3 Means to the End

I want to turn for a moment—in Melville’s own fashion—to the question of meaning.  I base my reading of Moby-Dick almost entirely on a line in Chapter 1: “Surely all this is not without meaning.”  I apply this sentiment liberally.  So does Melville:

Chapter 7: “All these things are not without their meanings.”

Chapter 8: “What could be more full of meaning?”

Chapter 99: “And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher…”

Melville’s novel has great worth.  Therefore, I read it as though it were full of meaning.  To illustrate how, I have no better means than to share a passage from one of the best-written books in the English language: The Wind in the Willows.  The following occurs as Mole and Rat, the central characters, lose themselves in the Wild Wood.

“There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.

(Just so, Melville’s round world, if meaningless, seems “an empty cipher.”)  Continuing:

                ‘We can’t sit here very long,’ said the Rat.  ‘We shall have to make another push for it, and do something or other.  The cold is too awful for anything, and the snow will soon be too deep for us to wade through.’  He peered about him and considered.  ‘Look here,’ he went on, ‘this is what occurs to me.  There’s a sort of dell down here in front of us, where the ground seems all hilly and humpy and hummocky.  We’ll make our way down into that, and try and find some sort of shelter, a cave or hole with a dry floor to it, out of the snow and the wind, and there we’ll have a good rest before we try again, for we’re both of us pretty dead beat.  Besides, the snow may leave off, or something may turn up.’

                So once more they got on their feet, and struggled down into the dell, where they hunted about for a cave or some corner that was dry and a protection from the keen wind and the whirling snow.  They were investigating one of the hummocky bits the Rat had spoken of, when suddenly the Mole tripped up and fell forward on his face with a squeal.

                ‘O my leg!’ he cried.  ‘O my poor shin!’ and he sat up on the snow and nursed his leg in both his front paws.

                ‘Poor old Mole!’ said the Rat kindly.  ‘You don’t seem to be having much luck to-day, do you?  Let’s have a look at the leg.  Yes,’ he went on, going down on his knees to look, ‘you’ve cut your shin, sure enough.  Wait till I get at my handkerchief, and I’ll tie it up for you.’

                ‘I must have tripped over a hidden branch or a stump,’ said the Mole miserably.  ‘O, my!  O, my!’

                ‘It’s a very clean cut,’ said the Rat, examining it again attentively.  ‘That was never done by a branch or a stump.  Looks as if it was made by a sharp edge of something in metal.  Funny!’  He pondered awhile, and examined the humps and slopes that surrounded them.

                ‘Well, never mind what done it,’ said the Mole, forgetting his grammar in his pain.  ‘It hurts just the same, whatever done it.’

                But the Rat, after carefully tying up the leg with his handkerchief, had left him and was busy scraping in the snow.  He scratched and shovelled and explored, all four legs working busily, while the Mole waited impatiently, remarking at intervals, ‘O, come on, Rat!’

                Suddenly the Rat cried ‘Hooray!’ and then ‘Hooray-oo-ray-oo-ray-oo-ray!’ and fell to executing a feeble jig in the snow.

                ‘What have you found, Ratty?’ asked the Mole, still nursing his leg.

                ‘Come and see!’ said the delighted Rat, as he jigged on.

                The Mole hobbled up to the spot and had a good look.

                ‘Well,’ he said at last, slowly, ‘I see it right enough.  Seen the same sort of thing before, lots of times.  Familiar object, I call it.  A door-scraper!  Well, what of it?  Why dance jigs around a door-scraper?’

                ‘But don’t you see what it means, you—you dull-witted animal?’ cried the Rat impatiently.

                ‘Of course I see what it means,’ replied the Mole.  ‘It simply means that some very careless and forgetful person has left his door-scraper lying about in the middle of the Wild Wood, just where it’s sure to trip everybody up.  Very thoughtless of him, I call it.  When I get home I shall go and complain about it to—to somebody or other, see if I don’t!’

                ‘O, dear!  O, dear!’ cried the Rat, in despair at his obtuseness.  ‘Here, stop arguing and come and scrape!’  And he set to work again and made the snow fly in all directions around him.”

As the scene continues, heroic Ratty reveals a door-mat and, digging further, at last uncovers the door itself.  They are saved.

Moby-Dick is full of door-scrapers.  So often we only trip over them, but Melville has written them as meaningful items, each of which signifies the door.  This is the way to read the text.  This is the way Melville reads the round world itself.

“Call me Ishmael,” he begins.  A door-scraper.  Our narrator does not give his name.  Rather, he says, we might as well call him Ishmael.  Who is Ishmael?  As far as Ishmael is concerned, he is not Isaac—not the promised son of Abraham, through whom all God’s promises extend to His people, particularly that of Land.  Thus, the wilderness fathers Ishmael.  He (like Rat and Mole) loses himself in the Wild Wood.  And in this place, the round world quite often appears an empty cipher.  Ishmael surveys a place of confusion and injury.  Seeing the same, we too share his “everlasting itch for things remote,” searchingly uncomfortable with being lost.  Now we are really reading!  So as the novel continues, when we find a door-scraper at our feet, let’s conduct ourselves like wise old Ratty, else the Moles among us may forever remain in the cold.