Moby Dick

I am happy (thrilled? relieved?) to report that I have finally finished reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I started it last year, got about halfway through, then set it aside for the lighter, easier books that were arriving (sometimes daily) at the library. This continued for about a year. Then last week, I had many books that I was waiting for, but none that had arrived, and I looked at Moby Dick next to my bed gathering dust and decided that I was tired of seeing it and needed to finish it. It took me about five days to finish it off. 

If you had asked me what I thought about Moby Dick before this week, I would not have been overly excited. There were a few amusing bits, but there were an awful lot of bits that felt like a slog. I was worried that the rest of the book was just going to be a three hundred page slog to the finish line. It wasn't. In fact, I actually ended up liking it. Kind of a lot. And the ending was particularly satisfying. I was surprised by my reaction, actually. 

One of the things that makes Moby Dick challenging is that Herman Melville was a man of his times. Remember my mixed thoughts about Jules Verne? Well, let's just say it was good that had some significant Jules Verne experience before tackling Melville. Verne looks like an amateur in comparison. There are so many whales, so many chapters about whale biology, so many chapters about whale oil and the processing of. Just when you think he has covered every possible subject related to whales, you turn the page and are confronted with another. And like Jules Verne, Melville was writing in the mid-1800's and the science has... changed. I started keeping my phone next to me when I was reading because I found the need to fact check every few chapters. This was a bit tedious. 

The rest of the story is actually kind of engaging as you get further in. (And by further in, I mean over halfway, so you'll have to decide if you can hang in there through the first half for the payoff.) Because it was about halfway through that I started to really figure out what Melville was doing. On the face of it, Ishmael (the narrator of the famous first line) seems to be saying that whales are monstrous, but really, in his narration of the story, he is really asking who is the monster? From an insane, monomaniacal captain, to the whole of process of killing and processing whales, to the treatment of the human beings on the boat, the whales are looking pretty good. This was not by accident. 

"But pity there was none. For all his (the whale in question, not Moby Dick) old age, and his one arm, and his bling eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all." (Chapter 81 - The Pequod Meets the Virgin)

But today, towards the end, I realized that Moby Dick also has something to say about madmen in power. It seems a bit topical, don't you think? Because Ahab is mad and is willing to doom his ship and his crew in pursuit of the desire of his madness. Starbuck, his first mate, knows Ahab is mad. In fact, Ahab came near to killing Starbuck earlier in the book. At one point, something else has gone wrong on board and Starbuck needs to go inform the captain. Ahab is asleep and Starbuck sees the loaded gun inside the cabin door. Starbuck stands there a long time struggling with his conscious and what is the right course of action. The trouble is that Starbuck admires the captain on some level and cannot abide seeing him in chains for the long way home. He says he couldn't endure the sight. He goes on, " 'The land in hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me and law. - Aye, aye, 'tis so. - Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering the sheets and skin together? - And would I be a murderer, then, if' -- and slowly, stealthily, and half-sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end against the door." (chapter 123 - The Musket)

If Starbuck had done the right thing, taking control of the ship and putting the captain in chains due to insanity, the Pequod, its entire crew, and its cargo would have survived. Instead, Moby Dick, the object of Ahab's delusions, takes vengeance upon the captain, crew, and ship in its death throws. No one survived save Ishmael. Who knew the 'Great American Novel' would be quite so prescient on the eve of the 250th birthday of the nation?