[ Silence ]
>> All right let's get
started.
Actually, I want to begin
by thanking everybody
who had the last class hour
free and chose to spend it here
in this rather stuffy
room with me.
Thank you very much.
I understand it was a sacrifice,
having just walked outside,
it's nice out for now at least.
So thank you.
I think the rest of you, when
you hopefully have a chance
to watch that lecture online.
I asked them to make that
available by blackboard as well.
Will find that it's less
terrible then it might have been
had I've been speaking
simply to an empty room.
So I do appreciate it.
And we were speaking
a little bit about how
for Hawthorne [assumed
spelling] romance is a kind
of integrated mode that
brings things together.
Speaking about, thinking about
a logic of both and as opposed
to a kind of either
or of allegory.
And thinking about what kinds
of constraints might be in place
when you apply a
logic of both and.
Both and means you can't
get rid of either term
and there are certain
ways that in which both
than may not be a fully
receptacle relation.
One part of the, of
the binary may end
up coloring towards
then what's going
on elsewhere in that system.
And I think that's something
we really want to be thinking
about as we finally, finally
turn our attention back
to Melville [assumed spelling].
Bless you, bless you,
believe me I sympathize.
The, so we're thinking
about Hawthorne as kind
of an older writer
pioneering in romance as far
as Melville is concerned.
And, and Melvin you remember
when we, when we turned
to Melville on the second
day of class I suggested
that we would be thinking
about Moby Dick as a kind
of framing text cross.
And that in many ways we
were going to think about it
as summing up, encoding into
it, in that green black sense
of a great novel or great
work of art encoding many
of its cultural context
into its own texterality
[assumed spelling].
Decoding of lot of what's
going on in the United States
in the middle of the
nineteenth century.
And really in the literary
history that takes place in,
in the seventeenth to
the nineteenth century is
that what we've been
trying to chart.
So this is our moment
really to kind
of sum things up in the course.
And hopefully our reading
of Moby Dick will
allow us to do that.
You remember last time though,
we started off by thinking
about this statement from
Hawthorne and his Mosque.
You remember the story
that Melville had recently
decamped from the York.
He's gone up to live
in the Berkshires.
He meets with Iya
Hawthorne in a picnic.
He's been writing
this whaling voyage.
At this time in his career,
he's known as somebody
that writes narratives of the
sea from the most part inflexed
by his personal, his
personal life story.
They tend to be presenting
in some
since as personal narratives,
although there's clearly a,
a kind of fictionality [assumed
spelling] that's imposed.
In fact there's some controversy
over rather type p is
perhaps too fictionalized
or presented under
false auspices.
But he meets Hawthorne
and the story goes
that Moby Dick changes as
a result, and it starts
to do something quite different.
And he meets Hawthorne, he
goes back and he reads Mosques
from the old man and
he writes a review.
And it's published really, and
he writes it a couple of weeks,
really quickly, it's
published in two parts.
And as we said then, it
is a kind of program piece
for what an American
literature might look like.
So we haven't read to, I haven't
to oppose too many
of them on you here.
We might have to think of it
as something would be an align
of manifesto's that
would include such things
like Bryan's Tricolavic
[assumed spelling] Meter Essay,
Emerson's [assumed
spelling] American Scholar
or Self Reliance, Whitman's
[assumed spelling] preference
to the eighteen fifty
five Leagues of Grass.
Hawthorne in his Mosque's
is that kind of piece.
It's extensively a review,
but what it really is,
is a manifesto for the
new kind of literature,
an American literature
masquerading as we review.
He has a particular way
of reading Hawthorne.
And you know we were just
talking in the last hour
about that moment which
you should all review
in the custom house preface when
Hawthorne talks about the affect
of moonlight on a room.
How a room that looks one way,
a drearly domestic kind of,
very much in cahoots
with the kind
of numbing that's
the banality of life
in the nineteenth century
in the United States is
transformed by the moonlight.
Become as what Hawthorne
calls as neutral territory,
where the imaginary and the
actually imaginary they meet
and imbuest [assumed
spelling] each other
with aspects of one another.
Melville picks up on that,
that imagery of light and dark.
So in the course of this essay
as this moment he's been talking
about the kind of sunny
side of Hawthorne.
But that doesn't interest
him as much, as this,
despite of the Indian summer
sunlight on the hither side
of Hawthorne soul the other
side like the dark half
of physical sphere is shrouded
in the blackness
ten times black.
But this darkness gives more
effect to the ever moving dawn
that further advances
through it,
has circum navigates the world.
Let's think about image
[inaudible] I mean half the
world is always covered
in darkness
but the world is being
circum navigated by darkness.
In a sense this is a very,
this is a very powerful image
for Melville, whether Hawthorne
has simply availed himself
of this mystical
blackness as a means
to the wondrous affects
he makes it to produce
in his lights and shades.
Or whether there really
lurks in him a touch
of pure tainted gloom this
I cannot altogether tell.
But I'm hoping that by now
a pure tainted gloom means
something different to you.
It could be the state
that was induced
after your midterms, perhaps.
[ Laughter ]
Hopefully we'll be moving
towards a more frankleneon
[assumed spelling]
mode of perfectionism
if that's the case
for the final.
But Melville said
that certain as it is
to have this great power
of blackness in him
to rise its force from its
appeal so that Calvinistic sense
of innate depravity
an original sin.
Right, so remember that.
It's one of those things
that Melville is
doing is looking back
to puritan inheritance that he
believes that U.S. culture has.
Particularly the idea of
total depravity as a result
of original sin or
too it as long
as principles flow out of this.
And the only thing
that happened is
that they haven't disappeared.
I mean you read Emerson [assumed
spelling] and you think, oh,
I just retrospected, he builds
on circles of [inaudible]
of do everything again.
Look start again, don't
be coward by the pass.
Forget original sin, we
believe in perfectionism.
Thank him, we believe
in perfectionism.
Hawthorne and Melville
both never said,
let's wait a minute
maybe that's too fast.
Like there's the moment I
referred to in the last hour
of Hester Prim urging the
Dimisdale [assumed spelling]to
begin all anew.
And that's not possible.
That can only happen in the
enchanted space of the forest
that they all have to leave.
And she by the end comes to
realize that true wisdom suggest
that you cannot begin all anew.
That you are bound to history,
and you can be bound to history
in a way that's completely
constraining,
or you can be bound in a ways
that can be constructive
and forward moving.
But it isn't quite so
easy to cut the ties
as Emerson might suggest.
So Melville is thinking
a similar things.
Innate depravity an original sin
from whose visitations no
deeply thinking mind is always
unholy free.
For the certain modes no man can
wade this world without throwing
in something, somehow
like original sin
to strike an uneven balance.
And there's something
frankleneon perhaps,
maybe even Hawthorne
it about something,
somehow like original sin.
Which two hundred years later
is not going to be original sin,
but we just can't dispose of it.
We need something, the
puritans was on to something.
Something has to
take that place,
you know in our imaginations,
otherwise things
are out of balance.
The worlds don't
work that way, right.
If you think about
that image of the glow,
the glow was always
half-and-half.
Half-light, half-dark,
it's balanced in that way.
Original sin is necessary
sometimes
to keep us conceptually
balanced,
that's what's Melrose arguing.
Remember when I suggested
to you earlier on therefore
that Melville is kind of
haunted by the residue
of this puritan imagination
that the article as we traced
from Bradford and Winthrop
[assumed spelling] on, right.
So I ask you to then think
about the relationship
between their modes
of using the bible.
Winthrop and any of the other
puritan thinkers, Wigglesworth
for example, even Bradstreet
[assumed spelling] or Taylor,
would they have a
relationship with the bible
that is mutually supportive.
Winthrop has something to say
because there is a
book called the bible.
And he is then, you might
as well say the moments
in his sermon are authorized
by his engagement with
and his apparent
knowledge of the bible.
He can almost use a kind of
shorthand as can Wigglesworth,
just to refer you to the bible.
Refer you to passages to
delegate what he's saying.
Right, so the two
have a relationship
of intertextuality
[assumed spelling],
you might say that's
complimentary.
Is that what's going
on in Moby Dick?
Certainly it has a
relationship of intertextuality
to the bible among a host of
other books, but perhaps first
and foremost the bible.
Meanings of Moby Dick
are not going be Complete
if you don't know the
book call the bible exist,
But what is that relationship.
Is it a relationship
of Complimentary
the way this one is,
or is it something else
You remember I suggested
that Melville inherited from his
mother this sense a Calvinistic
sense, or Calvinistic
approach to Christianity
and therefore he knew the bible.
I mean scholars have said
that you know Melville
imagination is bible trends
that he can quoted it, you know.
Yes ok but from his
father a certain kind
of skepticism a willingness
to play along
but we think not entire you
know not a really full belief
to go thru the rituals
but perhaps not believe
in the same way.
And that tension
seem to work its way
into Melville's text practically
in Moby Dick likewise I told you
that the family had a
considerable hardship.
Alan Melville signs his name
without an e that because
in some sense after his death.
Maria supporting Melville
as the eve to destroying,
in part to distinguish
the family's future
from the family's past.
They have incredible
financial hardship and Melville
as well has a deep imbeviance
[assumed spelling] to the world
of business and finance.
He's forced to cease
his education in order
to help support the family,
he tried to be a schoolteacher
and then he goes to sea.
But, Moby Dick is marked
therefore by a number
of context, and one of
them is the biographical.
Another context may I say
is the moment in history
that we've been talking about.
So precisely that
moment of eighteen fifty,
remember I told you that yet
Lameul [assumed spelling] Shaw,
who is Melville father
in-law was the judge
who first upheld the
fugitive slave law.
And felt in, in return the
slave named Thomas Simms back
to the south from Massachusetts.
All right, so there's
that context as well.
And then there's a whole
context of literary history kind
of leading up to
this, all right.
Melville himself is
trying to evoke a
since of context
for what he's doing.
That's why we have
these strange chapters
at the beginning called
anemology [assumed
spelling]an extracts.
And particularly extracts you
might say is setting a kind
of intellectual history.
And also you might say
putting us on notice
that this is not going
to be a standard novel.
This is going to be a novel
that has certain kinds
of encyclopedic aims.
It's going to be a novel
that in some since might
like the whale swallow
up for a variety
of previous forms of writing.
So these are signals that the
novel is sending to us again.
And I suggested in the last hour
that either the Scarlett Letter
is a novel begins three times.
It begins with the
custom house preface,
it begins with the first
chapter which is kind
of short an anematic
[assumed spelling]and focused
on the weather beaten door and
invites us to a certain kind
of allegorical reading
which we were able
to make immediately problematic.
And then it begins again when
Hester Prim actually comes
in the sub narrative
and starts proper.
Moby Dick begins
three times too,
four if you count the
dedication to Hawthorne
which for us is a
crucial context.
But begins with it has
its anemology section
in which you know, it's clearly
not just a list of words, right.
He's starting to do some
actually imaginative writing
here, anematic as it might be,
there's the abstract section,
and then there's
Call me Ishmael.
Right, that chapter called
Loomings that I spent a lot
of time on last time, and so
one of the things that I want
to suggest is that this
is a novel that in some
since is immediately putting
us on notice that's it's going
to be a strange kind of novel.
It begins three times
it seems to set a set
of ground rules for us.
It's going to have
these encyclopedic aims,
it's going to be fictional but
maybe not entirely fictional.
And it's going to have
this serious engagement
with the bible.
So the first of the
abstracts is from Genesis,
and God created great whales.
The first sentence of
the narrative proper,
call me Ishmael immediately
invokes a kind
of biblical context.
And I suggested that we ought
to think kind of carefully
about what it means to begin
a novel with Call me Ishmael.
It's different than
my name is Ishmael.
This means we don't
know what his name is.
Call me Ishmael, there's
something a little bit chatty
about it, maybe, maybe something
a little bit pushy you can
dramatize it in different ways.
Certainly Ishmael
suggests the outsider,
somebody who is not part
of the biblical tradition,
the mainstream biblical
tradition,
although he is crucial
to the Muslim tradition.
We'll talk a little bit
about Melville engagement
with Islam perhaps in a
couple of lectures from now.
Someone who certainly is
a wonderer, all right,
so these are some
of the context,
of course you don't know that if
you don't know about the bible.
So you kind of need to
have, this is something
that Melville is immediately
putting you on notice
that he is drawing on
a biblical tradition.
But that Ishmael thing
should give us pause,
it's not the same
as call me Jacob.
I haven't been keeping
up with Lost
so I have no comment
on any of that.
[ Laughter ]
Should I, should I, like
five episodes in the bank,
should I keep writing.
Yes, ok, I'll blame you.
[ Laughter ]
No, I always enjoy binging on
lost whenever, I know exactly
when I want to do that, May
tenth at around five pm.
[ Laughter ]
Ok, so call me Ishmael suggest
that we should be
a little nervous.
And then the implication of
death, you know he's being funny
but he's trailing after
coffins and he's talks
about committing suicide
or not and there's a kind
of weird thing that's going on.
So that's part of what
I suggested to you.
I also told you the story
about the asters you remember,
Melville hears about the story
of the Essex [assumed spelling],
the whale ship in
the eighteen thirties
that was famously
sank by a whale.
That seemed to sink it with
intention, not just by accident
or by instinct, but to
actually come around
and whack the boat deliberately.
And at the result of that was
that these sailors, the captain,
and the first mate were
ended up in long boats.
The whaling boats, an I'll show
you pictures of a lot of what
that looks like and
maybe a little clip
of what's called a Nantucket
sleigh ride when the,
when the boat gets
pulled by the whale.
And they do the crazy
thing of trying to get
to the western coast
of South America,
rather than the most closer
Markazian [assumed spelling],
because they are so afraid of
meeting cannibals in Markazia.
And then of course in one
of those dramatic ironies
that life often presents,
they become cannibals
in order to survive.
And they eventually
make it home but not
after becoming the very thing
that they sought to avoid.
Melville reverses it, he has
Ishmael go the other direction
and he has him meet the
cannibal right away.
We'll get our cannibal
out of the way,
we'll meet the whale later.
So there's something funny
that Melville is doing
from the very beginning
with the idea
of personal narrative as well.
And I suggested to
you that at the end
of the Looming chapter one of
the things that's being evoked
as an addition to the kind
of weirdly proleptic [assumed
spelling] contested election
and battle for Afghanistan and
all these thoughts about people
on all paranormal had after nine
eleven, that this was some kind
of like weirdly prophetic
Nostradamus like book.
Beyond that the extent
that Ishmael is a
kind of cosmopolitan.
He's interested in
things worldly.
What he calls baberish
[assumed spelling] shores.
He says I love to, this
is on page twenty two,
I love to sail forbidden
seas, for that I'm tormented
with an everlasting itch for
things remote and landing
on baberish shores, coasts
not ignoring what is good,
I'm quick to perceive the horror
and could be social withered
would they let me, since it is
but well to be on friendly
terms with all the inmates
of the place one lodges in.
World is a madhouse or
prison, interesting, right.
By reason all, all these
good things he goes away
on the voyage.
And I suggested to you like,
why does Melville begin it
once, what in Manhattan.
I mean once because I've already
began the book in Manhattan,
so it kind of pays homage
because he already began
the book in Manhattan.
But he's only putting
so many aspects
of his personal life
up for grabs.
Why begin it there?
Why not just begin in New
Bedford or in Nantucket.
Why begin in the
island of Manhattan.
I wanted to suggest, I suggested
to you that maybe it's a way
of signaling a certain drawing
on a cosmopolitan history
that already is associated
with New York,
and maybe signaling a
kind of a way of thinking
about this novel, which then
quickly leaves the scene
of cosmopolitan New York
and becomes something else.
Ok, so I want to take a
look at some of the chapters
that go further on here and
we're think a little bit more
about what's going on here.
How much objective
mind, did I talk to you
about The Spouter Inn?
Does that ring a bell?
Did I show you that picture?
All right, we'll do that then.
So, The Spouter , so Ishmael
goes, right, and he's looking
around for a place to stay.
He has this tendency you might
say to think about the world,
at, in not in allegorical terms
but in least in symbolic terms.
And he always position, I
mean he's named Ishmael,
it belongs to a tradition
that has a sub imperialism were
names seem to be significant.
This is on page 24 for example,
he's looking for
a place to stay.
Hah, said I, Hah as the flying
particles almost choked me,
are these ashes from that
destroyed city Gomorra
but the crossed harpoon
and the swordfish,
this then must be the sign of
the trap, doesn't really want
to stay in any of these places.
Moving on I came out
last keen to a dim sort
of out hanging light
not far from the dock
and heard a fro long
creaking in the air.
Looking up, saw a
swinging sign over the door
with a white painting upon it,
fairly representing a tall
straight jet of misty spray,
and these words underneath,
The Spouter Inn, Peter Coffin.
A coffin is actually a
good old Nantucket name.
So it's kind of one of these
happy accidents from Melville's,
what's the name of this guy
Peter Coffin, Coffin, Spouter,
rather ominous in that
particular connection said I,
but it is a rather common
name in Nantucket they say.
And I suppose this Peter here
is an immigrant from there.
As the night look
so dim and the place
for the time looks quite enough
in the dilapidated little
wooden house itself,
looked as if it might have
been carted here from the ruins
of some burnt district.
And as the swinging sign had a
poverty sort of stricken creak
to it, I thought that here was
a very spot for cheap lodgings
and the best of pea coffee.
All right, so he goes
into the Spouter Inn.
Entering, this is the next
page, entering the gabled,
entering the gable of the
Spouter Inn you found yourself
in wide low straggling entry
with old-fashioned wainscot
reminding one of the bullocks
of condemned old craft.
On one side hung a
very large oil painting
so thoroughly besmoked,
and every way defaced,
that in the unequal cross
lights by which you viewed it.
It was only by diligent
study and a series
of systematic visits to
it, and careful inquiry
of the neighbors, that
you could any way arrive
at an understanding
of its purpose.
Now, once again artwork
represented in a piece
of writing or piece of art
we should pay attention.
This is a moment of
what's called effaces,
the representation of
visual art in a text.
A classic representation it
should be, we should think of it
as again a moment when the
novelist is able to comment
on acts of interpretation and
therefore suggest to you things
about how you maybe
should interpret the text
that you're reading.
So let's see how he
comes to meaning here.
And this is by the way people
think that this is not,
not necessarily this one but
when Melville went on his trip
to Europe, before
writing Moby Dick,
one of the things he might, he
saw was paintings by the, the,
kind of the, the
romantic portrait,
landscape painter Turner.
And this seems to be a fairly
reasonable representation
of the kind of thing
that Ishmael is probably
seeing here, okay.
Such unaccountable masses
of shades and shadows,
that at first you almost thought
some ambitious young artist,
in the time of the New
England hags, had endeavored
to delineate chaos bewitched.
But by dint of much and
earnest contemplation,
and oft repeated
ponderings, and especially
by throwing open the little
window towards the back
of the entry, you at last
come to the conclusion
that such an idea, however wild,
might not be altogether
unwarranted.
Nice Hawthornian [assumed
spelling] sort of sentence.
So how are we going to go
about doing our interpretation.
What do we need to do?
What most puzzled and confounded
you was a long, limber,
portentous, black mass of
something hovering in the center
of the picture over
three blue, dim,
perpendicular lines
floating in a nameless yeast.
Let's call those the three
dim blue perpendicular lines.
A boggy, soggy, squitchy
picture truly,
enough to drive a
nervous man distracted.
Yet was there a sort of
indefinite, half-attained,
unimaginable sublimity about
it that fairly froze you to it.
Till you involuntarily,
involuntarily took an oath
with yourself to find out what
that marvelous painting meant.
Ever and anon a bright,
but, alas,
deceptive idea would
dart you through.
It's the Black Sea
in a midnight gale.
It's the unnatural combat
of the four primal elements.
It's a blasted heath.
It's a hyperborean winter scene.
It's the breaking up of the
icebound stream of time.
But at last all these
fancies yielded
to that one portentous something
in the picture's midst.
That found out, once found out
and all the rest were plain.
But stop, does it not
bear a faint resemblance
to a gigantic fish, even
the great leviathan himself?
In fact the artist's design
seemed this, a final theory
of my own, partly based
upon the aggregated opinions
of many aged persons with whom
I conversed upon the subject.
The picture represents a
Cape-Horner, so it's a type
of whale ship, in
a great hurricane.
The half-foundered
ship weltering there
with its three dismantled
masts alone visible,
and an exasperated whale,
purposing to spring clean
over the craft, in
the enormous act
of impaling himself upon
the three mastheads.
Now, what do we make
of Melville?
How does he arrive
at his meeting?
That's the process of
interpretation here.
If this is supposed to
be an act of interpreting
of meaning making,
how's it working?
Does he come up with
it all by himself?
Yeah.
>> [inaudible]
>> Sure, that's good,
he brings at it
from other kinds of angles.
He even has to change
the lighting a bit.
He has to throw open a,
you wonder how he's
actually standing there,
he has to throw open a window
in the back some place.
What do you mean
by other context?
>> I don't know like,
he's talking
about like the winter scene and
breaking open the ice, and then
>> So there's a lot of
interpretive possibilities here.
How did he settle on
his final meeting?
Yeah.
>> He [inaudible]
asked others opinion.
>> So he asked other
opinions.
So there is a kind of
collaborative moment
of meaning making here.
I have a theory of my own
partly based upon the aggregated
opinion [inaudible]
and then he decides
that it's a whale leaping
over the mast of a ship.
Which seems kind
of more outlandish
than the other possibilities,
again leading you to wonder,
to what extent is he, in fact,
imposing his own perspective
on what's going on.
He's whale obsessed,
maybe everything looks
like a whale to him.
He claims to have
consulted a lot of people.
He claims to have tested
out lots of things.
This would extensively
make it seem
like an authoritative
rendering of the scene.
But I think we should ask
ourselves are there limits
to the mode of interpretation
that's going on here.
There's one possible
interpretation of course
that he doesn't bring up.
Does that remind you of anybody?
Or of anything, that picture?
[ Silence ]
No, don't remind
you of anything.
Yeah.
>> The three masses
of [inaudible]
>> The three masses
of sister ships.
Ok, it could be Columbus, I
guess, maybe, possible, sure.
>> [inaudible]
>> Yes, it's possible, I
mean,
whatever we're just
speculating here as it turns
out Ishmael is [inaudible].
Yeah.
>> [inaudible]
>> Kind of like go with a,
I used to dramatize it
this way, ship, whale.
[ Laughter ]
Sinking.
[ Laughter ]
But he doesn't say that.
Why doesn't he say that?
Right, I mean it's a
bible, he's bible obsessed.
It's a bible obsessed book.
Why does he leave out the
biblical interpretation?
Maybe the professor is
just reading in, maybe not,
maybe this is Melville having
an end joke you might say
at Ishmael expense.
In any case obviously the
scene is an important one.
Whatever you make
of it, it's a scene
about not only interpretation
and modes of interpretation.
But you might say the subjective
nature of interpretation
and the limitations
of interpretation.
And it also might
be a way of getting
at the thing I was talking about
on the second day of the course.
Which is, how can a first
person novel know more
than its first person
narrator is that possible.
And is Moby Dick
an example of that.
So that's one of the
things we might want to ask
over the next few times.
Is there a way in which Ishmael,
who seems to take up all the air
in the room, is it possible
that there are things
that Ishmael doesn't know yet,
that the novel is
conveying to us.
I suppose that further iteration
might be Ishmael older writer
knows them but Ishmael character
being dramatized here doesn't
know them.
We want even get into
the further level
of complexity would
be are there things
that Ishmael older novel
writer still doesn't know
that Tex knows or
Melville knows.
We'll get to that later,
anyway I want you to be in tune
to this, there are many
of these in Moby Dick.
Moments when we ought to be
saying, oh this is a scene,
it's a inset story, it's
a kind of dramatization
when the novel is self
consciously reflecting
on its own means of generating
representations, and of the ways
in which those representations
are likely to be interpreted.
Alright, do we need
that, we don't need that,
don't want that, ok
so Ishmael goes right,
he goes in to the inn
and he meets Peter Coffin
and he is trying to
figure out where to stay.
And Peter Coffin says,
well there's not really
a place for you to stay.
Well you could stay
with this harpooneer.
Ishmael doesn't really
want to do that.
Bottom of 29, no man
prefers to sleep two a bed.
In fact, you would a good
deal rather not sleep
with your own brother.
I don't know how it is, but
people like to be private
when they are sleeping.
And when it comes to sleeping
with an unknown stranger,
in a strange inn,
in a strange town,
and that stranger a harpooneer,
then your objections
indefinitely multiply.
Nor was there any
earthly reason why I
as a sailor should sleep two to
a bed, more than anybody else,
for sailors no more sleep
two in a bed at sea,
than bachelor Kings do ashore.
To be sure they all sleep
together in one apartment,
but you have your own
hammock, and cover yourself
with your own blanket, and
sleep in your own skin.
So, he goes to plan B.
Landlord I changed my mind
about that harpooneer,
I can't stay with him.
I'll try the bench here.
So he goes and tries to sleep
on the bench, this is a scene
of comedy, alright so one
of the things to know then
about what Melville is invoking
is, that there is a kind
of urging like narrative
voice that Ishmael has.
It should remind us a little
bit of Geoffrey Crayon
and the Voyage perhaps.
Irving, Ishmael had, he
just seems a little bit
like a kind of hypochondriac.
He seems a little
bit depressive,
but there is also another
stream of magazine writing
that Melville seems
to be invoking.
It's called down east humor.
Down east humor typically
has somebody with,
who is kind of like a country
bumpkin coming to the city
and making a fool of himself.
And it pretty much uses a kind
of ridiculous Yankee
biblical names like, Hezekiah,
or Ezekiel, or Ishmael,
things like that.
That's what's being
invoked in this chapter.
All right, so we get a kind
of slapstick moment here.
This is the start of it, he's
like, I'm not going to sleep,
Melville says okay,
I'll shave down that,
the thing that make him more
comfortable, start shaving it
down in between service
and he hears a knock,
which kind of makes it
worse and he says forget it,
I'll sleep with the
damn harpooner.
So he goes and he sleeps
with the harpooner.
And I want you to look the way
in which the scene progresses,
because it should be
telling you something
about the way that
Ishmael thinks.
And is it a part that tells
you something about the way
that Ishmael thinks,
it should make,
should give you an idea
whether this is a narrator
that you can trust, or not.
So he goes back, bottom of 32.
There, said the landlord,
placing the candle
on a crazy old sea chest that
did double duty as a wash-stand
and centre table, there,
make yourself comfortable
now and good night to ye.
I turned round from eyeing the
bed, but he had disappeared.
You know what happens later own,
but I always had like a picture
in my mind that he's kind of got
his eye on that keyhole looking
and listening at the doors
to see what's going on.
Because clearly there's a since
in which Peter Coffin is acting
as a kind of stage manager here.
This is a moment of dramatic
irony which he knows things
that Ishmael doesn't know and
he's, he's you know setting
up a scene you might
say that's going
to play out in front of us.
Folding back the counterpane,
right, the comforter,
I stooped over the bed.
Though none of the most elegant,
it yet stood the
scrutiny tolerably well.
I then glanced around the
room; and besides the bedstead
and centre table, could see
no other furniture belonging
to the place, but a rude
shelf, the four walls,
and a papered fireboard
representing a man striking
a whale.
Of things not properly
belonging to the room,
there was a hammock lashed
up, and thrown upon the floor
in one corner; also
a large seaman's bag,
containing the harpooneer's
wardrobe,
no doubt in lieu
of a land trunk.
Likewise, there was a parcel
of outlandish bone fish hooks
on the shelf over
the fire-place,
and a tall harpoon standing
at the head of the bed.
So far, so good, all things
within a typical
seaman's experience.
But what is this on the chest?
I took it up, and held it close
to the light, and felt it,
and smelt it, and tried
every way possible to arrive
at some satisfactory
conclusion concerning it.
It might remind you of Edger
Huntley and his box, right,
he is going to try to use
empirical investigation,
rational experience to figure
out what this thing is.
He can't, it's outside the
realm of his experience.
So again we might, in tying
things back, you know he talks
about the painting is marvelous,
he talks about the novel is
going to depict a wonder world.
There's a since in which
Melville is also drawing
on that discourse of the
wondrous and the marvelous
that we say in some of
the sentiment narratives.
And Ishmael portrays the same
kind of logic that someone
like Columbus does
in his letters.
We have a template, we
apply it to experience.
We try to shoehorn
experience into it even
when it doesn't quite fit.
I can compare it to nothing
but a large door mat,
ornamented at the edges with
little tinkling tags something
like the stained porcupine
quills round an Indian moccasin.
There was a hole or slit
in the middle of this mat,
as you see the same in
South American ponchos.
But could it be possible that
any sober harpooneer would get
into a door mat, and parade the
streets of any Christian town
in that sort of guise?
I put it on, to try it, and it
weighed me down like a hamper,
being uncommonly
shaggy and thick,
and I thought a little damp,
as though this mysterious
harpooneer had been wearing it
of a rainy day.
I went up in it to a bit of
glass stuck against the wall,
and I never saw such
a sight in my life.
I tore myself out of
it in such a hurry
that I gave myself
a kink in the neck.
All right, again
it's a common theme.
He sees this pretty
mat, he's putting it on
and he's acting like an idiot.
But he's trying to
figure it out.
Ok, yes in bed, and
then, bottom of the page.
I heard a heavy footfall in
the passage, and saw a glimmer
of light come into the
room from under the door.
Lord save me, thinks I,
that must be the harpooneer,
the infernal head peddler.
Because he has been told that
this guy has been going off
and selling heads
around the town.
But I lay perfectly
still, and resolved not
to say a word till spoken to.
Holding a light in one hand, and
that identical New Zealand head
in the other, the
stranger entered the room,
and without looking
towards the bed,
placed his candle a good
way off from me on the floor
in one corner, and
then began working away
at the knotted cords of the
large bag I before spoke
of as being in the room.
I was all eagerness to see his
face, but he kept it averted
for some time while employed
in unlacing the bag's mouth.
This accomplished, however,
he turned around when,
good heavens, what a
sight, such a face.
It was of a dark,
purplish, yellow color,
here and there stuck over with
large blackish looking squares.
This is bad, but know
where in the realm
of my understanding right.
Yes, it's just as I thought,
he's a terrible bedfellow.
He's been in a fight, got
dreadfully cut, and here he is,
just from the surgeon.
Ok frame of explanation one.
But it doesn't quite fit.
But at that moment he
chanced to turn his face
so towards the light,
that I plainly saw they could
not be sticking plasters at all,
those black squares
on his cheeks.
They were stains of
some sort or other.
At first I knew not what to make
of this, but soon an inkling
of the truth occurred to me.
For readers of Tepee
[assumed spelling],
they would notice this,
this is exactly the thing
that the narrator in
Tepee is afraid of.
That these people, one of
things while he's most afraid
of that they're going
to eat him.
But beyond that he's afraid
that the cannibals amongst,
what he thinks are
cannibals, amongst whom he has,
will tattoo him and disfigured
him, especially his face.
He's happy to have tattoos
everywhere but not the face.
I remembered a story of a white
man, a whale man too, who,
falling among the cannibals,
had been tattooed by them.
I concluded that this
harpooneer, in the course
of his distant voyages,
must have met
with a similar adventure.
And what is it, thought
I, after all.
It's only his outside, a man can
be honest in any sort of skin.
Now that is a nice platitude.
And in a way if you think about
it, especially given the context
of eighteen fifty and
racism and slavery
and that's not a bad thing to
be thinking about it seems like,
ideologically progressive.
Can we take it seriously
in this narrative context?
That's part of the challenge
of these early chapters.
There full of comedy, the comedy
subvert what we might think
of as cosmopolitan
principles, or principles
of toleration equality
of the novel.
And Ishmael seems to
be putting forward.
What's the relationship
between these moments
of philosophical
thought and comedy?
To be sure it might be nothing
but a good coat of tropic,
but he said, but
then what to make
of his unearthly
complexion, that part of it,
I mean lying roundabout can
come completely independent
of the squares of tattooing.
To be sure, it might be
nothing but a good coat
of tropical tanning,
but I never heard
of a hot sun's tanning a white
man into a purplish yellow one.
However, I had never
been in the South Seas;
and perhaps the sun there
produced these extraordinary
effects upon the skin.
Right again, trying
to be rational,
hycephic [assumed
spelling], empirical.
Now, while all these ideas
were passing through me
like lightning, this harpooneer
never noticed me at all.
But, after some difficulty
having opened his bag,
he commenced fumbling in it,
and presently pulled out a sort
of tomahawk, and a seal-skin
wallet with the hair on.
Placing these on the old
chest in the middle of a room,
he then took the New Zealand
head, a ghastly thing enough,
and crammed it down
into the bag.
He now took off his
hat, a new beaver hat,
when I came nigh singing
out with fresh surprise.
There was no hair on his head,
none to speak of at least,
nothing but a small scalp-knot
twisted up on his forehead.
His bald purplish head now
looked for all the world
like a mildewed skull.
Had not the stranger stood
between me and the door,
I would have bolted
out of it quicker
than ever I bolted a dinner.
Again, that's a kind
of therovian [assumed
spelling]moment right,
but it's part of
the comedy here.
So look what's going
on Ishmael is trying
to make himself comfortable.
He's put himself
in a new situation,
thinks he can handle it.
He looks for the most
comfortable frame
of explanation.
Staving off what he
knows is the truth,
and what we already have
realized is the truth
about this person here.
Even as it was, I thought
something of slipping
out of the window, but it
was the second floor back.
I am no coward, but what to make
of this head peddling purple
rascal altogether passed
my comprehension.
Ignorance is the parent of fear,
and being completely nonplussed
and confounded about the
stranger, I confess I was now
as much afraid of him as
if it was the devil himself
who had thus broken into my
room at the dead of night.
In fact, I was so afraid of him
that I was not game enough
just then to address him,
and demand a satisfactory
answer concerning what seemed
inexplicable in him.
Alright, so he's going on,
he's got this tomahawk,
Ishmael is scared you know,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We go on to the next, let's
go on to the next page.
We'll go to the bottom
of the page, next page.
In the interval I spent
in deliberating what
to say, was a fatal one.
Taking up his tomahawk from
the table, he examined the head
of it for an instance, and
then holding it to the light,
with his mouth at the handle,
he puffed out great
clouds of tobacco smoke.
The next moment the
light was extinguished,
and this wild cannibal,
tomahawk between his teeth,
sprang into bed with me.
I sang out, I could not help it
now, and giving a sudden grunt
of astonishment he
began feeling me.
Stammering out something, I
knew not what, I rolled away
from him against the wall.
And then conjured him, whatever
or whatever he might be,
to keep quiet, and let me get
up and light the lamp again.
But his guttural responses
satisfied me at once that he
but ill comprehended my meaning.
Who e debel you?
He at last said, you no
speak e, dam me, I kill e.
And so saying the lighted
tomahawk began flourishing
about me in the dark.
Landlord, for God's sake, Peter
Coffin, shouted I, landlord,
watch, Coffin, angels, save me.
Speak e, tell e me
who e be, or dam me,
I kill e. Again growled
the cannibal,
while his horrid flourishings
of the tomahawk scattered
the hot tobacco ashes
about me till I thought my
linen would get on fire.
But thank heaven, at that
moment, and I tell you,
he's outside at the door
listening, the landlord came
into the room light in hand,
and leaping from the
bed I ran up to him.
You can imagine him doing
a Yogi Barra and like,
you know putting all his
legs around him perhaps.
Don't be afraid now,
said he, grinning again,
Queequeg here wouldn't
harm a hair of your head.
Stop your grinning, shouted
I, and why didn't you tell me
that that infernal
harpooneer was a cannibal?
I thought ye know'd it, didn't I
tell ye, he was a peddling heads
around town, but turn flukes
again and go to sleep.
Queequeg, look here,
you sabbee me,
I sabbee you this man
sleepe you, you sabbee?
[ Laughter ]
Humph, me sabbee plenty.
[ Laughter ]
Grunted Queequeg, puffing away
at his pipe and sitting in bed.
You gettee in, he
added, motioning to me
with his tomahawk, and throwing
the clothes to one side.
And now look at what's happened.
Think about Ishmael
train of thought.
He's tried to make
since of the situation
in which things are just
beyond his experience.
He has no idea what these
cannibals possessions are,
he tries to keep the
knowledge that he's
with a cannibal off
as long as possible.
He finally has to admit
that's what it is.
And then all of a sudden there's
a really quick about face.
He really did this
in not only a civil
but a really kind
and charitable way.
I stood looking at
him for a moment.
For all his tattooings he
was on the whole a clean,
comely looking cannibal.
What's all this fuss I
have been making about,
thought I to myself, the man's
a human being just as I am.
He has just as much
reason to fear me,
as I have to be afraid of him.
Better sleep with
a sober cannibal
than a drunken Christian.
Ok, that sounds like
good advice, I guess.
[ Laughter ]
Landlord, said I, tell him
to stash his tomahawk there,
or pipe, or whatever
you call it.
Tell him to stop
smoking, in short,
and I will turn in with him.
But I don't fancy having a
man smoking in bed with me.
It's dangerous.
Besides, I ain't insured.
So he makes a joke.
He takes the thing that's
worrying him an deflates
attention away from it
to something else that's
extensively the thing
that worries him the most.
Now, again this is just a little
thing, but its characteristic,
and we'll see this in a moment,
of the way in which the
novel shows us characters
who for various purposes of
persuasion, shift the ground
of debate from one
arena into another.
So he's worried about
cannibalism but he claims
to be worried about, you
know, smoking in bed.
And this you might say
is a kind of technique
that we will see other
people use in novel.
The novel is sort of
making us attune to it
at this particular moment.
This being told to
Queequeg, he at once complied,
and again politely
motioned me to get into bed,
rolling over to one
side as much as to say,
I won't touch a leg of ye.
Good night landlord,
said I, you may go.
I turned in, and never
slept better in my life.
Now, I want to ask you what
you think of that scene.
Alright its meant to be funny.
So that's one of the
signals that the novelist
that the novelist done, this
can actually be a funny novel.
If you can get beyond the
fact that it's all these pages
and it's this nineteenth
century American classic
that everyone talks about.
And it's been assigned in this
ridiculous course that's going
to have an exam at the end, if
you can get beyond all that.
[ Laughter ]
You can realize it's actually
fun to read this damn thing.
And its irreverent and
has some social overtones
which push the boundaries
of, of the exceptual ideas
in the nineteenth century and it
is blasphemous in many places.
It makes fun of the bible, it
has a lot of kind of dirty jokes
that are based on
biblical culture.
And the fact that people
probably don't bother
to look things up, or
don't know it quite
as well as Melville does.
Ask yourself how we are
supposed to take this idea.
Better sleep with
a sober cannibal,
than a drunken Christian.
Are we supposed to
take that straight up,
or with a grain of salt.
Are we suppose to think
that Ishmael has come
around to the right way of
thinking that this is a kind
of image of cosmopolitan
tolerance,
or has he been too quick
to rationalize things.
Has he not actually thought all
this through, is he too quick
to jump into something new.
Is there a problem here with
the narration that we're seeing.
Ok, that's one seen I
think is somewhat iconic
for this narrative.
And I think it says a lot
of things in play for us
to be attune to as we go on.
Ok, let's take a
look at the chapel,
the chapter that's
called chapter seven.
The cenotaphs, I
mean The Chapel.
And what it does is present
us with a set of cenotaphs.
A cenotaph is a kind
of funereal marker
in the absence of a grave.
So he goes to the whale man's
chapel there in New Bedford.
And you know like Frederick
Douglass reproducing his past
and his marriage certificate,
he attempts to reproduce
for us the cenotaphs.
So again, like the boggy, soggy,
switchy picture, this a kind of,
I don't know, sort
of meditictual [assumed
spelling] moment,
in which we're asked
to consider something
that in this case not an
artwork but something has,
that has the same, where we have
the same kind of relation to it
that Ishmael has to the artwork.
In other words, he is
also a spectator looking
at these things.
And he's also looking
at the people
who are looking at these things.
And what would we, what
could we find out about them.
For one thing if
you are about to go
on a whaling mission I suppose
they should give you pause.
Sacred to the memory
of John Talbot, who,
at the age of eighteen, was
lost overboard near the Isle
of Desolation, off Patagonia,
November first eighteen
thirty six.
This tablet is erected to
his Memory by his sister.
Sacred to the memory of
Robert Long, Willis Ellery,
Nathan Coleman, Walter
Canny, Seth Macy,
and Samuel Gleig
[assumed spelling],
forming one of the boats
crews of the Ship Eliza,
who were towed out of sight by
a whale, on the off shore ground
in the pacific, December thirty
first, eighteen thirty nine.
This marble is here placed
by their surviving shipmates.
Sacred to the memory of the
late Captain Ezekiel Hardy,
who in the bows of
a boat, of his boat,
was killed by a sperm whale
on the coast of Japan,
August third eighteen
thirty three.
This tablet is erected
by his memory,
to his memory by his widow.
These are men who
disappeared at sea.
Their stories aren't necessarily
incomplete, all we can sort
of tell about them,
the bare facts,
and there put there on the wall.
So the novel is inviting us
to think about certain things.
One of the things that I want to
suggest to you as a possibility,
is that maybe what
this novel is,
is in fact one of these things.
It's a cenotaph.
If you haven't gotten
to the end yet,
I may have spoiled some
part of it for you.
It's a cenotaph that does more
than a cenotaph possibly could.
In other words, it's as if
what if we looked at one
of these stories and
were able to tell it
in all of its fullness.
So there's a kind of memorial
function that this novel has.
But the other thing we
might say about it is
that it may well be
a record of a trauma.
Think about a cenotaphic
function.
These are people who have
lost love ones at sea,
they don't know exactly
what happened to them.
Somebody was killed by a whale,
body disappeared or something.
They were towed out of sight.
God knows what happened to them.
We know about the
Essex, we took that type
of thing didn't happen to them.
We need stories, but more
than that we need a place
communally to morn them.
That's what these things served.
There's a kind of
communal function
that these cenotaphs have.
Maybe there's a cenotaphic
urge within the novel itself.
Its self forming a kind of
communal function as a way
of dealing with trauma.
So one of the things I
want to suggest to you is
that maybe this is a novel
that would benefit very much
from using a kind of interpreted
lens that today is a,
is identified with
trauma studies.
What does it mean
to be a survivor?
That's part of what is
at stake in this novel.
In this chapter I think
suggest that to us.
Ok, so what, I'm going to try to
point out things that I want you
to use as tools for interpreting
as we go a little
bit further on.
I want spend time on the
pulpit and the sermon today.
Instead I would like to look
at the chapter that's
called A Bosom Friend,
this is on chapter ten,
this is chapter ten.
Now again I suggested to you in
some since the novel is kind,
this is, is a thought
experiment.
So it is going to be dramatizing
a number of philosophical ideas
and asking us to think
deeply about that.
So one of the things I
want to suggest to you,
is that it is a novel
that poses a lot
of what I would call heuristics,
or a lot of what ifs?
So here is one of them
on page fifty five.
We're starting with think
about Queequeg alright.
He returns from The Spouter Inn
from the chapel and he finds
that Queequeeg is now looking
at a book, assuming the bible,
and kind of, these things
become defamiliarized
as if western culture becomes
defamiliarized when we see it
through Queequeeg's eyes,
or at least when we watch
Queequeeg consuming it.
And this gets Ishmael
to thinking.
So, this is into the second,
first full paragraph
on fifty five.
Through all his unearthly
tattooings,
I thought I saw the traces
of a simple honest heart.
And in his large, deep
eyes, fiery black and bold,
there seemed tokens of a spirit
that would dare a
thousand devils.
And besides all this, there
was a certain lofty bearing
about the Pagan, which even
his uncouthness could not
altogether maim.
He looked like a man
who had never cringed
and never had had a creditor.
Whether it was, too, that
his head being shaved,
his forehead was drawn out
in freer and brighter relief,
and looked more expansive
than it otherwise would,
this I will not venture
to decide,
but certain it was his head
was phrenologically [assumed
spelling] an excellent one.
Right, this is the moment when
part of the way of thinking
about the relationship between
appearance and capabilities,
obviously linked to
a discourse of race
in the nineteenth century.
For now it just seems to look
at the shape of the heads
and the place of
indentations in it and think
that you can tell something
about the capabilities
about the person who had
that particular shape.
It may seem ridiculous,
but it reminded me
of General Washington's head,
as seen in the popular
busts of him.
It had the same long regularly
graded retreating slope
from above the brows, which
were likewise very projecting.
Like two long promontories
thickly wooded on top.
Queequeg was George Washington
cannibalistically developed.
Now, again I think
this is a little moment
when I think it is
again an invitation
to a thought experiment.
What would it mean for George
Washington to be developed
in a cannibal context?
Alright, what would it mean
for someone who is a cannibal
to be a better example
of Christianity
than most Christians, who are
you know drunken and misbehaving
and doing whatever else, right.
These are the kinds of
little thought experiments
that I think the
novel is inviting us
to consider all the way through.
And that's one of the
things that I wanted
to point out to you here.
Now, this chapter is
interesting and iconic as well
because it gives
us another example
of Ishmael's religious thinking.
And you might say his
commitment to toleration.
He's trying to understand
Queequeg's different practices
right, and so he talks
to him about them.
And then at the top of
fifty seven we have this,
it's the end of chapter ten.
I was a good Christian.
Born and bred in the bosom
of the infallible
Presbyterian Church.
And we're going to talk a lot
about the Presbyterianism here,
but it has, for our purposes
it has certain things in common
with the period and
culture that we look at.
And the footnote will tell you
why this particular passage was
a little bit controversial
after the novel was published.
How then could I unite
with this wild idolater
in worshipping his
piece of wood?
Right, I mean if your
cosmopolitan you want
to reach out, you want to
bridge gaps, you want to.
But what is worship?
Thought I.
Do you suppose now, Ishmael,
that the magnanimous God
of heaven and earth,
pagans and all included,
can possibly be jealous
of an insignificant piece
of black wood, of black wood.
But what is worship?
To do the word, will of God?
That is worship.
And what is the will of God?
To do to my fellow man what
I would have my fellow man
to do to me.
That is the will of God.
Do onto others as you would
have them do onto you.
That goes by a name.
What is that?
>> The Golden Rule.
>> The Golden Rule.
Yes, do onto others as you
would have them do onto you.
Ok, now Queequeg
is my fellow man.
And what do I wish that
this Queequeg would do
onto me, do to me?
Why, unite with me
in my particular
Presbyterian form of worship.
Consequently, I must then
unite with him in his,
ergo, I must turn idolater.
So I kindled the shavings,
helped prop up the
innocent little idol,
offered him burnt
biscuit with Queequeg.
Salaamed before him twice
or thrice, kissed his nose,
and that done, we
undressed and went to bed,
at peace with our own
consciences and all the world.
But we did not go to bed
without some little chat.
How it is I know not, but
there is no place like a bed
for confidential
disclosures between friends.
Man and wife, they say,
there open the very bottom
of their souls to each other,
and some old couples often lie
and chat over old times
till nearly morning.
Thus, then, in our hearts
honeymoon, lay Queequeg,
laid I and Queequeg
a cozy, loving pair.
Now that is a very juicy
an ripe set of paragraphs
which we can think about a
lot but I want to ask not
about the ending of it,
but the beginning of it.
What's wrong with the
logic that Ishmael implies?
Complete with Argo,
looks and logistic.
What's wrong with it?
Golden rule invoked.
Golden rule says, do onto
others as you will have them do
onto me, that's the rule of God.
So, he, I want him to be like
me, I'm going to be like him.
What's wrong?
Yes, all the way in the back.
>> He's using like
syllogistic [inaudible] in order
to take one identical
[inaudible]
and make it [inaudible]
against the other one.
>> Ok, what's the other
one.
>> The, isn't that
the First Commandment.
>> Which is?
>> You basically don't
worship idols [inaudible].
>> So, yes the First
Commandment
is, I am the Lord thy God,
thou shall have no
other God's before me.
When Jesus revises
the Old Testament
and recreates the laws, he
doesn't take that one away.
Right, you've heard
of Jesus would say,
you've have heard it say, an eye
for an eye a tooth for a tooth,
but I say to you,
turn the other cheek.
The Golden Rule comes
out of that.
But it's still second, the first
is always, I'm the Lord thy God.
One of things that
you might say is that,
that Ishmael here is perhaps
having, making a joke,
or Melville is making,
using Ishmael to make a joke
about popular understandings
about literature.
I mean and a popular
understanding
of the bible right.
What's the most famous
thing, The Golden Rule?
We talk about the Golden
Rule because it's hard to do,
but also because maybe we take
for granted the First
Commandment.
Of course no other
Gods before me,
would never apply the Golden
Rule in this context right.
So what does it mean to
ignore the [inaudible].
I mean this is an example
of blasphemous thinking set
in a kind of comic way.
That should give us a
little, we should think
about what's at stake here.
What does it mean that
our narrator is willing
to write this, in a
since believe this,
and try to get us
to believe this.
Is he pulling our leg, is he
egging us on, do we just say,
Oh yes on the other hand it's
also a very nice statement
of tolerance and
cosmopolitan principles.
Is the comic way and the kind of
slightly dodgy logic, does that,
does that invalidate
the idea of toleration
that comes along with it.
Is this a sign, maybe
that Ishmael
and the Devil can quote
scriptures for their purposes,
should we become more suspicious
of Ishmael as a result of this.
Again, I think these are
the moments in the novel
that questions are
being opened up.
We might link this to
the first acquaintance
with Queequeg right.
There's a similarity
in the logic between,
a kind of rationalization that's
going on with, Better sleep
with a silver cannibal
than a drunken Christian,
and I must turn Idolater.
And this is also the moment
when Queequeg an Ishmael
basically become this cozy
loving couple.
I mean, they assume
the character
of an old married couple, and
as one of, one of the things
to note as, as we
embark on a voyage
in which they are basically
going to be no women
that there is a kind
of invocation
of what we would think of
as homo social relations.
Relations between men that
are complete without women.
And we might want to think about
that, should that give us pause.
Should that be something
we understand as a kind
of radical suggestion about
the future of society.
Is there a literary historical
way of thinking about it,
I mean, maybe this
is Melville's way
of dramatizing the necessity,
to get away from all those
damn scribbling women, right?
The way Hawthorne talks
about it, maybe this is one
of the things he's promoting.
What would it mean to have
a world without women,
would it be a better
one or worse one?
Some of these again,
things that we will go on,
the homo social train of thought
you might say is something
that starts here with Queequeg
and get continued later on.
And these questions
about the advocacy
of tolerance no matter
how you get to it,
is there something disturbing
about Ishmael modes of thinking,
what does it mean to
be able to play fast
and loose with the bible?
All these are questions
that the novel continues
to explore as it moves forward.
Alright, we'll start, we'll end
with one more little bit here.
This is a chapter that's
called, A Ship, here,
and this is a chapter that's
funny also, but it takes some
of the patterns that
we've seen already,
especially this shifting
of ground from one mode
of discourse into another.
And takes, and has to be taken
a little bit more seriously,
and part of what's at stake you
might say is the cultural uses
of religious modes of thought
and discourse and speech.
So they are in bed again
and there concocting their
plans for the morrow.
But to my surprise and no small
concern, Queequeg now gave me
to understand, that he had been
diligently consulting Yojo,
the name of his black
little god.
And Yojo had told him
two or three times over,
and strongly insisted upon
it everyway, that instead
of our going together among
the whaling fleet in harbor,
and in concert selecting our
craft, instead of this, I say,
Yojo earnestly enjoined
that the selection
of the ship should
rest wholly with me,
in as much as Yojo
purposed befriending us.
And, in order to do so, had
already pitched upon a vessel,
which, if left to
myself, I, Ishmael,
should infallibly light, he
repeats the word that he uses
to talk about Presbyterianism,
infallibly light upon,
for all the world as though
it had turned out by chance.
And in that vessel I must
immediately ship myself,
for the present irrespective
of Queequeg.
This is providential logic,
what does it mean that comes
out of a little block of wood.
What do we think
about the relationship
between faitiveness [assumed
spelling]and free will here?
These are huge topics
for the culture,
huge topics for the
novel as well.
Ishmael has already
talked about being part
of a larger programs set by the
faiths in the first chapter.
This is another comic
invocation of province.
Are we supposed to take
it seriously or not,
because of the comedy?
Anyway he goes and looks
at all these ships,
and he finally does find one.
And this is on page sixty,
page seventy of the novel.
[ Silence ]
He's talking about the
Pequad, which he has,
I suppose we should go back.
On page sixty nine he talks
about some other ships
that disturb him because of
their names, The Devil Dam,
The Tit Bit, The Pequad.
Devil-dam, I do not know the
origin of, Tit-bit is obvious.
[ Laughter ]
A little humor in that,
aromatic actually.
Pequot you will no doubt
remember, was the name
of a celebrated tribe of
Massachusetts Indians;
now extinct as the
ancient Medes.
Yes, because the
puritans killed them.
So what does it mean, you
know again, The Spouter Inn,
what does it mean to
choose the name of this.
Ok fine, does name
mean something,
or do names not mean anything.
And when he goes on he
decides that, that one is ok,
and he goes and he
meets Captain Peleg.
Top of seventy.
Old Captain Peleg, many
years her chief-mate,
before he commanded
another vessel of his own.
And now a retired seaman, and
one of the principal owners
of the Pequot, this old
Peleg, during the term
of his chief mate ship,
had built upon her original
grotesqueness, and inlaid it,
all over, with a quaintness
both of material and device,
unmatched by anything except
it be Thorkill-Hake's carved
buckler or bedstead.
This was appareled like any
barbaric Ethiopian emperor,
his neck heavy with
pendants of polished ivory.
She was a thing of trophies.
This was a kind of barbaric
ship, it's all festooned
with ivory and whale bits.
It almost look liked
this kind of,
it's something deeply barbaric
about the way that it looks.
Ok, so he goes up here
on the quarter deck,
because where the captains are.
He goes up there to the
quarter deck of the Pequot
and he talks about, talks to
the two people that are there.
This is the top of seventy one.
Is this the Captain
of the Pequot, said I,
advancing to the door of the
tent, which was pitched there.
Supposing it be the
captain of the Pequot,
what dost thou want
of him, he demanded.
I was thinking of shipping.
Thou wast, wast thou?
I see thou art no
Nantucketer [assumed spelling],
ever been in a stove boat?
No, Sir, I never have.
Dost know nothing at all
about whaling, I dare say eh?
Nothing, Sir, but I have no
doubt I shall soon learn.
I've been several voyages
in the merchant service,
and I think that,
Merchant service be damned.
Talk not that lingo to me.
Dost thou see that leg?
I'll take that leg
away from thy stern,
if ever thou talkest
[assumed spelling]
of the merchant service
to me again.
Merchant service indeed, I
suppose now ye feel comfortable
and proud of having served
in those merchant ships.
But flukes man, what makes
thee want to go a whaling, eh?
It looks a little
suspicious, don't it, eh?
Hast not been a pirate,
hast thou?
Didst not rob thy last
Captain, didst thou?
Dost not think of
murdering the officers
when thou get test to sea?
I protested my innocence
of these things.
I saw that under the mask of
these half humorous innuendoes,
this old seaman, as an
insulated Quaker Nantucketer,
was full of his insular
prejudices,
and rather distrustful of all
aliens, unless they hailed
from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.
Now again, in so far as
Ishmael is going to be this kind
of voice of cosmopolitism
hailing from New York.
He's immediately in conflict
with these Quakers here
as [inaudible] to be somewhat
insorbed [assumed spelling].
And you'll see that there
Quakers that seem to have a lot
in common with Puritans.
But what takes thee whaling?
I want to know that before
I think of shipping ye.
Well, I want to see
what whaling is.
I want to see the world,
again, a cosmopolitan impulse.
Want to see what whaling is, eh?
Have ye ever, have ye
clapped eye on Captain Ahab?
Who is Captain Ahab, sir?
Aye, aye, I thought so.
Captain Ahab is the
Captain of this ship.
I am mistaken then.
I thought I was speaking
to the Captain himself.
Thou art speaking
to Captain Peleg,
that's who ye are
speaking to, young man.
It belongs to me and Captain
Bildad to see the Pequot fitted
out for the voyage, and supplied
with all her needs,
including crew.
We are part owners and agents.
But as I was going to
say, if thou wantest
to know what whaling is, as
thou tellest ye do, I can put ye
in a way of finding it out
before ye bind yourself
to it, past backing out.
Clap eye on Captain Ahab,
young man, and thou wilt find
that he has only one leg.
Ok, so this is the thing
we are going to find
out about Captain Ahab, he has
only one leg, remember that.
What do you mean, sir?
Was the other one
lost by a whale?
Lost by a whale.
Young man, come nearer to me,
it was devoured, chewed up,
crunched by the monstrousest
parmacetty
that ever chipped
a boat, ah, ah.
[ Laughter ]
Right o,
[ Laughter ]
I was a little alarmed,
[inaudible] alarmed
by his energy.
[ Laughter ]
Perhaps also a little
touched at the hearty grief
in his concluding exclamation.
Alright, so he goes
on and he says this.
Very good, now, art thou
the man to pitch a harpoon
down a live whale's throat,
and then jump after it?
Answer quick, I am, sir,
if it should be positively
indispensable to do so.
Not to be got rid of, that is,
which I don't take
to be the fact.
Good again.
Now then, thou not only
wantest to go a whaling,
to find out by experience what
whaling is, but ye also want
to go in order to see the world?
Was not that what ye said?
I thought so.
Well then, just step forward
there, and take a peep
over the weather bow,
and then back to me
and tell me what ye see.
So he says go to the
back sir, take a look,
go to the front, take a look.
Ok, well, what's the report,
said Peleg when I came back.
What did ye see?
Not much, I replied,
nothing but water,
considerable horizon though,
and there's a squall
coming up, I think.
Well, what does thou think
then of seeing the world?
Do ye wish to go round Cape
Horn to see any more of it, eh?
Can't ye see the
world where you stand?
Now this is funny I suppose
because something in that right,
that's a version
of Emerson's idea
that traveling is
a fool's paradise.
It's not a good enough
reason says Peleg
to want to see the world.
The world mostly
looks like that.
You go on a whaling ship that's
what you're going to see mostly.
A lot of horizons a
lot of open ocean.
Why do you really want to go.
Well ok he finally lets him sign
up and then finally we get this,
and this is extensively
about Bildad and Peleg
but really it should be,
were getting a foreshadowing
of Ahab himself, this is
on page seventy three.
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and
indeed many other Nantucketers,
was a Quaker, the island
having been originally settled
by that sect.
And to this day its
inhabitants in general retain
in an uncommon, in an
uncommon measure peculiarities
of the Quaker, only variously
and anomalously modified
by things altogether
alien and heterogeneous.
For some of these same
Quakers are the most sanguinary
of all sailors and
whale-hunters.
They are fighting Quakers, they
are Quakers with a vengeance.
And then again he's punning here
right, an almost oxymoronic,
fighting Quakers, Quakers
are suppose to be pacifists.
There are Quakers with a
vengeance, which means what,
they're really, really, Quaker,
or there Quakers who have,
who Labarbera [assumed
spelling] Chilling [assumed
spelling] wrote.
One of the things we might
say here is what Melville is
dramatizing for us is
exactly the dynamics
of dominant residual
in emerging, right.
These Quakers have been mutated
by their contact with others,
with these barbarics
[assumed spelling] customs
that they have become
accustomed too by whaling,
by whaling itself,
they've changed.
So that there are instances
among them of men, who,
named with Scripture names,
a singularly common fashion
on the island, and in childhood
naturally imbibing the stately
dramatic thee and thou
of the Quaker idiom.
Still, from the audacious,
daring, and boundless adventure
of their subsequent
lives, strangely blend
with these un outgrown
peculiarities,
a thousand bold dashes
of character,
not unworthy a Scandinavian sea
king, or a poetical Pagan Roman.
We're invoking Norse
mythology, or epics,
or perhaps classical tragedy.
And when these things
unite in a man
of greatly superior natural
force, with a globular brain
and a ponderous heart, who
also has by the stillness
and seclusion of many
long night-watches
in the remotest waters,
and beneath constellations
never seen here at the north,
been led to think
untraditionally
and independently.
Again, this might remind us of
Hester Prim thinking to herself
by her seaside cottage.
Thinking by herself
of the pressures
that may have been done to her,
comes to think things she's
really not suppose to.
Receiving all nature's sweet
or savage impressions fresh
from her own virgin voluntary
and confiding breast,
and thereby chiefly,
but with some help
from accidental advantages,
to learn a bold
and nervous lofty language.
That man makes one in a whole
nation's census a mighty pageant
creature, formed
for noble tragedies.
I want you to remember
that image,
the mighty pageant creature,
formed for noble tragedies
who speaks a bold and
nervous lofty language.
That's Ahab, and we're
getting a little taste
of what Ahab is going
to be like.
Now, Peleg and Bildad,
those are biblical names.
Bildad is one of the
questioners of Job,
one of the self righteous
ones who tells Job,
oh if he's punishing you,
you must have did something
wrong, think about it.
Peleg a little bit more
obscure, Deuteronomy I think
or maybe Exodus, he is one
of the begets [assumed spelling]
his name actually has the
derivation, I used to think it
meant nothing and then I found
out that it actually
kind of means a river
that divides two lands,
or something like that.
So in fact there's something
going on there about division.
Ok these two guys are going
to decide Ishmael's salary,
and we'll end here with that.
Ishmael decides that he's going
to have a certain amount of pay.
This is on the bottom
of seventy five.
He talks about the way whales
men are paid according to lays.
He says that what you
get is one fraction
of the total net
proceeds of the voyage.
Right, in which case
getting half would be good,
getting twenty fifth
would be good.
He expects something like the
two hundred seventy fifth lay.
This is at the bottom
of seventy five.
I made no doubt that from all I
had heard, I should be offered
at least the two hundred and
seventy fifth lay, that is,
the two hundred and
seventy fifth part
of the clear net
proceeds of the voyage,
whatever that might
eventually amount to.
And though the two hundred
and seventy fifth lay was what
they call a rather long lay,
yet it was better than nothing.
So he goes to these guys
expecting to get at least that.
What do they offer him?
They start to offer him, well
let's see, the seven hundred
and seventy seven lay.
Captain Bildad suggests this,
he happened to be reading,
oh coincidently, a
passage from Matthew.
That passage from Matthew is
Christ sermon on the mound,
he's talking about how to
behave and there seems to be a,
yes it says, lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth, well,
Captain Bildad,
interrupted Peleg, what ye say?
What lay shall we
give this young man?
Thou knowest best, was
the sepulchral reply,
the seven hundred and seventy
seventh wouldn't be too much,
would it, where moth and
rust do corrupt, but lay.
So he's making a pun, he's
reading a passage that says lay,
and it's about how you
shouldn't want worldly things,
but only should lay up
treasure up in heaven
where they really count and
not corrupted by moth and rust.
And he uses that as an excuse
to say give him this biblically
significant number for a lay.
Since worldly possessions
don't matter,
how about the seven
hundred and seventy seventh.
Lay, indeed, thought
I, and such a lay,
the seven hundred
and seventy seventh.
Well, old Bildad, you are
determined that I, for one,
shall not lay up
many lays here below,
where moth and rust do corrupt.
It was an exceedingly
long lay that, indeed,
and though from the magnitude
of the figure it might
at first deceive a landsman,
yet the slightest
consideration will show
that though seven hundred
and seventy seven is a pretty
large number, yet, when you come
to make a teenth of it, a
fraction, you will then see,
I say, that the seven hundred
and seventy seventh part
of a forthing is a good
deal less than seven hundred
and seventy seven
gold doubloons;
and so I thought at the time.
They go on and stage
this kind of mock fight.
What does Ishmael end up with?
What's the final lay
that he gets promised?
He gets the three hundredth lay.
That's worse than what
he expected to go in,
but he leaves glad to get it.
Ok, so as we depart
today, ask yourself
of what's at stake there.
What just happened to
Ishmael to make him glad
to get the three hundredth lay?
How did the dynamics of
that conversation work,
and how we think might those
be implied to what Ahab does
when we finally meet
him on the quarter deck.
And we'll take it up from there
when we come back to Moby Dick.
