Moby Dick

Moby-Dick is a book that gets better every time I read it. First time around, it was just strange. Second time, it was a good story about whaling, spoiled by a lot of stuff that should've been edited out. The third time... well, I think I'm beginning to get it!

It's a helter-skelter, messy work of fiction, a "modern novel" from the mid-19th century. Parts of it are brilliant. Parts read like poetry. It is political, metaphysical, factual. I can understand why teachers love to teach it, because it is filled with easily tagged metaphors. What does that white whale represent? Is Ahab God? Is he the devil? The book can be read from so many angles....

It is political, in that much of it about authority. Ahab, despite his precarious sanity, is tuned in to the question of whence comes his authority. He has mastery over his men, but his authority hangs by a thread. The question of mutiny keeps coming up via ships they meet, most strangely in the person of a shipboard prophet. These ships seem to be hovering in a neverland between the absolute authority of a monarchy in the person of their captain and a democracy as embodied in their crew. Moby-Dick is very much a paean to the common man. It also recognizes how beholden the common man is to mere commercial interest. And how susceptible he is to a demagogue, or a religious zealot.

Ahab is a marvellous character. Starting with his delayed appearance on deck-- here, a remarkably effective device to build suspense. He is described as "scorched"-- how wonderful is that? Lightning-struck, blasted like a tree, damned. His long, iron-grey hair and his missing leg are mere icing on the cake after that. Lightning, electricity, and magnetism keep recurring in this strange novel. Lightning plays around the ship during a typhoon, and the immortal Ahab holds the grounding chains in his hand, as if daring God to strike him dead. (God demures.) The ship's compass becomes demagnetised, and Ahab restores it with a kind of self-conscious magic trick, as if he loves playing the devil for his men's enjoyment. It's Ahab who gets all the best lines, soliloquizing alone in his cabin like a character from Shakespeare.

And the whale, Moby-Dick himself? I submit that for Ahab, at least, he represents Death. Ahab is irresistibly drawn to it-- fascinated, horrified, obsessed:

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I grapple with thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

The old man Ahab will not go gently into that good night....