Response Journal Week 9 - Kalil

Kalil Smith-Nuevelle

In this section, Ishmael once again returns to the idea that you cannot accurately portray a whale. The whale, elevated as it is to such a high status in Moby-Dick, cannot be fully represented by mortals. This returns us to the idea of whales as godlike, and Melville does suggest that the whale is “immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality” (354). To draw a whale, or define a whale would be to make it mortal. However, Matt Kish had no such qualms. His representation of the whale, as well as of every other part of Moby-Dick was far from limiting. Instead, looking at his visual representations, my own understanding was changed to some extent. I was especially drawn to his representation of the various sailors. Each one of them actually looked like a ship (a good deal more modern than the Pequod, but ships nonetheless), which reminded me of our consideration of microcosms within the novel. I also enjoyed his whales, although this was mostly just aesthetic (I loved the way that they looked almost industrial, or manufactured).
This short section returns once again to Ishmael’s vast arrogance, often to the point of stupidity. He claims that he has “undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan,” and strangely refers to his methods as “antedeluvian” which appears rather accurate (349). Instead of calling upon modern science, or even truly accepting his sources (from which some of these chapters are nearly plagiarized), he is weirdly contradictory. He is keenly aware of the challenges presented by attempting to understand the whale through science, when undertaken by other men, writing, “How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood” (348). Yet this is the very process he himself undertakes, in his measurement of the whale (apparently his units for mass are “villages of one thousand one hundred inhabitants”) (347). For all of Ishmael’s previous awe of the whale, he has become like Ahab, disregarding its true power. Instead of recognizing it’s gargantuan awesomeness, he notes “that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child’s play”. This opinion is also characterized in his disregard for the priests who warn him against measuring the whale. He takes the abstract concept of the whale, and objectifies it through his measurements, though they are bound to be both inaccurate and profane.