Gordon Korman. Radio Fifth Grade. 1989; New York: Scholastic, 2010. Print.

If anyone is following this blog, the last few entries have been some pretty heady nonfiction works—brain function, infinity, education reform. I needed a break. Ah, who better to lighten the way than one of our favorite YA writers—Gordon Korman!

As is obvious from the title, Radio Fifth Grade has a slightly lower reading level than many Korman’s other titles which are geared more toward middle school or early high school. The content and style is not much different from his Swindle series, for example, but Radio Fifth Grade is a bit shorter. It is still a lot of fun.

The students at an elementary school in the city of Venice USA (the state is not specified) have been allowed half an hour of air time Saturday mornings on a local FM radio station. Benjy, Mark, and Ellen-Louise are the fifth grade producers of the show. Benjy idolizes a certain disk jockey whose autobiography he has practically memorized to become the host of the radio show. Mark does the physical labor, and Ellen-Louise is the teacher’s pet type who tries to keep the adults happy.

They get into some crazy situations on Saturday mornings for three main reasons. (1) Their classroom teacher suddenly leaves, and the new hire, Ms. Panagopolous, is fresh out of teachers’ college ready to get the kids to do a fifth grade seminar. (2) The school bully, a hulking sixth grader known as the Venice Menace, writes a totally lame story about two kittens who fight over a ball of yarn and gets to read it over the air (or else). (3) The show’s sponsor is local pet store whose grouchy owner is focused on the bottom line and wants to sell a talking macaw who only seems to want to say, “That parrot is a rip-off!”

I actually laughed out loud reading this book, something I do not do very often while reading. The story of the kittens Fuzzy and Puffy is so bad that it’s good. And the kids devise a plan to outsmart their teacher and get answers for the “seminar” homework, but they have to make sure that “Professor” Panagopolous does not listen to the show.

The kids are quite creative—not so much on the air, but in figuring out how to use the show to hoodwink their teacher and keeping the Menace from beating anyone up. Of course, it all begins to unravel. Technically, there are no break-ins in this story, but there are some other shenanigans that come pretty close.

Radio Fifth Grade will be great for nearly anyone from second or third grade on up to old-timers. Teachers should love the satire on their profession. Thank you, Mr. Korman, for keeping us smiling.

In case you are interested, here are our other reviews of books by Mr. Korman:

Ungifted
The Hypontists
Swindle
Zoobreak
Hideout
Jackpot
Unleashed
Masterminds
The Dragonfly Effect
Masterminds: Criminal Destiny
Masterminds: Payback
No More Dead Dogs
Supergifted
Restart
Slacker
Notorious
Unplugged
Linked
Showoff
The Unteachables
The Superteacher Project
Mixed Up

David Foster Wallace. Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. New York: Norton, 2003. Print.

Having enjoyed and admired Infinite Jest, I had to read what its author would say about the concept of infinity. Everything and More keeps the reader’s interest. It is not what I expected, but that is OK. By the way, I spell out the word infinity in most cases in this review, except for a couple of equations. Wallace frequently uses the symbol for infinity, the lemniscate. Even the book’s subtitle is written A Compact History of ∞.

Everything and More is truly a mathematics-based history of the concept of infinity, starting with the ancient Greeks. This work is a combination of mathematics and philosophy. Wallace frequently quotes a high school AP math teacher of his. One of my high school math teachers actually majored in Philosophy and Mathematics at Harvard. If Mr. Galvin is still around, I am sure he would enjoy this book—if he has not already read it.

I will be honest. I did take math in college up to theoretical calculus, but I have not used much of the higher math I studied since taking those classes, so I did skim over some of the more formulaic parts. For any serious mathematicians, there is an erratum at http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/images/enmerrata.pdf. However, the philosophical parts were fascinating, and I think I got the gist of the main arguments.

Wallace notes that it was the Greeks who, as far as we know, were the first people to look at numbers as potential abstractions. For example, the Egyptians and Babylonians knew about a 3-4-5 right triangle and used them to form and measure right angles. However, it was the Greek Pythagoras who showed the relationship among the sides by the theorem that still bears his name. Prior to some of those Greeks, numbers always stood for something—as Wallace puts it, five meant “five of something” like, say, five oranges. I guess one could say that numbers were adjectives that the Greeks began to see as nouns.

So they began looking at numbers as numbers. Indeed, Wallace asserts that Platonists and Aristotelians had a different view of number. The Platonists would see a number as a form or ideal. Aristotelians saw them as representing or describing something in the physical world. Aristotle dismissed the concept of infinity because nothing in the material world is infinite. Wallace has some fun with some ridiculously small and large numbers to illustrate that even the smallest measurable division of time or the number of electrons in the universe may be numbers so large or tiny as to be unimaginable, but they are still not infinite.

The Greeks were made aware of infinity largely through the infinitesimal, namely Zeno’s Paradox. Most students who have finished junior high math have heard of it. If you keep going halfway, you will never cross the street, yet how can two halves make a whole? What Zeno was suggesting was that between any two integers there are an infinite number of numbers.

As with so many things, the teachings of Aristotle held sway for about a millennium and a half (some still do). Yet people were aware not only of Zeno’s Paradox but others as well. For example, the invention of calculus brought a kind of corollary to Zeno—that in any given position or moment of time an object is at rest, so how does one account for motion?

Even the ancient Greeks had an idea that rational numbers (i.e., numbers that can be expressed as a ratio) do not account for all the numbers. Thanks to Pythagoras, they saw that the diagonal of a square is the square root of two [√ 2 ], which cannot be expressed as a ratio. Neither can pi [π]. So to have continuity on the number line—or even to account for motion mathematically—one has to account for every point, and there are an infinite number of points between any two rational points on a line.

Galileo came up with his own paradox: Even though there are many more numbers that are not perfect squares, when dealing with all the integers (an infinite number of integers) the number of integers and perfect squares are the same because every integer can be squared. Wallace explains this very clearly.

Everything and More focuses on Georg Cantor, the nineteenth century mathematician who developed much of modern set theory and, in doing so, was able to answer many of the questions people had about infinity such as the two paradoxes mentioned here. Unlike some of the calculations in the book, Wallace explains very clearly why there are different infinities. Although there are an infinite number of integers or squares or rational numbers, there are many more irrational numbers. This means that the set of real numbers is a degree of infinity greater than the set of integers or rational numbers.

Cantor used the Hebrew letter aleph [א]to designate an infinite set. A greater infinite set would then be designated by an aleph with a numerical subscript, with the first level aleph being aleph sub zero [א₀] corresponding to the set of rational numbers. So aleph sub one [א₁] would describe the set of real numbers, which corresponds to a line of one dimension. Since then, people have shown that there are sets of infinities based on dimensions. Yes, there are an infinite number of points on a plane, but that is a degree of infinity greater so that becomes aleph sub two [א₂]. Three dimensional space has aleph sub three [א₃], and so on. Other mathematicians have made a case that these different alephs can be expressed as two to the aleph power of the aleph that precedes it, so א₁=2^א₀, א₂=2^א₁, and so on. I think I presented this correctly.

Going back to Zeno, this “solves” the problems of continuity and motion mathematically from the perspective of number theory. Aristotle may have been correct saying that in the physical universe there are not an infinite number of anything, but when we observe motion and measurements, we take such an idea into account. This also becomes a topic of discussion in this book and among math scholars: Is induction a valid technique for finding what is true in mathematics or should we, like Euclid, stick to deduction?

Because Infinite Jest was a wonderfully funny work of speculative fiction, I expected Everything and More to be more speculative than it was. Of course, because its topic is infinity, a certain amount of speculation is unavoidable. Still, it was mostly history. And Wallace desires, though cannot quite bring himself, to agree with the professor in the Narnia stories who explains, “It’s all in Plato. What do they teach in the schools these days?”

Ironically, for someone who is contemplating infinity, Wallace takes a narrow view of things. He asserts sadly, “That our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrical pate.” (22) Well, as our last review notes, the mind and the brain are not identical. Similarly, he trivializes love as “a function of natural selection.” (23) How drearily mechanistic. How much like Roger Chillingworth!

Everything and More dismisses, for example, Aquinas’s speculation (and the old saint’s only serious disagreement with Aristotle) about infinity—that God is infinite and that eternity is infinite in time.

I confess that if I were writing about infinity, that is what I would be speculating about. Take one simple example I share with my students when we study Tom Stoppard. We know from the Second Law of Thermodynamics that the universe is winding down. Stoppard tells us “the future is disorder” and some day “heat is gone from the earth.” However, eternity is different. Eternity means unlimited energy forever. I can prove it mathematically.

We learned about a hundred years ago that the inherent energy of something is its mass times the square of the speed of light, or E=mc². Eternity is timeless. That means that speed, which is distance divided by time (d/t in math class) is infinite in eternity. Instead of c=186,000 miles/second, in a timeless environment the speed of anything, light and everything else, is the distance over zero because there is no time in eternity. Any number divided by zero is either nonsense or infinity. Wallace makes a case that any real number divided by infinity is zero or by zero is infinity [e.g., 1/0=∞]. If eternity exists, that means E equals m times infinity [E=m·∞], so E=infinity [E=∞], so eternity has infinite energy. That helps explain creation, miracles, and other things we might consider supernatural. It is a thought.

Everything and More is very well written. Wallace is first and foremost a story teller. Though nonfiction, this book tells a story in a pretty effective way even it its speculation is materialistic, something Infinite Jest starts with but does not end with. Indeed, the last three sentences of Everything and More suggest such things as I speculated on in the last paragraph, but instead of seeing eternity, Wallace saw the “Void.” (305, his capital) Alas.

P.S. The copy of this book that I obtained is the original edition. In 2013 an edition of Everything and More came out with a preface by Neal Stephenson. Stephenson is also a very clever speculative writer. It would be interesting to see what he had to say about this book, but that will have to wait.

Caroline Leaf. Switch on Your Brain. Grand Rapids MI: Baker, 2013. Print.

Switch on Your Brain is subtitled The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health. The author is a doctor who specializes in communication pathology. The first two thirds of the book make a case for what she calls neuroplasticity, that the nerve cells in our brains can be made to work differently depending on our thoughts. Politically, theologically, practically, and scientifically, she would assert that people have free will.

The book could be seen as a kind of Pangloss or Norman Vincent Peale positive thinking book. To some degree it is. The author makes a case, however, that while we may not be able to do much to change our circumstances, we can choose to react to them in a positive way. A consistent attitude—whether positive or negative—begins to make a regular road in the neural pathways of the brain. In effect, Switch on Your Brain makes a scientific case for positive thinking. You might as well get those pathways headed in a positive directions.

One striking assertion of this presentation is how it parallels the experience of Dr. Eben Alexander in his Proof of Heaven, reviewed in this blog. That book is a testimony, not a how-to or self-help book. However, the author is a brain surgeon. He shares how he was brain-dead for a week and then revived. Even though his EEG was flatlined the entire time, he was conscious. Prior to that experience, he had always assumed that the mind and the brain were the same. He realized from this experience that that is not the case.

Dr. Leaf’s experience counseling and treating people has led her to the same conclusion—that the mind is not exactly the same as the brain. The brain is the physical manifestation of the mind. She notes, though, that they are not independent. She makes a case, as did Dr. Alexander, that there is a lot we do not know about the mind.

She notes that the scientific and mathematical models in recent years indicate that there are at least eleven dimensions to physical existence, and frankly, we know little about most of them. She notes that quantum leaps of subatomic particles like electrons are instantaneous. She notes that some subatomic particles seem to react to the manner in which they are being observed. In all this, and especially in her discussion of brain anatomy, she makes a case that there is much we do not know but that free will exists. To quote the title of a book from a generation ago on the psychology of happiness, this means that happiness is a choice.

The second section of Switch on Your Mind, approximately the last third of the book, covers five steps to renew the mind (see Romans 12:2), or as the author puts it, to “switch on” the brain. Those five steps do appear to be helpful and do make this a true self-help book.

That section might be a bit weaker simply because it does involve self-help. Dr. Leaf has devoted her life to helping others, and gives some fascinating case histories illustrating her steps and showing how they have helped her clients and patients. Still, it one thing to be led through therapy by a skilled expert and another thing to “do it yourself,” even if the directions were written by an expert.

Does it work? Well it worked, she tells us, for some very disadvantaged school students in a Johannesburg, South Africa, slum. It certainly cannot hurt. If nothing else, this book is a good reminder that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14)

Bob Sorge. Between the Lines. Kansas City MO: Oasis House, 2012. Print.

As I look back, I realize that I have reviewed three books by Bob Sorge since starting this web log. Like The Fire of God’s Love, Unrelenting Prayer, and The Fire of Delayed Answers, Between the Lines is intense and effective. Though perhaps not as intentionally as John White’s Daring to Draw Near, Between the Lines looks at a lot of things from God’s perspective.

Basing his book on the principles that Jesus is not only the Creator, but the author (I Corinthians 14:33 KJV, Hebrews 5:9 KJV and Hebrews 12:2 KJV), the Word (John 1:1 et seq.), and even the letters of the alphabet (Revelation 1:8, Revelation 1:11 KJV, 21:6, and 22:13), Sorge tells us that God is writing a story for each of us. He reminds us that the best stories have lots of conflict, suspense, and eleventh hour impossibilities. God’s stories are often that way—in order to show His glory.

For example, Exodus 9:15-16 tells us that God specifically told the Pharaoh that He could have just wiped out the Egyptian royal family, but He raised up this king so the whole world would see God’s glory. It was ten plagues and a miracle at the Red Sea that delivered Israel. It took a while. It appeared that Egypt had all the advantages, but the final outcome was much more thrilling and powerful. I note that forty years later, the people of Jericho are afraid of the Israelites because of what their God did to the Egyptians.

We could say similar things about Jesus’ passion, about the life of David or Joseph and other Bible figures. Sorge reminds us to look at our own lives the same way. No doubt because of his own experiences (detailed in some of his other books like The Fire of Delayed Answers) this rings true. I am reminded of what Betsie ten Boom told her sister Corrie before she died at Buchenwald: “They will listen because we have been there.”

Sorge notes how waiting and swiftness often go together. The Israelites had to wait at least eighty years for deliverance, but actual events that set them free were sudden. The actual final escape literally happened overnight. So did Jesus’s resurrection.

Between the Lines is divided into three parts: (1) The Stuff of Story (God as author), (2) Staying in the Story (Perseverance leading to transformation), and (3) A Story of Biblical Proportions (a retelling of the life of Jacob).

As a reader, writer, and English teacher, part one really spoke to me. I believe it is anointed. It was certainly a rhema word this this reader. The second part was straight teaching on what true faith in God means. Again, this was not merely theoretical. Sorge has been there.

I heard him speak last year, and his voice is still quite weak. Sometimes people tell him that because of his soft voice, they have to listen more intently, so they get more of what he is trying to share. He very honestly says that while he is glad that people listen, it is not much consolation to him because it is still painful to talk. He would rather have his voice back. Yes, we get it.

To begin the third part, Sorge makes an interesting observation, one I believe that few people have thought about. Who is the person named most frequently in the Bible? He describes the seven people mentioned most. Seventh is Aaron, the first high priest and brother of Moses. Sixth is King Saul. Even here the number six signifies man by himself without God (see Revelation 13:18) and suggests rebellion and antichrist. Judah is fifth because his tribe dominates much of Old Testament history. Four is Moses, probably as significant in world history as anyone except for Jesus Himself, who is number three. King David comes in at number two, but number one is Jacob. His name is mentioned 2,980 times, almost three times as often as David (1,087 times).

Part three, then, is a teaching on the life of Jacob. This perhaps is where the significance of the title really comes through. We read about significant points in Jacob’s life: his birth, his bargaining with Esau, his tricking his father, his dream of the ladder, his marriage to Rachel and Leah, his escape from Laban and return to Canaan, the loss of Joseph, and his settlement in Egypt. Those are quite a few events, but we are reminded that they cover a span of 147 years.

That means that most of his life was devoted to working as a shepherd, raising a family, and waiting. He was still single at 75. He lost Joseph at age 108 and it took 22 years before they were reunited. During that time we are told “he refused to be comforted.” (Genesis 37:34-35) Towards the end of those years, when Simeon was kept hostage and the Egyptian leader (who was, in fact, Joseph) demanded Benjamin, Jacob got even more depressed.

Things seemed to get worse before they got better. What was the key to Jacob’s growth spiritually besides suffering? In a word: Covenant.

Sorge gives a different perspective from what is usually taught about Jacob’s vow in Genesis 28:20-21. If God provides his needs and he returns to his homeland in peace, “the Lord shall be my God.”

That is a key to Jacob. It is not so much that he skeptically kept his distance from God for twenty years. No, what is important is this: Jacob kept his vow. As he re-entered Canaan after being gone for twenty years, God renamed him Israel, i.e., Prince of God. As soon as Jacob settled in Shechem, where he planned on staying, he built an altar and named it El Elohe Israel (Genesis 33:20)—God, the God of Israel. God is Jacob’s God.

From then on, Jacob continued to remain faithful. In spite of the long time he refused to be comforted, he kept covenant with God and ultimately he was blessed above most men in history.

There is a lot more to the story as Sorge tells it. At the end of his life Jacob notes that he has been blessed more than his father Isaac or his grandfather Abraham. He tells his sons:

The blessings of your father have exceeded the blessings of my ancestors…(Genesis 49:26)

Yes, he wanted Isaac’s blessing and Abraham’s covenant, but he wanted God even more. His God was the God.

What a story!

One thing this reviewer would add, perhaps as a note to the author is Ephesians 2:10. Most versions say something like “we are His workmanship” (KJV, ESV) or “we are God’s handiwork.” (NIV) That Greek word translated “workmanship” or “handiwork” is poema. It means what you think it means: We are God’s poem. It is beyond the scope of this review to discuss the significance of poetry in the Greek culture, but that verse confirms Sorge’s thesis in Part 1 of Between the Lines.

I would like to end with some personal thoughts. Before I read this book, I identified with Jacob somewhat. Frustrated, perhaps too clever for my own good, my name (James) is an Anglicization of the name Jacob. Many years ago I wrote the following. It still applies.

Jacob Fought with Jesus

I don’t want to fight you, Jesus,
But I know that I have.
Let me trust you completely
And know that you are love.

Jacob was no dummy
But Jacob fought with Jesus.
He fought Him most his life despite the Lord’s Word.
Why bribe his brother?
Why dupe his father?
The Promise was his and that was that.

Jacob loved Rachel,
But he got tricked, too,
Ended up with a love-life soap operas envy.
He knew God was faithful
He knew His word was true
But he wanted to make sure and rose up against God.

The day finally came
He had to leave for Canaan,
One more trick to play on his father-in-law.
But Jacob’s stomach shivered,
For Esau would be waiting.
Something had to give, and he feared it would be himself.

A man came down from heaven;
Jacob called Him God.
He started fighting Jacob and Jacob fought back.
Jacob knew He loved him,
Jacob loved Him, too,
But they struggled and strained till the morning light shone.

Jacob knew now
As he never knew before
The Creator of the heavens had come to him as man.
It was useless to struggle
Even struggle for a blessing
The blessing had been his since the dawn of time.

Jacob was now crippled,
But he had met his Maker;
Known afterwards as Israel, he would claim his land.
Jacob was no dummy
But he could have been much smarter
For there was still much for him to do according to God’s plan.

God will have the victory
As He did with Jacob.
His victory was with him, not over or above him.
One of God’s names we use now
Is the name the God of Jacob—
A title for all time of the Creator’s love for men.

Though I fight hard against you
My God, O God of Jacob,
My hope for those who know me
Is they’ll know you are my God,
And with the name of Jacob, Jesus,
You’ll say you’re my God, too.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General. New York: Holt, 2014. Print.

The title of Killing Patton caught my attention because the other titles I was familiar with in this series were all about people who everyone knew were assassinated or set up, even if the specific theories varied: Lincoln, Kennedy, and Jesus. But Patton? He died in a car wreck, but was he deliberately killed?

My uncle thought so. He was a retired Army Lt. Colonel who served under Patton in North Africa. He would receive both the Silver and Bronze Stars later in the war for commando and intelligence operations. He spoke very highly of Eisenhower, Wainwright, and Patton. But he also believed Patton’s death was suspicious. What would O’Reilly and Dugard have to say about this?

It must be noted that the first half of the book is largely about Patton’s last year, especially his successes in the Battle of the Bulge and the relief of Bastogne. It is a remarkable story, and the authors give Patton a lot of credit. His audacity worked on the battlefield, but not so much in the bureaucracy. Eisenhower comes across as not so much weak but politically motivated. We are reminded more than once that Eisenhower never had any direct battlefield experience. Patton is frustrated time and again because Eisenhower orders him to wait—mostly to keep British and Soviet allies happy.

There are many interesting tidbits of information. I was familiar with the slogan of the 101st Airborne: “They’ve got us surrounded, the poor bastards.” Killing Patton tells us its origin. The 101st Airborne led by Gen. Anthony McAuliffe was the unit surrounded by German Panzers in Bastogne. One of the officers was talking about their situation and said, “They’ve got us surrounded.” A medic who happened to be present gave the famous rejoinder.

McAuliffe was offered terms of surrender by the Germans. Today he is best known, not for his battlefield prowess, but for his response to the German proposal that he surrender. The messenger who turned the German letter over to McAuliffe had to wake him up. McAuliffe, like many other people wakened early from a sound sleep, muttered, “Nuts!”

When he was awake and dressed, McAuliffe, who was not going to surrender, asked aloud, “How do we answer their letter?” Someone suggested he reply with what he had said earlier. Killing Patton gives the actual text of his reply. Besides the usual heading, salutation, and closing, the letter simply had his one-word reply: “Nuts!” When the Germans received it, even the America-trained English translators did not understand the message. The American couriers used much stronger language and more words to communicate the gist of McAuliffe’s letter.

For better or worse, McAuliffe even today is best known for that simple reply in spite of his distinguished service. After the war, he would sometimes get annoyed because no matter where he went someone would bring up the subject of “Nuts.” Once, a few years later, he attended an evening party and was having a wonderful time because no one mentioned it the whole evening. As he was leaving the party, the thanked the hostess profusely. She replied, “Thank you and good night, General McNut.” (325)

I recall discussions in the sixties and seventies about why and by whom “we lost China” to the Communists. During the war, the United States supported Gen. Chiang of the Kuomintang against the Japanese but also reached out to Mao and the Communists. After all, we were allies with the Soviet Union.

“Wild” Bill Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services of Military Intelligence, contacted Mao and asked him how much money he needed for weapons to help against the Japanese. The sum that Mao quoted was outrageously higher than what the arms would cost—in fact, it was the same figure as the OSS’s entire annual budget. When Donovan asked him what figure would he settle for, Mao came back with an even higher number. This told America that Mao was either looking to feather his nest or that he was not really serious about fighting the Japanese.

Killing Patton includes chapters keeping the readers abreast of what some of the key figures in the war were doing, notably Eisenhower, Donovan, Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and, after FDR’s death, Truman.

The second half, leading to Patton’s death, is sad. It is clear that O’Reilly and Dugard believe that if FDR and Eisenhower had listened to Patton, less of Eastern Europe would have become Soviet and that the Americans could have made it to Berlin first. Truman seemed to be the only one who would admit that Patton was right, but Truman disliked anyone who was as flamboyant as Patton. (Though they do not mention this, that may have been why Truman took a dislike to MacArthur in the Korean War.)

We read of the rather pathetic events leading up to Hitler’s death. We read of Roosevelt’s death. Killing Patton notes that even Stalin was visibly upset on hearing the news about FDR from the American ambassador and then recommended that they should do an autopsy to insure he had not been poisoned. Paranoid? Truly, but the book details the various ways the Soviets developed untraceable poisons which they mostly used against their own people. (Judging from news reports, the Russians apparently still use them today.)

The circumstances of Patton’s death are certainly weird. A stolen U.S. Army vehicle driven by a drunk driver appears out of the woods heading straight for a building strikes the car in which Patton is riding. The driver tells three completely different stories each time he is questioned and then disappears.

Reilly and Dugard present pretty convincing evidence that Stalin wanted Patton dead. But there is reliable testimony that Donovan, who was at least sympathetic to Russia, also wanted him dead. After he was hospitalized, doctors were confident that Patton would probably recover. He died ten days after the accident. Was the accident a setup? Might he have been poisoned afterwards? Was it the Russians? The OSS?

One other interesting observation—and there are many in the book—occurs at the Potsdam Conference when Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb. Churchill and Truman both noticed that Stalin had no reaction. Of course, we would all learn later that it was not news to Stalin thanks to highly placed spies, notably Klaus Fuchs and Alger Hiss. At Potsdam Truman also learned, though, that Stalin could not be trusted. Potsdam set the stage for the Cold War.

Some readers might criticize Killing Patton for its lack of specific documentation. O’Reilly and Dugard appear to try to avoid it to make the book less pedantic and more readable. Still, there are many editorial footnotes, and the writers are careful to give the sources of the lesser known or more controversial points they make such as Donovan’s desire to get Patton out of the way.

Killing Patton is a great battle story as well as a fascinating tale of intrigue. Whether he was ultimately correct or not, my uncle was not just blowing smoke when he spoke of Patton’s death.

As a postscript, I cannot help think of the famous film Patton starring George C. Scott in the title role. In the film, Patton gives a speech where he says that the soldier is not supposed to die for his country. He is to get the enemy soldier to die for his country. Patton’s actual speech which is quoted in its entirety in Killing Patton is much more colorful and patriotic.

There is also a brief scene in the film where Patton gives the order to a chaplain to pray for certain weather during the siege of Bastogne. While Patton may have done that, Killing Patton lets us know that Patton prayed a very specific prayer himself. The subsequent attack succeeded even though the weather did not change. When Patton saw that the weather affected the Germans more adversely than it did the Americans, he admitted in a subsequent prayer that he had made a mistake and thanked the Lord for knowing better. Even today, that is a wise approach to unanswered prayer. As has been said, “The will of God is exactly what I would do if I knew all the facts.”

George Eliot. Silas Marner. 1861; Amazon Digital Services, 12 May 2012. Ebook.

I have been a high school English teacher for over 35 years, and I missed this one. Silas Marner is found in a number of high school anthologies and is often used to introduce students to Victorian Literature. For Eliot, it is short book, fewer than 200 printed pages. (I had read Middlemarch in college. It was worth reading, but to me not worth re-reading.)

I confess, I was somewhat prejudiced against Silas Marner. A college friend once told me that she had read the book in high school and hated it. She said it was one of the most boring books that she ever read. However, a few years ago a parent of a student mentioned the book and said it was a delightful story of redemption. Hmmm.

In a sense, both of these informal critics are correct. Other than a few key events, not much happens in Silas Marner. It is more like most people’s ordinary lives. After the first few chapters, much of the book is about people not directly related to Silas. We could say that Eliot’s chief means of characterization is reputation—what others say about Silas and a few other folks in his village. It gets a bit repetitive, and it seems that we will not see a lot of those people again.

On the other hand, the overall impact of the story is uplifting and even refreshing.

At times I felt like was reading something like Tristram Shandy. That is a humorous biography of the title character who is not even born until about a third of the way through the novel. Except, of course, Eliot is not writing for humor. Shandy is largely set in a tavern for the jokes and humorous caricatures. At least of third of Marner is set in a tavern or more upper class social gatherings. We hear gossip, testimony, and speculation, but no jokes.

As can be told by the bibliographical entry above, this was read on a Kindle. The Kindle tells the reader what percent of the book has been read. The main conflict of the story is not really established until 94% of the book has been read. I can see why a high schooler might grow impatient with it. However, the conflict and resolution make it a very sweet story.

The author is less critical of Christianity in this work than some of her others. However, Silas Marner becomes an outcast because of a dubious practice of the nonconforming “chapel” he attends in his home city. We discover what it was in that last, powerful six percent. Indeed, Silas discovers redemption partly through the state church in the village he adopts as his home. Today we might say Eliot is an establishment elitist. I would compare her outlook to Matthew Arnold’s.

Although I had never read the book, I had known its basic story line for many years. Silas Marner, a miserly outcast, becomes more tender and humane when he rescues and adopts an orphaned toddler, Hephzibah or Eppie. Still, Marner is no Scrooge. He is not cruel or especially selfish; he merely keeps to himself and appears melancholy because of a burden from his past that he will not share. Yes, if you can make it through that first 94% (and it is not all bad), everything comes together almost like the way Dickens does it.

Moby Dick is full of allusions to the Bible. A major theme in the Bible is salvation and (in the New Testament) new birth. This essay will summarize what the Bible says on the subject and then show ways in which this applies to Moby Dick.

Moby Dick depends a lot on the Old Testament. Job and Jonah, Ahab and Noah stalk its pages. (Originally I had thought of doing a paper contrasting Melville’s Ahab with Job, but I was overwhelmed at the magnitude of references and allusions—anyone willing to stake me for a two-year sabbatical?). Moby Dick does also contain a much smaller number of New Testament allusions and references. Many of the references deal with the theme of salvation. Even some of the Old Testament material gains new significance because of the way the New Testament interprets it.

Moby Dick is set in the “primitive, pre-Christian universe of Job.”¹ Melville is not writing a Christian allegory, so the picture of salvation is more physical, more worldly, like the restoration of Job or Jonah or the sparing of Noah in the Old Testament. With a good personal knowledge of the Bible, Melville in his own way wants to bring forth a revelation. Nevertheless, he is writing in and for a Christian culture. The New Testament is going to figure in our understanding of the novel.

Salvation according to the New Testament

Salvation in the New Testament emphasizes the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth for the remission of mankind’s sins in fulfillment of prophecy. This is not to say that the Old Testament was not concerned with man’s spiritual condition. The Mosaic sacrificial system, the Psalms, the prophetic writings all deal in part with the sins of men and God’s provision for dealing with sin. Likewise the New Testament includes stories of physical healing, deliverance from storms, and other examples of being saved from a physical problem. Nevertheless, the New Testament’s and Church’s emphasis has generally been that of John 3:16:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”²

The New Testament teaches in many places that all men have sinned against God. This is probably most explicitly stated in Romans 3. Sin produces a separation from God (cf. Isaiah 59:1-2) which results ultimately in death in this world and eternal separation from God in the afterlife. Since all men sin and God is perfect, it is impossible for man to save himself. Therefore, God Himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth came as a sacrificial offering for mankind’s sin. Because Jesus was man, he could relate to our nature and suffer with us. Because he was divine, His sacrifice would be legally acceptable for all.

The basic condition for man to receive this salvation is that he have faith—that he believes in Jesus as the begotten Son of God and acknowledges the sacrifice on the cross as the means of forgiveness of his sin before God. In doing so, the believer acknowledges the authority of Jesus over creation as well as his own life. This authority is demonstrated in history by Jesus’ resurrection. When a person accepts the conditions of John 3:16, he is said to be “born again” John 3:3). The image, if not the theology, of rebirth is important in Moby Dick.

Sin: Separation from God and Man’s Nature

So is man’s separation from God. Indeed, much of the novel concerns itself with man’s alienation, especially personified in Ahab. While Ahab may be extreme in his rebellion against God, the novel seems to say that his is the general condition of mankind.³ The very first paragraph of the book Ishmael realizes that at times it is all he can do to keep himself from “deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people’s hats off.”⁴

Other than Ahab’s monomania about the white whale, sin is mostly manifested in man’s cruelty to others. So Ishmael notes in his reference to Luke 16:19-31:

“Now that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be removed to one of the Moluccas.”(19)

Ishmael’s Dives is a hypocrite as well, being president of a temperance society. It is amazing to Ishmael that people are so uncaring, but that is the way we are.

Later Ishmael is more direct. Echoing Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” he writes:

“Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending”, (78).

We all need the truth to live by.

As the Pequod sets sail in the elemental ocean, he notes that “we are all killers, on land and sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.”(125)⁵ The Cook’s “sage ejaculation” about Stubb can apply to all of us, “I’m blessed if he ain’t more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself.”(254)⁶

The Bible makes a connection between man’s ability to find God and his sinfulness as in Romans 3:23 above or Isaiah 59:2 which says:

“But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Melville does not explicitly give the same cause for it, but he is very much concerned with the hiddenness of God. There is a suggestion that God is ultimately responsible for the fallen nature of the world. After nearly losing his hand to sharks, the wise pagan Queequeg observes,

“Queequeg no care what god made him shark…wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.” (257)⁷

God’s Hiding or Man’s Separation?

That God has hidden himself provides the motivation for Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick. He tells us:

All visible objects, man, are but pasteboard masks…How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall…That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon-him (144).

Ahab challenges God throughout the book. There are many different replies—through prophets, through reason, through stories, through eyewitnesses, and through natural phenomena. But Ahab continues to challenge God until God (or nature, at least) speaks out of the vortex.

When Ishmael describes whiteness as both pure and appalling, he uses New Testament symbolism to show this. He notes that the redeemed, the elders, the throne of God, and God Himself are described in the Book of Revelation as white (164, cf. Revelation 1:14, 4:4, 6:11, 7:9, 20:11). He uses this for his own purposes when he calls white “the very veil of the Christian’s Deity” since Revelation claims to be an open vision. Indeed, the Greek word translated Revelation is apokalypsis which literally means “unveiling.” In spite of this Revelation, there is a sense here that God is still veiled.

Since the discussion goes on to talk about light, perhaps this veiled God is hiding behind that “light which no man can approach unto,” the immortal Lord of lords “whom no man hath seen, nor can see” (I Timothy 6:16). This is the “Christian Deity,” and one of the few references to God as revealed in the New Testament in Moby Dick.

Christ and the Trinity

The Christ of Moby Dick seems unreal. The only direct reference to Jesus Himself as the Son of God discuss paintings of an effeminate Christ which “hint nothing of any power.” (316)⁸ The four Gospels are something Ishmael uses to swear on to convince some Catholics of the truth of the story he tells. The Gospels are not read, just used ritually (224). When Ishmael speaks of telling the truth, he alludes to Moses as a recorder of truth, not the four evangelists.

The person of Christ is rejected or ignored by Ahab altogether. When he baptizes the harpoon, he says he will not do it in the name of the Father. He does not mention the Son or the Spirit whom the New Testament call comforters (John 14:16). (The Trinitarian baptism formula “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” is found in Matthew 28:19). Ahab has no comfort. Ahab sees nothing on God’s part reaching out to man, only tormenting him like the question of his paternity. (Mingling the blood of the pagans, however, is a kind of pagan trinitarian baptism, which suggests a further slap at the New Testament God).

Ahab does say he baptizes the harpoon in the name of the devil. This is reminiscent of a discussion Jesus had with some religious hypocrites in John 8.

Jesus tells them, “Ye do the deeds of your father.”
They reply, “We be not born of fornication; we have one father, even God” (John 8:41).
Jesus goes on to say, “If God were your father, ye would love me…Ye are of your father the devil” (John 8:42,”).

Ahab makes the same contrast, suggesting that his father is the devil. That is even heightened by the reply of the genealogy-conscious Jewish elders of John 8 since Ahab, as far as we know, is illegitimate.(404) It also depicts Ahab as literally an “anti-Christ.”

Faith and Salvation

While faith is essential to the Christian, it is of little significance to Ahab, though he does have some understanding of it. To teach the necessity of faith, Romans 4 and Galatians 3:6-18 use Abraham as a model of faith. Citing Genesis 15:6, Galatians 3:6-7 says:

“Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness; know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are children of Abraham:”

So when Ahab addresses the whale-head “Sphynx” in one of his ravings about God’s injustices he says that the evil things that the whale head saw Would “make an infidel of Abraham.” (264)

This is probably a good place to note that Galatians 4:21-31 presents a model to contrast with Abraham—Ishmael. Verse 30 notes that Hagar and her son Ishmael are “cast out.” This is the only New Testament direct reference to Ishmael. Galatians does this to show that Ishmael was not the heir of Abraham’s promise and so represents the Old Covenant. It is interesting that Moby-Dick‘s Ishmael, though saved at the end, does seem to represent the Old Testament. Not only does his narrative refer to the Hebrew Scriptures more, but he gains a kind of Solomonic wisdom, not any explicit faith in Christ.

Later Ahab seems ready to attack the very concept of faith. The carpenter in the course of conversation uses “faith” as an oath.

“Faith, sir, I’ve—”
“Faith? What’s that’?” [Ahab said.]
“Why., faith, sir, it;s only a sort of exclamation-like—that’s all,sir.”
“Um, um” (432).

Ahab may simply be testing his crewman to see what he believes; Ahab does test his men’s loyalty. However, his last “Um, um” shows that Ahab knows it can mean more, but not for the carpenter.

The Burdensome Rebirth in Fr. Mapple’s Sermon

There are a number of messages about salvation in Moby Dick. Some have Gospel parallels, but many of these rebirths fall short. The Jonah image is important in Moby Dick, but it also has significance in the New Testament. Jesus’ own interpretation of the story of Jonah and the whale is that it prophesies His own death and resurrection:

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40)

This is not the significance that the minister Father Mapple finds. He finds a lesson of obedience and repentance, with the emphasis on obedience. He seems to interpret the Gospel in terms of law rather than faith in Christ when he exhorts, “Woe to him whom this world charms from duty.” (50) He says there is nothing to “staunch” a guilty conscience. (Compare this with Hebrews 9:11-14, for example, which says that the blood of Christ can purge the conscience). He says that true repentance is “grateful for punishment” (47,49) In the New Testament view, one is even more grateful for the forgiveness which follows the repentance. (See, for example, Luke 7:40-47, the Parable of the Two Debtors.)

The Impossibility of Containing Our Own Sin

Father Mapple’s sermon is thematic to the novel because it expresses the idea that obedience to God is difficult, and people should not expect life to be easy. For Father Mapple, Jonah’s rebirth brings a worldly wisdom about the nature of life, but not the relief promised by the New Testament. Indeed, the minister stays in the pulpit in a religious pose until everyone has filed out; he does not greet or reach out to his parishioners. Ironically, when Jonah behaved similarly for the Ninevites, he was chided by God for his selfishness. (Jonah 4) What Fr. Mapple says, then, is limited. He has “two hands” of God on him instead of the usual one, and it is a burden to be borne rather than a joy to be shared.

The cook’s sermon also notes some religious truth, but his theology also falls short in New Testament terms. Ishmael has noted that mankind is “sharkish.” It is our nature. The cook preaches self-control to the sharks.

Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can’t be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more den de shark well goberned (251).

What foolishness calling on sharks to govern their voraciousness! Can we expect any more from sharkish man?

Unbelieving “Christians” in the Story

Starbuck is identified as a Christian in the story. His doubloon speech begins in orthodoxy. He speaks of the Trinity and refers to Malachi 4:2 (cf. Luke 1:78-79) which Christians interpret to mean Christ (360). But he says “at midnight” calling to God is “vain.” As a consequence, in the story he does not act on what he says he believes to be true. He knows Ahab’s quest is ungodly and he has chances to thwart it (see especially chs. 46 and 109). The Town-Ho’s story even sanctions mutiny when the Captain is not doing his appointed duty.⁹ He almost persuades Ahab to dispense with the chase, but his appeal is human rather than divine—to return to his family. At the end Starbuck finally appeals in Jesus’s name, but it is too late, and Starbuck seems to know it.

Captain Bildad quotes the Bible and hands out tracts. But he uses Matthew 6:20, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth,” as a justification to pay Ishmael as little as possible (74). His concern for the spiritual welfare of the Pequod seems mostly a personal financial concern. If God blesses the crew and vessel, he will have a good return on his investments. Father Purdon in Joyce’s Dubliners is perhaps a Catholic parallel to this “work ethic” Quaker.

Someone being named Bildad is almost as unusual as someone being named Ahab. Bildad was one of Job’s friends who, while sympathizing with him, accused him of hiding sin.  The Lord would rebuke Bildad for his self-righteousness and ignorance and ask Job to intercede for him.

False or Negative Rebirths: Ahab and Pip

Ahab actually underwent something like a trial of Jonah or a Christlike death or burial. Elijah speaks of “that thing that happened to him off Cape horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights” (87). But if this resulted in a rebirth, it was a birth out of Christianity. He desecrated a communion vessel and church altar and would conduct his own kind of pagan rituals on the Pequod.¹⁰ There is a suggestion that what he “saw” during this time hardened him just as what Pip “saw” while a castaway made him crazy. Of course, Ahab’s rage and monomania is the focus of the book’s action and dialogue and the reason for the Pequod’s destruction. His “rebirth” is self-destructive and not to be emulated.

Pip’s rebirth brings insanity. Pip could not handle being thrown overboard and his fear drives him insane. Just as Ahab admires the whale’s head for seeing the unseen, so he relates to Pip. He assumes Pip’s conversion was something like his own. Perhaps Pip does prophesy afterwards, but his is the prophecy of a village idiot. His baptism and rebirth do not bring relief any more than Ahab’s, only a different kind of insanity. There is, however, a baptism and rebirth at the heart of the novel. One critic calls it “Ishmael’s Divine Comedy.”¹¹

Tashtego’s Physical Rebirth

There is a foreshadowing of this when Queequeg rescues Tashtego from suffocating in the whale’s head.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently helpless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. (290)

Tashtego was “in the the whale’s belly” like Jonah. This would foreshadow how Queequeg would raise Ishmael.

Ishmael and the New Birth

Ishmael alludes to a New Testament resurrection when he speaks of re-writing his own will. It was the fourth time he had done it. Thus it is his own “new testament,” so to speak. Should he go to sea again, it won’t be his last one, either. After making the will, Ishmael says,

“I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection.”
He felt “like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault” (197).

He has a sense that making his will will make him live on like a family ghost, but the Bible image heightens it. That he re-does it four times may suggest the four gospel stories—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus told in four different ways.

The sense of rebirth or resurrection here is not so much a second chance at communion with God as a second chance at living, like Lazarus after he was raised from the dead. This major image brings in the Old Testament stories of Job, Jonah, and Noah, the last two which have been interpreted by the New Testament. Ishmael’s rebirth is not so much a joyful experience, or even something which he is grateful for, but a means of obtaining wisdom. Solomon wrote, “I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly:” In Ahab Ishmael has seen madness and folly, “I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit” (Ecclesiastes 1:17). A second chance at living is somewhat melancholy, it postpones what is still inevitable, just as the resurrection of Lazarus did.

Ishmael as a Jonah Figure

Ishmael is the Jonah of the book. From the moment he enters the Spouter Inn through the jaws of the whale, his voyage on the Pequod is like Jonah’s voyage. The Pequod is Ishmael’s hearse-whale. He goes aboard ostensibly to get away from life, just as Jonah shipped out to avoid God’s call. But like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, he learns more than he expected. The final chase, the passion of “godlike” Ahab, lasts three days. Ahab treats the chase prophetically, not only because of Fedallah’s fortune-telling, but by his view of fate—

“The whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.” (459)

Like the true pagan he has become, Ahab invokes fate.

The third day dawns like a “new-made world” (460). Ahab is reminded of Noah, a lone survivor of an apocalyptic disaster (462). The ship sinks, reminding, the reader of the three crosses at Calvary, (See Luke 23:32-33) where Jesus was crucified:

Only the uppermost masts out of water, while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooners still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea (469).

Ishmael himself swirled “like another Ixion,” a mythological character who suffered a crucifixion-like torture with the addition of being spun on his wheel-like torture device.

Ishmael’s “Resurrection”

We see the three crosses on the horizon making a descent into hell, the Pequod being compared to Satan being cast from Heaven. Out of the vortex, “it so chanced,” the empty coffin is left behind like the empty graveclothes or empty tomb of Christ. Ishmael comes forth out of the “shroud of the sea.”¹³ He has his resurrection. In the New Testament saints are saved through the death of Christ; here Ishmael is saved through the coffin of Queequeg.¹⁴

The coffin is not only reminiscent of the empty tomb or graveclothes of Jesus, but of Noah’s Ark. In the New Testament Noah, like Jonah, becomes a prophetic symbol of salvation through Christ. I Peter 3:20-21 calls Noah’s Ark (where “eight souls were saved by water”):

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth now also save us (not by the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here is restated the basics of the New Testament Gospel, “a good conscience toward God.” Here also is a direct comparison between Noah’s Ark and rebirth through Christ’s resurrection. Ishmael’s going under the water and re-emerging is also “a like figure” of baptism, with the coffin his “ark.” The baptism formula of Romans 6:3-4, which is often quoted during baptismal rites emphasizes that the going under the water and re-emerging typifies Christ’s burial and resurrection:

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

This is further, emphasized by the prayer-book paraphrase of John 11:25, “may the resurrection and the life,” quoted by the captain of the Delight who interrupts himself when he notices the Pequod’s coffin-lifebuoy (440,441). The Ark is described in Genesis 6:14-16 as boxlike and covered with pitch “within” and “without.” So Queequeg’s coffin, the only thing remaining of the Pequod, is caulked on the inside and covered with pitch on the outside. Earlier, Ishmael would remind the reader that the world is still greatly affected by Noah and the deluge:

“Ye foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two-thirds of the fair world it yet covers” (235).

So it is Ishmael’s Ark which saves him through a kind of baptism—not necessarily the kind that brings about the clear conscience of St. Peter, but which leaves him with a story to tell nevertheless.

The Pequod’s Apocalypse

There are also numerous New Testament apocalyptic images accompanying the sinking of the Pequod. (I use apocalyptic here in the traditional sense of end-times prophecy). Jesus treats Noah apocalyptically when he speaks of the Ark in his Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:37). II Peter 2:5 does likewise adding the information that Noah had a prophetic ministry. So Ishmael is saved to tell us his story. Moby Dick’s most fully developed New Testament image, that of the Virgin, also comes from the apocalyptic Olivet Discourse (Matthew 25:1-13). Gabriel of the Jeroboam claims that his vials are the pestilences of Revelation, (266 cf. Revelation 5:6, 15:7, 16:1-17, 17:1, and 21:9). Ahab is developed as an antichrist figure who gets his crew to join him with Fedallah as his false prophet (Revelation 13 and 19:20). Even the image of the sky-hawk and the sharks (earlier called “sea-vultures”) at the end recall the Olivet Discourse’s “For wheresoever the carcase is there will the eagles be gathered together” (Matthew 24:28).¹⁵ The image of the Pequod bringing down the hawk like Satan dragging a “living part of heaven” down is also New Testament apocalyptic referring to Revelation 12:4, 7-9 (cf. Luke 10:18).

It would take another paper to develop the New Testament apocalyptic images and themes in Moby Dick,but the New Testament promises that there will be some kind of peace or promised land after the defeat of the antichrist. So Ishmael’s Ark floats on after the antichrist Ahab drives the Pequod to destruction. Christ, in fact, uses the metaphor of birth when he calls the cataclysms of the last days birth pangs or sorrows necessary to bring forth the millennial kingdom (Matthew 24:8).

Ishmael’s Rescue by the Rachel

Ishmael is rescued by the Rachel who is sorrowing in her own way. The image of “Rachel weeping for her children,” though from the Old Testament, is better known today from its New Testament citation in Matthew 2:17-18 as part of the Christmas story.

King Herod hears from the Magi that a new King of the Jews has been born in Bethlehem, so he orders an execution of all the male children in the Bethlehem area under two years old. This is seen historically as the first attempt to attack Jesus. Rachel weeps for her children, but Jesus’ family escapes and God’s Messianic promise is carried through (see Matthew 2). Salvation is accomplished and the Gospel spreads beyond the confines of the Jewish nation, though innocent children die. So the Rachel picks up Ishmael, “another orphan.” Ishmael is “saved.”

New Testament images help amplify and explain his salvation from the sea, from Ahab’s Pequod, and from Moby Dick. His resurrection brings a desire to tell his story and share his wisdom. Having been given an extension of life like Lazarus, he is not going to stay locked up in his snug vault. He is going to share is latest testament with his readers. Out of the prophetic disaster he survives to tell his story.

Salvation through Covenant with Another

As in most symbolic writing, the outcome is ambiguous and elusive. Nevertheless, we can see some patterns which the New Testament helps us understand Ishmael’s newest testament. The symbols on the coffin are undecipherable, but Ishmael accepts the coffin. Likewise he humbly accepts the ambiguous nature of this life. He is neither defiant like Ahab nor fearful like Pip. (Revelation 21:8 tells us that the “fearful” along with idolaters will be excluded from the New Jerusalem). He is not charmed by Ahab.¹⁶ He accepts the covenant relationship with Queequeg, and that human love as symbolized by the coffin saves him.

Queequeg, a primitive, still recognizes the value of blood covenant, which is comparable to marriage for him. Ishmael accepts this relationship for mutual good. (Ahab also initiates a covenant exercise, but it is for control of his crew, not for mutual benefit or respect. Ahab earlier had explicitly rejected God’s covenant as he desecrated the altar and chalice in a church.) Some of Queequeg’s tattoos were symbols of covenant-cutting; some may have even been covenant cuts. Even cut into the coffin, though undecipherable, the figures were not without meaning.¹⁷

A Reconciliation

This is part of Ishmael’s new understanding. On a personal level, we can work against our own sharkishness, or against knocking hats off. One of the final signs of Ahab’s reprobate mind was his refusal to help the Rachel. Yet a week later the Rachel rescues the Pequod’s lone survivor. The occasion is rich in symbolism. Ishmael on the coffin is a kind of reconciliation between life and death, or at least an acceptance of death’s reality. With a captain named Gardiner on the Rachel, there is also a suggestion of a final reconciliation between land and sea, between the comfortable “insular Tahiti” and the unknowable deep. ¹⁸ The first man, Adam, was a gardener, and Christ, a son of Rachel, is called the “last Adam” in the New Testament. (I Corinthians 15:22,45) Jesus’s tomb was in a garden. He was buried in a garden and rose there. When Mary Magdalene first ran into the risen Jesus, she thought he was the gardener. Captain Gardiner does harvest one soul from the deep.

Rachel is the wife of Jacob and the mother of the twelve tribes of Israel. As we saw above, Hagar and her child, Ishmael, were cast out from the promise. The New Testament, however, claims a reconciliation through Christ. Rachel weeping for her children accompanied the advent of Jesus. So Christian Jews spreading the Gospel to Gentiles in the first century C.E. brought the possibility of salvation to the non-Jews who for so long had been outside God’s Covenant. This is expressed well in Ephesians 2:11-22 which says, in part:

At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise…ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ…to make in himself of twain one new man,, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross…therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints…

While Melville is not preaching quite that kind of Gospel, nevertheless, the image of reconciliation between the Rachel and Ishmael makes us realize that something has happened to Ishmael. He has become integrated with the world, with life, if not Christendom, in some way.

It is interesting to note that another chapter which emphasizes salvation to the Gentiles coming from the Jews is Romans 11. This New Testament “wisdom” chapter uses the image of grafting a wild olive branch to a cultivated olive tree as a symbol of reconciliation between Gentile and Jew through Christ. This chapter ends (Romans 11:35) with a quotation from the Leviathan chapter (Job 41), the only one in the New Testament (Job 41:11), and a doxology in honor of God’s wisdom. The effect that Romans 11 had on Melville’s thought is researched elsewhere.¹⁹

Ishmael’s Wisdom

Wisdom “under the sun”, is a key theme of Moby Dick. Wisdom is what Ishmael comes away with. His new birth is in some ways more like the Old Testament new birth of Job or Jonah, in that he grows in wisdom. Ishmael begins his story with a chapter called “Loomings.” This may suggest his later description of the mat-maker at a loom in chapter 47 where the warp is necessity and the woof is free will with occasional “blows” of chance (185). This is further detailed in “A Bower in the Arascides” where Ishmael talks about the indifferent, unseen weaver-god.

This shows why Ishmael (if not Melville) places such emphasis on Solomon. In Ecclesiastes the writer (usually viewed as Solomon, see verse 1:1) is going to discover truth through wisdom. Under the sun the writer sees no justice any more than Job does. The universe appears vain and indifferent. The wisdom which Solomon learned in a lifetime is what Ishmael shares with us: a kind of moderation, humility, and respect, knowing that under the sun the world is indifferent. Avoid fighting it like Ahab, avoid fearing it like Pip, but do not avoid it as most of the rest of the Pequod did (and most of the world does).

Wisdom and Woe

Ishmael does not pick up on the parts of Ecclesiastes described as being “under heaven” in which the writer’s perspective does change. Yet Ishmael suggests that there may be more. He does not at the end appear overly bitter, fearful, or angry, just melancholy like the wedding-guest of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

“A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.”(ll. 624,625, cf. Moby Dick 165n.).

Coleridge explained these lines of the poem by quoting Ecclesiastes 1:18—”For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” So Holman says that the “key sentence” of Moby Dick is “There is wisdom that is is woe.”²⁰ Likewise Ishmael/Melville notes:

The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. (335)

The term “Man,of Sorrows” comes from Isaiah 53, a passage which is interpreted by the New Testament as applying to Jesus especially in His suffering and death for mankind’s sins (Matthew 8:17, Luke 22:37, John 12:38, Acts 8:32-35, Romans 10:16, 1 Peter 2:24). Melville used the term somewhat ambiguously. Is the Man of Sorrows Solomon? Perhaps, but Christ never wrote a book, so He is not ruled out simply because Solomon wrote the best one. It probably is a reference to the suffering aspect of Jesus’ ministry. For a nineteenth century liberal Christian or Unitarian as Melville probably was, Jesus of Nazareth would have been an example to learn from rather than savior to submit to. A paragraph written on the flyleaf of one of Melville’s Bibles emphasizes precisely the ministry of teacher and exemplar. ²¹

Ishmael as an Echo of Christ

Jesus suffered injustice, sorrow, indifference in the world. Almost from the beginning of his ministry, people were plotting to kill Him. In His death agony He even cried out that God had abandoned Him (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34).²² He preached the “Truth in the Face of Falsehood” (50); it was His literal “Gospel duty.” (cf. Fr. Mapple above) So St. Paul exhorts Timothy to maintain “a good profession before many witnesses” like “Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession” (I Timothy 6:12-13).

Jesus for His witness before Pilate was executed in sorrow and experienced a resurrection. Part of his ministry after the resurrection was to instruct his followers. When this happened, “their eyes were opened” (Luke 24:31) and they began to understand the significance of what He had undergone. They, in turn, told others. Indeed, one of the main appeals of the New Testament writers is that they are giving an eyewitness account (Matthew 26:20, Luke 1:1-4, 24:45-48, John 21:24,25, Acts 2:22-24, I Corinthians 15:3-8, II Peter 1:18, I John 1:1-3, and others).

Ishmael’s “Gospel”

So Ishmael has a story to tell, too. He is a resurrection eyewitness to life. His epilogue begins with the quotation repeated four times in Job 1:15-19, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee” (470). Ishmael is saved in order to tell us something. It is not, apparently, the Christian Gospel per se, but it does have Gospel overtones. Ishmael did gain something through his experience. He calls himself a witness who dares to “seize the privilege Jonah” (373), that is to tell others about his experience after being “resurrected” from the deep. So, once again, he writes a new will, a new testament, what he calls a “mighty book” with a “mighty theme” (379), leaving to posterity what he has learned.

The multiplicity of wills suggest that the rebirth and salvation are ongoing. “The world’s a ship on its passage out” (44) and there is something lost and something gained on every leg of the voyage. Melville has more to say than just the things mentioned in this paper. The New Testament allusions with their images of salvation, resurrection, and rebirth may open our own eyes.

Notes

1. C. Hugh Holman, “The Reconciliation of Ishmael: Moby Dick and the Book of Job,,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 57(1958)490.

2. All Bible quotations are from the Authorized or King James Version because this is the version Melville used. The online links are from a modern translation (2001-2011), the English Standard Version.

3. See T. Walter Herbert, Moby-Dick and Calvinism, (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1977) 120.

4. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ed. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker, (New York: W . W. Norton, 1967)12. All subsequent references to Moby Dick will be given parenthetically in the text. Page numbers will refer to this edition.

5. It should be noted that Ahab may fall into the category of “Bonapartes and sharks.” Ahab opposes the Biblical God; and during his time in power, Napoleon was often seen as the antichrist or one who would prefigure the Biblical antichrist or “beast” of Revelation 13, a political leader who would rule the former Rome, oppose God, and manage to hold sway over the world. This is mentioned in “Billy Budd,” where Napoleon is described as “this French portentous upstart from the revolutionary chaos who seemed in act of fulfilling judgment prefigured in the Apocalypse.” Herman Melville, “Billy Budd” in Great Short Works of Herman Melville, ed. Warner Berthoff, (New York: Harper, 1970) 450.

6. For more on Melville on the “sharkishness” of man see Mark Heidmann, “Melville and the Bible: Leading Themes in the Marginalia and Major Fiction, 1850-1856,” Diss. Yale Univ., 1979, 75.

7. Melville’s concern (or, to some critics, obsession) with God hiding Himself and divine responsibility for evil is part of the main thesis of Lawrance Thompson, Melville’s Quarrel with God, (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1952). It is also noted in Thornton Y. Booth, “Moby-Dick: Standing Up to God,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 17(1960) 40ff., and William Braswell, Melville’s Religious Thought: An Essay in Interpretation, (1943; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1973) 67ff.

8. There is another image similar to this. Ishmael tells of the sailor who refuses to believe in the Bible because he once saw an illustrated Bible with an unrealistically drawn whale in a picture of the Jonah story. So does this mean that Jesus is unmanly or unrealistic, or just that some picture him that way—and perhaps this caricature of Jesus keeps people from believing in Him or in the New Testament?

9. See Daniel G. Hoffman, “Moby Dick: Jonah’s Whale or Job’s,” Sewanee Review, 69(1961),216; cf. Tyrus Hillway, Herman Melville, (New York: Twayne, 1963), 101.

10. Kerry McSweeney, Moby-Dick: lshmael’s Mighty Book, (Boston: Twayne, 1986), 90 gives some symbolic interpretation of Starbuck which is useful here.

11. See Nathalia Wright, Melville’s Use of the Bible, (1949; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1969) 71,72.

12. This is developed well elsewhere. Harold Bloom, ed., Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, (New Haven: Chelsea House, 1986) 9 and Braswell, 62ff. give good illustration of Ahab’s gnosticism. Henry A. Murray, “In Nomine Diaboli,” in Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Richard Chase, (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962) 66-72 portrays Ahab as an antichrist and also notes some practices of pagan religions he engages in. Whatever else you can say about Thompson (139), he offers a good discussion on Ahab’s Zoroastrianism and Manichaeanism.

13. Holman, 482.

14. For the three crosses on Calvary where Jesus was crucified, see Luke 23:32-33; for the descent into hell between his death and resurrection note Ephesians 4:9, I Peter 3:19; for the empty tomb and graveclothes note especially John 20:5-7.

I do not consider it important that Tashtego rather than Queequeg is on the middle mast. Moby Dick contains symbolism; it is not an allegory. Since he is a Native American, Tashtego has symbolic purpose beyond the scope of this paper in Melville’s portrayal of democracy and America.

15. Modern versions frequently translate eagle as “vulture,” cf. Job 39:26-30 where the same word (in both Greek and English) clearly refers to a carrion-eating creature.

16. A good contrast of character between Ahab and Ishmael is found in William Ellery Sedgwick, “[Ishmael v. Ahab],” in the Moby-Dick edition cited, 643-648.

17. I do take issue with the thesis of Leslie Fiedler, “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!” The author shows no understanding of primitive cultures and the use of blood covenant even in the nineteenth century. I recommend E. Clay Trumbull, The Blood Covenant, (rpt. Kirkwood MO: Impact Books, n.d.), a nineteenth-century anthropological work. The famous explorer Livingstone had over 100 marks on his body where he had cut covenants with African chieftains. Even in the twentieth century “blood brothers” is associated with American Indian tradition and would easily explain Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook.

Melville encountered covenant relationships (“bosom friends”) during his stay with natives in the South Seas. In fact, he writes in Omoo that “The really curious way in which all the Polynesians are in the habit of making bosom friends at the shortest possible notice is deserving of remark.” (Herman Melville, Omoo, in Typee, Omoo, and Mardi, ed. G. Thomas Tanselle, [New York: Library of America, 1982] 480). Of course, this is precisely what Queequeg did. Melville goes on in the same passage to note that “In the annals of the island [here Tahiti] are examples of extravagant friendships, unsurpassed by the story of Damon and Pythias, in truth more wonderful; for, notwithstanding the devotion—even of life in some cases—to which they led, they were frequently entertained at first sight for some stranger from another island” (Omoo, 480).

Marriage in most such cultures is seen as one kind of blood covenant, as it is in Malachi 2:14. Melville’s Typee tells that certain tattoos on the hand and foot indicate that a woman is married. (Herman Melville, Typee, in Typee, Omoo, and Mardi, 224, 225). Marriage would probably be the closest term to blood brother or covenant in English that Queequeg would know. Homosexuality would be alien to such a relationship in most cultures.
The term, “bosom friends,” which Melville uses would probably be the term most familiar to his western, culturally Christian audience since this suggests the covenant relationship between two men in the New Testament, see especially John 13:23 and 21:20. See also Tomlinson’s Review of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy.

18. McSweeney, 112; Herbert, 120ff., discusses Ahab’s reprobation.

19. See Herbert, 120ff.

20. Holman, 489.

21. Thompson, 255, believes that Ishmael means Solomon. McSweeney, 104, citing Melville’s Bible fly-leaf, makes a case for Ishmael representing Christ.

22. The orthodox Gospel would say that God turned His back on His Son because He was bearing the sins of the world. This gets back to the separation between God and man due to sin, see above, rather than any indifference or malice on God’s part.

Bibliography
Auden, W. H. “The Christian Tragic Hero.” New York Times, 16 Dec. 1945, Sec. 7, 1 and 21. Microfiche.

Bayle, Pierre. Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections. Trans. Richard E. Popkin. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. Print.

Booth, Thornton Y. “Moby-Dick: Standing Up to God.” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 17(1962) 33-43. Print.

Braswell, William. Melville’s Religious Thought: An Essay in Interpretation. 1943; rpt. New York: 0ctagon Books, 1973. Print.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  Vol. 2. Ed. M. H. Abrams, et al. New York: Norton, 1962, 181-197. Print.

The Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature. 2 Vols. Ed. John Kitto.  [1845; rpt.] New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman and Co., 1868.  Print. This was Melville’s most commonly used Bible reference book.

Heidmann, Mark. “Melville and the Bible: Leading Themes in the Marginalia and Major Fiction, 1850-1856.” Diss. Yale Univ., 1979.  Print.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Ed. Harold Bloom. New Haven: Chelsea House, 1986.  Print.

Herbert, T. Walter. Moby-Dick and Calvinism. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers U P, 1977.  Print.

Hillway, Tyrus. Herman Melville. New York: Twayne, 1963.  Print.

Hoffman, Daniel G. “Moby Dick: Jonah’s Whale or Job’s?” Sewanee Review, 69(1961), 205-224.  Print.

Holman, C. Hugh. “The Reconciliation of Ishmael: Moby-Dick and the Book of Job.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 57(Autumn 1956), 477-490.  Print.

Holy Bible. King James (Authorized) Version. Open Bible Edition. Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, 1975. This is the translation quoted throughout because it is the one Melville used.

Howard, Leon. Herman Melville. Second ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1971.  Print.

McSweeney, Kerry. Moby-Dick: Ishmael’s Mighty Book. Boston: Twayne, 1986.  Print.

Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Richard Chase. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.  Print.

Melville, Herman. “Billy Budd.” Great Short Works of Herman Melville. Ed. Warner Berthoff. New York: Harper, 1970, 429-505.  Print.

______. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Hershel Parker. New York: Norton, 1971.  Print.

______. Moby-Dick. Ed. Harrsion Hayford and Hershel Parker. New York: Norton, 1967.  Print.

______. Typee, Omoo, and Mardi. Ed. G. Thomas Tanselle. New York: Library of America, 1982.  Print.

Robinson, Douglas. American Apocalypses: The Image of the End of the World in American Literature.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1985.  Print.

Sealts, Merton M., Jr. Melville’s Reading: A Check-List of Books Owned and Borrowed.  Madison WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1966.  Print.

Stout, Janis. “Melville’s Use of the Book of Job.” Nineteenth Century Fiction,  25(1970) 69-83. Print.

Strong, James. Exhaustive Concordance to the Holy Bible. Rpt. Nashville TN: Royal Publishers, n.d. Print.

Thompson, Lawrance. Melville’s Quarrel With God. Princeton NJ: Princeton U P, 1972. Print.

Tomlinson, David. Review of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:  A Case Study in Critical Commentary. The Mark Twain Forum. TwainWeb.net. 19 Feb. 1996. Web. 6 July 2016. <http://www.twainweb.net/reviews/graff.html>.

Wright, Nathalia. Melville’s Use of the Bible. 1949; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1969. Print.

______. “Moby Dick: Jonah’s or Job’s Whale?” American Literature,  37(May 1965), 190-195. Print.

Young, William A. “Leviathan in the Book of Job and Moby Dick.” Soundings, 65(1982), 388-401. Print.

Copyright©1997-1998 James Bair, All rights reserved.