| 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.
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.
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.
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