Abhignya champions reading hefty books like Melville’s Moby Dick, arguing their depth offers profound self-knowledge despite modern distractions, exclusively for Different Truths.
It is not uncommon to be turned off by a hefty book. Who, after all, has the time and energy to read a big, fat book that may or may not be rewarding? It is a daunting prospect and demands serious commitment. Imagine the nature of guilt upon the end of a “bad” 1000-page story. One might as well have read five “good” 200-page books instead (three of which might have been a pleasant indulgence or of significant instruction; “good” and “bad” of course pertain to taste and general outlook).
In the age of Instagram and instant gratification, it is difficult to muster enough attention that will help finish a classic tome. There are many reasons to be a non-believer in the power of fat books, and yet, I wish to argue through the means of this short article that one must make the effort sometime. Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov are complex but life-altering. They teach the Socratic art of knowing oneself. The following is a discussion surrounding one such book.
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is the quintessential American classic. I’d first heard of the book, very late, in the last year of my literature degree. Moby Dick and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (I still haven’t acquired or read the latter, but the idea of it fills my heart with joy!). I remember having to choose between multiple editions at Crossword. I never really got around to reading the book until the Covid-imposed lockdown a year later. As I lay confined in my bedroom, this story of travel and adventure overseas seemed all at once very alluring. I spent a couple of weeks reading chunks of the novel on the terrace of my home every morning and evening. The dreadful news I heard daily (in the ever-present backdrop of ambulance sirens) added to the angst of Melville’s story of the overpowering determinism of Nature; were we also not helpless in the face of the coronavirus?
Herman Melville (1819-1891) led an interesting, difficult life. Born to a father who owned a fur and felt business, Melville was raised to understand culture and feel deeply about national affairs (one of his grandfathers was involved in the Boston Tea Party). He had a weak disposition due to an early attack of scarlet fever and never found stability in his work, barring short spans of success or happiness. Forced to earn a living after his father’s death whilst still very young, Melville tried his hand at being a banker, farmer, schoolteacher, harpooner/sailor, customs inspector, poet, and writer. To make matters grimmer still, one of his sons died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was not appreciated in his time and gave up the practice of writing; his death was not mourned in literary circles, and no obituaries were published on his passing. Two hundred years after his birth, however, he is considered to be a literary giant.
Moby Dick, although received poorly in its time, has become a celebrated text of American Literature. It is the story of Captain Ahab’s obsession with a white sperm whale called Moby Dick. The whale is based on the real Mocha Dick found in the waters of Mocha Island by Chile, known for its notoriously destructive streak with sailors and their ships. Ahab wishes to kill the whale because it has bitten off his leg in an encounter in the past. He is described as an “ungodly, godlike man” who has but one unreasonable demand of life. He does not let the brute be a brute but anthropomorphises the whale to symbolise all that he despises and must thus eradicate (or perish trying). He wishes to take charge of and possess the creature like men do with nations, artefacts, and lovers. Driven by a mad spirit of revenge, Ahab assembles a team that sails stormy waters on the ship Pequod. One amongst them, the narrator Ishmael, finds himself in low spirits, caught by “a damp, drizzly November in the soul”, and has thus decided to partake in the whaling sojourn. The story unfolds from his impressionable, whimsical, and patient perspective. He tentatively befriends the tribal prince and cannibal Queequeg, who stands in stark opposition to other Christian (civilised) characters. Melville teaches the reader to eliminate the difference between the self and the other through Queequeg and other members of the Pequod who hail from different ethnicities. He writes, “See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.”
Another character, Starbuck (in whose honour is the famous coffee chain Starbucks christened), becomes the voice of reason and morality as he beseeches Ahab to see sense (“let faith oust fact”) and whale only for commerce to return home safely to their wives and children; Ahab, however, only seeks Moby Dick and in Moby Dick his unfathomable revenge. Melville comments thus:
“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man” and “There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.” Ahab, nevertheless, takes himself seriously.
The writing is akin to a fever dream, a medicine-induced half-lit picture of reality. There are chapters only a paragraph long or dense ones on the significance of a certain colour or pirates, and self-fulfilling prophecies. Ishmael meanders, and the reader drifts along; the best books depict time as endless and as arrested within one’s stream of consciousness. The reader feels stranded in time, as on the sea. Melville gently pushes her to probe into the mysteries of life whilst constantly describing the anatomy of a whale (the reader becomes well-acquainted with the nature and uses of ambergris, blubber, sinew, baleen, and spermaceti; ideas of cetology she might not have ever lent serious thought to). He writes:
“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide underwater, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as well as the dainty, embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this, and then turn to the 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.”
As Ishmael notes, it is the infinite water around that triggers meditation. At times, the novel reminded me of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and its painted ship upon a painted ocean. Critics have drawn upon Melville’s Shakespearean influence. Author Ray Bradbury wrote of Moby Dick as being written by Shakespeare using a Ouija board! Ahab’s monologues remind one of King Lear or Macbeth. There is the same ambivalence and tragedy in his speech as is in Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’. It is hubris and monomania that define Ahab, who has spent more than four decades whaling. Moby Dick not only escapes the harpoons plunged into its thick blubber but also retaliates. In the three times it is spotted by the crew of the Pequod, it only causes damage. As Ahab launches his attack, he cries, charged with adrenaline and agony:
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
Moby Dick survives, and Ahab finds himself entangled in the noose-like wire he’s used only to be dragged within the deep unknown waters that are home to the white sperm whale he wishes to annihilate. Moby Dick reigns victorious. Melville draws for his audience the pitiful picture of a lone man fighting a force of nature; the ginormous whale looming large in Ahab’s face can only be a joke. The universe, like Camus asserts, will remain indifferent if not hostile to man’s search for meaning. Thus, Moby Dick might be a metaphor for God, Nature, the Bourgeoisie, Patriarchy, one’s parents, Fate, or fear. To each reader, his/her own.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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I enjoyed reading the article. I started reading Moby Dick in my teenage and had left incomplete. I am planning to pick it up again, all thanks to this insightful article. Being a big fan of Ms. Abhignya, as always I look forward to read more in Different Truths.