Tolerance is an important theme in Moby-Dick, but so is Melville's religious vision. In no way was it contextual or a matter of mere literary influence.

I do not mean that Melville is not religious (there is a moral tale in the story after all), but that the religious symbolism is the main guide for melville, his literary symbolism and the narrative are. He is making choices based on that, it is the central structure of the story. If every motiff or technique present needs to be a religious allegory, he wouldnt dedicated that much space for the "scientific" chapters.

I will say this, though. The idea that Christ could be presented as unified in some way with Leviathan, a figure that came to be considered demonic in normative Christianity, is understandably offensive to many Christians. It is also a deeply radical position. A very great many 19th century Christians would have seen tolerance toward aboriginal animists without thought of conversion as unacceptably radical and the idea of sleeping with one as just as offensive. My point is simply that Melville was capable of bucking the system that hard. You and I may have to agree to disagree about whether he is doing this in terms of religion in Moby-Dick, but it's not a particularly far-fetched hypothesis. I was not convinced when I began, but all I have found in my third reading of this novel has inclined me to think this was exactly what Melville was doing. He is not throwing flowers at a Blakean marriage of Heaven and hell, he is just trying to see if life and fate functions as an integral phenomenon. Avast, he is asking, Hast seen the white whale?

I think Melville (talking beyond Moby Dick) was really curious about God's Manifestation. That may explain his tolerance towards paganism (and not the kind of Ahab paganism, as it is about somehow who found god and denied it), he is genuinely trying to find God and communicate with him. He is just not mystical enough to find it or be a prohet like Blake or Whitman. He is a pratical bloke, down to earth that had a massive literary talent, but found that talent would put him in a lot of troubles.

[Pompey Bum]

Somehow, i think that in his mind, the new american (the americans) are different from others, because they werent exposed to the Bible, so they couldnt be blamed, as Ahab. The point about the Heresy here.

I don't understand what you mean. Midcentury American religion was Bible-centric/Biblical literalist. Am I misunderstanding you?

If I remove Christ from Jonah tale, the whale still is his salvation. Also, I am not quite sure about Ishmael redemption (unless telling the tale is redemption), but no point having this argument back and forth.

But Melville did not remove Christ (who in Trinitarian theology is coeternal with the Father and a Person of the Trinity) from Jonah's salvation. For a Christian, Christ is necessarily the agent of Salvation. What Melville does is to add Leviathan, a combination he expresses in the symbol of the holy whiteness (think Christ's Transfiguration) of the whale. The image of Moby-Dick has become such a familiar part of popular culture that we tend to forget what a paradox it is.

This theology does not work for me at all. In fact, I see it as a kind of paganizing because it elevates the created (Leviathan) to the level of the Uncreated (Christ). I just don't think Melville saw it that way.

But okay, yes, time to agree to disagree. I have other things to say about the novel, but first I want to thank you for an intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable theological discussion--and online! Typically religious discussions end in rancor or bring out nut jobs from every corner. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

At this point I think I understand Melville's attitude towards Paganism and also his theological symbolism. Offeror's posts have made me think about Melville's theory of fate. The problem, as we have discussed, is that there is a recognizable Shakespearean tragedy going on, with its combination of choice and fate; but there also many purely fatalistic overtones to the narrative. These episodes are sometimes expressed in terms of Biblical Prophecy (Elijah vs. Ahab, etc.). I suggested (baffled as usual) that it almost seems like Melville was giving his reader a choice.

I refined that opinion recently when I remembered the scene from Chapter 47 in which Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving together (a la the Fates). There is no reason to debate symbolism because Ishmael explains it all:

"As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn; I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance— aye, chance, free will, and necessity—no wise incompatible— all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course— its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events."

So there on the surface of it is Melville's theory of fate or, more accurately, Augustine's. Melville is willing to accept "chance, free will, and necessity—no wise incompatible— all interweavingly working together." This combination allows Ahab's tragedy to unfold within the western literary model.

But then the darnedest thing happens. As they are weaving away on deck, Tashtego, the Gay Head Indian, sings out the Pequod's first sighting of whales. Ishmael says: "you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate," and notes "the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing."

So perhaps the reader does not get a choice between theories of fate. Perhaps Melville is expressing a distinction in terms of mode. There is the "limited will mode" (chance, free will, and necessity) which permits Ahab in his cabin or back in Nantucket to weave his own destiny, and then there is--the combat model?; the Biblical model?; the whaling model? What happens, in any case, when one is so removed from the possibility of meaningful choice that the ball of free will drops right out of the boat and there is only necessity and chance.

This modular approach to fate would (finally) explain why Ishmael survived the Pequod's destruction. He was fated to survive; others were not. So perhaps I have made progress with that mystery as well. And perhaps it is compatible with your idea that there was no special reason that he survived--unless fate--blind or otherwise--can be thought of as a special reason.

[JCamilo]

I don't understand what you mean. Midcentury American religion was Bible-centric/Biblical literalist. Am I misunderstanding you?

Well, it was more or less a /XVIIIXIX theme, with the new world. The pagans they found in American could not be exposed to the holy texts, therefore they are more pure/forgiven than the pagans from orient, like those described in the Bible, who choose to ignore God. One is guilty of ignorance, other of rebelion/denial. So I think it was easier in a christian mind to have more sympathy for american indians. That is probally the difference, Queequeg is pure, Ahab is corrupted.

But okay, yes, time to agree to disagree. I have other things to say about the novel, but first I want to thank you for an intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable theological discussion--and online! Typically religious discussions end in rancor or bring out nut jobs from every corner. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

Probally because I wasnt discussing theology

At this point I think I understand Melville's attitude towards Paganism and also his theological symbolism. Offeror's posts have made me think about Melville's theory of fate. The problem, as we have discussed, is that there is a recognizable Shakespearean tragedy going on, with its combination of choice and fate; but there also many purely fatalistic overtones to the narrative. These episodes are sometimes expressed in terms of Biblical Prophecy (Elijah vs. Ahab, etc.). I suggested (baffled as usual) that it almost seems like Melville was giving his reader a choice.

I refined that opinion recently when I remembered the scene from Chapter 47 in which Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving together (a la the Fates). There is no reason to debate symbolism because Ishmael explains it all:

"As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn; I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance— aye, chance, free will, and necessity—no wise incompatible— all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course— its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events."

So there on the surface of it is Melville's theory of fate or, more accurately, Augustine's. Melville is willing to accept "chance, free will, and necessity—no wise incompatible— all interweavingly working together." This combination allows Ahab's tragedy to unfold within the western literary model.

But then the darnedest thing happens. As they are weaving away on deck, Tashtego, the Gay Head Indian, sings out the Pequod's first sighting of whales. Ishmael says: "you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate," and notes "the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing."

So perhaps the reader does not get a choice between theories of fate. Perhaps Melville is expressing a distinction in terms of mode. There is the "limited will mode" (chance, free will, and necessity) which permits Ahab in his cabin or back in Nantucket to weave his own destiny, and then there is--the combat model?; the Biblical model?; the whaling model? What happens, in any case, when one is so removed from the possibility of meaningful choice that the ball of free will drops right out of the boat and there is only necessity and chance.

This modular approach to fate would (finally) explain why Ishmael survived the Pequod's destruction. He was fated to survive; others were not. So perhaps I have made progress with that mystery as well. And perhaps it is compatible with your idea that there was no special reason that he survived--unless fate--blind or otherwise--can be thought of as a special reason.

Well, for once, I do not think Melville give us answers, so I am not sure how much those options are really ours. Anyways, Free Will and Fate are already too complicated before Melville. I think Melville has a point, something about Fate that is misterious to us. In our limited perception, we cannot see all the links, all the waving, like the net between Ishmael and Queequeg (otherwise, we can say, Ishmael does not see how his friendship with Queequeeg would bring him the means of his salvation - I think this is very literal), therefore our Free Will, when used, can lead us adrift and it is more an option we do or how we do our "choices", how we take our fate or accept it. I think he means at that point Ishmael (a bit like Ahab, in the examples you posted before) see what he thinks it is fate and recognize it and in the best way of prophets, notice the past signals and identify his fate. A bit like a mode (a prophet mode?)

If Ishmael had to survive because his part on this drama, what he was designed to do, perhaps we can say free will is a tool for existensialism and Melville is man of XIX century, so he could be leaning towards it. (Also, the omens and such, present also in the Greek/Shakespeare plays, can be a form of perception, in the sense, the plays are teaching us the mood/way to read those omens and there is a lot on Ishmael that is about his function as the reader's guide).

[Pompey Bum]

Well, it was more or less a /XVIIIXIX theme, with the new world. The pagans they found in American could not be exposed to the holy texts, therefore they are more pure/forgiven than the pagans from orient, like those described in the Bible, who choose to ignore God. One is guilty of ignorance, other of rebelion/denial. So I think it was easier in a christian mind to have more sympathy for american indians. That is probally the difference, Queequeg is pure, Ahab is corrupted.

Oh, I see what you are saying. Yes, maybe Melville felt that way. I mean, historically it sure wasn't born out. Spaniards in Mexico burned apostate converts alive and Jesuit missionaries in Canada knew better than to expect noble savages where they were going. But I do think that for Melville the difference between Ahab's Paganism and Queequeg's is that one is opposed to YHWH and the other is just what it is. So yes, as a literary conceit it works.

Probally because I wasnt discussing theology

Well, it's like history, you know? Sometimes people don't see it, but that's exactly
what they're discussing.

In our limited perception, we cannot see all the links, all the waving, like the net between Ishmael and Queequeg (otherwise, we can say, Ishmael does not see how his friendship with Queequeeg would bring him the means of his salvation - I think this is very literal), therefore our Free Will, when used, can lead us adrift and it is more an option we do or how we do our "choices", how we take our fate or accept it. I think he means at that point Ishmael (a bit like Ahab, in the examples you posted before) see what he thinks it is fate and recognize it and in the best way of prophets, notice the past signals and identify his fate. A bit like a mode (a prophet mode?)

Now there you go getting theological again.

My question at this point is whether Melville really believed in the old "limited choice" mode, or if he thought (or strongly suspected) that everything--including one's supposed choices--was preordained. Given the Ahab story, and especially the Father Mapple and Captain Boomer comparisons, I am still holding to the former. But sometimes Melville confuses the issue. Maybe he felt confused about it himself.

[JCamilo]

Oh, I see what you are saying. Yes, maybe Melville felt that way. I mean, historically it sure wasn't born out. Spaniards in Mexico burned apostate converts alive and Jesuit missionaries in Canada knew better than to expect noble savages where they were going. But I do think that for Melville the difference between Ahab's Paganism and Queequeg's is that one is opposed to YHWH and the other is just what it is. So yes, as a literary conceit it works.

Yeah, there is the rousseau thing working here. Funny, maybe there is something there about this. One of his short stories are quite a bit like Swift Satyre, or Voltaire's. Moby Dick has some elements of carnival there, a Bakhtin concept while analysing Dostoievisky, which according to Bakhthin is a path of novel development, from Cervantes to Rabelais to Voltaire and that in XIX century went to a more darker social critic style. It lose a bit of comedy, but not of adventure. The crew of Pequod seems to be so unique and yet, strange, that resembles one or another of those social groups Dostoievisky could create. So, maybe, there is a matter of literary "Perdigree" also behind his reaction to Rousseau. I am sure Melville fits in the dialogism model too, always taking past literature, voices and using them in oposite sites to express himself, It would not be stranger to think the most american novelist was also the most russian.

Well, it's like history, you know? Sometimes people don't see it, but that's exactly what they're discussing.

Well, I am joking, but I just do not see Melville mystical enough (like Blake, Bunyan) to give us a great religious discussion. Not saying it is not his theme, just that he is not able to go deeper on it, as you said, sometimes he was confusing and confused. We end talking more about our perspectives, I guess.

Now there you go getting theological again.

My question at this point is whether Melville really believed in the old "limited choice" mode, or if he thought (or strongly suspected) that everything--including one's supposed choices--was preordained. Given the Ahab story, and especially the Father Mapple and Captain Boomer comparisons, I am still holding to the former. But sometimes Melville confuses the issue. Maybe he felt confused about it himself.

I do think Melville had a lot of "trust" on the individual. He is fascinated I guess by characters and he separate them from their fate. His first concern is probally what we do to be Christians/Deal with God, but that probally God is one thing (albeit in many forms), and Fate is God's will, therefore cannot be changed. So, I would say, no limited choice, but this does not go against Will, because what matters is how their perform. Somehow, Ahab and Ishmael fate is almost the same until the last two pages anyways...