Moby Dick- The Whale Wins

Back on Long Island, another island involved in the whaling trade by the way, I spent yesterday reading the end of Moby Dick. I also spent some time reading about Herman Melville on Wikipedia. When the novel was originally published, it was not greeted with enthusiasm, and received very critical reviews. One edition of the book was published without the epilogue, which is the final chapter and the book doesn't end very well without it (although I don't think the end is very well written.) Although the novel has a lot of things wrong with it, it was somewhat enjoyable to read. My recommendation: if you want to read a great sea novel read Mutiny on the Bounty. A well written, well paced novel that holds up over time.

One of the reasons I think I have avoided Moby Dick for so long is not the length of the book, but the idea that it was written on many levels, and it took a lot to understand all the hidden parts of the story. Okay, I can see that the novel is much more than a sea adventure. But I guess I am a better reader than I have given myself credit for, because I don't think I missed anything. So here are the top 5 themes I have gotten out of the book:

1. Moby Dick is a sea adventure story.
2. Ishmael is a closet homosexual and there seems to be quite a homoerotic theme going on here.
3. Herman Melville documents the whaling industry as well as a classification system for whales and the possibility that unchecked the whaling industry could precipitate the extinction of whales.
4. A portrayal of religious tolerance/superstition/civilization and anarchy.
5. Man vs. Nature: nature wins.

The morality themes in the book are a bit ambiguous. The first mate, Starbuck, seems the only voice of reason onboard the Pequod, and in the end he choses to go along with the way things are and ends up dead with the crew, which he knew would be the final end if he did not act and relieve the captain of his duty. Being the only one on board who saw Ahab's madness for what it was, he would most likely have ended up dead for mutiny if he had acted. He was in a no win situation. I think he was hoping that Ahab would end up dead trying to kill Moby Dick and then he could sail back home to Nantucket with the remnants of the crew. Unfortunately he underestimated the whale. Oh well.

I think Melville forgot his narrator was Ishmael. We totally loose his perspective of what is happening on board the boat after a very homoerotic scene involving whale blubber (Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand). We don't hear back from Ishmael until the epilogue where *SPOILERS* he tells us he is the sole survivor. Not much more than that. Not how he got back after the Rachel picks him up, and how he was tasked with explaining the fate of the ship and crew back in Nantucket, if he even returned there again. Not his feelings about the death of his friend Quequeg, or how he got along with him on board for that matter (perhaps those were too steamy for publication in 1851.)

I've been noticing a lot of whales turing up in my life lately. The Nantucket whale sticker we have on our car, the white whale symbol on the Real Estate for sale sign in front of my house, this book, turning on the TV and catching a scene of a whale in the ocean. What is the universe trying to tell me? Since I live in a culture that embraces the whale as an intelligent mammal that needs to be protected and respected, I hope these whales in my life are more symbolic of happy tidings on the horizon.

Art notes: all photographs in both of these Moby Dick posts were taken on Nantucket using my iPhone.

Reading Moby Dick on Nantucket

I just returned from a week long family vacation on Nantucket Island. We were there before the 'season' really starts, for which I am very glad. This is my third trip to Nantucket. The first two were at the end of September. I would not like to face the massive crowds of the season, where the year round population of 10,000 grows to about 50,000. We also had cool temperatures, while the rest of New England was experiencing a heat wave and thunderstorms.




I decided to bring along some reading options on my ipad. This is my first try with ebooks, and since there was limited space to bring things in the car (four of us and the dog amounts to a lot of 'stuff') I thought ebooks and the ipad were the way to go. Moby Dick is one ebook that you can download for free, so I though, yeah, I've always meant to read Moby Dick. Whales, and the sea and Nantucket is a whaling port, so it fits.

Little did I know that Nantuket takes a starring role in the book. The crew of the Pequod leave from Nantucket on their voyage. Although I doubt that the Nantucket of today is anything similar to what 'Ishmael' experienced:

"Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it -- mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond the sea for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that the people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis and three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow shoes; that they are shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded and made an utter island of by the ocean, and to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantuket is no Illinois." Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 14, second paragraph.

A little wordy, but I wanted to give you a flavor for that, if you haven't had the pleasure of reading this 'American Literary Classic'. I think I've finally come to the realization that when you see those words connected with a book it's like saying someone's got a 'great personality' before you send them on a blind date with someone because you think they are desperate enough to try anything. This book would never make it past a modern editor to be published. I will say that it has some good character development, but the pacing is totally lost to chapters about whales, ships, rules of engagement for claiming whales hunted down by others, etc. This is not as bad as the book The Octopus by Frank Norris, which was not about the sea, but about the railroads being built across the United States. That book spent a whole long chapter on the plowing of a field. I consider it the worst book I have ever read. But I digress.

I managed to read close to 600 pages of the 800 plus the novel goes for. They still haven't seen Moby Dick and Captain Ahab has spent most of the book in his cabin, away from the action. I plan on finishing reading the rest soon, since I really hate leaving books unfinished once I start reading them, even when I suspect they will not end well.


A little trivia, being a big Starbucks fan (the Seattle Coffee chain), their name was selected from the book, after the character of the first mate. The name Starbuck is an old family name on Nantucket (along with the name Coffin, and Macy- yes the department store Macy). There are three Starbucks listed in the Nantucket phone book, and none of them are for the coffee shop, since there has always been a restriction on chain stores on Nantucket. I did notice that that rule seems to be slipping away however. I made several shopping trips to the Stop and Shop supermarket near where I was staying in Madaket, and on Nantucket Main Street I was disappointed to see a Ralph Lauren store. Oh well.