Pursuing the Whale from Quarantine, part 3

Now on to the reading assignment. Our first block of assigned chapters is 36-39. In these chapters, Ahab explains his real motive for this voyage (spoiler: it's not making money harvesting whale oil), and we see some key characters react to it. I'm going to try to structure this post as I would a class discussion. That is, rather than announce up front the way I interpret these chapters, I'll lead you through several observations, and see if you can figure out (or perhaps already have) the religious allusion that Melville is making in these chapters and why he might be doing that.

Ahab, so tormented by some deep thought that "you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced" and looking "not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up," summons the crew for a meeting, something "seldom or never [done] on ship-board except in some extraordinary case" (Chapter 36). He works them into a communal feeling and frenzy with a call-and-response. He asks basic questions about whale hunting, and they answer together.

Question: Where does one engage in communal call-and-response to remind us of and draw us into things we already know? (File that away. We'll come back to it at the end of this post.)

Their attention and participation secured, Ahab pulled out a $16 gold piece (worth about $480 in today's money) and

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!”

Question: how many times does Ahab repeat himself? (File that away, too.)

The three pagan harpooners all recognize this great white whale: it is Moby Dick! Starbuck does, too, but with less enthusiasm. Isn't that the whale that took your leg, he asks. It is, and Ahab cries out, "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." Note the figure of speech here: The Cape of Good Hope is the southernmost tip of Africa; Cape Horn is the southernmost tip of South America; the Norwary Maelstrom is near the northern extremity of a far-north country; perdition is Hell. In more evocative language, Ahab is saying he'll chase Moby Dick over every corner of the world and even to Hell. That's some deep commitment. #goals

But Starbuck is not convinced this is right, for two very sensible reasons. First, the practical: "I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels [of oil] will thy vengeance yield?" To answer this objection, Ahab pulls Starbuck closer and offers him "a little lower layer," meaning a deeper and more secret reason for the hunt. My vengeance, Ahab tells him softly, is worth more to me than enough guineas (gold coins) to encircle the whole globe. To which Starbuck gives his second objection, the religious: “Vengeance on a dumb brute! ... that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”

Really? Strong word, blasphemous. I suppose one could make the case that insofar as it upsets the natural order of God's creation, by treating a nonrational creature as a purposeful agent, it's a kind of blasphemy. Maybe. But that certainly isn't the word I think most of us would go for.

So, Question: Why "blasphemous"?

Ahab has a response to this objection, too, but I'll return to it in a minute. He manages to cow Starbuck into silence, because the rest of the crew is cheering along with Ahab's show, and "Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!" Starbuck backs down, murmuring another religious sentiment: "God keep me! -- keep us all!" And then there's a "low laugh from the hold" (the lower part of the ship, beneath their feet). The crew won over, Ahab seals their pact by passing around a flagon (a large metal cup) that everyone is to sip from, while he exults, "'tis hot as Satan's hoof."

Question: Does this ceremony of all drinking from a communal metal cup remind you of anything? and Question: What's with all the hellish language here?

We're almost there, and I hope you're seeing it come together now. This is the final piece. Ahab has one more ceremony he demands:

“Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me touch the axis.” So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre

Stop for a minute to visualize this. Question: What would this look like, three crossed harpoons with a hand grasping them at the point where they cross? Anything familiar?

Questions enough. Time for some answers. It would look a little something like this:

Which I submit to you looks more than a little bit like the Chi-Ro, a traditional Christian symbol formed by joining the first two letters of the Greek word for "Christ" -- the chi (an X, which makes the hard "ch" sound in Greek) and the ro (shaped like a P, but it makes the "r" sound in Greek).

Let's run through those questions again.
Where does one engage in communal call-and-response to remind us of and draw us into things we already know? In church, as part of the liturgy.
How many times does Ahab repeat himself? Three, the number of the trinity, and thus a number used frequently in traditional liturgies (for example, at the Kyrie Elaison: "Christ have mercy upon us").
Does this ceremony of all drinking from a communal metal cup remind you of anything? The Eucharist (that is, the communion cup).
What's with all the Hellish language here? and Why "blasphemous"? This is absolutely key to understanding this book.

Melville wants you to see Ahab's hunt not just as the lunatic quest of a madman to get revenge on the animal that hurt him--that would make the action of the book low, even silly. He wants you to see it as a blasphemous, Satanic quest to exceed the limits placed on mankind: to understand the knowledge that is forbidden to us (chiefly, why bad things happen to us) and ultimately to strike back in revenge against God, or the Universe, or Fate, or whatever it is that controls events. This interpretation makes sense of one of the most critical but difficult passages of the book: Ahab's lower layer yet again—his second, even deeper, reply to Starbuck's second objection, that the hunt for Moby Dick seems blasphemous. Here's Ahab:

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard [cardboard] 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. 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 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.

"That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate." Inscrutable means "impossible to understand or interpret." There seems to be some force or agent at work in the world, Ahab says, and everything that happens to us is that force working through the physical objects and events of the world. The objects and events in the world, then, are like pasteboard masks, and we cannot see the force working behind and through them. But "if man will strike"--strike back against that unknowable animating force--he must "strike through the mask!"

Put as bluntly as I can (though simplifying a bit), Ahab wants to punch God in the face. To do that, he's got to punch through the mask God wears to act in this world. And that's... The Whale.

Know ye now, Bulkington? There's the blasphemy. That's the quest launched with a satanic liturgy and approved by the laughter of Hell. Ahab acknowledges the charge of blasphemy but dismisses it, because he refuses to accept any limitation on his knowledge or scope of action. "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."

So Ahab appoints his "three pagan kinsmen" (kinsmen in that Ahab too is now outside the Christian faith) as his chief helpers in this quest. He orders them to fill the sockets of their harpoon blades with liquor, then commands:

“Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat’s bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!”

The oath is made, the drink is quaffed, and Starbuck—the pious and spiritually sensitive mate—"paled, and turned, and shivered." He realizes, even if the rest of the crew does not, what they have all just joined to.

THE DOUBLOON
Illustration posted to Pinterest by Marcia Rubin