This week: Chapter 125, "The Log and Line," to Chapter 130, "The Hat." Image by Lisel Jane Ashlock, more information here.
Chapter 126, "The Life-Buoy," was the most vivid for me in this section, as it seemed to have a sense of foreboding: "Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene."
The crew is startled by the "plaintively wild and unearthly" cries of seals: "The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of all—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea."
An unnamed crew member of the Pequod falls into the sea and is lost when the life-buoy tossed into the sea to save him also sinks below the waves and disappears. A coffin is then refashioned to replace the buoy:
“'A life-buoy of a coffin!' cried Starbuck, starting.
“' Rather queer, that, I should say,' said Stubb."
In a comment to last week's blog post, Oz Fritz, who's been working hard in this reading group, wrote, "I don't see Ahab as a straight up villain subject to a simplified reduction. I think he does show some control over his emotions up to a point. For instance, he eventually capitulates to Starbuck's rational position in chapter 109 regarding looking for the sperm oil leak despite clearly and emotionally not wanting to."
Of course, Oz seems correct. It wouldn't be a very good novel if Ahab was an unconvincing cardboard villain, would it? And yet Ahab seems a villain to me. This was underscored for me in Chapter 128, The Pequod Meets The Rachel, when Ahab callously refuses to briefly interrupt his vendetta to search for the missing son of the captain of the Rachel.
"But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not." This is a Biblical reference, Matthew 2:18, "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." Explanation here.
Speaking of Ahab as a villain, Aaron Gwyn, the writer and English professor I've mentioned before, recently posted his "Top ten villains in literature" on X:
1. Judge Holden (BLOOD MERIDIAN)
2. Iago (OTHELLO)
3. Satan (PARADISE LOST)
4. Humbert Humbert (LOLITA)
5. Ahab (MOBY-DICK)
5. Popeye (SANCTUARY)
6. The Misfit (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”)
7. Blicero (GRAVITY’S RAINBOW)
8. Claudius (HAMLET)
9. Henry Drax (THE NORTH WATER)
10. Arnold Friend (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”)
Next week: Please read Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," to Chapter 134, "The Chase -- Second Day."
5 comments:
Terrific post. In 1984 I took a class on Romantic poetryhe. The teacher, Randy Helms who wrote books on Tolkien, called Ahab a Byronic hero. The Wikipedia entry on Byronic hero quotes Lord Macaulay who "described the character as a 'man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.'" That seems to fit Ahab.
I found Milady de Winter a great villain in "The Three Musketeers". Hannibal Lector also seems like a great villain.
Reading about Pip makes me wonder if Melville read "Great Expectations" and though about the character Pip in that novel.
Very cool illustration! Did someone paint that?
Great description of Ahab, Eric. The defiant part fits the comparison with Job.
From the list of villains: I don't know "Sanctuary" but doubt its villain Popeye means Popeye the Sailor Man, one of my childhood heroes. I remember working a 30 hour shift as an assistant engineer than watching a Popeye cartoon early in the morning at the studio, and finding it to work on my fried brain like a Sufi parable. Pynchon puts this Popeye (very briefly) in Mason & Dixon
Oz, I grabbed that illustration from X.com and it was uncredited, but I have found the credit using Google image search and will add that to the caption.
Thanks Tom. It looks too good to be AI unless AI is now that good.
When Queequeg's coffin gets turned into a life-buoy, Ahab gives away a main theme of the book at the end of "The Deck":
Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver."
Of course, it's the Carpenter (Tiphareth) who makes the transformation from
coffin (death) to life-buoy. Remember that Queequeg painted his tattoos onto the coffin which reminds me of the Spells from the Egyptian Book of the Dead getting buried with Egyptian Royalty.
Despite my comments on Ahab last week, I do not see him as a villain at all, rather a tragic figure. His obsession about the White Whale leads him to make douchy decisions, such as the one in The Rachel chapter. But ultimately, I find him to be antipathetic rather than really a 'bad guy'.
Oz, I like the connection you make with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The coffin harking back to the Sun Ship and its long journey through the dark.
"So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me."
This reminds me of the Moon tarot card, particularly in the Thoth deck.
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