Karen Eisenhauer · that the ocean in Moby-Dick is a powerful force that, by definition, cannot be fully understood by man.

Karen Eisenhauer

ENG 582 Final Seminar Paper

“The Wondrous Depths”: The Ocean as Metaphysical Setting in Moby-Dick

Melville’s Moby-Dick is one of the most famous nautical novels ever written. It’s with

good reason, too – Melville’s ocean easily moves beyond mere ‘setting,’ permeating and shading

the action and characters as if it were a character of its own. Despite this, relatively little has

been written specifically about the water that constitutes the majority of the setting in the novel.

Upon closer examination the ocean turns out to be a powerful symbol representing the

metaphysical quests that dominate the atmosphere of Moby-Dick. Through periodic descriptive

passages and meditations on the open ocean, Melville communicates an increasing anxiety about

the tension between the safety and humanity of land and the deep, open questions of the soul

which the ocean comes to signify. Additionally, investigating Ishmael’s and Ahab’s relationship

to the ocean can shed new light on their respective philosophical quests. Through the lens of its

grand oceanic setting, Moby-Dick becomes a meditation on what it means to try and know the

unknowable – and whether one can do so without being lost to the depths.

In terms of scope, The ocean is one of the largest metaphorical elements in the

construction of Moby-Dick. Although Ahab and the mysterious white whale are Melville’s

obvious foci, it’s worth noting that neither appear in the novel until chapter 28; the ocean, on the

other hand, is pervasive. The oceanic setting is introduced to the reader directly after the famous

first line of the novel, as Ishmael tells the reader, “I thought I would sail about a little and see the

watery part of the world” (18). Only one page later we are invited to begin considering the

metaphorical resonances of the ocean:

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries – stand that man on his

legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water…. Yes, as everyone knows,

meditation and water are wedded forever. (19)

The extended meditation on the connections between water, magic, meditation, and the soul in

the first chapter keys the reader to the importance of the ocean as something more than simple

background. The ocean stays pervasive throughout the story, and furthermore creates a closing

frame to mirror its opening fanfare. Even after the two dominant forces of the book (Ahab and

Moby-Dick) exit the narrative, the last line before the epilogue reads: “Now small fowls beat

against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five

thousand years ago” (427). The ocean’s framing presence in the novel earns it closer inspection.

In addition to being pervasive setting, the ocean occasionally takes the center stage as the

object of Ishmael’s meditation. There are a full five chapters (Ch. 23 The Lee Shore, Ch. 58 Brit,

Ch. 111 The Pacific, Ch. 114 The Gilder, Ch. 132 The Symphony) which almost exclusively

describe and meditate on the sea’s significant beauty, danger and mystery. Ishmael’s musings in

these chapters bring to mind the concept of a Greek chorus. In them, Ishmael moves away from

his role as active character in the plot to a more observational, non-personalized role.

Additionally, all these chapters mark a move either towards or away from important plot

movements. “The Lee Shore,” for example, marks the beginning of the ocean voyage, and “Brit”

marks a return to the Pequod after thirty pages of non-narrative writing and begins the arc of the

first lowering. “The Symphony” is another beautiful “scene break” which marks the entrance of

the plot into its climactic “Final Chase” chapters. Melville uses his character’s meditation on

setting to his structural advantage, breaking his narrative into “acts,” invoking dramatic genres as

he does in many other facets of the novel.1

Schlegel describes the role of the Greek chorus an “ideal spectator” (70). He says, “It

mitigates the impression of a heart-rending or moving story, while it conveys to the actual

spectator a lyrical and musical expression of his own emotions, and elevates him to the region of

contemplation” (70). This role seems to suit Ishmael well – as Manfred Putz points out, Ishmael

is often put in the position of a “personified audience” and “critical spectator” more than as an

acting agent of plot (162-163). In these specific chapters, Ishmael joins us as spectator and critic,

and the ocean becomes a vehicle through which Melville can direct impressions of the

surrounding plot. This direction is hardly subtle: in many places, Ishmael explicitly invites the

reader not only to see the ocean, but to philosophize about it as well. In “Brit,” for example, calls

for the reader to “consider” the ocean as metaphor: “Consider the subtleness of the sea…

consider the devilish brilliance… consider, once more… consider all this” (225). He even ends

with the telling question: “Do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?” (225).

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1 Many have noted the multitude of connections between Moby-Dick and various Shakespearian dramatic

works, notably King Lear (Markels, Matthiesen, Stewart, Stone). The obvious Shakespearian influence visible in

Melville’s language, character development, plot, and direct homage gives grounds for interpreting the structure of

the novel in a Shakespearian sense as well. As Odell explains, the Greek chorus was shifted in Shakespearian drama

from multiple-person cast in musical setting to a single character. This character was often a member of the plot as

well (e.g. Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet, Puck in A Midsummer Nights’ Dream). Ishmael mirrors this updated

choral style by stepping out of plot to soliloquize on the ocean’s appearance and meaning; often, he does so in a

poetic style more suited to Shakespeare than to a sailor. In “The Lee Shore,” for example, he exclaims: “Is all this

agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, o Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of the ocean-

perishing – straight up, leaps ty apotheosis!” (97). The language here supports the conceptualization of Ishmael as a

chorus in the Shakespearian style.

Like most of Melville’s symbols and motifs, the ocean’s metaphorical purpose is difficult

to pin down. Many authors have equated the sea with Moby-Dick in the past, particularly in

metaphysical readings of the text (e.g. De Villiers). Others take it on its own terms to support

various abstracted meanings (e.g. Davis, Giesenkirchen). One author finds the Indian Ocean in

particular as an argument towards the socio-political reading of the Pequod as a nation state

(Birns). Despite the possibility for many readings, most authors agree that the ocean is positioned

in opposition to other natural elements, most notably to land. This opposition is first seen in

“Loomings” as he casts his land-bound existence as the source of his “hypos” and the ocean as

their cure. Later, in “The Lee Shore,” he once again draws the land (the port) as the opposite the

sea, saying “The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort,

hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities….” And that “in

landlessness alone resides the highest truth” (97). In “Brit,” he returns once again to this dualism,

comparing the virtues of the sea and the land. Later, in “The Gilder,” he meditates on times

where the two may appear the same, saying: “There are times when… the rover softly feels a

certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he regards it as with so much

flowery earth…” (372) but then reminds the reader that “when beholding the tranquil beauty and

brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it” (372), cementing

the concept that the land and the sea may look the same but are fundamentally different, even

opposed.

The land is clearly delineated in all these passages as the realm of the human. In his

article on color theory in Moby-Dick, Giesenkierchen notes that the land is perpetually described

as green, describing “man’s at-homeness in the world.” Indeed, every time land is brought up, it

is related to visions of home, family, and other quotidian or domestic scenes. Land in “The Lee

Shore” is described as “safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s

kind to our mortalities” (97). in “The Symphony,” connections between quotidian life, human

connection, and land are made clearer still. In this scene the land-scented air causes Ahab to

remark, “let me look into the human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to

gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone!” (406).

The ocean, on the other hand, is represented by Melville to be something beyond (and

antagonistic to) humanity. Where the land is related to hearth, home, farm, family and comfort,

water is described in various places in conjunction with words like “fate” (96), “deep, earnest

thinking” (96), “dreams” and “reveries” (19, 367, 372), the “soul” (321), “God” (321), and

“Heaven itself” (293). Because of this, the setting of the ocean takes on larger-than-life qualities,

representing various forces diametrically opposed to embodied human existence. Clark reckons

the sea/land (or sea/sky) dichotomy as akin to the renaissance dualism between the “upper and

lower strata,” where the lower stratum (symbolized by the ocean) represents “the element that

devours, swallows up (the grave, the womb) and that the same time an element of birth, of

renascence” (21). Giesenkierchen believes that the sea is “a symbol that encompasses the

unknown depths and ungraspable flux of both earthly existence and mental processes” (24).

Similarly, De Villiers posits that the sea is meant to represent the “ungraspable phantom of life…

where depth, night and death converge” (71). Although these interpretations differ, they all agree

that the ocean in Moby-Dick is a powerful force that, by definition, cannot be fully understood by

man. According to De Villers, Melville’s representation follows other literature of the time in

making the sea “enstranging force, the site of a violent otherness” (73).

The exact nature of water’s unknowable reality remains veiled in the text. In many

places, Melville seems to imply a divine agency which drives the ocean. The biblical references

early on seem to tie the ocean to the will of a Christian God, as in the famous Nantucket sermon

(48-54). He later describes the sea as borrowing a “rocking life” from the “inscrutable tides of

God” (136). His descriptions of creatures of the sea, and of weather, are also described as “God-

omnipresent” (321) and “as the insufferable splendors of God’s throne” (378). The Biblical

nature of the ocean becomes especially clear in “The Candles” and through the end of the novel,

as Ahab’s disobedience begins to increasingly parallel Jonah’s, as does his ultimate punishment.

This version of the ocean has no will of its own, but is a tool through which God enacts divine

will.

However, God is not the only force Melville uses to animate his oceans. Scholars have

noted Melville’s skepticism through his depiction of traditional Christianity and his celebration

of taboo boundary-crossings; the sea seems to be another tool through which he illustrates his

ambivalent metaphysical stance. In some places Melville describes the ocean as a Romantic

consciousness by ascribing to its nature a sublime soul separate from a divine will. In chapter 51,

he states, “still unrestingly heaved the black sea as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the

great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred”

(193). He also often implies a great oceanic consciousness by personifying it or otherwise giving

it agency – in one case, he even sexes the water, saying that sea life is “the strong, troubled,

murderous thinkings of the masculine sea” (404). In still other places he paints the ocean in the

spirit of transcendentalists, as a grand expanse with no consciousness that will ultimately

subsume humanity. He calls the sea a “heartless immensity” (321) and “more oblivious than

death” (369). He weaves all these in between (and sometimes directly alongside) Judeo-Christian

imagery. Take the descriptive passage of the secrets of the ocean revealed to Pip in “The

Castaway:”

Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal

world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his

hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the

multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the

colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his

shipmates called him mad. (321-22)

In this passage, Ishmael references a Judeo-Christian God directly, and indirectly through

biblical words such as “firmaments.” However, within the same passage, he alludes to the fact

that the ocean may contain a more generalized, agnostic “wisdom.” Ishmael also mentions the

“strange shapes of the unwarped primal world” and “coral insects” as representations of the

grandiose nature found underwater. These things he puts in the same passage, and thereby on the

same level, as the God he describes. He ends this chapter by describing the wisdom of the ocean

with the brilliantly non-committal phrase “that celestial thought” (322), underscoring his

undecided take on the nature of the “wondrous depths.”

Although Melville paints a shifting kaleidoscope of metaphysical philosophy, the effect

of the ocean on the sailor (and the reader) stays constant. The ocean represents that which is

ungraspable to man; that which challenges quotidian human existence; all possibilities for what

expands the human spirit. Melville’s summary in “The Mast-Head” is fitting:

…that deep, blue bottomless soul pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen,

gliding beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly discovered, uprising fin of some

undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the

soul by continually flitting through it. (136)

This may, at first glance, seem similar to how critics have interpreted Moby-Dick himself.

Moby-Dick, and whales more generally, are consistently described within this novel as larger-

than-life, mysterious, and dangerous. Ahab’s initial introduction of Moby-Dick calls him “that

inscrutable thing,” saying, “be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will

wreak that hate upon him” (140). Moby-Dick in particular is likened to divinity. The description

is likened to that of the Devil more often than that of God, but a similar inhumanity to the ocean

is attributed to him by Ishmael:

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it;

all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all

evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He

piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race

from Adam down… (156)

The connections between the two are obvious; but, unlike some previous scholarship, I posit that

they are not to be equated. Melville’s white whale is “personified” - He is a physical object, a

manifestation, and a focal point for all ungraspable evil in the world. The volatile, focused, and

physical presence of Moby-Dick compared to the pervasive background of the ocean suggest to

me that the two presences should be treated by us as differently as Melville treats them in his

text. If Moby-Dick is a focused goal of discovery or conquest, sea stands as a metaphor for the

process of gaining deeper wisdom. In this reading, the sea becomes not only a physical setting,

but a philosophical setting as well. Land becomes the quotidian metaphysical experience, and the

sea, the quest to move beyond that existence. And the white whale is whatever the end of the

quest, whether it be God, nature’s soul, or some grand indifference – as Ishmael puts it, is a

“great demon in the seas of life” (158).

The structure of the book reflects this intense focusing effect by introducing his presence

suddenly and loudly with an eight-chapter fanfare well into the narrative (ch. 36-43). From there,

Moby-Dick becomes an immediate object of focus for Ahab, the crew, Ishmael, and the reader.

Ishmael spends increasing amounts of time in prolonged (and failed) attempts at describing the

physical presence of whales, and Moby-Dick in particular. These stand in contrast from the more

omniscient choral renderings of the ocean that appear throughout the book. Ishmael never seems

to “fail” at describing the significance of the ocean; the ocean merely shifts, subtly and

constantly, in its suggestive power. And as we will see, looking closely at those shifting

considerations reveal nuances of anxiety and wonder implicit in the oceanic quest.

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As the Pequod sets sail, Ishmael’s choral musings on the ocean act to reflect and guide

the reader’s emotions about the quest for inhuman wisdom. At the beginning of the novel,

Ishmael describes the grand meditations of water as humanity’s inescapable, beautiful obsession.

As he says, “It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to all.” (20,

emphasis added). His first choral passage, “The Lee Shore,” echoes and strengthens this

sentiment:

With all [the ship’s] might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds

that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s

sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitters foe!... Glimpses do you seem to see of

that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul

to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to

cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?... But as in landlessness lone resides the highest truth,

shoreless, indefinite as God – so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously

dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! (96-97)

Here, in this first true soliloquy on the nature of the soul and the sea, Ishmael invites the reader

to see a nobility in the struggle to move beyond human limits of understanding. He also lionizes

Bulkington in this chapter, of whom he says “the land seemed scorching to his feet” (96).

Ishmael’s enthusiasm at this point could be in part due to his naiveté about the Pequod’s quest.

He hasn’t been exposed to the dangers of whaling, and importantly, he hasn’t met Ahab or heard

of his quest. Descriptions of Ahab have been vague but generally positive - Captain Peleg merely

says “Oh, thou’lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man,

Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen” (78).

The general optimism towards Ahab and the voyage shows in this oceanic rumination. Ishmael

insists that land is nothing but “slavish shore,” good for safety and not much else. He desires the

discomfort of the ocean, believing that by being engulfed in the storm he will find the “highest

truth.” In “The Mast Head” his desire to be completely landless comes to fruition as he describes

being dissipated in the consciousness of the sea: “In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to

whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space…” (136). It seems from these

passages that Ishmael believes in the quest for inhuman wisdom, but has little conception of the

magnitude of its possible ends.

“Brit” is also a philosophical overture on the ocean and in many ways a mirror of “The

Lee Shore.” It is of similar length and structure, with the first half being a description of the

oceanic weather and the second half being Ishmael’s comparison between the similar natures of

water and man. But between the two chapters, darker sides of the whaling voyage have been

revealed, including Ahab, Moby-Dick, Fedallah. As Ishmael returns to the adventures of the

Pequod after 30 pages of more abstracted philosophizing, his thoughts on the sea reflect these

dangers:

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, 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 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 this 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. God keep thee! Push

not off from that isle, thou canst never return! (225)

The substance of Ishmael’s philosophy appears almost in direct opposition from his earlier

characterization in “The Lee Shore.” Where before Ishmael was fascinated by the noble struggle

of landlessness, he now almost pleas for the reader to stay on the “insular Tahiti, full of peace

and joy.” there is no sense here that this comfort is also destruction; on the contrary, Ishmael

seems to be foreshadowing that the previously lauded ocean is now the primary source of danger.

This passage feels transitional, as Ishmael specifically asks us to consider the “subtleness of the

sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and

treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure” (emphasis added). He alludes here to

the fact that things which may have seemed beautiful or noble before now need a second look.

One could even read it as a tacit acknowledgement of his own previous misinterpretation.

In the following chapters depicting the first lowering, we do indeed begin to see the sin

and insanity that seem to lurk underneath the surface of the Pequod’s epic journey. “Brit” is one

of the first passages to mention the “dainty embellished shapes of many species of sharks.” This

introduction is another way in which the story pivots, as sharks from here on out become a motif

of sin and greed whose presence grows throughout the novel. Additionally, the main

characterization in the ocean’s relation to man has changed from “the highest truth” to “the

horrors of the half-known life.” I will return to the exact meaning of this phrase later, but here, it

suffices to say that the shift from “truth” to “half-known” represents a certain disillusionment in

Ishmael’s internal monologue, perhaps caused in part by his witnessing more of Ahab’s true

quest.

As the book progresses, Ishmael’s musings do not completely lose their initial wonder;

however, the “subtle dangers” of the sea are increasingly brought to the forefront. In “The

Pacific,” Ishmael still admits a longing for the sea, saying that “the long supplication of my

youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue”

(367). However, his following description of the ocean is ambiguous, describing “gently awful

stirrings” and “millions of mixed shades and shadows” (367). In “The Gilder,” the ocean has

become unambiguously sinister:

these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the

ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember,

that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang. (372)

This description can once again be read as Ishmael’s response to his own earlier praise of the

ocean’s calmness and/or nobility. While Ishmael often attempts descriptions from different or

conflicting angles, here we see a rare case of his landing on a definitive “side” of the argument.

The danger, as he describes it, is never “false;” beauty and nobility, however, are increasingly

described as such. Eventually the ocean is described in terms of the conflict between beauty and

terror, or else exclusively in terms of terror, often with mentions of sharks or other beings that

lurk beneath its surface. As the novel becomes darker and the Pequod’s tragic end looms, so

Melville’s interpretation of the ocean becomes (as Giesenkierchen puts it) “dominated by the

apprehension of something essentially hostile to both our bodily and mental wholesomeness

"looming" and "lurking" beneath the "blue blandness" that the seascape takes on” (27).

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It is key to note that although Ishmael always provides descriptions of the ocean, the

choral job of elevating the reader’s emotions to the “region of contemplation” in latter chapters is

not fulfilled not by Ishmael but by Ahab. The second half of all these chapters are dominated by

either the captain’s thoughts or deeds. This take-over resonates with many other readings of

Moby-Dick, where Ishmael’s consciousness is slowly consumed by Ahab’s. Additionally, we

may gain some important insight into the characters through their competing interpretations of

and reactions to the ocean voyage.

Both characters are set apart from other main actors in the book by their landless quality.

Ishmael, as it has been shown, identifies with water more than with land, though he recognizes

the dangers of the ocean. Ahab is even more “landless” than Ishmael. In his words, “for forty

years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the

deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore” (405). Once

at sea, he seems to avoid land, as Melville describes in “The Grand Armada”: “But how now? In

this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land?... Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long

time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but

what’s in himself. So Ahab” (297). And while Ishmael tries to lose himself in the calm waters of

the “Mast-Head,” we can also find Ahab losing himself in water, staying on deck to weather the

storms encountered by the Pequod. Both men are fascinated by the ocean – Ahab, through his

charts, and later his seeming intuitive connection with the currents, and Ishmael through

dissolving descriptions of the ocean’s countenance. They stand far apart from other prominent

sailors in this regard. Starbuck, for example, only seems to ever describe the ocean as “sharkish”

(144, 373) and wishes continuously for home. Stubb, the only other to discuss the sea directly,

famously sings his mocking disregard for the danger/power/mystery of the setting (380). Ishmael

and Ahab alone seem captivated by the ocean.

It’s the nature of their obsessions that set the two characters apart. The main difference is

that Ahab’s experience on the ocean importantly isn’t about the ocean – it’s about Moby-Dick,

read here as the answer at the end of the metaphysical quest. Ishmael states his quest as simply

“to get to the sea as soon as I can” (1), where Ahab describes himself as a harpooner his life at

sea as “the chase” (405). Unlike Ishmael, Ahab neither reveres, nor fears, the water. The sea is

his life – to the rejection of all things land-like, including his family – but it means nothing to

him, besides being the place where he will eventually find Moby-Dick. Ahab’s choral

meditations therefore have a very different atmosphere than Ishmael’s. Ishmael wanders

meditatively through comparisons between water and human spirit, but in “The Pacific” - where

Ahab fulfills the choral meditative role for the first time – descriptions are terse and dismissive:

But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing like an iron statue at his accustomed

place beside the mizen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from

the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale

must even then be swimming. (368)

Ahab’s monomaniacal obsession leads him to attempt to conquer the ocean rather than

understand or appreciate it. His early dedication to (and late frustration with) scientific

implements reflects his view of the ocean as a thing to be ‘solved.’ However, as the plot finally

reveals, Ahab is tragically misguided in these attempts. De Villiers argues that by searching for

Moby-Dick with such intensity, his attempt to question or solve dominant metaphysical stances

merely reinforces their initial assumptions. The tragic irony of this is that in the end, Ahab is

‘correct’ – he succeeded in ‘conquering’ the sea and finding the whale, which should have been

impossible. But he hasn’t grasped the whale or the ocean, certainly not like Ishmael is trying to

do. And “In the end the whale eludes his grasp, and Ahab is drawn into the abyss of the sea”

(75).

It is here that Ishmael’s earlier comments on the “cannibalism” of the sea seem

particularly cogent. In his attempt to conquer the inhabitants of the sea, with no real

understanding or care for his setting, Ahab almost seems to be a denizen of the sea rather than a

sailor upon it. He has been so utterly consumed by his misguided answer-seeking that his

landlessness feels inevitable. In “The Gilder” and “The Symphony,” Ahab expresses this

sentiment through his choral position. He reveals the cannibalizing danger (which Ishmael

alludes to earlier) by soliloquizing not on the ocean, but tragically by speaking of his longing for

land. In “The Gilder,” he mourns his exhaustion with the eternal struggle, asking, “Where lies

the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?” (373). “The Symphony” is even more tragically

ironic as he connects with Starbuck – the character most closely associated with the land – and

admits the true danger and folly of his mission. And yet, he cannot stop his quest. Calling

himself “cannibal me… abroad upon the deep” (406), he denies Starbuck’s plea to turn the

Pequod around even though he questions his own fundamental agency as he does so. Melville

thoroughly links these actions to imagery of Ahab’s sinking fixation on water: “Ahab leaned

over the side and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and

the more that he strove to pierce the profundity” (405). It is perhaps because of this sinking

feeling that he identifies so strongly with Pip, whose soul has been destroyed by the wonders of

the ocean; he sees in him his own desire and inevitable destruction. (It should not be lost, either,

that Pip calls Ahab’s skin “velvet shark-skin” (392)). Ishmael’s words in “Brit” begin to read like

a prophecy:

But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own

offspring; worse than the Persian host who murdered its own guests; sparing not the creatures

which itself spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so

the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side

with the split wrecks of ships. (225)

Like this passage foreshadows, Ahab becomes a creature that the sea spawns through its tragedy

and mystery. His self-created quest ends up cannibalizing him. Ahab slowly loses his humanity

as he casts aside all human comfort, and becomes a whale just like the one he hunts; both end up

side by side with the split wreck of his ship.

Ishmael, on the other hand, seems to understand the ocean in a way that Ahab does not.

He certainly seems to understand the potential danger of the oceanic quest, both literal and

metaphysical. His refusal to settle on a single answer to any great epistemological question, as

well as his explicit meditations on the power and treachery of the ocean, illustrate this. Rather

than relentlessly searching for the answers of life’s larger mysteries, he contents himself with the

questions; he picks up and abandons metaphors with ease, moving like waves through

interpretations of divine wonder. And through all this, he never loses his land-like connections

with other people, as illustrated by his enduring relationship with Queequeg. And in the end,

when both landless men are set to sea, it is Ishmael who survives. Ahab’s disregard for the ocean

culminates in his lowering into a pit of vicious sharks “seemingly rising out of dark waters”

(421). But as Ishmael is capsized, he floats, kept buoyant by an object of the man he loved. The

final imagery of the book wraps up Ishmael’s relationship with the sea beautifully: he floats,

safely, directionlessly, circling round and round in the water, while the sharks that destroyed

Ahab “glide by as if with padlocks on their mouths” (427).

I think the difference between the two men’s fates in relation to the ocean can speak to

what Melville might have meant by the “horrors of the half-known life” mentioned in “Brit.”2

Melville’s brilliance here, to me, is that this phrase has meanings on both sides of the land-water

duality. The first is, obviously, that you cannot kill the white whale. There is no one answer that

can satisfy the quest to understand the “wondrous depths.” The best that any man can seem to do

is go mad and “fall in” to the ocean, losing his humanity in the process. Just like the ocean is

uninhabitable, with man only able to manipulate its surface, the metaphysical questions will

always be “half-known.” On the other hand, if you push off from the “insular Tahiti” – at least, if

you do so like Ahab has done – then your humanity is also doomed to only be half-known. We

see Ahab try to regain his capacity for human connection in the latter part of the novel, but as

Ishmael says, “thou canst never return.” Ishmael might have pushed off, but he never sinks in the

way Ahab does, so he survives. He understands the ocean for what it is: wondrous, dangerous,

maddening, and ultimately, unknowable.

2 This phrase has been bothering me for MONTHS. It was, in part, the impetus for me returning to this subject for my final paper.

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