9: Seafaring and Fair Seeing: Part III

One final observation solidifies Moby-Dick’s American citizenship: the character of savage Queequeg.  The word savage, perhaps, has lost its appeal.  But, for Melville, fashioning a hero for his wayfaring masterpiece necessitates its use.   Describing Queequeg’s native home, Melville quips, “It is not down in any map; true places never are.”  Queequeg is “placeless,” and therefore placed.  His savagery liberates him from misplaced pride, which Melville finds in the heart of all evil.  Melville’s highest good might be humility; his darkest sin blasphemy.  In the same way, American society finds its place in brave and honest humility.

In Chapter 10, Melville describes Queequeg’s appearance:

            “Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.  And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim.  He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor… It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him... Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”

Washington and Queequeg epitomize the conceptual American citizen.  Washington refuses pomp and kingship from the start; he displays a “simple honest heart.”  He leads his fellows through desperate undertakings; he possesses a “spirit that would dare a thousand devils.”  His greatness roots not in title, birthplace, or blood, but in personal virtue.  His “lofty bearing”—coupled not with savage but with pagan, invoking the ancient virtues: Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence—his lofty bearing marks his independence: he owes nothing but to God.

Queequeg, like America, seems impossibly independent:

            “Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home… and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.”

With what apparent, astounding ease does this nation found itself even on the ocean-vastness of the American wilderness?  Its fashioning provides a singularly clear insight into human savagery and its desire for a final place.  Yet, as Melville has said already, “true places” do not appear on any map.  How, then, does this nation fashion itself?  By what virtue will the author recognize his hero?  That ship floats on honesty. 

Melville relates the following vision of the sea:

            “How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike earth!—that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records.”

Being displaced, only in honest humility can mankind locate any true “magnanimity”—and that only of the sea!  The sea permits no records of birth or knighthood.  Only from this honesty can Melville, a human creator, fashion his hero.

Read the remaining introductory chapters, until the introduction of the ship Melville will drive into sea.  The plain recognition of placelessness pervades.  No earthly foundation sustains, especially the deck of Ahab’s ship.  This novel defends its citizenship with a brave realization that no earthly place can be the place mankind requires.  Its astounding depiction of human pride begins in brave humility.

Yet how can such displacement be habitable?  Because its bedrock belief—that there exists a joy higher than the depth of our tragic humility—firmly asserts: not strength, but weakness; not heritage, but waywardness; not nobility, but savagery; defying false pride for true heroics, temporal in this place in the hope of Another’s deep eternity.  By this America can face the wilderness, fashioning civilized society from the knowledge of human vagrancy.  By this, too, Queequeg bravely faces the wild ocean, alone successful.