Analyzing Moby Dick

As a university student who spent my first & second year of uni struggling to find a good source on Moby Dick quotes, I wanted to share my exam paper from 2020 where I analysed 10 quotes out of Moby Dick on here because sharing is caring, am I right? If you’re a fellow American or English literature student, I hope this will help you understand what is also known as the “American Bible” even better. Good luck with your studies!

“Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return! Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!” (Chapter: BRIT)

In this chapter, Ishmael describes the Brit fish and how the right whale feeds on it. The right whale’s oil is useless for the seaman so neither they hunt them nor the whales try to escape from the ship. So, when a pod of right whales appears beneath the ship one day, Ishmael resembles them to mountains. The sense of standing on the land again hits Ishmael and he starts questioning the land versus the sea philosophy again. When he first begins his journey, he sees the ocean as a way of meditation and an end to his suffering. The “oceanic” feeling that he wants to experience (again) is, even though he doesn’t realize it, actually an addiction. The unknown of the ocean creates a mystery that human beings feel drawn into and Ishmael, just like everybody else, wants to explore this sense of uncanniness that lies within us. It is not only the unknown world that is hidden underneath the colorless shade of the ocean that is mysterious, it is also the monotony of the ocean and the waves it creates that discovers something new in one’s self. The obscurity that one finds within their soul and brain is so dangerous that it might even lead one’s, in Freud’s words, motivated suicide. These suicidal thoughts enter one’s mind because when they start experiencing the “oceanic feeling”, they realize that they left a part of themselves on the land and are now evolving a new persona as they go with the waves. Ishmael, too, realizes the differences in the way he thinks of the world and himself so he compares the land and the ocean to our conscious and subconscious mind. The land is our conscious mind that lets us go with our daily routine without disruptions and the subconscious mind is this unknown vastness that could endanger our mental being with the questions it asks.

I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the Wrap subject to but one single, over returning, unchanging vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meanwhile, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance –aye, chance, free will, and necessity — no wise incompatible-all interweavingly working together. (Chapter: THE MAT-MAKER)

This chapter is about Ishmael and Queequeg working together on something called a sword-mat. This act of weaving is used to attach their boat with greater support but Ishmael, once again, finds himself lost in metaphors. He compares this to the Greek myth of the Fates weaving the Loom of Time, in which “chance, free will, and necessity” all work together to create human destiny. He points at the concept of their ship mates’ (including his own) different fates getting twisted together into one big complex weave. He also specifies this metaphor by saying that the warp he’s holding is a necessity whereas the sword Queequeg’s working on is free will or chance. While Ishmael is wandering in his contemplative mind, a cry from one of his ship mates disrupts him to come back to reality. The action of free will collapses with fate as prophecy becomes the ship’s reality from that point. God, once again, steps into the scene right in the moment when mankind thinks they hold the power to decide something as divine as fate and proves them wrong. Yes, God gives his people a chance to use their free will wise but if they don’t take their chances then it’s all up to God to decide their fate.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh man! Admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou live in this World without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O Man! İn all seasons a temperature of thine own. (Chapter: THE BLANKET)

Ishmael comments about the skin of the whale as he, too, is uncertain about whether the thin layer or its blubber is its real skin. But he says that its blubber is like a “blanket” that makes the whale adapt to the climate it is in whether it’s in the equator or close to the North Pole. Melville, once again, interferes with his story and addresses to his readers by telling them to take the whale’s skill of adapting to anywhere as an example. Our boundaries as people should not be limited to the country or society that we belong to but we should be able to break down these boundaries to find our individual mind. If we find our true self without the labels the society put on us, we can exist whenever and however we like. As in for the delusional selfhood of humanity, we tend to believe in glorified things whether it’s a religion or an ideology. The great dome of St. Peter’s has deceived many people in the past to believe that they were in the center of the galaxy and other planets were evolving around the world. This kind of belief got people thinking that they were significant and irreplaceable without realizing the harm it causes to one’s mind. This is why Melville criticizes the 19th century positivist movement’s centralism and points out to nature’s indifference to humans once again.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, tou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. […] O head! Thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine! (Chapter: THE SPHYNX)

In the early process of phrenology, scientists thought that the brain was in the shape of the its skull so if the skull was big, then the brain was big too. Even though this theory was proved to be wrong later, Melville uses this theory to explain Ahab’s obsession with the whale’s head and the knowledge it holds. In this chapter, we see Ahab talking directly to the beheaded and gutted sperm whale that hangs over the back of the ship. Even though the whale is dead, he says that the whale has seen way too much and it has the knowledge of Abraham and Sphynx. Ahab’s desire to know the unknowable gets a hold of him again and he finds himself asking the skinned and decapitated whale to reveal the secrets it witnessed. The reason why he resembles the whale to the Great Sphinx is because the Egyptian pyramids construction date is unknown so the things it has seen through centuries is hidden in its dead eyes -just like the whale hanging in front of Ahab. Artifacts like the Great Sphinx are the signs to humanity that we are surrounded by signifiers of the past. Ahab makes assumptions about the things the whale has seen just like the archeologists who has theories about the Great Sphinx’s hidden rooms, even though they know that they won’t be able to reach it. Ahab, once again, describes the sea as a mass of murder and the sunk ships because the sea and its inhabitants have been nothing but cruel to him so he thinks only bad incidents happen at the ocean.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two: that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. … I saw this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you a poison in your pills, you die. (Chapter: THE MONKEY ROPE)

In this chapter, to be able to skin the whale, the one who’s partially dived in the sea must be tied up to another seaman to help him continue skinning. What they call this tie is a “monkey-rope” and if one man falls off, the other will be dragged along with him too. Ishmael is the one tied up to Queequeg and they’re both vulnerable at that point. Their lives are bound to the other one at the end of the rope and Ishmael sees this situation like invisible ties between all men in the society. No one can truly be alone in this world, even if you’re in the most isolate place that is the ocean. The interdependence of all men’s fate and actions is a way for our mutual survival even if we don’t believe in such thing. This metaphor can be addressed by Melville to Americans as they believed in individualism and self-reliance for centuries. Being self-sufficient is not enough for our survival in this world as we need to be loved for the sake of our well being. When Ishmael talks about the bond between him and Queequeg, he uses the word “wedded”. When we put the homoerotic love between them to aside, being wed is such a simple yet powerful word to describe the small community of human dependence and trust to each other. Our need to be loved and cared is a part of the reason why societies exist and why we long for some sort of affection even in the moments we desire to be left alone. In the beginning of Ishmael’s journey, his wish was to be not a part of the land’s society and its norms but out in the ocean, Ishmael and his friends form a little society that they all feel belong to. Perhaps that’s what Ishmael was lacking all along; somewhere to belong to.

By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the misermerman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. (Chapter: THE CASTAWAY)

Ishmael, then, tells the story of what happened to the young African American boy named Pip in this chapter. In Pip’s first whale chase, he gets scared so he jumps off the boat, tangling himself with the whale rope. The chief mate, Stubb, saves him from drowning by cutting the rope and letting the whale get away but he tells Pip that if he does it again, he won’t save him. The reason why the seamen hold onto their boats tightly is because they know the ocean very well and acknowledge its infinity. Pip, an inexperienced kid, is unaware of what’s going to happen if he takes a part of that vastness so he jumps off the boat again. He experiences something new as he starts bobbing in the sea; he takes up a tiny bit of place in this earth that is so indifferent to his feelings. Being used to saved by his mates, the indifference of the sea and the living creatures above it crushes his soul. Considering he is a faithful man, he comes with God face to face as he understands what it is like to be made by him and how his individuality means nothing to him. He feels as if he became one with everything God created and it is an end for his individuality and soul. When his mates comes to save him from sailing away into his own death and he gets back on board, he proclaims his death because he has realised the pointlessness of one’s individual needs. The smallness he felt at the ocean, brought him even closer to his Maker and that encounter stripped him off all of his mortal desires. What Pip has to face with in the ship is like how Emily Dickinson’s Much Madness is divinest Sense describes being “sane” and “mad”. His mates on the ship think that he’s a fool because they have never experienced a loneliness that is worse than death. What Pip experienced is a close to death experience where he can’t hide or run from what’s to come at him; but there’s also no one chasing him too. His death is his confrontation with his self’s worthlessness in the eyes of God and this is where Pip differs from Dickinson in a sense. While Dickinson writes about gaining a holy knowledge that makes her both superior and mad at the same time; because Pip could not held that much of a holy acknowledge in his fragile mortal body and underdeveloped young spirit, he loses his self-presence in the flow of the waves.

And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and before long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for the above supposition.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor glorified by a rainbow, as if heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. (Chapter: THE FOUNTAIN)

In this chapter, Ishmael talks about the mystery of whale’s breathing. For so long, seamen thought that the thing that comes out of their blowhole was a poisonous water and whoever contracted with it would be blind. Ishmael, though, thinks that it’s ridiculous to simplify such thing that is so mysterious to him. He says that almost everything about whales -no matter how simple its process be- is compelling and difficult to understand as scientists has not yet been certain with their existential functions. So, he wants to believe that whales expel a steam of deep thoughts from their blowhole. He compares this to what famous thinkers and literary figures experience with a peculiar scale of Satan to Dante. These names and the whales have seen and experienced so much that their thoughts become too much for their brain to keep them in so it lets itself out as a “semi-visible steam”. Melville also adds that this steam looks like a rainbow when its foggy and says that it’s as if in the moment of self-doubt, God sends a sign by making this steam visible. Doubt is the most humane thing a person can have and God puts a rest to the souls overwhelmed by this “act of thinking deep thoughts”.

But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is internationally and universally applicable.

What was America in 1492 but a loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.

What are the Rights of Man to the Liberties of the World but a Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and Fast-Fish, too? (Chapter: FAST-FISH AND LOOSE-FISH)

Ishmael, this time, relates the whale hunting business to law. It’s a doctrine of fast-fish vs loose-fish and what he means by that is that the ship is “fast” whilst the hunted creature is “loose”. The ship is fast because when the seaman harpoon a whale and it’s tied to the ship, then it’s the ship’s property. But when an accident happens and the seaman can’t hold on to the whale rope tight and the whale (tries to) escape, the whale is “loose” and can be claimed by anyone else who catches it. Ishmael says that it can be difficult for people to understand how this situation would be fair to the “loose” one so he gives examples from the real world. Ishmael’s global example is how one country “kidnaps” the another one to colonize it and announce it as a victory. The one who follows this imperialist policy is the “fast-fish” while the one being the victim of colonization has the same fate as the hunted whale. Even when the “loose-fish” country tries to invade another country, it will only hand out more loose-fish to the imperialist fast-fish’s empire because it has already been “owned” and is dependent on the fast-fish. It’s literary equivalent is the hierarchy in Pequod as the white seamen are usually at a higher rank like being the captain or the first mate whereas the Native-American or African-American harpooners and mates are described as “savage” and “uncivilised”. Then, Melville interferes with the story and turns his readers to ask themselves if they’re fast or loose fish. It is not an accusation but rather a chance for the readers to realize this huge problem. This planet itself has turned into a fast-fish feeding on “loose” individuals by the corporate led capitalist consumption. The earth and its natural sources has become a field for fast-fish to exploit and ask for more. Melville asks his readers to open their eyes and realize how nowhere in the world is left to be “loose” like the whale trying to escape from its hunter; everything has turned “fast” or contributing to the “fast”.

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me, that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.” (Chapter: THE SYMPHONY)

When Starbuck sees Ahab gazing into the sea in despair, he sees it as a one last chance to talk him out of going after Moby Dick. They exchange a few lines about their life back in Nantucket and how everything would be completely changed if they were to turn the ship around. Ahab, though, is blinded by his fatal desire to murder Moby Dick and he thinks that his actions are being controlled by the fate that’s already been chosen for him. It is, perhaps, not simply fate or God that controls his “small brain”, it is his own will to destroy the one creature that belittles him so much. Moby Dick’s existence crushes his ego because it has become Ahab himself throughout Ahab’s journey of 40 years. Ahab longs for his old life in Nantucket because that Ahab is naive and not driven by his subconscious mind. Those forty years has taken so much from his psyche that the only creature he can feel close to is the one that resides in the ocean and whom he hates the most. Moby Dick mirrors Ahab’s new innermost self and Ahab is not ready to face this new now-unrevealed repressed identity. The horror of feeling uneasy with his own self is so unbearable that he must kill Moby Dick before it exposes Ahab’s subconscious thoughts. He wants to see it as a task given by God because in the moments that people feel like they’re going crazy, they want to seek refuge in God. The thought of God watching him over gives Ahab the power to murder yet another creature that’s been created by God. He manipulates his own mind just like he manipulates other seaman into thinking that killing Moby Dick is their fate too. He doesn’t just seek an immortal power to give him the strength, he also assures his own forgiveness by saying that God gave his permission to murder another soul.

“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” Job

The drama is done. Why then here does any one step forth? –

Because one did survive the wreck.

It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was the whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from out the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating on the margin of the ensuring scene, and in full sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital circle, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. FINIS (Chapter: EPILOGUE)

In the chapter 133, The Chase- First Day, Ahab asks to be lowered quickly because he wants to be the one to catch Moby Dick before she runs away and he says: “Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first” (1158). His I only has a different kind of motive than Job’s I only. Job, after losing everybody and everything, proves God that he was right to choose him as a prophet because he is still a faithful man even after God made Satan test him and gave him a disease. Ahab, in contrast, is blinded by his obsession to murder Moby Dick and his I only does not carry any sort of faithfulness in it. The reason why he was destined to end up dead at the end of the novel was because he ignored the signals that were shown by God. Ishmael survived because he was the only one who accepted his changing identity and listened to his surroundings and God. Ishmael did not lose a part of himself in the “oceanic feeling” that he felt throughout the novel but rather found a missing piece of his persona. He managed to survive despite the thoughts he had that could lead to his suicide in chapter the Mast-Head. He acknowledged the power the ocean held and understood that even if it resembled the land sometimes (chapter Brit), the ocean would always find a way to be superior to land by either crushing people’s souls or individuality or by just having an endless vastness of knowledge of the unknown. Melville also finally puts an end to his Transcendentalism criticism in this chapter. Throughout Ishmael’s journey in Pequod, Melville criticizes Ahab’s perspective of Nature and transcendentalist ideas like becoming one with the nature to the point of claiming himself a God:

I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here . . . while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights . . . Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee. (1076)

Ishmael accepts Nature and its indifference to humans and appreciates it without trying to take a part in it. Ishmael also abandons his Romantic ideas like going to sailing to relax and finding his freedom. At the end, we see an Ishmael free from those ideologies and forming a personality without putting a label on himself. His experience allows him to transform his ideas and accept that he cannot know everything he wants to know and is now okay with the knowledge he can reach. This kind of personal growth also indicates his full reach of maturity and that’s exactly why he becomes the only one to survive from the ship. His spirit and mind are finally ready to do one thing people like Ahab usually lack of doing; telling the truth without elaborating or wandering off the subject.