Chapter 7, “The Chapel,” contains the argument of Moby-Dick in its entirety. Before continuing with Queequeg’s character,
Melville draws our attention to a small New Bedford chapel. Here he makes two observations that should
remain in the reader’s mind for the rest of the story. These comments frame the chapter with a
profound insight into human existence.
“The Chapel” begins as Ishmael once more wraps his chilled form against
inclement weather. This recalls
Ishmael’s sojourning status and the insufficiency of his covering:
“…I fought my way against the
stubborn storm.”
The earth is as unforgiving as the sea—the latter a figure
of the deep reality of the former. Melville
places Ishmael against the storm as a metaphor of human will, and as a
prescient introduction to Captain Ahab.
What’s more, the penultimate assertion of this milestone chapter reads:
“Yes, there is death in this
business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into
Eternity.”
How beautiful a line for a grim thought! Death follows mankind’s bout with the
storm. So Moby-Dick is tragedy, but this is only the penultimate assertion, not
the last word.
In the chapel, Ishmael observes several plaques adorning one
wall, each memorializing a whaler lost at sea.
Ishmael’s perception penetrates deeply.
While the tragedy of death certainly pervades, the isolation of the
scene strikes a graver chord:
“A muffled silence reigned, only
broken at times by the shrieks of the storm.
Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as
if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.”
Ishmael feels strongly the inhumanity of the scene. The lack of community (“incommunicable”), the
lack of common ground (“insular”), both indicate a source of tragedy more
unfathomable than death. Ishmael’s
outcast nature stirs in empathy. Melville
keeps one eye on this darker tomb throughout his novel.
Queequeg cannot fathom this blackness (or is it blankness?),
but for a different reason:
“Affected by the solemnity of the
scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his
countenance. This savage was the only
person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one
who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions
on the wall.”
Far from scorning this savage, Ishmael admires his
curiosity, his wonder, but most of all his unaffected calm. Queequeg does not hear these mortal murmurs. Ishmael must hear them and, momentarily, he
quails. The source of his sorrow, and that
of the other mourners, lies in the absence of a corporal memorial: they have
“placelessly perished” in the sea, leaving nothing landed but the vacant words
of these plaques. Nothing remains for
the wounded heart to grieve, to mark and remember. Their grief becomes intangible, insular. And following this explanation, Melville
repeats his central premise: “All these things are not without their
meanings.” That is, the dead do
speak. They assert the monumental
importance of the body to the living man.
I said that this speech was only the penultimate. Melville closes the chapter with a
winner-take-all turn:
“But Faith, like a jackal, feeds
among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital
hope… In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and
come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove
himself cannot.”
Melville will spend the remainder of the novel effecting the
transition. Notice Ishmael’s quickness
to adopt the notion. What has Ishmael to
hold? What does he call his own? Where can he bury it? Because
he is Ishmael—out of the inevitability of the grave, from that deepest sea—he
draws out hope with a fish hook. The
frailty of the body indicates, to him, the truer substance of the soul. Thus Melville records the happy cadence of
the dead.
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