Moby Dick Chapters 26-33
Aug. 9th, 2013 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe whole introduction of Captain Ahab is weirdly done, but I have trouble saying if I find it weird because I already knew who Captain Ahab was before I read it. His introduction sets him up as a man of mystery. We gradually get more and more, not even of him as an actual character with goals and feelings, but of his presence gracing the story. Since I already knew going in who Ahab was, that he was the famously monomaniacal captain whose leg was taken by Moby Dick and who thus pursues the white whale at all costs, is that why I found the introduction odd in its emphasis?
Maybe.
I think Ahab's introduction reminds me of the slow build of a suspense novel. First we get the prophetic appearance of Elijah, warning of the dread captain. We get Captain Ahab sightings, like the sightings of a long-fabled monster. Then we see more and more of him, until finally he speaks!
Ishmael's perspective starts to vanish in this section, though, which is an anomaly at odds with the construction of a suspenseful milieu. The narrowly focused first person narration of a suspense novel allows an author to withhold the keys to the narrative. The narrator is confused, unable to assimilate the facts in front of him or her, and thus the reader is stymied, too. Ishmael reports scenes of Ahab's odd activities that he explicitly explains he could not possibly have seen as a lowly deckhand. Still, he describes them in the same reportorial style accorded to scenes he does witness (or at least, has the capacity to witness).
In many ways, Moby Dick is a badly constructed novel. It just has this total disregard for the rules of fiction, for the conventions by which narrative flows linearly forward in a sense-making story. But more about then when we get to the novel's single best chapter, Chapter 32. Cetology.
Cetology is the marine biology textbook that Melville embeds in the novel, or at least it's the beginning of said textbook. My memory from the last time I read the book was that there was a lot more to it, so I'm guessing that there's some more marine bio textbook chapters to come that my mind combined into my memory of Cetology.
It is a very odd fish indeed. In some ways it's a parody of a 19th century scientific text, disputatious, tendentious, and unnecessarily authoritative. He entertains briefly the idea that whales are not fish, based on Linnaeus's classification and their mammalian characteristics, but completely rejects the idea because of um... the book of Jonah. Might be the novel's most unintentionally funny line, except that I'm not sure if it's unintentional.
In some ways, it's a legitimate exposition. Moby Dick is big and complicated and its intent is to immerse the reader in the world of whaling, so the reader had better know about whales. I'm told by those who know that for its time, Cetology is a work of exceptional accuracy. Comparatively little was known about whale biology in the 1840s, and many of the scientific texts on the subject were by non-whalers, a fact Ishmael strongly objects to.
And insofar as it is legitimate exposition, it's legitimate exposition with regard to what a whaler needs to know about whales. Each entry on a whale 'species' (and I use the term species as loosely as possible) describes the key visual identifiers large enough for a boat to spot- fins size and shape, coloration, spout location... and it describes how many gallons of oil and of what quality can be extracted from the species. Those facts are all that matter for most cases. In special cases, he'll single out some behavioral details, but only insofar as they matter to whalers- is a species friendly, or is it vicious and prone to attack? Is it slippery and fast and likely to escape, or is it slow and easy to kill?
My favorite entry, after the glorious entry on the sperm whale, is the entry on the huzza porpoise. It is a symbol of good luck, he says, and whalers love to see the friendly porpoises swim up alongside their ships. Then two lines later, he adds, "Porpoise meat is delicious." And as an afterthought, he adds, "You can get about a gallon of oil from a porpoise."
But the sperm whale! In addition to a decent helping of dirty humor about spermaceti being the semen of whales, we get odes to the quality and odor of sperm whale oil, and we get most important of all, lots and lots of promises that Ishmael will tell us more about sperm whales later, as if he hasn't told us enough. Of course, the reader most likely knows that the white whale is a sperm whale, that Ishmael's purpose is to provide us context on the central antagonist of the novel, but it's again the slippery disregard for chronology. Ishmael already knows that sperm whales are going to take center stage in his narration, so he can't help but give us the information now, out of any kind of logical order.
And it's the third function of Cetology where Ishmael offers explanation for this. A draught of a draught, he says. Cetology functions as an extended pun and metaphor for the entire novel. He sort of jokingly splits the whales into three size-based categories- folio, octavo, and duodecimo, based on the sizing of books. Thus Moby Dick is a sort of folio edition, and Moby Dick is a folio whale. Ishmael extends the metaphor throughout the chapter, calling his enumeration of whales a 'bibliography' and concluding with one of the most wonderfully moving passages in the whole book, the whole enterprise's raison d'etre:
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the cranes still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
Dirty puns, stacked metaphors, contorted metaphysics, dueling themes, obstinate optimism... is there anything this passage lacks?
Maybe.
I think Ahab's introduction reminds me of the slow build of a suspense novel. First we get the prophetic appearance of Elijah, warning of the dread captain. We get Captain Ahab sightings, like the sightings of a long-fabled monster. Then we see more and more of him, until finally he speaks!
Ishmael's perspective starts to vanish in this section, though, which is an anomaly at odds with the construction of a suspenseful milieu. The narrowly focused first person narration of a suspense novel allows an author to withhold the keys to the narrative. The narrator is confused, unable to assimilate the facts in front of him or her, and thus the reader is stymied, too. Ishmael reports scenes of Ahab's odd activities that he explicitly explains he could not possibly have seen as a lowly deckhand. Still, he describes them in the same reportorial style accorded to scenes he does witness (or at least, has the capacity to witness).
In many ways, Moby Dick is a badly constructed novel. It just has this total disregard for the rules of fiction, for the conventions by which narrative flows linearly forward in a sense-making story. But more about then when we get to the novel's single best chapter, Chapter 32. Cetology.
Cetology is the marine biology textbook that Melville embeds in the novel, or at least it's the beginning of said textbook. My memory from the last time I read the book was that there was a lot more to it, so I'm guessing that there's some more marine bio textbook chapters to come that my mind combined into my memory of Cetology.
It is a very odd fish indeed. In some ways it's a parody of a 19th century scientific text, disputatious, tendentious, and unnecessarily authoritative. He entertains briefly the idea that whales are not fish, based on Linnaeus's classification and their mammalian characteristics, but completely rejects the idea because of um... the book of Jonah. Might be the novel's most unintentionally funny line, except that I'm not sure if it's unintentional.
In some ways, it's a legitimate exposition. Moby Dick is big and complicated and its intent is to immerse the reader in the world of whaling, so the reader had better know about whales. I'm told by those who know that for its time, Cetology is a work of exceptional accuracy. Comparatively little was known about whale biology in the 1840s, and many of the scientific texts on the subject were by non-whalers, a fact Ishmael strongly objects to.
And insofar as it is legitimate exposition, it's legitimate exposition with regard to what a whaler needs to know about whales. Each entry on a whale 'species' (and I use the term species as loosely as possible) describes the key visual identifiers large enough for a boat to spot- fins size and shape, coloration, spout location... and it describes how many gallons of oil and of what quality can be extracted from the species. Those facts are all that matter for most cases. In special cases, he'll single out some behavioral details, but only insofar as they matter to whalers- is a species friendly, or is it vicious and prone to attack? Is it slippery and fast and likely to escape, or is it slow and easy to kill?
My favorite entry, after the glorious entry on the sperm whale, is the entry on the huzza porpoise. It is a symbol of good luck, he says, and whalers love to see the friendly porpoises swim up alongside their ships. Then two lines later, he adds, "Porpoise meat is delicious." And as an afterthought, he adds, "You can get about a gallon of oil from a porpoise."
But the sperm whale! In addition to a decent helping of dirty humor about spermaceti being the semen of whales, we get odes to the quality and odor of sperm whale oil, and we get most important of all, lots and lots of promises that Ishmael will tell us more about sperm whales later, as if he hasn't told us enough. Of course, the reader most likely knows that the white whale is a sperm whale, that Ishmael's purpose is to provide us context on the central antagonist of the novel, but it's again the slippery disregard for chronology. Ishmael already knows that sperm whales are going to take center stage in his narration, so he can't help but give us the information now, out of any kind of logical order.
And it's the third function of Cetology where Ishmael offers explanation for this. A draught of a draught, he says. Cetology functions as an extended pun and metaphor for the entire novel. He sort of jokingly splits the whales into three size-based categories- folio, octavo, and duodecimo, based on the sizing of books. Thus Moby Dick is a sort of folio edition, and Moby Dick is a folio whale. Ishmael extends the metaphor throughout the chapter, calling his enumeration of whales a 'bibliography' and concluding with one of the most wonderfully moving passages in the whole book, the whole enterprise's raison d'etre:
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the cranes still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
Dirty puns, stacked metaphors, contorted metaphysics, dueling themes, obstinate optimism... is there anything this passage lacks?
(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-07 04:45 am (UTC)I was... surprised by the introduction of Ahab. For some reason I had this idea of him in my head as a crotchety old man, and I was surprised that not only is he in his prime of life, Ishmael finds him admirable (from purely a physical perspective).
Also, as I'm getting farther into the book, I'm starting to see that The Wrath of Khan really is Moby-Dick SPAAAAACE!AU fanfic, which is fantastic and which I really only had the barest inkling of when I watched the movie.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-10 07:22 pm (UTC)In my post on the Father Mapple section I wrote a little bit about that passage as a sort of second beginning, but maybe it's better to understand Moby Dick as a book that just has a bunch of false starts. Maybe it's best to say that just as we are unsure what Moby Dick is about, Moby Dick is unsure what it's about. It doesn't know what story it wants to tell, so it offers a dozen different beginnings to a dozen different stories.
Queequeg/Ishmael is the book's primary slash pairing (in the academic literature as in the fic), but there are Ahab/Ishmael shippers, too.
Do not make the mistake of thinking of Ahab as crotchety, and certainly don't think this is a stupid or foolish man. Ahab is heroic and he is absolutely the hero of the novel, and it is a great tragedy, an almost Lovecraftian tragedy, that he is blinded by his hatred of the White Whale. (When