These recent chapters, in the vein of Melville’s themes of duality, provided some of both the most unexciting and exciting chapters yet. While (finally) we get to see an actually whale-hunt, which culminates in a capsizing of Ishmael’s boat because of a storm, we also had to brave the painstaking description of the currents which Ahab mapped to find his Great White Whale. Many of the themes touched upon in these chapters recall the opening chapters. Fatalism plays a huge part in both Ishmael onset narration, and now that he’s settled on the Pequod. “Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists.” (194) says Ishmael, when a period of clear weather sets in. Before that, in the storm during the whale hunt, Melville gives us another fatalist image of solitude and desperation: Queequeg holding up the lantern to signal the Pequod. Melville writes, “There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.” (187) And, of course, my favorite cynical fatalist quip comes in ‘the Hyena’, when Ishmael claims that “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 dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.” (188)
Another recurring theme that Melville/Ishmael brings up in “Loomings” and furthers in these chapters is that aspect of the sea that is both attractive and destructive. “…in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of…” says Ishmael, “they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.” (196) Ishmael sees this duality in everything (“Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love the invisible spheres were formed in fright.” (164)). He sees it in people (“…strangely compounded of fun and fury…” (182) and “…in him also two different things were warring.” (192)). He even sees it in the concept of the color white, of which he asks “Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation…” (165).
It’s interesting reading about Ahab after reading Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. I can’t help but notice the similarities. Both men are guided monomaniacally by a single principle (for Ahab, it’s Moby-Dick; for Machiavelli, it’s efficiency). Both men prescribe to others merely an instrumental value. Melville writes that, “To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order.” (177) Ahab sees his crew as “tools”—a means of achieving the ends of Moby-Dick, just as Machiavelli sees people as a means to the end of the survival of the state. It is questionable, however, because Ahab is doing just as much harm to himself as he is to his crew. He is undergoing, basically, a long, drawn-out suicide (or self-crucifixion), as he “…wakes with bloody nails in his palms.” (169)
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