>> Teacher: All right,
let's get started.
So our subject for
today is agency,
by which I mean the
power to act.
And one of the things
we're going to be thinking
about is the ways in which this
novel dramatizes what we might
think of as model of agency.
And in the context of this
course, it means the way
in which Melville is rethinking
some of the issues that have,
you might say, motivated
writers in our course
from at least Winthrop on.
The idea of the relationship
between fatedness
on the one hand, and freedom,
the freedom to act, on another.
Which is some sense is one
of the major trajectories
in the course, right?
The Puritans had one way of
thinking about the relationship
between what they called
providence or fate,
and the idea of freedom.
They had to have both, even
though they sometimes seemed
that they were complement,
contradictory ideals, right?
But when you think of the
idea of total depravity,
Adam cannot be held responsible
for his disobedience.
And his progeny cannot
be held responsible
for Adam's disobedience
if he weren't free to act
in some fundamental way.
So that even if God
had set up a situation
in which everything's foretold,
and God sees how things
will turn out, in the event
for the Puritans Adam was
always free to obey or not obey.
And therefore, free, had to take
responsibility for what he did.
The fact that God's mind is
such that He can always know
how somebody is going to choose,
does not in fact invalidate
the act of choosing itself.
When you get to someone
like Emerson,
you have a radically
different idea about the way
in which agency is constructed
and the way in which it needs
to be constructed, right?
He's thinking about the sense
in which we are too
much bound to the past.
Our age builds the
sepulchers of the fathers,
our age is retrospective.
The idea that we have in
some sense constrained our
own agency.
That's the point of the fable of
the Orphic poet that he tells.
In some very deep way Emerson
believes we create the world.
And if we forget
that we do that,
we severely limit the
possibility of our own agency.
So self-reliance becomes
a call for human beings
to reassert their agency.
To let go of the
past in certain ways.
We've already looked at
the ways in which Hawthorne
and Melville were skeptical
of this, and I want to pursue
that a little bit more today.
Remember that scene in
Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter
where Hester says, you
know, to Dimmesdale
in the forest, Begin all anew.
Not possible for some
very good reasons.
And Melville I think also
thinks that there may, you know,
that Emersonian swerve
might be too quick.
We need, as he says in
Hawthorne and His Mosses,
Something somewhat
like Original Sin
to strike the uneven balance.
So part of what we're
thinking of here in Moby Dick,
is what is that something
somewhat
like Original Sin
that's being dramatized?
What are the constraints
on agency here?
And who's placed them?
What are the models of
the agency [inaudible]?
What agency does a
narrator have in being able
to construct his
or her narrative?
What constraints might be
in place there as well?
And so those are some
of the larger issues
that I want to talk about today.
Next time I want to talk a
little bit about the idea
of domination, which is
related to the idea of agency.
And so I'd like to start next
time's lecture with a question.
If you know the answer to
it now, don't reveal it.
But I want to start with
a question which I'm going
to pose to you right now.
And that question
is quite simple.
What color is the white
whale really, okay?
Somebody will tell me the answer
to that and show me how she
or he knows at the
beginning of next time, right?
So what color is the
white whale really?
Okay, and I'll even remind you
of that in an email later on.
Okay. So let's go back to that
moment where we ended last time
in the chapter that's
called The Ship.
And remember what
was going on there.
This is a chapter where
Ishmael, it begins with the idea
of agency and fatedness
being interlinked, right?
Ishmael has delegated.
Agency, the power to act,
can sometimes be delegated.
There's a way in which Queequeg,
saying that he's actually
on behalf of Yojo, has
delegated to Ishmael the job
of choosing the ship, even
though Ishmael is probably not
as expert in knowing what the
best kind of whaling ship is.
Yojo said it'll be okay if
you pick it, so Ishmael does.
He settles on the ship
that's called the Pequod
and it's kind of a weird ship.
It's all festooned with
ivory and whale artifacts.
It has a kind of barbaric look
to it, which I guess makes it
in keeping with the kind
of things that we presume
that Yojo would like in all
of this little blackness,
you know, and woodenness.
Okay. Then he has a strange
conversation with somebody,
who's also biblically
name, Peleg.
And I said that Peleg's name
actually refers to a stream
that divides different
territories.
And Bildad, another
biblical name.
These two are the managing
partners of the ship.
And Peleg seems to be the
real managing partner.
He's the one that's
constructing the negotiations.
Bildad is looking at a book,
and periodically he looks up.
And what he ostensibly is
reading is this chapter
from Matthew, right?
Chapter 6, verses 19 to 21.
Lay not up for yourselves
treasure upon earth where moth
and rust doth corrupt.
And where thieves break
through and steal.
But lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven,
where neither moth
nor rust doth corrupt.
And where thieves do not
break through nor steal.
For where your treasure is,
there your heart be also.
That's what he's
ostensibly reading.
And what emerges is a
kind of interesting pun
on the idea of the lay, right?
And remember that Ishmael
has just told us a little bit
about the way in which whalers
normally use the term lay.
And this is on page
75 of the novel.
Here Ishmael is explaining
that the way
that sailors are customarily
is through some portion
of the net proceeds of a voyage.
You can imagine that everybody
has shared in this voyage,
and the owners have
a certain number.
And according to how
highly you were rated,
and how important you are to the
ship, you get a certain fraction
of the clear net proceeds.
So Ishmael has decided the
probably what is appropriate
for him to get is
something like the 275th lay.
Or as he puts it on
the bottom of 75,
The two hundred seventy-fifth
part of the clear net proceeds
of the voyage, whatever they
might eventually amount to.
And though the 275th lay is what
they call a rather long lay,
yet it was better than nothing.
And if we had a lucky voyage
would pretty nearly pay
for the clothing I would
wear out on it, not to speak
of my three years beef and board
for which I would not
have to pay one stiver.
All right?
So he's thinking he's not
going to be paid very well,
but he's going to get
experience, and he's going
to basically break even.
Does he end up with
the 275th lay?
No, he does not.
He ends up with something
a little bit worse.
He ends up with the 300th
lay, and he's glad to get it.
Why is he glad to get it?
Because Peleg and Bildad
have put him through a sort
of negotiating routine.
And it's linked to Bildad's
reading of the Bible, right?
So Peleg says, What are we going
to pay the guy, in
the middle of 75.
Well, Captain Bildad.
What d'ye say, what lay
shall we give this young man?
And Bildad you can
imagine looking up
and saying, Thou knowest best.
The seven hundred
and seventy-seventh wouldn't
be too much, would it?
And as your footnote tells
you it's a biblical number
from Genesis.
Okay, fine.
There are a lot of numbers in
Genesis, but that one has a kind
of ring to it, so fine.
Seven hundred and
seventy-seventh, and then this.
For where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also.
Peleg says I'm going to put him
down for the three hundredth.
Now 300's a lot better than 777.
And Ishmael has already
[inaudible] on the fact
that this 777th lay
is a really bad thing.
Okay. So Bildad insists
a little bit.
Captain Peleg, thou
hast a generous heart.
But thou must consider the duty
thou owest to the other owners
of this ship, widows and
orphans many of them.
So there's a kind of Christian
logic I suppose that's
at stake in 777.
I don't know.
There's another kind of
Christian logic that seems to be
at stake here, widows
and orphans, right?
We have to be Christian.
We have to provide charity.
We have to provide for
those, many of them.
And then if we are too
abundantly reward the labors
of this young man, we
may be taking the bread
from those widows
and those orphan.
The seven hundred
and seventy-seventh
lay, Captain Peleg.
Now at this, Peleg,
who apparently doesn't
like to be contradicted, starts
to get a little bit of exercise.
Thou Bildad!
roared Peleg, starting up and
clattering about the cabin.
Blast ye, Bildad!
If I had followed thy
advice in these matters,
I would afore now had
a conscience to lug
about that would be heavy enough
to founder the largest ship
that ever sailed
round Cape Horn.
Think of like Jacob Marley
and that's the kind of idea.
Captain Peleg, said
Bildad steadily,
thy conscience may be
drawing ten inches of water,
or ten fathoms, I can't tell.
But as thou art still an
impenitent man, Captain Peleg,
I greatly fear lest thy
conscience be but a leaky one.
And will in the end
sink thee foundering
down to the fiery
pit, Captain Peleg.
All right, them's fighting
words apparently, right?
Fiery pit!
Ye insult me, man.
Past all natural
bearing, ye insult me.
It's an all-fired outrage
to tell any human creature
that he's bound to hell.
Which is of course what every
Puritan tells every child
that they raise, you know,
except for those that are
by the grace of God saved.
Flukes and flames!
Bildad, say that again to
me, and start my soul-bolts.
But I'll, I'll.
They get into almost a
kind of fist fight here.
And at a certain point
it's like okay, fine.
I'll take the 300 lay.
Now, what is this?
I mean what kind of
negotiating tactic is this?
We give it a name on cop shows.
Yes?
>> Student: That's
[inaudible]
to be good cop, bad cop.
>> Teacher: Yes,
it's a good cop.
It's a kind of classic
early good cop,
bad cop routine, right?
Peleg is the good cop.
Bildad is the bad cop.
But what I want you to
see that lies beneath it,
is what place does this have
in an economic negotiation?
You know, okay, we're
willing to accept maybe
that it's not a bad thing
for the owners of a ship
to care a little
[inaudible] investments
for the widows and the orphans.
And to be making sure that
they are taken care of.
Okay, that's a kind
of generous capitalism
that we don't normally see.
But 777th lay because
you're reading Matthew?
And because lay happens to occur
in both your conversation
and in text?
There's something
slightly odd about that.
What I want you to see is
that there are two discourses
that are coming into collision
with one another here.
One of them is a discourse
about the limitations of agency
that is also religious
and spiritual, biblical.
Another is theoretically
a discourse about economy,
which may or may not be
about limitations on agency.
But the two collide, and you
might say what their strategy
is, is to shift the ground
of discussion from the realm
in which is properly belongs,
which is economy and wages.
To a realm in which it
probably shouldn't belong,
which is spirituality
and the Bible
and biblical sorts
of reasonings.
And you can say okay, well,
maybe they're good Christians
and they have a theological
reason for that.
But then as we see,
what happens is later
on when they meet Queequeg,
they're a little bit concerned
about his, you know, his
spiritual well-being.
But as soon as he can hit
the mark with a harpoon it's
like pay the man and
there's no negotiating.
It's like what, what does he
get, the 80th lay or something?
Something really good, right?
So one of the things you can see
here is that one of the things
that the novel I think
is dramatizing here,
is that biblical culture
is still powerful here.
It needs to be contended with.
But it can be used
for persuasion,
and not necessarily
only in the arena
of religion and spirituality.
There are cultural uses for
religion, in other words.
And one of the uses to
which it's put right here is
to get Ishmael to
take a lower wage
than he otherwise
would have expected.
And so we want to track that.
We'll see another use of that.
But we want to see where in
the novel, you might say,
different registers of discourse
are combined, juxtaposed,
and sometimes put in
collision with one another.
What is Melville saying about
the nature of those discourses
when these kinds
of things happen?
All right, but the chapter
isn't quite over yet.
He say, you know,
I've got a friend.
Can I bring him down?
Sure, okay.
Finally, he's about to leave
and on the top of 78 he says,
Turning back I accosted
Captain Peleg,
inquiring where Captain
Ahab was to be found.
And what dost thou
want of Captain Ahab?
It's all right enough,
thou art shipped.
So as you know, I asked
you about Ahab before,
before you signed up
but now you signed up.
Sorry, you know it doesn't
really matter whether you see
him or not.
Yes, but I should like
to see him, Ishmael says.
No, I don't think you'll
be able to at present.
I don't know exactly
what's the matter with him,
but he keeps close inside
the house, a sort of sick
and yet he don't look so.
Now we've already been
prepared a little bit
for Ahab I said, right?
I mean this idea of the
Quakers that have become Quakers
with a vengeance, and
they're bloody Quakers
and they become pageant
creatures.
And really if we are, we.
We should understand that
this is a description,
a kind of foreshadowing
of Ahab himself, right?
He speaks his mighty
scripture language,
they're born for
noble tragedies.
So here's another
description of Ahab,
and in a way it makes him less
of an epic figure and more
of something like a
figure of paradox.
A sort of sick, and
yet he don't look so.
In fact, he ain't sick.
But no, he ain't well either.
Anyhow, young man, he
won't always see me,
so I don't suppose he will thee.
And then this, which
might make you worry
if you're a greenhorn who's
just sign on to the ship.
He's a queer man, Captain Ahab,
or so some think,
but a good one.
Oh, thou'lt like
him well enough.
No fear, no fear.
He's a grand, ungodly,
god-like man, Captain Ahab.
Doesn't speak much,
but when he does speak,
then you may well listen.
What does that mean, grand?
Okay, that's keeping
with the ethic
of ungodly and yet god-like man?
What does that.
You know, there's a kind of
an apparent paradox there.
One of the things that might
make you really worry is the
fact that what Ahab may be is
a kind of figure who's prone
to blasphemy, who
might well be wanting
to set himself up
instead of God.
Might give you pause.
Mark ye, be forewarned,
Ahab's above the common.
Ahab's been in colleges, as
well as 'mong the cannibals.
Been used to deeper
wonders than the waves.
Fixed his fiery lance
in mightier,
stranger foes than whales.
At this point we might
wonder what are mightier,
stranger foes than whales?
His lance!
aye, the keenest and the surest
that out of all our isle!
Oh, he ain't Captain Bildad, no.
And he ain't Captain Peleg.
He's Ahab, boy, And Ahab of old,
thou knowest, was
a crowned king!
Okay, so we're invoke the Bible.
Ahab has authority because why?
Because in the Bible
Ahab was a crowned king.
You might say, well,
what's the logic of that?
Why does the name of an ancient
historical character have
anything to do with
this present Ahab?
But more than that,
Ishmael is one
of these people who's
actually read the Bible
and knows his Bible,
he's a school teacher.
So he knows this.
And a very vile one.
When that wicked king
was slain, the dogs,
did they not lick his blood?
So you might say
Peleg is bluffing.
Ishmael calls his
bluff, so now Peleg has
to change his tactics
a little bit.
Come hither to me.
Hither, hither, said Peleg,
with a significance in his eye
that almost startled me.
Look ye, lad.
Never say that on
board the Pequod.
Never say it anywhere.
Captain Ahab did
not name himself.
All right, so you want to see
that he's done a completely
180-degree reversal.
At first he says,
oh, Ahab authority.
Ahab was a king.
And then Ishmael says,
Ye, he's a wicked king
and dogs licked his blood.
Okay, never say that.
His name doesn't mean anything.
He didn't name himself,
it's not his fault.
'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim
of his crazy, widowed mother
who died when he was
only a twelve month old.
Pause. And yet the old
squaw Tistig, at Gayhead,
said that the name would
somehow prove prophetic.
Okay, so we have that
other evidence as well.
Perhaps other fools like
her may tell thee the same.
Why bring that up?
To be more persuasive?
Or because Peleg can't quite
get it out of his head.
I wish to warn thee.
It's a lie.
I know Captain Ahab well.
I've sailed with him
as mate years ago.
I know what he is.
A good man, not a pious
good man like Bildad,
but a swearing good
man, something like me.
Only there's a good
deal more of him.
Aye, aye, I know that
he was never very jolly.
And I know that on
the passage home pains
in his bleeding stump.
What? That brought that
about, as any one may see.
I know, too, that ever since
he lost his leg last voyage
by that accursed whale
he's been a kind of moody,
desperate moody, and
savage sometimes.
Right? So now we're
getting a kind
of psychological
explanation for this.
But that will all pass off.
And once for all, let me tell
thee and assure thee young man.
And this formulation should
remind you of something
that you've heard in
the novel already.
It's better to sail with
a moody good captain
than a laughing bad one.
Is that reminding
anybody of anything?
>> Student: That
we're cannibals.
>> Teacher: Yes, right.
So we're cannibals and what
do we think about that?
What do we think about this?
What does it mean that Peleg
isn't sometimes using the same
kind of rationalizing
locution that Ishmael did?
So good-bye to thee, and
wrong not Captain Ahab,
because he happens to
have a wicked name.
Okay? Naming isn't destiny.
Naming doesn't mean
anything, right?
That's what we take
away from this.
Oh, one more thing.
Besides my boy, he has a wife,
not three voyages wedded.
A sweet, resigned girl.
Think of that.
By that sweet girl that
old man has a child.
Hold ye then there can be any
utter, hopeless harm in Ahab?
No, no, my lad.
Stricken, blasted, if he
be, Ahab has his humanities!
Okay, fine.
So I want to ask you, having,
you know, read all the things
that you've read, what
does it mean if we're going
to stake Ahab's humanity
on the fact
that he has a wife and child?
The wife and child he
pretty much leaves behind
for long periods of
time back on land.
You might almost say that
he goes to sea in part
to escape them, or at least
that's the effect of it.
So if his humanity is rooted
back there what do we,
what is that image
supposed to tell us?
Is he leaving behind
his humanity?
Is that going to be the anchor
that keeps him grounded somehow,
a thing to which
he always returns?
Is that what we're
supposed to believe?
Well, one of them we
can go as, you know,
students of literary history,
we can go meta, if you will.
And ask ourselves this.
What does it mean that Peleg
is invoking, you might say,
the Christian domestic
tradition of the novel to stake
out Ahab's humanities which we
already know is precisely the
tradition against which Moby
Dick is situating itself.
Again, these are paradoxes
for us to think about.
Should, does this ennoble Ahab?
Or does it mean.
Or is this something.
I mean we're going
to read a novel
in which there are
pretty much no women.
So what does it mean that
one's tenuous tie to a wife
and child is going to be
the basis of your humanity?
Even if we put the best
construction on it, we might say
that that's a fairly
tenuous tie to something
that is liable to
be fragile, no?
As the voyage continues.
If that's where we're
staking our humanity,
then maybe we do have a problem.
Of course Ishmael
himself doesn't know.
Well, at least the narrative
does and perhaps if we do.
As I walked away, I was
full of thoughtfulness.
What had been incidentally
revealed to me of Captain Ahab,
filled me with a
certain wild vagueness
of painfulness concerning him.
And somehow, at that time, I
felt a sympathy and a sorrow
for him, but I don't know what,
unless it was the
cruel loss of his leg.
And one of the things I
want to suggest to you,
is there is that
idea of a sympathy
between Ishmael and Ahab.
And I want us to
think about that.
I mean obviously
in a certain way,
if we say that Ishmael is
constructing this narrative,
then Ahab and everybody else,
including Ishmael the character
in this narrative, is
Ishmael's own creation.
So of course he presumably
has some kind of sympathy
or some kind sympathetic,
some sort of negative
capabilities allowing him
to dramatize these characters.
Okay. But typically we
would say that Ishmael
and Ahab are very different
kinds of characters.
I think I've related this
to some of the reading
that Melville did
before he went away.
One of the things that he did
in going to Europe was try
to steep himself in
romantic literature.
And one of the people
that he read was Goethe.
And a couple of things
of Goethe's.
One, you know, Faust he read,
and he probably also
Dr. Faustus.
Goethe's autobiography,
Truth and Poetry.
So when he writes to Dante
[assumed spelling] later
on that, you know, that
he's interested in thinking
about whaling, but the
poetry is hard to comes out.
It's like, it doesn't
run very well.
It's like sap out of a
cold tree, but he means
to get it up by cooking it up.
All that stuff seems to, would
indicate that he's got Goethe
on his mind a little bit.
One other book of Goethe's
that he read was Wilhelm
Meister's Apprenticeship,
thought to be the
first bildungsroman.
And Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship is in part
about the young German boy who's
trying to bring a production
of Hamlet to the stage.
And Hamlet becomes an
interesting thing to bring
to the stage because it
allows Goethe, via Wilhelm
and his friends, to think
about what drama can do
and what the novel can do.
And they come up with the
theory that Melville seems
to have somewhat to heart.
Which is that drama is all about
action and pressing forward.
The novel is about consciousness
and process and thinking,
and therefore resists
pressing forward.
Hamlet, therefore, becomes
the novelistic of dramas.
It's got a novelist/protagonist
who really doesn't want
to do the thing that
he's supposed to do.
He's in a genre called
revenge tragedy.
He knows he's in a genre
called revenge tragedy.
Revenge tragedy requires
that he be the revenger,
and that he basically
kill everybody
so that the stage is littered
with dead bodies at the end.
Preferably not his own, but
if it has to be, so be it.
And interestingly, if
you remember your Hamlet,
he gets there by the end.
That's exactly what happens,
and yet not in the way
that would happen in
classical revenge tragedy
with an actively pressing
forward protagonist.
Hamlet tries to retard
it at everyone's prove,
he has to stage a play, he's
got to do all this stuff.
And finally he comes out almost
by accident, or through plots
that are not of his devising.
This, we might say, is a
dramatically inflected novel,
and we're going to see today
moments where it actually breaks
into drama for a couple minutes.
So one of the things
we might say is
that Melville is
interested in Hamlet
because it's a dramatically,
it's a novelistically
inflected drama.
Or perhaps the most
novelistic of dramas.
And what he's creating here
is a novel that's going
to be Shakespearean in
several senses, and maybe one
of these sense is
that it's going
to measure these forms
against one another.
So in Ahab we will find the
mighty pageant creature born
for epic, born for drama.
Pushing forward always.
Ahab is the revenger,
and in some crucial way this is
a revenge tragedy like Hamlet
and like its predecessors.
In some other ways though,
we have the narrator,
Ishmael, who is one of these.
Who is a very chatty, digressive
narrator who tells you things
that you really think you
don't really need to know.
And he's kind
of free-associating
it with you at times.
Wanting to keep us from getting
to where it is that we're going.
Now I suggested last time that
this is a story about trauma.
Maybe that's a psychological
explanation for what's going on.
That in some sense Ishmael also
knows where we're ending up,
and he's doing everything he
can to delay getting there.
Or you might say he's giving
us as much as we deserve
to understand the full weight
of the trauma that awaits us.
Okay. That would
suggest that Ahab
and Ishmael are very
different figures.
And some critics
have said that part
of the characteristic
feeling of Moby Dick is a kind
of alternation between
their styles.
We get these encyclopedic kind
of digressive style that's part
of Ishmael's narrative when
he's interested in the business
and the techniques of whaling.
And then we get these other very
dramatic chapters which are all
about Ahab and his
performance pieces.
And we see this kind
of alternation
for at least two-thirds
of the way through.
When you finish the novel we
can, you'll see what happens
to that set of alternations.
So what people would say,
at least at the beginning,
Ahab and Ishmael are
rather different characters.
I want us to ask in what
ways are they different?
And in what crucial
ways is there this kind
of sympathy between them?
Crucial similarities
between them all along.
That's one of the things
that I want to bear in mind.
This might be one place where
it starts, but it's almost as if
as soon as Ishmael thinks
about it he drops it.
As if perhaps it's almost too
traumatic, even in this moment,
for him to seriously think
about and so he lets it go.
Okay, I want to take a look now
at the first moment
that we see Ahab.
This is in the chapter
that's called Ahab.
And we are prepared for this
chapter by a series of chapters
that are designed to introduce
us to the crew, right?
So these are the
chapters, Chapter 26 and 27,
that are both called
Knights and Squires.
And so they give us an
introduction to the crew,
particularly the three mates.
Starbuck, Stubb and Flask.
All of whom have
different characters,
and those characters
become important
as the novel progresses.
We're introduced to
the three harpooneers
at the end of Chapter 27.
Not only Queequeg but
Tashtego and Daggoo.
And remember, Queequeg
is a South Seas Islander.
Tashtego is a Native American.
And Daggoo is an African,
so we have a kind of variety
of different others who are
serving as these harpooneer.
And then we get this passage
on 107 just before the
introduction of Ahab.
Let's take about eight lines
down from the top of 107.
Herein it is the same with
the American whale fishery
as with the American army and
military and merchant navies,
and the engineering forces
employed in the construction
of the American Canals
and Railroads.
Right? So he's talking here
about American military power,
and also the power of
American progress, right?
What's the building the
canals and railroads
that are enabling U.S., the
U.S. government and U.S. culture
to take control of a continent.
The same, I say, because in all
these cases the native American,
by which he doesn't
mean Indians.
He means the white Anglo-Saxon
presumably Protestant American.
The native American
liberally provides the brains,
the rest of the world
as generously supplying
the muscles.
Right? And so in this way,
you might say, the hierarchy
on board the Pequod
replicates American culture
in the middle of
the 19th Century.
No small number of these whaling
seamen belong to the Azores,
where the outward bound
Nantucket whalers frequently
touch to augment their crews
from the hardy peasants
of those rocky shores.
In like manner, the Greenland
whalers sailing out of Hull
or London, put in at
the Shetland Islands
to receive their full
complement of crews.
Upon the passage homewards,
they drop them there again.
How it is, there is no
telling, but Islanders seem
to make the best whalemen.
They were nearly all
Islanders in the Pequod.
Then he gives them
a term, a name.
Isolatoes too, I call such,
not acknowledging the
common continent of men,
but each Isolato living on a
separate continent of his own.
And in a way we might think
of this as very American.
When I think back to
Tocqueville's critique
of individualism, that it
creates a kind of egotism.
It creates a kind of atomism.
People withdraw from
the public society.
These guys start out that way.
And although they come
from all over the world,
but maybe they're sort
of perfect Americans.
They're all isolated,
each out for his own game
to get his high, you know,
his lay and that's about it.
But something happens,
either on all whalers
or certainly on this whaler.
Yet now, federated
along one keel,
what a set these Isolatoes were!
An Anacharsis Clootz deputation
from all the isles of the sea.
And the footnote tells
you that this is a kind
of cosmopolitan moment when
people from different nations
of the world come together
before the French assembly.
And all the ends of the
earth, accompanying Old Ahab
in the Pequod to lay the world's
grievances before that bar
from which not very many
of them ever come back.
And one of the things I want
to say about that phrase,
is this idea of being
federated on one keel.
Is a sense in which
Ishmael is playing
with the old metaphor
of the ship of state.
And suggesting that
there is a sense
in which the Pequod may well
be replicating the American,
you know, national polity.
And then one other thing
that we should mention.
Remember this is 1850.
Remember that Melville's
father-in-law is the man
who sends the first
[inaudible] of slaves
from New England back
down to the South.
There was the hope in this
moment that the problem,
the internal problems of slavery
might be deflected, if not,
you know, gotten away with,
gotten rid of completely
by the energies of
what became called
in this period Manifest Destiny.
The idea that the United
States would take over the.
It was a destiny,
the providence,
the fate if you will, of
the United States to take
over the entire continent.
If we could be outward
thinking, we wouldn't worry
about the problems
internally that we had.
Of course, the whole debate of
the Compromise of 1850 shows
that there's a problem
with that, right?
That it's precisely the
outcome of the Mexican War
that provokes the crisis
over slavery in 1850.
But there was this hope
that somehow Manifest Destiny
might take these energies
and deflect them outward
and keep American coherent.
So there's a certain way
in which Ishmael seems
to be playing with the idea
that the Pequod embodies these
energies of Manifest Destiny.
We'll see how well
that works out.
Question?
>> Student: Do you think
it
would be like, I don't know,
a mystery and also you.
[ Question inaudible ]
>> Teacher: Yes, I think.
I don't think you need
to make a, to say that.
I mean I don't know
how you'd argue that.
You say Isolato reminds
me of a Mulato that seems.
Maybe, it's possible.
I think you could
make that argument.
But certainly the other
things that you are saying,
and I don't think they depend
on that particular point,
are true enough, right?
That there is this sense
of everybody coming
together and being.
That the nation is
all implicated
in this larger system.
Here he's.
He is not at first singling
out the south, right,
in the way that Stowe is.
Stowe is saying love
you in the South.
We're, you, we understand
we're sympathetic with you,
and the people in the
North are equally guilty.
She's putting them together.
But look, if you will, where
the part of the passage
that I didn't get to ends up.
Who is this that he focuses on?
Black Little Pip, he never did.
Poor Alabama boy!
On the grim Pequod's forecastle,
ye shall ere long see him,
beating his tambourine.
Preclusive of the eternal
time, when sent for,
to the great quarter-deck
on high.
He was bid strike
in with angels,
and beat his tambourine
in glory.
Called a coward here,
hailed a hero there!
So I think that's
a whole discourse
of rage that's clearly
at stake here.
Right? It's these
South Sea Islanders
and others commonly
provide the muscle.
And then clearly when you bring
in Pip, you have that kind
of subtext of slavery
coming in as well.
So I think that it isn't
an allegory exactly.
But we might say a
lot of the elements
of the 1850s are being
thrown I here, mixed up.
And it seems to promote
something
like [inaudible] we could say.
I mean there's a number of
possibilities at this point.
We could say this is a kind of
version of Manifest Destiny,
ship of state sailing
off, going to go do battle
against the white whale,
the enemies of the nation.
Maybe. But also maybe
this is an emblem
of a certain kind
of cosmopolitanism.
And that would seem to
be the primary meaning
that he's getting at.
Now is this a cosmopolitanism
that's happening
because of the whaling mission?
Despite the whaling mission?
Is it the captain's intention?
It is something that the
captain is intending in order
to manipulate this
crew more effectively?
Does it have a different
outcome than either we
or the captain expect?
I think these are some of
the elements that are being,
you know, proposed here
by Ishmael in this moment.
And all of this before
we've actually seen Ahab.
In the next chapter
we actually see Ahab.
Now remember what Ishmael
has heard about him, right.
That he had his leg taken
off in a previous voyage,
and it made him kind of
moody and a little bit crazy.
And that he might or
might not be sick.
Take a look at the
bottom of 108.
Ahab finally comes up, and we
see him for the first time.
Now I want you to see what it is
that Ishmael mentions
first about him.
So Ahab is standing
on the quarter-deck,
which is basically the part of
the ship that's behind H, right?
So that's the captain's
province.
You go down J to
get to his cabin.
So he comes up and
at the bottom of 108,
Captain Ahab stood
upon his quarter-deck.
He's come out of the cabin and
they see him for the first time.
There seemed no sign of
bodily illness about him,
nor of the recovery from any.
He looked like a man
cut away from the stake,
when the fire has overrunningly
wasted all the limbs
without consuming them, or
taking away one particle
from their compacted
aged robustness.
His whole high, broad form
seemed made of solid bronze,
and shaped in an
unalterable mould
like Cellini's cast Perseus.
Threading its way out
from among his grey hairs,
and continuing right down one
side of his tawny scorched face
and neck, till it
disappeared in his clothing,
you saw a slender rod-like
mark, lividly whitish.
It resembled that perpendicular
seam sometimes made
in the straight, lofty
trunk of a great tree.
When the upper lightning
tearingly darts down it.
And without wrenching a
single twig, peels and grooves
out the bark from top to bottom,
ere running off into the soil,
leaving the tree still
greenly alive but branded.
Whether that mark
was born with him,
or whether it was the scar
left by some desperate wound,
no one could certainly say.
By some tacit consent
throughout the voyage,
little or no allusion was made
to it, especially by the mates.
But once Tashtego's senior,
an old Gay-Head Indian among the
crew, superstitiously asserted
that not till he was full
forty years old did Ahab become
that way branded.
And then it came upon him, not
in the fury of any mortal fray,
but in an elemental
strife at sea.
And remember, Ahab
has fixed his lances
in stranger things
than a while, right?
That's what Ishmael
has been told.
Yet, this wild hint seemed
inferentially negatived
by what a grey Manxman
insinuated.
An old sepulchral man, who,
having never before sailed
out of Nantucket, had never ere
this laid eye upon wild Ahab.
Nevertheless, the
old sea-traditions,
the immemorial credulities,
popularly invested
this old Manxman
with preternatural
powers of discernment.
Right? So we're talking about
how stories get passed on.
How legends get created.
How we believe what we believe.
The sailors, by tradition,
end up believing one
particular person.
Does he have more authority
really than the others
that they choose not to believe?
So that no white sailor
seriously contradicted him
when he said that if ever
Captain Ahab should be
tranquilly laid out,
which might hardly come
to pass, so he muttered.
Then, whoever should do that
last office for the dead,
would find a birth-mark
on him from crown to sole.
So powerfully did the whole
grim aspect of Ahab affect me,
and the livid brand
which streaked it,
that for the first few
moments I hardly noted
that leg upon which he partly.
That not a little of this
overbearing grimness was owing
to the barbaric white leg
upon which he partly stood.
And now we get to the peg leg.
I mean, if you think about
Ahab, the next thing you think
of after the white
whale is the peg leg.
I mean, that's the
characteristic.
What does it mean that
it's not the first thing
that strikes Ishmael about Ahab?
That the first thing he sees
is this scar that seems to run
down his face, livid white out
of his hairline that marks him?
What are the associations
that are being created here?
Why do this?
I'll give you one more
bit before I ask you.
Now this is at the bottom of the
end of the last full paragraph.
Not a word he spoke, nor did
his officers say aught to him.
Though by all their minutest
gestures and expressions,
they plainly showed the uneasy,
if not painful, consciousness
of being under a
troubled master-eye.
And not only that, but moody
stricken Ahab stood before them
with a crucifixion in his face.
In all the nameless
regal overbearing dignity
of some mighty woe.
So what's the pattern of imagery
that's being created here for us
around Ahab from the
beginning by Ishmael?
What are some of the
things that we see here?
Anybody? Yes?
>> Student: Well, you
know,
the whole scar thing
I think it's biblical.
It makes me think of.
I mean [inaudible]
especially about kings.
>> Teacher: Okay.
All right.
On the one hand, maybe
the mark of king,
branded from the beginning.
And let's go with
that branded word.
What does branded?
Who get, what gets branded?
Who gets branded?
>> Student: Cattle?
>> Teacher: Who?
Cattle did somebody say?
>> Student: Yes.
>> Teacher: Yes, okay .
Cattle.
>> Student: Slaves.
>> Teacher: Slaves.
Anything else?
Not so much these days
but, I mean, you know,
they could have done it
to Hester but they didn't.
>> Student: Prisoners.
>> Teacher: Who?
>> Student: Prisoners.
>> Teacher: Prisoners
or criminals, yes.
Right, you get that.
Anybody ever read
the Three Musketeers,
one of my favorite books?
>> Student: Uh-huh.
>> Teacher: Three
Musketeers,
and the Lady DeWinter, you know,
she's got the brand
of a criminal
which is finally revealed and
the whole plot turns on it.
Criminals, property, slaves.
These get branded.
What does it mean?
And then you bring up
another one, the mark of king.
What does that mean, that Ahab
has that set of associations?
And then at the bottom of 109,
Before them with a crucifixion
in his face, and some
regal overbearing dignity
of some mighty woe.
What's that?
It means now it seems
to indicate
that he's a kind
of Christ figure.
Well, okay.
I guess that's compatible.
I mean Christ was
branded, you know.
Christ was crucified because
he conceived of as a criminal.
And so what do we do with
this pattern of imagery?
Is his, are we seeing someone
who is a kind of Avatar
or an anti-type of Christ?
Therefore, I don't know
what, God's agent on earth?
That's the imagery
that's being created?
Or is it the opposite of that?
But how would we know?
Anything else that
see associated
with Ahab at this time?
Yes?
>> Student: Trees.
>> Teacher: Trees.
What does that do for us?
Anything?
>> Student: Trees
are kind of majestic.
>> Teacher: Okay,
possibly.
Trees are majestic.
Nature, maybe.
Although again, we're
going out on a land,
off land so not too many trees.
What happens to this
tree, by the way?
>> Student: It gets
hit by lightning.
>> Teacher: It gets
hit by lightning.
And what's the first image at
the beginning of the paragraph?
He looked like a man?
>> Student: Burned at the
stake.
>> Teacher: Cut away
from the stake.
Yes, who's been burned
at the stake.
So a tree struck like lightning.
Something majestic has been
scarred by lightning, fire.
Or somebody that's been
burned away, you know,
been burned at the stake
and cut away and also fire.
Another pattern of imagery
that's being overlaid,
that will be associated with
Ahab as we move forward.
I want you to track
both of these things.
Track the kind of, all three
of things you might see.
Track the imaging, the imagery
of branding, whether it's
of property or criminality
or something else.
Track the imagery of
Christ-like stuff.
Crucifixion and other things.
And track the imagery of fire.
How do they go along with Ahab?
How do they shift as
the novel progresses?
Okay. So he's up here on
the quarter-deck, right,
and that's the first
time that we see him.
And I want to skip
to the chapter that's actually
called The Quarter-Deck
so that we could
actually see what it is
that Ahab does, right?
We've already been told that
Ahab doesn't speak much,
but when he does
you better listen.
This is a moment that he speaks.
This is Chapter 36, page 136.
The Quarter-Deck.
And immediately when we
get to this chapter we see
that this is, there's
something a little odd about it.
Something a little odd about it.
Enter Ahab.
Then, all.
We get a stage direction, right?
Something is going on.
It's almost as if what
we are immediately clued
into is the fact that we're
about to see a kind
of performance.
And it's another way,
you might say perhaps
with a novel, shifting.
It's Shakespearean,
it's signaling it's
Shakespearean ambitions.
So Ahab comes.
Now a thing to know about
this, the quarter-desk first
of all is the province
of the officers
and especially the captain.
So when everybody's out
on the quarter-deck,
which is in the back part of
the ship, if the captain's
out there the officers
stay to the other side
so he can have privacy.
And the whole, the ordinary
crew doesn't go back.
In fact, most of the
non-officers are referred
to as people before the mast.
They're supposed to stay in
the front part of the ship.
And the officers have
the purview of the main,
from the main mast
on to the back.
Bringing more than that, ships
operate on watches, right?
Not everybody is
awake all at once.
You need some people to be awake
and some people to be asleep.
And the ship, some of the
ship can be run all the time.
A ship like a whaler, by the
way, carries a complement
of people that's far greater
than it actually
needs to run the ship.
Just because they're, as you'll
see later on next time, they,
a lot of them have to spend work
actually processing the whales
that they catch.
The shipping in fact
becomes a kind of factory
on the ocean for a while.
But you've got a big crew
and most of them are,
they're not always
in any one place
on the ship at any one time.
So for Ahab to say,
Send everybody aft
to the quarter-deck, is a
very strange thing to do.
This is on page 137.
Sir! said the mate,
astonished at an order seldom
or never given on
ship-board except
in some extraordinary case.
Send everybody aft,
repeated Ahab.
Mast-heads, there!
Come down!
It's like we're going
to pause, right.
Maybe it reminds you of that
moment of Bradberg's, you know,
but here I must take
a pause and look.
Everybody's going to get
down, no more lookouts.
Everybody back here.
The captain has something
to say.
Okay. Vehemently pausing,
he cried, What do ye do
when ye see a whale, men?
Sing out for him!
was the impulsive rejoinder
from a score of clubbed voices.
Good! cried Ahab, with a
wild approval in his tones.
Observing the hearty animation
into which his unexpected
question had
so magnetically thrown them.
I'm going to avoid
the temptation
to sound like Darth Insidious.
Gooood. Unlimited power!
Right. What do ye do next, men?
Lower away, and after him!
And what tune is
it ye pull to, men?
A dead whale or a stove boat!
Okay, so he's working
them up, right?
Okay. Then top of 138.
All ye mast-headers have
before now heard me give orders
about a White Whale.
Look ye! D'ye see this
Spanish ounce of gold?
Holding up a broad
bright coin to the sun.
It is a sixteen dollar
piece, men.
A doubloon.
D'ye see it?
Mr. Starbuck, hand
me yon top-maul.
And you can't particularly well
here because of the lights.
But this is the actual,
a representation
of the actual doubloon.
And if you were to look at it,
you would see that there was,
I'll put this in the
notes so that you can see
that there's a sun
right here on the top.
And a couple of mountains,
right?
So he takes this
doubloon and he nails it
to the middle mast, right there.
Or to the mast right
there, the main mast.
Okay. This is not a very good.
It's probably better to
see it on this one, right?
So he's, they're all gathered
by, in the quarter-deck
and he's going to nail it to
F, to the main mast there.
And they're all kind of
standing in that part of the,
rear part of the ship.
So he's nailed this thing.
What does that suggest?
Again, remember we talked
about the unacknowledged
biblical imagery in the spatter,
in the picture scene, right?
He's got three masts there.
You're going to nail a
doubloon to the middle one.
That's doing something more
with crucifixion imagery, right?
Although we have to think
what it its we're crucifying.
Are we crucifying a.
Are we crucifying gold?
Are we crucifying the economy?
Okay. And then again,
these are not allegories.
These are symbolic gestures.
But not from only the
novel, but the characters
within the novel are making.
Ahab knows how to manipulate.
So he wants you to, the first
he's doing is he says, look,
a good ounce this is, you know.
You guys are not
making anything on this.
Think about how much
money this is compared
to what you're supposed
to make on this voyage.
And he says this.
This is a couple of paragraphs.
Receiving the top-maul
from Starbuck,
he advanced towards
the main-mast
with the hammer uplifted
in one hand,
exhibiting the gold
with the other.
And with a high raised
voice exclaiming,
whosoever of ye raises
me a white-headed whale
with a wrinkled brow
and a crooked jaw.
Whosoever of ye raises me
that white-headed whale,
with three holes punctured
in his starboard fluke.
Look ye, whosoever of ye raises
me that same white whale,
he shall have this
gold ounce, my boys!
Hurray! That's a lot of
money, and it's going
to be there every single day
until they see this whale.
People are looking at it.
So he's created a
kind of symbol,
and it's got these
other overtones
that we might notice perhaps.
That's one thing that's
going on, so he puts that up.
He's created this pageant.
Everybody's attention is on
this, and it seems to be more
or less in keeping with what
they're supposed be doing.
They're supposed to
hunt whales, right?
Okay. He's interested
in a particular one.
He's giving a special
reward for it.
That's fine, right?
Maybe not.
Captain Ahab, said Tashtego,
a little bit further down.
That white whale must be the
same that some call Moby Dick.
Moby Dick?
shouted Ahab.
Do ye know the white
whale then, Tash?
Does he fan-tail
a little curious,
sir, before he goes down?
said the Gay-Header
deliberately.
And has he a curious spout,
too, said Daggoo, very bushy,
even for a parmacetty, and
mighty quick, Captain Ahab?
And that's Daggoo.
And then our friend,
Have he one, two, tree.
Oh? Good many iron in
him hide, too, Captain,
cried Queequeg disjointedly.
All twiske-tee betwisk,
like him, him.
Corkscrew!
cried Ahab.
Aye, Queequeg.
The harpoons lie all
twisted and wrenched in him.
Aye, Daggoo, his
spout is a big one,
like a whole shock of wheat.
And white as a pile
of our Nantucket wool
after the great annual
sheep-shearing.
Aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails
like a split jib in a squall.
Death and devils!
Men, it is Moby Dick
ye have seen.
Moby Dick.
Moby Dick!
Right? Okay.
Moby Dick.
They're not the only ones
who have heard of Moby Dick.
Starbuck, the first mate,
has heard about him too.
Captain Ahab, said Starbuck
who, with Stubb and Flask,
had thus far been
eyeing his superior
with increasing surprise.
But at last seemed
struck with a thought
which somewhat explained
all the wonder.
Captain Ahab, I have
heard of Moby Dick.
But was it not Moby Dick
that took off thy leg?
Who told you that?
Said Ahab, then pausing.
Aye, Starbuck.
Aye, and my hearties all round.
It was Moby Dick
that dismasted me.
Moby Dick that brought me to
this dead stump I stand on now.
Aye, aye! he shouted with a
terrific, loud, animal sob,
like that of a heart-stricken
moose.
Aye, aye! it was that accursed
white whale that razeed me.
Made a poor pegging lubber
of me for ever and a day!
Then tossing both arms,
with measureless imprecations
he shouted out, Aye, aye!
And I'll chase him round Good
Hope, and round the horn,
and round the Norway maelstrom.
And round perdition's
flames before I give him up.
And this is what ye
have shipped for, men!
To chase that white whale
on both sides of land,
and over all sides of earth,
till he spouts black
blood and rolls fin out.
What say ye, men, will ye
splice hands on it, now?
I think ye do look brave.
Aye, aye! shouted everybody.
Okay, so. All right.
So the men are all psyched,
but what do they know, right?
Dumb heathens, right?
Starbuck, who clearly
starts to serve as a kind
of conscience of the voyage.
I am game for his crooked jaw,
and for the jaws of Death too,
Captain Ahab, if it
fairly comes in the way
of the business we follow.
But I came here to hunt whales,
not my commander's vengeance.
How many barrels will thy
vengeance yield thee even
if thou gettest it,
Captain Ahab?
It will not fetch thee much
in our Nantucket market.
Okay. This is where
our experience
with difference discourses,
coming against one another,
comes, it will be helpful to us.
He is invoking the discourse
of business and economy.
What they've signed
up for, right?
They are the designated agents
of the owners of the Pequod.
They each are going to receive
a share of the proceeds.
They need to catch
whales, and they need
to catch a lot of them.
They stay out on
the sea for two,
three years until their
holds are full of whale oil.
And then they go back
and they sell their oil,
and they all make their money.
Assuming the price of oil
does not precipitously drop,
which in a few years
it actually does.
But that's not for here.
Looking for one whale
out of a whole sea?
That doesn't seem
very profitable.
Won't fetch thee much in
your Nantucket market, right?
Ahab has a rejoinder.
Nantucket market!
Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck.
Thou requirest a
little lower layer.
If money's to be
the measurer, man,
and the accountants have
computed their great
counting-house the globe,
by girdling it with guineas,
one to every three
parts of an inch.
Then, let me tell thee, that
my vengeance will fetch a great
premium here!
He smites his chest,
whispered Stubb.
What's that for?
Methinks it rings
most vast, but hollow.
Now I want you to
think about Emerson
for a moment, among
other people.
Think about what Emerson says
about joint stock companies,
and what economy does to people.
It gives them this
sense of false goods.
He wants them to wake up
and spring to the truth.
There's a sense in which Ahab is
sampling rephrasing what Emerson
has already told us.
Is money supposed to be
the measure of a man?
But Starbuck won't let it go,
because there's another
way of thinking about it.
Vengeance on a dumb brute!
cried Starbuck, that
simply smote thee
from blindest instinct!
Madness! To be enraged
with a dumb thing,
Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.
Right? Okay.
It's just an animal.
It struck you because
you were chasing it.
It didn't mean anything.
It was an accident
of the fishery.
This is another affront to
Ahab, perhaps an even worse one.
And it's something
he can't abide.
And so look at the long
speech that he gives
on the next, top
of the next page.
Hark ye yet again, the
little lower layer.
And now he's going
into something
that we might call a
kind of metaphysical key.
Certainly this resonates
with platonic philosophy
on the one hand, you know.
The idea that ideas
are the real reality,
rather than particular
manifestations.
I think we've talked about
this with the Puritans as well.
Something about the
pneumenal world,
the world of spirit rather
than the phenomenal
world, the world of matter.
That's what's the real
thing, the world up there.
Hark ye yet again, the
little lower layer.
All visible objects, man,
are but as pasteboard masks.
But in each event, in the living
act, the undoubted deed there,
some unknown but still reasoning
thing puts forth the mouldings
of its features from
behind the unreasoning mask.
All right, think of the
signals he's sending.
Visible objects is just a mask.
The true meaning, the true
reality is somewhere behind what
we see.
Behind the material world.
Think of the number of
writers in our course with whom
that would resonate positively.
If man will strike,
strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner
reach outside except
by thrusting through the wall?
To me, the white whale is
that wall, shoved near to me.
Sometimes I think
there's naught beyond.
But 'tis enough.
He tasks me, he heaps me.
I see in him outrageous
strength,
with an inscrutable
malice sinewing it.
That inscrutable thing.
And remember where the
word inscrutable comes up.
It comes up in Puritan
discourse all the time,
right, inscrutable.
God is inscrutable.
What does it mean if the
whale is inscrutable,
or the thing behind the
whale is inscrutable?
And this is the sentence I
want you to keep in mind.
That inscrutable thing
is chiefly what I hate.
And be the white whale agent,
or be the white whale principal,
I will wreak that hate upon him.
Talk not to me of
blasphemy, man.
I'd strike the sun
if it insulted me.
For could the sun do that,
then could I do the other.
Since there is ever a
sort of fair play herein,
jealousy presiding
over all creations.
Principal and agent again is
mostly economic language, right?
I mean the owners of the
Pequod are the principals.
The sailors are agents.
Ahab is in a somewhat ambiguous
position since he's both.
He's both a co-owner and one
of the chief agents executing
the intention of the owners.
And that's what agents do,
they execute intentions.
Is the white whale an
agent for something else?
Executing some other
intention for some other being?
If so, what?
Is the white whale a principal
working on its own intention?
Whatever it is, it's
that intentional thing
that Ahab wants to give to.
So if it's the white
whale itself, fine.
Kill it, we got rid of
the intending thing.
If the white whale is working
on behalf of something else,
no other access to
the intending thing
than through the white whale.
What I want you to see is
that however you construe it,
it construes that
there is intention.
He is refuting with, he
cannot stand the idea
that Starbuck has given
us on the previous page.
That it was just instinct.
That there was no
meaning in it at all.
I want you to think
about this logic.
We've seen it before, right?
Who is that looks at
every little thing,
and some big things, and thinks
there's meaning behind it?
That it's part of a larger plan.
That there's intention.
That there's providence, right?
This is a weird kind of
Puritan-like thinking.
Ahab shares with the
Puritans a certain kind
of haunt to the imagination.
So that even if he is
a Quaker ostensibly,
you say it's a mutated form
of Quakers and it has a lot
of seeming fundamentalism
built into it.
This idea of intentionality,
of fatedness,
of things meaning things.
Except in his case, it's
become kind of inverted.
And again, there's a kind of
epic motif here as well, right?
Where is that we would
see the sun actually come
down in a battlefield and
content with a human being,
if not on the pages
of Homer, right?
When Apollo comes and fights
on the side of the Trojans,
among many different examples.
Ahab, therefore, figures himself
as in fact what we've
heard earlier.
As this ungodly, god-like man.
He's willing to be what Starbuck
thinks of as blasphemous.
[ Silence ]
And he understands that
he has a certain kind
of persuasive power, right?
What has he done,
in other words?
He has taken an economic
discourse.
He's appropriated the terms
of that economic discourse,
agent and principal, and
turned them into kind
of a philosophical
or metaphysical key
so that they come to
mean something different.
It's almost a reverse, you
might say, of what Peleg
and Bildad have done
to Ishmael on the ship.
But he isn't done yet.
He needs to seal the deal.
So at the top of 141.
The measure!
The measure!
cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter,
and turning to the harpooneers,
he ordered them to
produce their weapons.
Then ranging them before
him near the capstan,
with their harpoons
in their hands,
while his three mates stood
at his side with their lances,
and the rest of the ship's
company formed a circle round
the group.
Right? So they're all at the
center, everybody's in a circle.
There's clearly some kind of
ritual about to take place.
He stood for an instant
searchingly eyeing every man
of his crew.
Right? He's the boss, but
he's going to make a kind
of personal connection
to all of them.
He knows how to manipulate.
You can see what this
is, is a scene in which,
of ideological persuasion
which he is bending them
from one mission to another.
Or perhaps revealing the true
measure, the true mission
that he thinks they
signed up for.
But he's got to persuade them.
He's only one guy.
If they all ban against him in
mutiny he can't do anything.
So he has a certain
position of authority,
but he needs to seal the deal.
He needs to get them to believe
that his mission
is their mission.
First thing to do,
drink together.
That always is good, right?
Drink and pass!
And drink in a ritual way.
The crew alone now drink.
Round with it, round!
Short draughts, long
swallows, men.
Tis hot as Satan's hoof.
So, so, it goes round
excellently.
It spiralizes in ye.
Forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye.
Well done, almost drained.
Steward, refill!
Okay. It's clearly a
scene of communion, right?
So we have a lot of
religious imagery here,
but it's being manipulated.
It's hot as Satan's hoof.
We're going to drink together.
We're going to have this
kind of communal moment.
It is a kind of Satanic
communion.
And remember what I said, right?
Melville reverses
his own voyage.
He sends the Pequod out
east where he went west.
He goes around.
Melville himself goes around
South American and Cape Horn.
The Pequod goes around the
Cape of Good Hope and Africa.
What else is it a reversal of?
It's also a reversal of the
Puritans coming from Europe,
sailing west to the New World.
These guys sail east.
And as they leave the New
World, they have this kind
of devil communion here.
There's again a kind of
weird playing with it,
as if Ahab is part
of a kind of new.
He's part of a tradition that's,
in which the terms are set
by New England fundamentalism,
but he's reversed them
in strange ways for his
own particular purposes.
He's not done yet.
Advance, ye mates!
Cross your lances full before
me, at the bottom of 141.
Well done!
Let me touch the axis.
So saying, with extended arm,
he grasped the three level,
radiating lances at
their crossed centre.
While so doing, suddenly
and nervously twitched them.
Meanwhile, glancing intently
from Starbuck to Stubb,
from Stubb to Flask,
it seemed as though,
by some nameless interior
volition, he would fain,
have shocked into them the
same fiery emotion accumulated
within the Leyden jar of
his own magnetic life.
And then what does he do?
He asks the three harpooners
to detach the iron part
of their harpoons, turning
those into chalices.
He fills those and
forces the mates,
who are basically the masters,
each one, of a harpooner,
to become the cup bearers.
So this is the middle of 142.
Stab me not with
that keen steel!
Cant them, cant them over!
Know ye not the goblet end?
Turn up the socket!
So, so, now, ye cup-bearers,
advance.
The irons, take them.
Hold them while I fill!
Now three to three, ye stand.
Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who
are now made parties
to this indissoluble league.
This is the oath that
they all swear together
over against what Starbuck
has asked them to do, right?
And it's done through a mixture
of ritual that is a blend
of kind of Christian
ritual and pagan ritual.
And it has a lot of booze.
It's ideological
persuasion in action, right?
What happens?
Melville wants, or Ishmael
wants, one of the two of them,
wants to register how radical
a gesture this has been.
And so what happens is
that Ishmael disappears
from the narrative for
a number of chapters.
And these chapters
turn instead to about
to be dramatic chapters.
In fact, they're soliloquys.
The first one, the Sunset
chapter, is Ahab's soliloquy.
And there are people
who have actually said
that it's Shakespearean
in his language.
Somebody's actually rearranged
this into blank verse lines
and it works pretty well,
so it's got that kind
of Shakespearean cadence.
I won't read it to
you, but I'll point
out one interesting
image at the end of 143.
He's talking about people
who are fighting against by,
they're kind of,
they have rifles.
They're behind cotton bags.
Ahab says, Come forth from
behind your cotton bags!
I have no long gun to reach ye.
Come, Ahab's compliments to ye.
Come and see if ye
can swerve me.
Swerve me?
Ye cannot swerve me, else
ye swerve yourselves!
Man has ye there.
Swerve me?
Look at this one.
The path to my fixed purpose
is laid with iron rails,
whereon my soul is
grooved to run.
Over unsounded gorges, through
the rifled hearts of mountains,
under torrents' beds,
unerringly I rush!
Naught's an obstacle, naught's
an angle to the iron way!
Of what is that an image?
What's he evoking there?
How does he metaphorize himself?
>> Student: It's a trade.
>> Teacher: Yes,
it's a trade, right?
So he is linking himself
to the very emblem
of American progress, right?
Capturing that imagery of,
you know, the Americans taking
over the continent through
canals and rail building.
But it's an image of purpose.
And he says, you know,
my purpose is fixed.
I can't be served.
So think about that
as an image of agency.
What agency does the
railroad engine have?
It goes from its starting
point to its destination
on these unbending rails.
But can it deviate at all?
It has a fixed purpose.
Does it have agency?
Is it simply not
acting under orders
that have been given to it?
The place on a rail, it's
been sent, you go forward.
There's a limited
amount of shifting to do.
And even when a train shifts
it's not even the engineer
who can do it, right?
The train rails need to be
shifted by someone else.
It's a kind of paradoxical
image of power.
Ishmael has Ahab
evoking this as an image
of his fixed purpose
and his power.
But I want you to see there's
a kind of ambivalent image
in which the dynamics of agency
are very much constrained.
Couple of other things to know.
So each of the other
mates get their chapter.
Starbuck gets his.
Again, realizing he is a
testimony in some sense.
He sees what's going on,
but he's almost powerless
to do anything about it, right?
Take a look at the top of 144.
My soul is more than matched.
She's overmanned
and by a madman!
He drilled deep down, and
blasted all my reason out of me!
I think I see his impious end;
but feel that I must
help him to it.
Will I, nill I, right there,
where's his agency there?
The ineffable thing
has tied me to him.
Tows me with a cable I
have no knife to cut.
Horrible old man!
Who's over him, he cries.
Aye, he would be a
democrat to all above.
Namely he says I can, you know,
God has to come down to my life,
and go to God so I
can fight the sun.
Look how he lords
it over all below.
Oh! I plainly see my miserable
office, to obey, rebelling.
And worse yet, to hate
with touch of pity!
We'll come back to this,
but there's a sense again
of a sympathy between Starbuck
and Ahab, as if Ahab seems
to Starbuck a thing that
he himself, Starbuck,
could easily become and
with whom he has sympathy.
The next mate, jolly Stubb.
Again these are all versions
of Ahab, you might say,
and possibly of Ishmael as well.
But look at this line here.
So Stubb is the one
who is the comic force.
Ha! ha! ha!
Clear my throat!
I've been thinking over
it ever since, and ha,
that's the final consequence.
Why so? Because a
laugh's the wisest,
easiest answer to
all that's queer.
And come what will, one
comfort always left,
that unfailing comfort is,
it's all predestinated.
So that might remind us in this
course of Edward Taylor, right?
I mean taking a kind of comic
view of this idea of providence
and predestination, and a
potential lack of agency.
Who bolds the sun, right?
It's kind of funny
at the beginning
of God's determinations.
[ Student sneezes ]
Bless you.
But notice how the thing
that gives Stubb comfort
here is precisely the thing
that drives Ahab mad.
The fact that it's
all predestinated.
Well, which is it?
Is predestinated something
that should drive us
crazy and feel tragic?
Provoke kind of war-like
epic responses?
Or should it just allow us to,
you know, take it as it comes.
Enjoy our life.
Do what we need to
do, and not worry
about the larger
meanings of it all?
The point is, someone
like Stubb can do that.
Ahab can't.
So again, we have a
collision of perspectives.
Both of them believe
in predestination,
but there are radically
different ways to do it.
Which way in the
end will win out?
Then Chapter 40 gives us a kind
of mad Walpurgisnacht,
as in Goethe's Faust.
Kind of, you know, a night where
seemingly spirits come out.
Won't go through it all,
but there's lots of
different voices.
Kind of weird racist thing
going on with Daggoo.
I'm getting into a
fight in the center.
It kind of, you might say,
it takes the whole dramatic
portion of this to a climax.
And then we get to
the top of 152.
The chapter that's called Moby
Dick, and Ishmael is back.
[ Silence ]
And again, what we've
had is a text
that was disrupted,
textually, right?
Ahab's disruption of the
voyage is signaled textually
by disruption of the stopalistic
[assumed spelling] form
of the text.
It's almost now as if
Ishmael asks us to come back
to personal narrative,
but we have to go back
and rethink everything.
We have to go back at
least to the quarter-deck
and rethink what Ahab's role
was and what Ishmael's role was.
Because I, Ishmael,
was one of that crew.
My shouts had gone
up with the rest.
My oath had been
welded with theirs.
And stronger I shouted, and more
did I hammer and clinch my oath,
because of the dread in my soul.
A wild, mystical,
sympathetical feeling was in me.
Now remember we've seen the
seeds of that sympathy planted
as soon as he heard Ahab's name.
Ahab's quenchless
feud seemed mine.
With greedy ears I
learned the history
of that murderous
monster against whom I
and all the others had taken our
oaths of violence and revenge.
Right? So what I said
before was, what Ahab needs
to do is he can't just order it.
He needs to get them to believe.
This paragraph here
indicates the extent
to which he's gotten
them to believe.
So much so that to register,
Ishmael has to basically
lose himself in the oath
and the events that
follow from it.
And only then manage
retrospectively
to reassert himself.
Right? So it's almost as if
the narrative happens with him,
and then he has to go
back and reinject him.
And we have to try to
reinject him ourselves back
into the narrative.
That's how effective,
you might say, it's been.
Ahab has completely
taken over them.
Their identities have
become completely linked
to this idea of the mission.
Now I want to show you, I'll end
today with one other chapter.
It's called The Chart in
which Ishmael tries to account
for Ahab, using that same
language of agent and principal.
This is on page 166.
It's Chapter 44.
And it's one of these
strange split chapters.
It starts off one
way and ends another.
It's about trying to chart
the progress of the whale.
Ahab has all these whale charts.
I meant to bring one together.
I'll start next time
with a whale chart
so that you can see it.
I mean you think this
is kind of crazy.
In a sense it is, but
in a sense it isn't.
Though whale ships all tend
to follow a similar track.
I mean they know from
experience where the populations
of whales go to at
different times of the year.
They know where they're
going to be birthing,
where they're going
to be hunting.
Where they're going
to be doing what.
So they all fall
a similar track.
That's how come whale ships
can run into each other
on the ocean, and we'll talk
about the Gam chapters
next time.
Ahab is trying to map.
He's trying to pursue a route
that will give him the greatest
chance of finding Moby Dick.
He has an idea of where he
will eventually find him.
Back where in fact he had that
first confrontation with him.
But he's hoping to
go in such a route
that he might encounter
him along the way.
And there's a suggestion
with that,
that stuff about
the spirit spout.
And that in fact Moby Dick
may be playing with them
and being not too far
away from them all along.
But one of the things that
the chapter here suggests is
that rational belief
and scientific methods
and empiricism will
only take you so far.
That maybe where Moby
Dick is concerned,
the rules don't tend to apply.
And that's what Ishmael
tries to get
at at the end of this chapter.
Take a look on page 169.
[ Silence ]
This is into the first
full paragraph on 169.
Ahab is asking himself, And
have I not tallied the whale,
Ahab would mutter to
himself, as after poring
over his charts till long
after midnight he would
throw himself back
in reveries, tallied him.
And shall he escape?
His broad fins are
bored, and scalloped
out like a lost sheep's ear!
Ishmael pulls back, Ah, God!
What trances of torments does
that man endure who is consumed
with one unachieved
revengeful desire.
He sleeps with clenched hands,
and wakes with his own
bloody nails in his palms.
Another image of crucifixion.
And we might think of again part
of what Melville is exploring
is what Hawthorne explored
in the Scarlet Letter
with Chillingworth,
a kind of psychology, the
demented obsession of revenge.
And then Ishmael tries to
get into Ahab's head, right?
And this is another
one of these chapters
where Ishmael is clearly
trying to look at things.
He's looking at things that
he can't possibly have seen,
so he's describing things
that he's only imagined.
So we need to take this
all with a grain of salt.
Often, when forced from
his hammock by exhausting
and intolerably vivid
dreams of the night.
Which, resuming his own intense
thoughts through the day,
carried them on amid a
clashing of phrensies,
and whirled them round and
round in his blazing brain,
till the very throbbing
of his life-spot became
insufferable anguish.
And when, as was sometimes the
case, these spiritual throes
in him heaved his
being up from its base,
and a chasm seemed
opening in him.
Now remember, he thought
that what he figured himself,
Ahab was, as a train
crossing gorges.
Here we have a chasm opening in
himself from which forked flames
and lightnings shot up.
Again, imagery of hell
and fire and lightning.
When this hell in himself
yawned beneath him,
a wild cry would be
heard through the ship.
And with glaring eyes Ahab
would burst from his state room,
as though escaping from
a bed that was on fire.
And I think there's more
than a little overtones
of Milton's Satan here, right?
A hell in himself.
What Satan realizes
in Paradise Lost is
that hell is not a
particular place.
Hell is wherever Satan
is, because he's been cast
out of the sight of God.
Now it's the insight that
Satan has that Melville seems
to think suggests that we
should have about Ahab as well.
Now listen to the
language of agency.
Yet these, perhaps, instead
of being the unsuppressable
symptoms
of some latent weakness, or
fright at his own resolve,
were but the plainest
tokens of its intensity.
For, at such times crazy
Ahab, the scheming,
unappeasedly steadfast
hunter of the White Whale,
this Ahab that had gone to
his hammock was not the agent
that so caused him to burst
from it in horror again.
The latter was the eternal,
living principle or soul in him
which at other times employed it
for its outer vehicle or agent.
It spontaneously sought escape
from the scorching contiguity
of the frantic thing
of which, for the time,
it was no longer an integral.
But as the mind does not exist
unless leagued with the soul,
therefore it must have
been that, in Ahab's case,
yielding up all his
thoughts and fancies
to his one supreme purpose.
That purpose, by its own
sheer inveteracy of will,
forced itself against gods
and devils into a kind
of self-assumed,
independent being of its own.
Right? What we have here is
a fracturing of personality,
a fracturing of agency.
And Ishmael uses
all this language.
But ask yourself whether
it really all makes sense.
Nay, could grimly live and
burn, while the common vitality
to which it was conjoined,
fled horror-stricken
from the unbidden
and unfathered birth.
Right? The revenge
is so powerful
that it takes on
a life of its own.
It gets Ahab soul fleeing from
it, and then when Ahab jumps
out of bed he's this
kind of formless.
Thinking of Edgar Huntley's
somnambulistic being.
A ray of living light, to be
sure, but without an object
to color, and therefore
a blankness in itself.
A whiteness, therefore not
unlike a certain other whiteness
that is in fact its obsession.
One last thing.
God help thee, old man,
thy thoughts have created
a creature in thee.
And he whose intense thinking
thus makes him a Prometheus.
A vulture feeds upon
that heart for ever,
that vulture the very
creature he creates.
We all know the Prometheus myth.
What's the name of
the modern Prometheus?
It's a book that Melville
read shortly before writing
Moby Dick.
It's what?
>> Student: I'll
say Frankenstein.
>> Teacher: Frankenstein.
The unfathered and
unbiddened birth.
Let's take it up
from there next time.
