More from Moby-Dick…

I’m slowly making my way through Melville’s Moby-Dick and enjoying it very much.  I like the way Melville made each chapter relatively short and, while a plot does exist, many of the chapters could be read by themselves and stand alone.

In Nathaniel Philbrick’s book Why Read Moby-Dick? , he emphasizes the American aspect of the novel.  As I’m reading about the exotic Polynesian Islands along with characters like Queequeg, the pagan cannibal, I can easily forget that Melville has written an American novel.  While Ishmael is narrating his sea travels, Melville frequently has him refer to definitively American geography and landscape such as Cleveland, Buffalo (the city), the mountains of Virginia, the Great Lakes, the Great Plains and buffalo (the animal).  One of my favorite chapters so far (chapter 54) is “The Town-Ho’s Story (As told at the Golden Inn)”- just to clarify, the “Town-Ho” is the name of a ship.  This ship deals with a previous sighting of the White Whale, Moby-Dick; however, one of the more interesting details to me involved the Canallers  aboard the ship – those men who went from working on the Erie canal to being whalers in the South Seas.  Melville, through his storyteller, describes the Canal and the land around it with a realistic but poetic pride; but the passage that I thought the most telling spoke of the transformation of American occupations along with the change in religious ideas:

…to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its (the Erie Canal’s) line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.

The above painting is on the cover of my copy.  It’s entitled “Peche du Chachalot” by Ambroise Louis Garneray.  Over the course of several chapters Ishmael determines that very few artists are able to do justice to a whale.  He decides that this is probably a result of the difficulty of seeing a whale in it’s entirety.  While the French made up a very small portion of whalers compared to the American and British, Ishmael indicates that French artists were able to best capture whaling action.  He suspected them of being tutored by Americans or British.

Meanwhile, Ishmael has become only vaguely acquainted with Captain Ahab and his vengeful purpose for The Pequod.  

Call me…intrigued

Call me witty.

Call me wise.

Call me philosophical.

Call me believer.

Call me infidel.

Call me sarcastic.

Call me observant.

Call me Ishmael.

I’ve started reading Melville’s Moby Dick and I think Ishmael will become one of my favorite characters.  So far, I think he is the best side-kick/narrator I’ve experienced since Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.  I say “since” because I read Gatsby a long time ago and am just now reading Moby Dick.  I realize that the chronological order in which the two novels were published is reversed.

In the short amount of time I’ve been reading the novel, I’ve come across some great quotations by Ishmael.  Such as this one in which he comments on the hypocrisy of those who try to paint money in an evil light:

But being paid, – what will compare with it?  The urbane activity with which man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.  Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Here’s one that I think I will be quoting often:

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

As a whaler, he’s familiar with the dangers of the job but seems to take it in stride (methinks):

Yes, there is death in this business of whaling – a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity.  But what then?  Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.  Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance.  Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.

Look for more posts about this novel.  I’m on chapter 9 out of 135.  The chapters are short by most standards, though.  I’m looking forward to the rest of them.

Why Read Moby-Dick?

I stated a few posts ago that I had started reading Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick a long time ago but never finished it.  Wade commented on that post suggesting I read Nathaniel Philbrick’s small book Why Read Moby-Dick? .  I took him up on the suggestion and easily finished this book in a day (Philbrick’s book, not Melville’s) and am now motivated to read Melville’s novel, again.  I wish I could say that it would be the next one I read, but I don’t think it will be, but soon.

The interesting information Philbrick shares about Melville, the man and the process through which he went in writing probably his most famous novel, makes this a compelling short read.  He brings the concepts, themes and history surrounding the novel to light for the average reader without making his book a substitute for reading Moby-Dick.  His comparison of political and historical ideas in the 1850’s to today’s world gave new understanding to me about the story of Ishmael, Captain Ahab and a White Whale.

One specific point Philbrick makes is that the White Whale is a whale – not a symbol – “In the end he is just a huge, battle-scarred albino sperm whale, and that is more than enough.”

He goes on to indicate why we read classic literature anyway:

This is the fundamental reason we continue to read this or any other literary classic.  It’s not the dazzling technique of the author; it’s his or her ability to deliver reality on page.

Throughout his book, Philbrick discusses the friendship between Melville and his “hero” Nathaniel Hawthorne.   It seems that the two were very different in personality and at times Philbrick hinted that Melville was somewhat of a pest to the Hawthorne family.  However, at the time of Moby-Dick’s publication, Hawthorne was the only one to recognize the talent Melville put into the novel.  According to Philbrick, the novel needed some space and time before people could start to appreciate it.

One quotation from Moby-Dick that Philbrick uses several times (and one that I found intriguing) was Ishmael’s description of his own worldview:

Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.