Quote 21
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, – Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. (94.5)
In this passage, the crude jokes about sperm give way to an actual moment of transcendence, in which Ishmael feels himself united with all the men around him in an erotic brotherhood. Dang.
Quote 22
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, – longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. (95.1)
Yes, this is the whale’s penis. Ishmael’s talking about the giant penis of the sperm whale. And about the phallus-worship in ancient cultures. And yes, it’s supposed to be that funny.
Quote 23
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. (24.22)
Even before he’s done telling the story of the Pequod, Ishmael’s already imagining the prestige that his manuscript will garner when it’s finished. Or perhaps this is a moment where Melville’s own voice shines through, and he’s thinking about his own role as the author of Moby-Dick.
Quote 24
What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. (32.25)
It’s no accident that Ishmael divides whales into categories taken from libraries. Moby-Dick is a book titled with the name of a whale, and Moby Dick is a whale that can only be understood if he’s treated like a book.
Quote 25
For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. (45.7)
Ishmael (and Melville) is highly concerned with making the underlying structure of Moby-Dick seem reasonable and even probable. He’s obsessed with creating a veneer of realism. In this passage, he claims it’s because he doesn’t want the novel interpreted symbolically.
We’re sorry to disappoint him, but some of the symbols are just too obvious. Still, it’s important to remember that part of what Moby-Dick tries to do is play down its own literariness. Of course, the other thing it tries to do is play up its literariness. But at least that creates an interesting contradiction.
Quote 26
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face, in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read if it you can. (79.6)
This is supposed to sound as though Ishmael is daring you to interpret the whale as a symbol, daring you to try as hard as you possibly can to "read" the whale’s meaning. It’s also Melville daring you to make sense of this crazy novel. We know you’re up to the challenge!
Quote 27
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing – at least, what untattooed parts might remain – I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale. (102.13)
Ishmael’s close association between composing a work of literature and the body reminds us that Moby-Dick continually interprets the body as a blank page on which events write themselves. Think of Queequeg’s tattoos, or Ahab’s whalebone leg, or Starbuck’s condensed leanness. Our bodies tell our stories, so why not tell our stories on our bodies? That’s how Ishmael thinks, anyway.
Quote 28
[D]oubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
"GRAND CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES. "WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces – though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. (1.11-12)
So here’s what Ishmael claims: I went on my voyage on the Pequod because it was fate. And because I was interested in whales. But mostly because it was fate. And because I chose to find out more about whaling. Hmm, contradict yourself much there, Ish?
Quote 29
[T]he graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play – this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side. (60.9)
We’re with Ishmael for the beginning of this metaphor: even though whalemen are literally sitting among lines that could strangle them, everyone is symbolically in the middle of the world’s snares. But the logic falls apart when we realize that it’s obviously a lot more dangerous to be in a whaleboat than sitting by the fire at home, and that some whale-lines really should inspire more terror than others. After all, if we accept that things are fated, that still makes some fates way worse than others.
Quote 30
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have sanctioned so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering ...I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you nap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it. (72.4)
In this passage, we begin to understand that the complex webs of fate aren’t just random lines, the interconnections between different people. You can control your own fate to the extent that you can move your end of the line, but because you’re interdependent on others, they can affect you in the same way, and that can feel like predestination... or at least something out of your control.