Critical Notes on Melville
When we read—whether we are reading the sets of symbols we call words, or reading a landscape, a situation, the look on another person’s face—we are taking in a great deal of information, sorting it, selecting it, and generally filtering it through our preexisting set of assumptions about the world. When we look up, we expect to see the sky, and so on. This course, Freshman Composition, is about reading and writing. Notice that I, like most people, put “reading” first. Why? Because in fact it does come first. You have learned to read the world outside yourself long before you begin to acquire the skill of making sense of squiggles on a page. And you can never hope to become a good writer without first having become a good reader. As Ishmael tells us in Moby Dick, “I have swum through great libraries.”
Those squiggles we call letters and words don’t mean anything in particular unless we all agree that they do. It’s kind of like money. A dollar isn’t worth much these days, but it is worth something, and what that something is, is arbitrated by consumers, banks, and the governments that produce the physical bills. So, too, with words. If I say to you, “dog,” if you speak English then most likely you will understand generally what I mean: a domesticated animal with four legs that some people keep as a pet or companion. But if all I say is “dog,” what you see in your mind and what I mean might well be two completely different things. There are, after all, many kinds of dogs. I am a pit bull guy, a lover of big dogs in general, but maybe “dog” to you first means a teacup dachshund. Our responsibility as writers is to create images with words that will allow our readers to see clearly a closer version of our intended meaning. That is after all how information reaches us first, even before we have acquired language. We receive information through the five senses; it is transmitted to the brain, and is, somehow, mysteriously converted into symbols, and from symbols into thought.
What I am getting at here is that when we use language, we need to be aware of how insufficient it is to the task of representing reality. And yet, it is basically the only instrument all of us collectively have to do that for one another. So we must choose our words carefully, and read those of others just as carefully. Language is truly a mystery. No one really knows why we humans, to the exclusion of all other animals, use symbolic language. Whales may sing, and understand one another, but they aren’t writing down their songs as words, and they sure aren’t sending out autographed CDs to record stores. The history of the written word is the history of history itself. What we call “civilization” came into full flower only with the invention of the written word.
Melville’s famous opening sentence, “Call me Ishmael,” is a case in point. That’s a very different sentence, isn’t it, from “My name is Ishmael”? And of course that name has all kinds of meanings and connotations that Melville may wish for us to understand. Only by learning more about that name can we begin to understand the character Melville is creating. The word “character” can mean either a fictional person in a story, or a letter in the alphabet (see The Oxford English Dictionary for more; the OED is found in Galileo, under “Databases”). That’s not a coincidence, and we will explore that more later this semester. Just keep in mind when reading, especially when reading literature, that there is a creator, an author, behind the construction. The author reaches the reader through characters. If you ask me who I am, I will not describe myself or show you my passport, I will say, “I am Ted.” But who is Ted? Ted is a character, made of characters. “What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet. That turns out to be a very complicated question.
Our man Ishmael is a guy down on his luck. He’s broke; he’s got what he calls the “hypos” and what we would call depression. The only cure he knows is to get away from civilization and to go to sea. And as we find him entering The Spouter Inn, that’s what he is about to do. That The Inn is described as looking like a whaling ship is no accident. In some ways we never leave The Spouter Inn, even if we manage to wade through all 135 chapters of the novel. The Inn foreshadows the adventures on The Pequod, the doomed whaling ship of Captain Ahab.
In fact the course of events, or plot, of Moby Dick is utterly simple: a crazed captain goes after the whale that took his leg, and gets almost everyone killed in the process. But the narrative of the story is complex, and has many layers. The one that interests us here is the one that many readers fail to see, but like the arrow “hidden” in the FedEx logo, once you’ve read it, it becomes plain. What does it mean to read? Among the definitions contained in the OED, are the pertinent following: “To consider, interpret, discern. To think or suppose (that something is the case). To make out, discover, or expound the meaning or significance of (a riddle, dream, omen, etc.). To foresee, foretell, predict (a person’s fortune, the future, etc.).” All of these come well before the definition of our conventional understanding: “To scan or study writing silently or (esp. in early use) by oneself or for one’s own benefit.”
I submit to you that Moby Dick is primarily a tale about reading and writing; that the titular character is white because he is to be understood as a page upon whom Ahab wishes to inscribe (with a giant pen, his harpoon) his name. But our whale is a page on the go, a violent page, and reading him, getting close enough to him to read the scars on his skin, is to court death itself. As many a student will testify, reading Moby Dick is a deadly experience, an encounter with a book about a whale that is a whale of a book. Indeed, the very title of the book suggests to us that Moby Dick is both a character and a book filled with characters. The actual full title is “Moby-Dick, or The Whale.”; I use the unusual format to point out that Melville puts a period at the end of his title, reminding us that the book is both about its character, and a charactering of him.
So, Ishmael’s encounter with the canvas at the Inn is a kind of reading lesson. If we learn it, we will be prepared not only to read the novel, but anything. The formula Melville offers us is threefold:
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old- fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. (Melville 11-12)
So our situation is much like that of Ishmael, who is confronted by a work of art he can neither, at first go, read nor understand. In Ishmael’s case, it is the smoke and dirt which have obscured the original image. In our case, the difficulties are more subtle: 19th century English, which is far different than the one we use today, and the complexity of Melville’s mind, his personal language, and the novel itself. But we suffer his same essential plight: we have come upon something illegible, something we cannot read alone. What to do? Melville provides the solution.
Firstly we must assume, like our hero, that what we are reading has a purpose. Another way of thinking about purpose is “argument,” meaning “a statement or fact advanced for the purpose of influencing the mind; a reason urged in support of a proposition” (OED).
Next we see that “it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose.” For Ishmael, this means careful and repeated examination of the canvas, with much thought. For us, it comes down to rereading. My dissertation director once told me that “the first ten times don’t count” when you read Moby Dick. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He was right.
“Careful inquiry of the neighbors” simply means asking people who live and work there, in or near the Inn, about the painting. The analogue for you would be talking with your fellow students, your peers, and with your S.I., about the texts I assign, and about the writing assignments I will ask you to do. Some, like Melville’s novel, are unconventional. But trust me, they all have a purpose, that being to make you into better readers and writers. That last bit in the paragraph about “throwing open the little window” is intended as a joke, perhaps illuminating how much different the language was in Melville’s time, that I would feel a need to explain a joke.
Notice that “diligent study” and “earnest contemplation” involve forming theories. Ishmael reveals to us that he is capable of that, and that his theories are based on his wide and deep reading background. A good reader will know a good reader when they read one:
Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. –It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale. –It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. –It’s a blasted heath. –It’s a Hyperborean winter scene. –It’s the breaking- up of the ice-bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great Leviathan himself? (Melville 12)
The lesson of this passage is that no matter how “bright” or even beautiful, your idea about something you are reading is, you must test it, and it if fails to pass muster, you must reject it. Like a scientific theory, it only takes one false result in your experimental reading to invalidate that reading. But don’t be afraid to make mistakes, as Ishmael does here, especially if they are as beautiful as “the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time.” But notice that Ishmael has now become able to discern by diligent study and consultation with the neighbors that the subject is becoming clearer.
Finally we come to the end of the lesson. There is one more thing to learn:
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads. (Melville 12)
One seeks out the “aged persons” for conversation about the painting precisely because they may well have seen the painting when it was new and unbesmirched by smoke, and therefore easier to see and thus read. The aged person is of course yours truly, your professor, whose presumed knowledge and command of the language and the text is yours for the taking.
I want to point out in closing that Melville very carefully moves us from an abstract idea of the painting, a categorical description, toward, at the end, a verbal concrete image of the painting. Now, like Ishmael, we can see it, if only in our mind’s eye (a phrase which is, itself, an image). This focus on the concrete image is a large part of what we will be doing this semester, and is the entire part of your first essay, the assignment for which I will be posting shortly.
One last thing, for the budding poets in the virtual room. That phrase “exasperated whale,” is another demonstration of the power of language to evoke the image through the senses. The difference is that, unlike most verbal images, this one is auditory. “Exasperated” is a word that makes a sound when you read it much the same as the sound of a whale exhaling though its blowhole. The musical qualities of language should never be ignored in any writing, least of all that which we call descriptive.
Questions for #1 Melville
Some of these questions have very specific answers; some are more open-ended. Do not be afraid of giving the “wrong” answer. Like Ishmael, I admire hard thinking, even if your ideas are “bright but deceptive.”
What are the differences between “Call me Ishmael” and “My name is Ishmael”?
What are the two definitions of “character” I offer in the above notes, and how do those meanings relate to one another?
What’s the difference between a plot and a narrative?
Express in your own words the three-part formula for reading that Melville offers us in this passage.
Explain to the best of your ability how “exasperated” does what it does in the passage.
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