Intro
The American classic Moby-Dick features an angsty sailor named Ishmael who’s having a bad day and so decides to sets sail with a satanically blasphemous captain hell-bent on revenge against a white whale. Just a typical day in 1850’s New England, right?
And what is that infamous white whale, you might ask? Ah, that is the question. Melville plays metaphorically with his grandiose god of the sea, but as the novel is written from the perspective of so-called Ishmael, the symbolism of the whale comes to us through the eyes of this outcast character’s observations. We get everything through his lens. In hermeneutic jargon, he mediates the meaning of the whale. Even when we get the musings and pontifications of other characters, Ahab especially, we get these thoughts filtered through Ishmael’s perspective.
Yet it’s Ahab’s perspective that dominates. Ahab wins the crew to his revenge quest by creating a hermeneutic tradition centered on revenge against the whale that injured him—basically, getting everyone around him to understand the whale as he does and share in his hatred for it (because let’s be real, if they don’t, they’re likely to revolt against the crazy captain and get him tossed in the loony bin).
To this end, he uses his commanding personality, poetic condemnations of the beast, and religious-like ritual to form his crew into a community bound by their intent on violence. Spellbound by the cap’s blinding narrative, they set out on a voyage to their own ruin.
Quote
"Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said true—ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?"
"Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner.
"Captain Ahab."
"What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"
"Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"
"No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long."
"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. "Look ye; when captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."
"What do you know about him?"
"What did they tell you about him? Say that!"
"They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that he's a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."
"That's true, that's true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that's the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that every one knows a'most—I mean they know he's only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off."
"My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg."
"All about it, eh - sure you do?—all?"
"Pretty sure."
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and said: "Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye."
"Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say."
"And it's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for him - the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh, when ye get there, tell 'em I've concluded not to make one of 'em."
"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way - you can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him."
"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."
"Morning it is," said I. "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?"
"Elijah."
Analysis
This little gem of a scene foreshadows the disastrous voyage of the Pequod. It’s worth knowing that the Elijah in the Bible was the prophet who repeatedly warned King Ahab of Israel not to turn away from the Lord and worship false gods. See any parallels yet? Moral of the scene: you don’t disregard the prophets and live to tell a happy tale.
Here Elijah is warning Ishmael not to get himself stuck on a boat with the not-totally-trustworthy, one-legged Captain Ahab. Elijah gives a nineteenth-century Massachusetts version of a biblical prophecy about why Ahab lost his leg: he just got carried away one day and killed a man before an altar. Which isn’t really a big deal if you’re cool with blaspheming the almighty (not to mention a little thing called murder).
Elijah adds that Ahab spat into the Eucharistic cup, which for the believers of that church meant spitting into the blood of Christ. Not so tactful, Cap. These two blasphemous actions, according to Elijah, brought on the loss of Ahab’s leg by the whale Moby Dick. Which means that when Ahab sets out for revenge, he’s seeking vengeance on God’s totally fair punishment and basically on God himself. Guess how far that gets him.
In this scene, Elijah accomplishes a double hermeneutic function. First, he’s giving Ishmael the whole picture in which he should interpret his individual part within Ahab’s story. Plus, he’s giving us, the reader, a context beyond the world specific to the novel in which to interpret it. To understand the meaning of the novel—both this scene and the fate of Ahab and his crew—you have to know something about the biblical figures of Ahab and Elijah.
With that awareness of how Melville named his characters to have symbolic meaning within the Judeo-Christian tradition, you get a lot more out of reading the novel than a fear of white whales and one-legged psycho captains. Ready to set sail?