NAVIGATING THROUGH THE PEQUOD;

OR THE MAINTENANCE OF SUBJECTIVE SPACE

Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant, ---fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. (Chap. 135: 463)

The sublime moment is the ultimate subsumption of the self. It is frightening in its intrinsic need to consume the experiencer and then emancipate him upon the consummation of the event. Melville composed a story that could have been filled with moments of the sublime and yet it is, frustratingly for the reader, almost entirely absent. However, this is not an indication of any fault in the text. Rather, it is the consequence of a meticulously planned physical and psychological space which is mapped out in the relationships the characters enjoy with one another. Ishmael, Ahab and Starbuck represent three characters whose actions and positions in the narrative determine their capabilities to encounter and experience the sublime.

It is with "the poor devil of a Sub-Sub" that Ishmael's voice first makes itself heard. The Sub-Sub who has "gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls" (Extracts: 2) to find mundane but diverse images of whales is toasted as one who will soon expel the archangel triumvirate "Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael" in heaven but will be forgotten here on Earth. The Sub-Sub (who is of course forgotten for the rest of the novel) plots the course for the entire narrative. What can at first be regarded as a hodge-podge of space-filling references becomes Ishmael's guarantor of success in the role of narrator. For if we are to take on Ishmael as our guide to the Sperm Whale world, then we need to be confident in his abilities. The jumble of citations work to push away all preconceived notions of "whale-ness" and leave room for only a few basic assumptions: whales are large and have played important roles in history before.

But it is not the specifics of the assumptions that matter, for Ishmael himself confuses and confounds his own characterizations of the Leviathan consistently. It is the fact that whatever whale imagery each reader might have initially brought with him to the text is supplanted by a catalogue of quotes whose blitzkrieg attack ensures a standard conception of the animal in the reader's mind before the novel even begins. Ishmael, with the Sub-Sub already forgotten, is our Librarian and Expert who asserts the truth of the tale (and the truth of the whale) as if it should go hand in hand with such things as the Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the U.S. Senate, on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828. Ishmael's toasting of the Sub-Sub has the effect of nullifying all the work with which the "poor devil" is credited:

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness--Give it up, Sub-Subs! (Extracts: 2)

As benevolent master of the poor devil's work and commentator of his life, Ishmael commences with the appropriation of voice or, in this instance, of text itself, that is the most common ploy he will use to create the air of authority, an issue essential to Melville as an author. Even before the commencement of the novel Ishmael has taken control of the Sub-Sub (poor devil) and pushed him into Heaven, to make vagabonds of archangels and to offer the reader the first installment in an unending series of inversions and transposition of roles. The outcast Ishmael is the judge who can bring down the holy to make room for the mediocre. With so powerful a force exhibited in the first two paragraphs how can we not begin to see that whales have played an important part in the history of the world and, in fact, are quite large?

Carolyn Porter finds that "[Ishmael] plunders his sources for their authority..., a rhetorical feat that relies upon Ishmael's double-voiced discourse."[1] Her exegesis of the confused chapter that is spouted out in legal-ese, "The Affidavit," concludes:

There are, in effect, two voices speaking here. One speaks in the cadences of legal testimony, and the other can be heard struggling against its limits. But the second voice can be heard only because it clashes so discordantly with the first...Ishmael's voice is authorized ironically, by its capacities to expose the limits of the authorized discourse in which he is compelled to speak. In the act of parodying legal discourse, he usurps its authority.[2]

Ishmael's narration is often this attempt at propagating the language of another only to reduce it to a testimony of his own authoritativeness.

If Ishmael can encompass the words of others, as we saw him do to the Sub-Sub even before the novel begins, it is his liminality that allows him to do so. As neither a full member of society while on shore, nor a full member of the ship's crew while at sea (his novitiate status taking a prominent role both in his commentary and his interactions with the officers and mates), he is able to usurp and command over infinite points-of-view. As soon as we are comfortable in one role has taken on, it is dropped in favor of its opposite. The fluidity of Ishmael's character entitles him to navigate through his interlocutors, usurping their voice and sometimes letting that voice take over completely. Chapter 41 begins with Ishmael re-introducing himself ("I, Ishmael, was one of that crew"), so long has he been subsumed by the roles he has taken on (cetologist, fly-on-the-wall reporting private monologues, etc). Ishmael's quintessential move for authority is to integrate the other to himself.

Ahab, on the other hand, needs not search for his authority. He is, by title, the Captain of the ship. As Starbuck tries to gain permission to "up Burtons" and discover the location of the leak that has sprung in the hold, Ahab rifles back with the answer that "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.---On deck!" (Chap. 109: 394) More importantly, he is entirely consumed by his own thoughts and his monomaniacal nature leaves little room for questioning. What distinguishes Ahab the most, especially from Ishmael's fluid and permeable subjectivity, is his utter reluctance to either allow prolonged intercourse with any other character or to bask in the comfort of the solidity of his staunch but truncated body. Excluding the rent leg, Ahab's body is mangled by the singularity of his desire to revenge himself upon the whale. Even the location of this drive is put in question:

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? (Chap. 132: 445)

What Ahab has is authority; so much so that it seems that that is all he has. The man in him is squeezed out in the one tear that Ahab sheds, quite possibly the very last of any sort of humanity he had. "From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop."[3] (Chap. 132:443) Once it is gone and Ahab's soliloquy is finished, the shell that retains his soul is closed except to the whale. Sharon Cameron writes:

Thus, when Ahab is unable to repress his ambivalence (when his feelings of grief are at war with his desire for revenge), he projects grief from his mind, allocating it to Pip, as he projects rage from his mind, attributing it to God. What is left once the self has been purged of its impulses is, of course, nothing--the whiteness of which Ishmael speaks with reference to the whale's mysteries, or the vacancy directly attributed to Ahab.[4]

It is the deformed shell of Ahab's body and the doubly-enforced strength of Ahab's will which comprise the totality of the solid, closed captain. The delight with which he anticipates his own demise seems indicative of the triumph that he sees in just entangling himself with the whale. "Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse can be mine: ---and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!" (Chap. 135:464 emphasis added) It is not a desire to be devoured by the whale, as it is the cause of his vehemence in the first place. When his leg was ripped from his body Ahab was deprived of his unity as a man and his permeability. To become whole again is not to be devoured (by such confining and enclosing spaces as coffins, hearses or whales) but to be connected to that which took from him originally. For more on Ahab and his relationship to his environment please click here.

If we have, on one side, the fluidity with which Ishmael proposes voices and authorities, taking on other subjectivities as his own and, on the other, the stern and solid rigidity which comprises Ahab's rejection of anything foreign (including anything objectivity transposed upon himself), Starbuck presents a middle ground. But while he is just as firmly grounded in the narrative he is, rather strangely, set apart from the rest of the crew. It is, ironically, the centrality of his character, not only in terms of his placement between these two other subjectivities, but on the ship itself, which makes his role in the novel liminal.

In Chapter 26 we are presented with the healthy solid frame of the thirty-year-old Starbuck. His slim form is not emaciated, but rather

[h]is pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for ages to come, and to endure always, as now." (Chap. 26:103)

And while Ahab is pictured as similarly solid, Starbuck is given an air far less threatening. He is first described as mutable; it is this attribute of adaptation which has allowed him to live the life that he has. "He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit." (Chap. 26:102) It seems his hardiness is not characterized in and of itself, but by its being a default quality -- adaptation. Far more important is his curious brand of courage, which is taken as being somewhat too level headed, too centered, for the crew and the narrator. Starbuck is cautious with what he deems an essential yet dangerously powerful attribute, producing a bravery that is marked by its limitations.

And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery, chiefly visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man. (Chap. 26: 104)

Starbuck is not, however, a man marked by mediocrity. He is, rather, a man who is successful outside of the whaling industry. His is the only family that is referred to with love and longing, all of the other men on board being run-aways or wanderers of some sort. The citation with which this paper started is followed by a call to his wife Mary and young son. And the family that he cries out for awaits him as well. "'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself!" says Starbuck as he pleads with Ahab to change course and return to Nantucket. "She promised that my boy every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's sail!" (Chap. 132:444) While otherwise it is exactly the outsider status which melds together the diverse and mutt-like crew, Starbuck's success as a balanced man with responsibilities distinguishes him as peculiar, while still central.[5]

It is, in fact, his close relationship to home that lands him on the Pequod during the final chase of the whale. Ahab looks to Starbuck as a view to humanity and, aware of the inhumane effort he is about to embark upon, refuses Starbuck the right to lower his boat. "No, no; stay on board, on board!---lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!" (Chap. 132: 444) Starbuck is again central and yet removed from the main action.

What seems so exceptional is merely the fact that Starbuck is capable of interaction without overpowering his interlocutor, whether that be another man, the sea, or the ship. Ahab dominates every inch of physical space he can while Ishmael subverts the space that his interactants think of as their own. The first mate is a sociable man, willing to confess his fright and desire to return home (unlike the other shipmates who are fused to Ahab's oath), and who finds solace in others with whom he shares his life. But placed inside the world of the Pequod where action is determined by one man's monomaniac will and narrated by another's underhanded method for establishing authority, Starbuck's centrality leaves him with very little space in which to move. (For another view of crew dynamics click here). He is, essentially, barred from the manipulation of the self that the other two characters use as tools for navigating through life on board. While he can proffer a handshake and receive one in return; open a conversation and be responded to; help a shipmate and assume a reciprocal favor, his dealings are structured and predictable. Because of this, he is frightened of the power of the sublime moment. The citation which opened this paper will be repeated here for convenience:

Starbuck is on the verge of recognizing the horror of his imminent death, and yet still cannot move past the expectancy. That Starbuck is "fixed at the top of a shudder" illustrates nicely his position on the Pequod and in the novel as a whole. One shudders from the shoulders. If Starbuck is fixed on top of a shudder he is at the head. Yet the tension which revolves around the novel is only vaguely intellectual. The spiritual crisis which climaxes with Ahab's final tear is not associated with the mind so much as with the physical condition of the body as a receptacle of the soul. Starbuck is failing to find the sublime moment because he is starting from the wrong place. The intellect does not lead to loss of identity, but rather the heart or the soul does.

But Starbuck cannot be blamed for this. Within the narrative he is both pushed away from the fluidity of Ishmael and forced to act in contrast to the staunch rigidity of Captain Ahab. He is left with no other choice than to be the middle man. So while he is aware enough of his situation and centered enough to grasp the sublime when it comes, he too is barred from the sublime by the mere fact that there is no "space" in which he can be subsumed by it. Ishmael and Ahab are too much involved in their own subjective status to allow themselves to be overcome. Ishmael may allow another voice to take over but he is still in control of the narrative, as was made clear in the beginning with the Sub-Sub. Ahab cant let anything overcome him, as is seen in the symbolic circumstances of his death. The sublime is not an experience in which one can engage one self automatically. The actor has to be in the right state and in the right environment. Melville ingeniously created a situation where nobody could be brought to the sublime moment. At the end of the novel, as the Pequod is sinking, so is the reader's hopes for a resolution to the climactic tensions which enveloped the narrative all along.

chandman@reed.edu