Pursuing the Whale from Quarantine, part 5

I just read Gov. Northam's announcement that all Virginia schools must remain closed through the end of May. Our quarantine is going to be a lot longer than we had hoped for. There are five of us in this house, and like any human beings confined in close quarters, we can get on each other's nerves sometimes. Just being shut up together in the same space, with no opportunity to get out, makes one snappish.

That, of course, is Ishmael's predicament aboard the Pequod. He and 30 or so men are stuck together on a whaling ship that was 100-150 feet in length, and about 25 feet wide.

When he first finds her, Ishmael describes the Pequod as "a ship of the old school, rather small if anything" (Chapter 16), so that's about 2500 square feet of space, shared by 30 men.

My house is 2500 square feet. There are 5 of us.

Living right there on top of each other, there are bound to be some dust-ups, and Melville is not unaware of that fact, despite his thoroughgoing Democratic Idealism. He gives us a lovably magnanimous narrator in Ishmael, who believes firmly in the equality of all men, in "that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!" (Chapter 26). So Melville gives us in the Pequod a ship that is a microcosm of the pluralistic state: it's a single unit in which sailors of all races and creeds work together toward their common good. But he also shows us the tensions inherent in that state. He does so brilliantly in...

Chapter 40, Midnight, Forecastle

This chapter (which you did not have to read, but take a quick glance at its formatting) looks like a play. And note what we are told about the actors: their diverse nationalities. There are sailors from Nantucket, France, Iceland, Malta, Sicily, Long Island, the Azores, China, the Isle of Man, Spain, the Cape Verde islands, and of course Queequeg is a South Seas Islander, Tasthego is Native American, and Daggoo is African. They begin this chapter singing and dancing together, as though this were not a novel but a Broadway production. It's all so sociable and charming.

But then the storm comes, both literally and figuratively. There's a flash of lightning, and one old sailor makes an offhand remark about the darkness of the night sky: "look yonder, boys, there’s another [flash] in the sky—lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black" (Chapter 40). Daggoo responds with an innocent comment reflecting pride in his appearance: "What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm quarried out of it!"

And then somebody goes racist, because (he says in an Aside, marked out in italics like a stage direction), "the old grudge makes me touchy." Advancing toward Daggoo, the sailor sours all the friendly banter with a racist insult: "Aye, harpooner, thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence."

No offense. Melville is such a keen observer of human interaction. Every racist comment ever either ends in "no offense" or begins with "I'm not a racist, but..."

Daggoo tries to brush it off, but the sailor (a Spaniard) persists:

SPANISH SAILOR: ...No offence.
DAGGOO (grimly): None.
ST. JAGO'S SAILOR: That Spaniard's mad or drunk...
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR: What's that I saw--lightning? Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR: No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO (springing): Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!
SPANISH SAILOR (meeting him): Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!
ALL: A row! a row! a row!

Melville's book is full of the democratic idealism rampant in mid-19th century America, and he adds to it a belief in the equality of all men that was far more rare in his day. But he is not blind to the racial tension inherent in a pluralistic democracy. And he's insightful about how such squalls develop: an innocent comment, interpreted racially but not offensively, then someone turns it ugly, masking their animosity as people so often do. The offended party tries to brush it off, but the offender doubles down. The Spaniard's second comment isn't even as openly hostile as the first. The first comment was that Daggoo is "devilish dark"--a moral judgment. The second was merely a comment on his appearance, indeed a comment not unlike the one Daggoo made about himself: his skin is as black as the night sky. But it was clear by then that the Spaniard said it with hatred.

Melville is considering here a very contemporary question. What makes a comment racially offensive? Is it only what is said, or does the context in which it is said matter, too? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

The Democratic Idealism that energized the mid 19th-century is far from "the dead past," by the way. Here's the Lumineer's 2019 cover of a 1992 song, written at the fall of the Berlin Wall: