Moby-Dick is a novel that is mostly about whales

According to my records, I read Moby-Dick for the first time in April of 2010. My journey into the book started off quite well. Like most readers, I was surprised by the overt, barely-subtextual homoeroticism—I loved the relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael.

But, about a third of the way through the book, I got a bit confused. Wasn't this kind of a lot of chapters about whales?

I'd heard of the "whiteness of the whale" chapter, which is a meditation on the awful sublimity of Moby Dick's color. But most of the whale chapters weren't so self-consciously artistic or philosophical. Most of these chapters seemed primarily concerned with educating the reader about various aspects of the whaling trade. Chapter 24 defends the dignity of whaling as a profession. Chapter 32 describes the various species of whales. Chapter 33 describes the role of the harpooner. Chapter 35 describes how at any given time one sailor is up on the mast-head keeping a watch for whales. Chapter 53 describes rituals of whalers that meet at sea. Chapter 55, 56, and 57 criticize various efforts to paint or illustrate the whale. Chapter 62 describes the harpooning process. Chapter 63 is about the crotch where the harpoon is stored, ready to be thrown. Chapter 65 is about whether whales are suitable for food. Chapters 67 and 68 describe the blubber of the whale. Chapters 74, 75, and 76 are about the heads of whales. Chapter 77 is about harvesting the sperm from a whale's head. Chapter 79 is about the whale's forehead. Chapter 80 is about its brain. Chapter 82 is about the importance of whaling as a pursuit. Chapter 83 is about the story of Jonah and the whale. Chapter 84 describes 'pitch-poling'—a particular way of pricking a whale with a dart. Chapter 85 ponders the spout of the whale. Chapter 86 is about the whale's tail. Chapters 87 and 88 are about the social organization of whales at sea. Chapters 89 and 90 are about the disputes that arise between ships at sea about the ownership of whales. Chapter 92 is about ambergris, a rare substance harvested from sick whales. Chapters 94 and 96 are about processing whale oil.¹ Chapters 102 and 103 are about the internal anatomy of whales. Chapter 104 is about the prehistoric whale. Finally, chapter 105 is about whether whales are going extinct.²

Moby-Dick has 135 chapters (and an epilogue). As you can see, at least half of the material between Chapter 32 and 105 consists of various musings about whales and whaling.

Sometimes these musings have a symbolic quality. For instance, the chapter about the whale-line talks about how dangerous this line is. Once the whale is harpooned, the line will start drawing out, and if it gets caught or snagged on a man, then the man will likely get killed or pulled into the sea. The chapter closes by saying:

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whaleboat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

But many of the whale chapters aren't like this. They're just information about whales. For instance, at the end of the chapter about ambergris, there's a long section about how it's a lie and a slander that whaling ships smell bad, and actually whales smell great.

I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman’s two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate?

I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city graveyard, for the foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.

I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a textbook on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale’s flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great.

It's hard to escape the feeling that Melville just...had a bone to pick with people who said whalers smelled, so he decided to address that argument in his book.

The above three paragraphs were, I imagine, unutterably boring to most of my readers, and I doubt you read them. In fact, we are now 1,000 words into this blog post, and most of you are wondering why I'm going on at length about all the whale-content in this book.

Okay...so, you're bored even reading about this stuff. Now...imagine the dreariness of being twenty-four years old, using your spare time to improve yourself, and forcing yourself to read this minutiae about the 1840s whaling industry.

That experience didn't leave me with a great impression of either Moby-Dick or of Melville's work as a whole.

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But, now, fifteen years later, I've spent the last week re-reading Moby-Dick, and I enjoyed it immensely. Even the whaling bits.

Moby-Dick has three major parts: the first fourth is a romance, about a young man who wants a life of adventure and is immersed in a strange milieu; the middle section is about the business of whaling; and the final fourth centers Captain Ahab's monomaniacal obsession with killing the white whale, Moby Dick.

Throughout all the sections, there’s a slowly-building sense of horror, fear, and nihilism. Obviously, pursuing Moby Dick is a bad thing to do, but the crew of this ship are helpless. A good portion of them have been convinced by Ahab that it's a worthwhile pursuit. Starbuck, the chief mate, knows that it’s wrong, but doesn't have the courage to kill Ahab. And even Ahab himself doesn't imagine that he could lose his whole ship and it's entire crew. He thinks, at worst, that he or a few of his oarsmen or harpooners could be killed. That's precisely why he asks Starbuck to stay back on the ship during the final whale hunt—he wants to spare Starbuck's life.

So although everyone knows this to be a dangerous pursuit, none of them imagine how total the devastation might be.

But, as Melville says in the whale-line paragraph I quoted, that's basically what life is! Everyone dies. Everything is obliterated. People are terrified when they're out at sea chasing whales, but really people should be terrified all the time, constantly.

Moby-Dick's climate of absolute terror and hopelessness cannot be sustained, as a literary artifice, without the boring whaling bits, because these boring whaling bits are what gives meaning to the lives of these sailors.

These people are out here to conduct a business. It's true they have various motives that bring them here: Ishmael is bored with life at home; Queequeg worries he's unfitted now to be king of his home island; the blacksmith has destroyed his life with alcohol and now he's committing suicide by putting out to sea at his advanced age. But the ultimate reason for their existence on this ocean is that people need spermaceti oil for their candles and lanterns.

Without that need, there'd be no ship, there'd be no adventure.

And this pursuit has its own rituals. Ishmael doesn't particularly care if they catch any whales, but in the ship as a whole, people tend to rise to the extent that they take pride in their work. Queequeg, as a harpooner, is critical to the endeavor. Unless they can actually harpoon these whales, then the months at sea are meaningless. That’s why the owners of the ship offer Queequeg one-ninetieth of the profits if he’ll sign on—Ishmael only gets one three-hundredth.

The confrontation between Starbuck and Ahab comes to a head when Starbuck realizes some of the casks of oil might be leaking. Starbuck wants them to return to port and seal these casks, because if they lose the oil, then...what does that mean? The oil is their whole reason for being here.

That's where Ahab's different purposes become so threatening. He doesn't care at all about profit. He just wants to kill Moby Dick.

Earlier, Starbuck has told him that his quest is insane and makes no sense:

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”

But Ahab replies:

Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

This distinction that Starbuck is making, between human and animal, is itself artificial. It's all fate. And Ahab is angry at fate; he wants to strike back at fate himself.

For his own crew, Ahab has become a white whale. He's something they have to deal with, to varying degrees. Only Starbuck truly understands that Ahab is mad and will lead them to ruin. The others keep pretending he's a normal captain, and Ahab allows them to do that. That's why he undertakes regular whaling operations—to lull them, to make them think he's engaged in the same ends as they are. He's told them that his ultimate aim is to seek the white whale, yes, but he knows if they grasped the extent of his monomania, then that would terrify them.

It's such a frightening story, because it opens our eyes to the truth, which is that all around us, we are surrounded by beasts that cannot be controlled or reasoned with. Our own bodies could fail at any moment. Any of the things we need or rely upon, they could all fail. We read this book about people who sign up for a whaling voyage and are suddenly delivered into the hands of madness, and part of us wants to think, oh, bad things happen on whaling voyages—that's why we don't go on those voyages.

But the book takes pains to assure us that whaling is a part of the fabric of life. That the sea is three-fourths of the Earth's surface, and that within the sea there exist creatures who are inconceivably large. And that these creatures have been around for millennia, and they will outlast us. That we engage in this activity, hunting whales, as if it's a normal thing to do, with its own rituals, but in reality it's exactly as strange and terrifying as everything else—as our own lives!

It's such a powerful experience.

I've criticized many books over the past year for lacking moral vision. What I usually meant is that in the universe of these books there was no vision for how people ought to deal with calamity or with a sense of life's meaninglessness.

I think Moby-Dick really escapes that charge precisely because of the whaling chapters. Life is composed of its own rituals. It has a certain heaviness to it. At any given time, there's just a bunch of stuff that you have to do, and if you pay attention to this stuff and do it well, then the awfulness of existence isn't so pressing. That's really Ahab's crime. Not that he hated Moby Dick or wanted to kill him—most whalers have at least some desire to kill a big, famous whale—but that he so clearly didn't care about actually being a good whaling ship and bringing profit to himself and his family.

Late in the book, we learn that Ahab has a wife! He has a son! He and Starbuck have a conversation about their respective families. The difference between these two men is not immense. Both of them are engaged in a dangerous pursuit. Both have chosen to spend years away from their families. Both know that they might never return home. But Starbuck is committed to the fiction that he's doing this for his family, and Ahab can't really say the same.

Ahab knows he ought to act differently, but ultimately he's unable to. As he puts it:

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?…

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On Boredom

Anyway that's my take-away from this book. It's a great book. You should definitely read it. The whaling stuff is very crucial, but...I wouldn't be surprised if the reader's interest lags during those sections.

Personally, I found myself somewhat-diverted by the whaling stuff. I was not particularly bored. My ability to be engaged by boring material has expanded dramatically since I was twenty-four. By the standards of boring stuff, Moby-Dick's whaling sections are not that boring, because they're at least attempting to communicate with a reader who is presumably reading this book for pleasure. Vast sections of the Bible have no such orientation—they're not addressed at all to anything we'd consider 'a reader'—and it shows, because they're unbearably repetitive and dull (I'm thinking of Isaiah and Jeremiah here primarily).

So even the most boring parts of Moby-Dick are not that boring in the grand scheme. They're like baby boring—getting you used to reading really boring things.

Because here's the thing: sometimes books have boring stuff! Being bored is not the end of the world. If you're so bored that the book isn't worth your time anymore, then you stop reading it. Or you could skip the boring stuff, but then...you'll always be the person who skipped it. You'll never know, maybe there was something good in there. Maybe if you'd read it, you'd be altered somehow, or your experience of the rest would be different.

We read these books because they're important. Nobody would read Moby-Dick if it wasn't the kind of book that I, Naomi, might write about on my blog. I have a lot of patience now for boring things when they're within books that I trust. For instance, right now I'm in the tenth volume of the Mahabharata, and Yudhisthira just asked Bhishma for his advice on how to live a long life, and there was pages and pages and pages and pages of stuff that was like...don't eat food while wearing shoes. That was one of the pieces of advice.

But I have faith that this advice represents something. That it encapsulates some kind of wisdom from Vedic India on how to live a long, healthy life. I am notionally interested in gaining that wisdom, at least to the extent that I am willing to sit through it.

With Moby-Dick some of the whaling stuff is different than others. I was somewhat interested in anything human—anything to do with ropes, the organization of the crew, the various ways the whale was killed, caught, handled and process.

Other stuff, like how whales have been inaccurately depicted in some old pictures—that's a bit less interesting to me. But it was still interesting to think, "Oh, Melville's readers probably genuinely had very little idea of what a whale looked like." And then I thought, do I myself really understand a whale? Yes, I've seen pictures, but do I really understand its enormity? I can go to Sea World, yes, but I've never actually done that! I have seen whales on occasion, but they've always just been flat, glossy surfaces of ocean where people were like, "Wow, it's a whale." Whatever visions I've seen of a whale in its entirely have been mostly on a small TV or computer screen. I certainly have never seen a whale in the way that Melville had.

You know, I don't actually think I'm better at concentrating than I was when I was twenty-four. I just think I'm more confident, and I have such a range of experience, reading a wide variety of material, so my mind kind of cuts through it. I don't have that hesitance anymore where I'm like, "What is this? What am I reading? Why is this supposed to be good? Is there something I'm not getting?" Instead I just think, "Well, this is Moby-Dick!"

Source

Further Reading

Personally I did not love either the Penguin Classics or the Oxford Classics versions of Moby-Dick (I own both, for some inexplicable reason). Many of Melville’s references went unexplained in these texts, and I took to cutting and pasting passages and asking ChatGPT to explain some of these allusions—something it did quite ably.

The introduction to the Penguin Classics Moby-Dick was, in particular, surprisingly lacking, considering that their introduction to Typee was excellent and probably one of the best Penguin Classics introductions I’ve read. I really dislike the kind of introduction that’s just a summary of the text you’re about to read. I much prefer an introduction that gives me some kind of context that’s not available from the text itself. In this case, some knowledge of the literary context and how this book was received at the time and has been received throughout history would’ve been great!

My sense is that what seems weirdest about the book today (the insane amount of detail about whales) would not have been weird when the book was published, because Melville was known primarily as a writer of travelogues. People would’ve read this book in part because they were interested in whaling! What they would not have expected was that all this realistic detail would be wedded to this overheated, romantic plot where many people talk in a wild English that seems to have some hints of Shakespeare.

But…it would’ve been nice if the introduction had touched on some of this. Instead it’s mostly literary analysis like this:

It is through the encounter between these two principles—the widening embrace of Ishmael and the “monomania” of Ahab—that Moby-Dick takes form. Yet the book never becomes merely a contest between them, because Melville himself incorporates both, and he feels their claims with equal fervor.

In retrospect, I wish I’d invested in the Norton Critical Edition, which only costs $13 (at least for the Kindle edition) and includes way more footnotes and prefatory material. It seems quite cheap for a Norton, honestly, and it’s making me think that in the future I should probably default to them when I’m engaging in a big reading project.

For much of the time I was reading, I also listened to the audiobook recommended by Rob Vlock during my interview with him.³ It was a really great performance by William Hootkins, and I highly recommend it.

1. It seems reductive to put it on this list, because Chapter 94 is also one of the best chapters in the book and contains one of its most famous passages.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say⁠—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

2. I’ve been experimenting with using ChatGPT to help me understand texts. I created this list in part by asking AI to give me a summary of every chapter in Moby-Dick. I don’t post any AI-generated text, ever, and about six months ago I stopped posting AI-generated images, but I’ve been writing a bit on Notes about the various use-cases for AI, so I thought I’d write about one occasion where it actually helped me.

I’m generally somewhat skeptical of the usefulness of AI. At best, it seems to be a mildly-improved Google search. But…that’s not nothing! I mean, Google is a bazillion-dollar company for a reason.

3. Here’s a link to my interview with Vlock.