Melville and his Moby Dick

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Melville and his Moby Dick
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First things first

• You need to have a general understanding of the
  movements Moby Dick was born out of
• This includes a background on
• The Age of Reason
• Romanticism
• Transcendentalism
• Gothic, and
• Anti-Transcendentalism

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Romanticism

• The first major movement in American literature,
  Romanticism was a movement in art, literature,
  and music dating from the late 1700s to the
  mid-1800s
• Romanticism is characterized by the 5 Is
• Imagination
• Intuition
• Idealism
• Inspiration
• Individualism

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Imagination

• Romantics emphasized imagination over reason and
  logic
• This was a backlash against the rationalism of
  the Enlightenment period or Age of Reason
  (1650-1789)
• In the Age of Reason, people believed all truth
  and knowledge could be discovered through using
  reason, logic, science, and math.

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Intuition

• Romantics placed a high value on intuition, or
  feeling and instincts, over reason
• Thus, emotions were hugely important in Romantic
  art and literature

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Idealism

• Idealism is the concept that we can make the
  world a better place
• Romanitcs believed that thought (our mind and
  spirit) makes the world the way that it is thus,
  positive thinking actually makes the world a good
  place (if you think its good, then it is)
• They were very optimistic about life

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Inspiration

• Romantics believed that artists and writers make
  their art through spontaneous inspiration
• In art (this includes visual art, the written
  word, and music), they believed it was more
  important to follow your feelings and impulses
  than to try to get things exactly correct, or
  technically perfect

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Individualism

• Romantics celebrated the individual
• They believed people should listen to their own
  feelings and their own moral compass to guide
  their actions and to find what is good and right,
  rather than just following what society says
• They thought people should march to the beat of
  their own drummer
• There are no universal truths -- we must search
  for our own truths!

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Transcendentalism

• However, Transcendentalists also believed that
  God was IN nature and humanity
• This divine spirit was called the Oversoul
• This belief was a response to the idea of God as
  a divine watchmaker, in which Age of Reason
  thinkers like Franklin and Jefferson believed

• A uniquely American Philosophy its heyday was
  between 1820 and 1830.
• Transcendentalism drew heavily on Romanticism
  its believers valued the same things the
  Romantics valued (the 5 Is)

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Gothic Literature

• Gothic literature arose around the same time as
  the Romantic movement (mid-1700s) and was wildly
  popular up until the Civil War
• Both Gothic and Romantic writers were reacting to
  the Age of Reason, and both wanted to free the
  imagination.
• However, Gothics saw POTENTIAL EVIL in the
  individual, while Romantics saw HOPE in the
  individual

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Gothic Conventions

• Setting
• ancient castles,
• decaying estates,
• weird or haunted places
• Plot
• strange and terrifying events supernatural
  events
• extreme situations (murder, torture, revenge)
• These situations bring out mans true nature, and
  it is NOT good

• Characters
• Supernatural characters like ghosts, demons, and
  monsters (such as werewolves or vampires)
• insane male characters
• beautiful women who are dead/dying

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Gothic Conventions

• Style
• macabre
• macabre (adj)
• including gruesome and horrific details of death
  and decay
• imaginative distortion of reality
• dark atmosphere

• Subjects
• the unknown,
• the fantastic,
• the demonic,
• insanity
• the human heart and mind

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Anti-Transcendentalism

• Moby Dick is an Anti-Transcendental piece
• Anti-Transcendentalism was a 19th century
  (1840-60) literary movement that focused on
• the dark side of humanity and
• the evil and guilt associated with mans sinful
  nature

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Anti-Transcendnetalism

• This focus is similar to the focus of the Gothic
  writers
• However, the Gothics used very specific
  conventions (the supernatural, the macabre, and
  the terrifying) that are not necessarily always
  found in Anti-Transcendentalist works

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Why did this movement begin?

• It began as reaction to a perceived naiveté in
  the unbridled optimism and idealism of the
  Romantics and Transcendentalists
• It also challenges Neo-Classical (Age of Reason)
  notions about order and logic, as the Romantics
  did

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Why did this movement begin?

• Many scholars argue that Anti-Transcendentalism
  was born out of a human tendency to dwell on
  feelings of guilt and remorse over past sins

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Why did this movement begin?

• Additionally, writers were discontented with the
  ills of American society in the 1800s (poverty,
  mistreatment of workers, slavery, lack of womens
  rights)
• Unlike the Romantics and Transcendentalists,
  these writers viewed societys moral dilemmas
  with a negative lens
• Romantics thought these problems could be solved
  with a little positivity and good work
• Anti-Transcendentalists did NOT

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Key Ideas

• Man has a great potential for destruction and
  evil. He is inherently sinful, and evil is an
  overwhelming force working through the universe
• Man is forever uncertain, forever running into
  his own limitations, and thus forever ineffective
  (bound for failure)

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Key Ideas

• Like the Romantics and Transcendentalists,
  Anti-Transcendentalists believed there were no
  universal truths -- we should all find individual
  truths
• However, these truths, they believed, were
  usually disturbing and awful
• Like the Gothics, they believed that extreme
  situations brought out mans true nature, and
  that this nature was not good

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Ideas about Nature

• Nature is vast and incredibly powerful
• As the creation of God, it cannot be understood
  by man
• Encounters with nature bring out the struggle
  between good and evil
• Sometimes man vs. nature conflicts bring out
  mans evil side (evil man vs. good nature)
• Sometimes nature is the evil entity, and man is
  trying to work for good, but nature is powerful,
  and man is weak thus, he must fail

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Writing Style

• Raw and morbid diction (straight-forward, not
  sugar-coated, gloomy, horrific, and disgusting)
• Strong focus on the inner struggles of the
  protagonist (interest in the inner-mind and
  internal conflict)
• Protagonists are often haunted by some mental
  problem or past sin, and they are usually
  alienated from society
• Heavy use of symbolism

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Now, lets get more specific

• What should I know about Moby Dick, specifically?

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Lesson A Moby Dick is awesome

• Moby Dick is one of the two major works of
  American literature most frequently cited as The
  Great American Novel (The other is Twains
  Huckleberry Finn)
• As such, it is referenced constantly in popular
  culture if youre looking, youll see it
  everywhere, from The Sopranos, to Mad magazine,
  to The Onion, to popular cartoons.

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Masterpiece

• Of the novel, Melville wrote I have written a
  wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
• Doesnt that give you goose bumps? The man can
  write!
• He wrote that he felt this was his true
  masterpiece.
• (Readers, however, did not agree, at least not at
  first. He was mostly unknown until the Melville
  Revival of the 1920s, and his book had rotten
  sales)

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Lesson BMelvilles life-story matters

• Melvilles material is the kind of stuff that
  could only be born of a particular sort of life
  experience -- an experience that was precipitated
  by some key events in his life
• 1) Melvilles father was unsuccessful in business
  (importing), and his bankruptcy was too much for
  him to handle. He fell ill and died when Melville
  was 12.

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Melvilles life

• 2) As a result of the familys financial troubles
  and the death of his father, Melville couldnt
  afford to go to college. As it was up to him to
  support his mother and sisters, he needed a good
  paying job
• 3) He joined a merchant ship in 1837 (whaling was
  hugely profitable, as whale oil was used for
  fuel). At sea, his adventures included desertion,
  captivity, and enlistment in the U.S. Navy

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Melvilles Life

• Ishmael says in Moby Dick, A whaleship was my
  Yale College and my Harvard, and this is
  certainly true of Melville!
• Melville took his experiences and wrote two
  wildly popular travel narratives, Typee and Omoo.
• These describe his time as a captive among a
  cannibal tribe in the Marquesas Islands and his
  experiences an explorer in the Polynesian islands.

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Melvilles Life

• He grew bored of writing popular, but shallow,
  travel narratives, and began writing deeply
  philosophical and experimental books full of
  symbols
• His book Mardi was such a book, and he considered
  it great art, but the public hated it, and he
  needed money, so he wrote a few more crazy travel
  narratives

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Melvilles Life

• When he published Moby Dick in 1851, he knew it
  was his great masterpiece, but it was a
  commercial failure, and he was extremely
  disappointed with this. He became very bitter
  toward the American reading public.
• Afterward, his physical and mental health
  declined sharply due to his struggle with
  terrible debt, as he tried desperately to support
  his family (he had four children!), as well as
  his mother and sisters.

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Lesson CMelville as Truth-Seeker

• Melville called writing
• The great Art of Telling the Truth
• He believed that he and his good friend Nathaniel
  Hawthorne needed to probe the most profound
  truths, however dark -- truths most people could
  not bear to see (Renker n.pag.).

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Truth-seeking

• Thus, we can read Moby Dick as a meditation (an
  extended and serious study) on truth, or as part
  of Melvilles great quest for truth.
• Isnt that cool?
• But how does one execute such a reading? What
  should we be looking for?

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Questing for Truth

• Both Ishmael and Ahab (the two key characters)
  are on a search for truth, and both pursue this
  truth in the form of the whale
• We can read the whale as a symbol for truth

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Ishmaels Quest

• Ishmael tries to find truth by trying to
  understand the whale from every angle possible
• At first, it seems that he thinks it is possible,
  if one studies and thinks enough, to find true
  understanding (yes, of the whale, but we can
  extend this out to God, man, the universe)

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Ishmaels Quest, Part 2

• Ishmael tries to put together a complete
  classification system for whales, to analyze them
  from every angle
• (This is where some of the boring stuff comes in.
  But, hey! at least it has meaning behind it!)
• However, he realizes that this is a never-ending
  project -- he could study the whale and pursue
  its meaning FOREVER
• For him, the whale is full of meaning he
  describes the search for knowledge and truth as a
  branching tree that never ends
• This does NOT discourage him

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How does this help me?

• We can read the chapters on cetology (the study
  of whales), which are an attempt to dissect the
  whale and find its ultimate meaning (truly
  understand it), as an attempt to DISCOVER TRUTH
• Read the whale as truth
• (Hopefully, understanding this will help us avoid
  whining like babies about how boring these
  chapters are.)

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What does Ishmael learn?

• He finds that the whale is such a huge topic that
  his study can never be complete
• What he shows us is that the world is so full of
  meaning that we cant ever grasp all of it
• However, we should try! The effort is not futile!
  In fact, it is awesome and worthy!

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Ahabs Quest

• Ahabs quest, by contrast, is not one to
  classify whales in general, but to avenge himself
  on one whale in particular.
• His quest for truth is not generative it doesnt
  create more branches, like Ishmaels, but
  destructive. It zeroes in on ONE target (Renker)

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Ahabs Quest

• Ahab is ENRAGED by his inability to understand
  Moby Dick (which he views as the same as
  understanding the absolute truth of the universe
  (just as Ishmael did))
• He views the whale as a malicious force (thus,
  for him, the universe is evil)

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Ahabs Quest

• Ahab calls the white whale the inscrutable
  thing (inscrutable means hard to interpret)
• He is furious about the limits of understanding
  we have as humans (he calls this limitation a
  wall, and he wants to break through it)
• Notice that wall and whale echo each other
  (Cool, huh? Yes, it is.)

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How does this help me? The Cliffs Notes Version

• Both men view the whale as holding the ultimate
  truth
• Ishmael can live with the understanding that the
  whale (read life, the universe, God) is both
  incredibly meaningful AND ambiguous (can be
  understood in more than one way has an unclear
  meaning)
• Ahab CANT live with that

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What we learn

• Everything has many meanings truth is ambiguous
• The universe is so vast as to be incomprehensible
  to man

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Lesson D Multiple Meanings

• This brings us to the fourth key point
• EVERYTHING CAN BE INTERPRETED IN MANY, MANY,
  MANY, MANY, MANY WAYS
• Early on, Ishmael writes about the Sperm Whales
  eyes it can see two different views at once,
  unlike man
• Obviously, this invites us to read the story in
  multiple ways and see everything in it from
  multiple angles.

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Look For

• Multiple interpretations of
• the painting in the Spouter-Inn
• the doubloon
• Moby Dick himself
• something else? (be cool and find other items
  with multiple meanings and multiple
  interpretations)

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This Lesson Is Long

• Yes, I know, this lesson is getting hella long.
  Its a hella long, hella meaningful book.

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Lesson E Form Mashup

• The novel is like an encyclopedia of forms!
• Youll see dictionary, whaling manual, comedy,
  tragedy, epic, prophecy, sermon, soliloquy,
  drama, bawdy humor and tales within tales, as
  wells as A BILLION allusions from Shakespeare,
  Milton, the Bible, adventure narratives, and
  technical books
• (dont write all this down, just write that it
  uses MANY forms (duh))

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Why so many forms?

• Melville is trying to look at the whale from
  EVERY ANGLE POSSIBLE.
• Hes also trying to look at the novel as a
  literary form from every angle possible.
• In this way, Melville pursues that crazy
  generative (ever-building and growing) tree
  branch of knowledge that Ishmael talks about
• He shows that knowledge is vast and can (and
  should) be pursued among bajillions of different
  avenues
• HOW AWESOME IS THAT? So dont complain about how
  boring the dictionary-like chapters are.

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Lesson FThe Novel as a Reaction to the Times

• Number One Religion
• Early theories of evolution, increasing
  scientific developments, and a new study of the
  Bible as a product of history rather than divine
  revelation have created a crisis of faith in the
  Western world. People are asking Is there a
  God?

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Religion

• Melville uses Ishmael (an outcast named after the
  Biblical outcast (Abrahams son)) as a metaphor
  for a humanity that has lost its sustaining
  beliefs and is now in search of new meaning

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Religion

• Moby Dick himself (the whale) is constantly
  compared to God
• In a sermon, God came upon Jonah in the whale
• The whalemen believe Moby Dick is a supernatural,
  immortal being
• A sailor-prophet says Moby Dick is God
  reincarnated
• Thus, we can read the search for Moby Dick as a
  search for God, or a search to understand God (in
  addition to reading it as a search for truth)

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Two Politics

• In 1850, the nation was in crisis over slavery,
  and we were continuing to subjugate and
  exterminate Native Americans
• Both forms of subjugation were underwritten by
  smug assertions of the civilized of their
  supremacy over savage races (Renker)
• Melvilles novel explores this issue

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Race in the Novel

• At first, Ishmael accepts American racial
  hierarchies -- he is repulsed by and afraid of
  Queequeg, a South-Sea islander, cannibal, and
  pagan.
• Soon though, he chooses the kind and heroic
  Queequeg over a hypocritical Christian
  civilization Ill try a pagan friend, thought
  I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow
  courtesy
• Ishmael and Queequeg form a loving friendship.

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Race, continued

• Little Pip is subjected to the fearful and
  violent power of racism
• Pip, a small African American cabin boy trembles
  in fear before the big white God, Moby Dick
  and this passage asks us to see not only a
  spiritual but also a racial dimension to Moby
  Dicks whiteness (Renker)

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So what?

• We are meant to read Pip against Moby Dick -- Pip
  represents what it means to be African American
  in this time (he is small and helpless), and Moby
  Dick (representing whiteness) is a fearful and
  omnipotent force
• Notice there are MANY ways to interpret Moby
  Dick (this relates to that point about multiple
  interpretations)

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Re-Cap

• A) This is an awesome book
• B) Melville had actual whaling experience, and
  his book was a failure at first
• C) This is a book about TRUTH
• D) Everything in it has multiple meanings
• E) It borrows from multiple forms to represent
  the vastness of knowledge and truth
• F) Its also a response to a crisis of faith in
  the 1850s and a crisis of morality in the form of
  racism