The whaling ship Pequod
is described:
“She was a thing of trophies. A
cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were
garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm
whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of
land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend
helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously
carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe.” [my emphasis.]
Melville’s appetite for cannibalism must be remarked. The author establishes a clear relation between
the whaling vessel and Queequeg, the cannibal.
Current appetites tend to read Queequeg’s character as the figurehead
for the novel’s discussion of race, yet this interpretation makes nothing of
the quote above (a ship, with more than a hundred sundry souls aboard, cannot
be a race). The thematic relationship
fails. Severance of this kind will kill
a novel, like taking a fish from water.
A novel thrives, though at a depth, on the expectation of consistency. If inconsistent, it is a poor novel; if
great, it will be consistent. Trust the
relation, then seek to interpret: Queequeg and the Pequod are cannibals.
Melville’s use of cannibal
has little to do with race. In Moby-Dick, race appears as flotsam on
the sea—briefly noted by the pilot’s eye as he fixes on the greater wreck ahead. The ship runs over race, in order that it
might later take survivors from the sea.
Based on the correlation between Queequeg and the Pequod, I propose Melville’s use of cannibal refers to nature itself, and its wild conditions.
The ship clearly represents home—the universally common place
each character inhabits. And what else
is home to the human race, if not nature?
Melville states his meaning precisely and avoids the inherent vagueness
of the word: he will not write nature,
he writes cannibal instead. This not only names the place, but interprets
it. Nothing lives in nature but it
devours natural things. Death and growth
overflow, but never in equal balance. While
nature preys upon itself, the human race watches, horrified.
Queequeg, however, seems immune to this horror. He is a creature both in and of nature,
wholly natural. Cannibal himself, he
knows nature’s life-and-death conditions.
He places himself willingly in nature’s teeth. Ironically, his fearlessness makes him
remarkable and thus grandly individual—a hero of the novel, thrice a savior. Placed in contrast with Captain Ahab’s
insistent solitariness, the term cannibal
becomes a central consideration of the text as a whole. Our hero is the man who can inhabit
contentedly the cannibal Pequod.
But Melville’s human authorial intention exceeds the natural
condition. Three times, Queequeg saves
drowning men: a stranger, a fellow harpooneer, and ultimately Ishmael. Queequeg preserves life, and thus his
humanity. The human race, inhabiting
this place, still wants to live. So, to
fathom cannibal nature raises the question, to what end does Queequeg preserve
these lives?
Ishmael asserts his reason for going to sea: “I want to see
the world.” Being urged, therefore, to
take a look, Ishmael comments:
“Going forward and glancing over the
weather bow, I perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the
flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly
monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I could see.”
Such a monotonous world forbids individuality. It also overwhelms race. Ishmael sees the world as “not much…nothing
but water…” All humanity ships under
this condition. The hero contents
himself to live in the jaws of death, dedicated to preservation of life, yet all
the while individually obsolete. Is such
contentedness possible outside of fiction?
Humanly possible, I mean. Can
Ishmael resign himself to not be Isaac?
Can a man resign himself? Integral to Melville’s artistry, therefore, is
the assurance of future sanctuary. In
its secret hold, Moby-Dick bears a
discussion of faith upon the open ocean.
It seeks to navigate cannibal nature.
