From the chapter “The Prophet:”
“A soul’s a
sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.”
Melville concerns himself chiefly with the human being—a
wayward soul in a frail body. For the sake of focus, he sets his characters all
in a ship on an open sea, like a wooden frame around their human faces. Still,
no author builds a frame unless he comprehends the wood. Green nature surrounds
us all. Setting his story on the waves allows Melville to distill the complex
significance of this fact, and to thus draw drinkable water from a sea of
meaning. That water, distilled, tastes as much of land-rain as it does
sea-spray.
As discussed in my previous post (11 It’s Not a Race), much
of Melville’s analysis of nature involves Queequeg, the cannibal. This post
will explore an aspect of nature, in connection with the quote above, that has
proven limitlessly useful to my own study of literature.
Queequeg’s most conspicuous accoutrement is his tobacco-pipe.
A dangerous tomahawk, with hollowed shaft and metal bowl opposite the blade,
Queequeg smokes it continually throughout the book. He smokes it calmly (always
calm, is Queequeg) in the hold of the Pequod
in the chapter “Going Aboard:”
“He was going on with some wild
reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses
both brained his foes and soothed his soul…”
Only an aside, yet it expresses a central aspect of
mankind’s perception of nature. Nature, also, possesses the two qualities of
Queequeg’s tomahawk-pipe: violence and the peace of comfort.
Put simply, humanity cannot fully enjoy its peace because it
cannot wholly escape its violence. This is enough to set us apart from nature
and all animals. We can neither possess both at once, nor be quietly subject to
either. Violence always fails to satisfy. Peace always fails to last. However, in
nature we perceive both qualities existing in unison, as they do in Queequeg’s
pipe, because no creatures, except for human beings, seem to complain. Instead,
they roll steadily forward on the landscape, in silent wagons, while the fifth
wheel—the human soul—loudly creaks.
First, connect this notion to the text. Notice Queequeg’s
prowess in battle. As a skilled, victorious warrior, he represents the
dominance that Captain Ahab covets. Queequeg’s tomahawk-pipe therefore parallels
Ahab’s bold harpoon. Yet the pipe contains a comfort that the captain cannot
muster. Captain Ahab is more than other men, he is “above the common,” yet in
this way Queequeg surpasses him. (This offers another reason to interpret
Queequeg’s character as wholly natural, not like a man.) He carries everywhere
an impossible combination: his tomahawk-pipe. For him it holds no
contradiction, but for Ahab it proves maddeningly paradoxical.
Second, in defense of my contention and to clarify its
cause, a quick anecdote about a grasshopper:
Years ago, I was driving on my way
out of town when I noticed a small, green grasshopper perched on my windshield.
As I drove onto a highway, I watched the intrepid insect, to see what the
outcome would be. At 40 mph, it turned resolutely into the oncoming wind. At 55
mph, its antennae straightened over its back, in an attitude of utmost
determination. At 70 mph, though it persevered for several seconds, it vanished
from the windshield.
Consider: what became of the grasshopper next? Assuming it
is not crushed against the pavement—insects are light and very resilient—is this
grasshopper now forever destitute? Is it lost, as a human would be? Does it
begin its Homeric voyage back to a backyard Ithaca? Does it long for home, the
land of its birth? Or does it quietly hop away from the noise of the highway,
seize calmly on a blade of grass, and sing for a mate with which to propagate
its kind in this newfound verdure?
We can hardly imagine any outcome but the last. Only a man
might be wretched, resisting his fate. The fifth wheel of his soul makes him
disagreeable. But an animal survives, as it always has, being never at home (in
the human sense) and so perfectly at home wherever it lands. Therefore, we perceive nature as both
innocent and independent—a lamb and a lion. Like Melville’s Queequeg; his peaceful
warrior. But what causes this perception?
Nature has a wondrous ability to negate itself. It can be nothing and
die silent. Nature greets us, the scientist and the backyard observer alike,
with the outstretched hand of a species, and what is a species if not a collection
of negated individuals? The human race alone turns dissatisfied from nature’s
habitat, and nature cannot recognize Ahab’s willful independence.
So nature has everything we want, and yet offers us nothing.
It provides everything for the body, and it kills the body, but the soul persists.
The human being is body and soul. This
prevents our calm subjection to violence and comfort together, for mankind is
and ought to be eternal. Queequeg,
therefore, is decidedly fictitious. He cannot be, but in fiction he reveals our
being.
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