Moby Dick; or, The Yawner Whale

I have begun Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Again. Probably the 50th time. So maybe, re-begun is more apt. Whatever the right word, I begin with the intention to not only finish it, but to come away enriched. I just read The Great Gatsby, admittedly in conjunction with the new Baz Lurhrman movie, and I did get more out of it this second time around. Full disclosure: I researched Gatsby a lot as I read it, and the meaning I got is directly from all the analysis I read in the research. (Without that research, it might be just another book.) I will do the same with Moby Dick, and while my learnings may be imitation, I will report it honestly.

"Call me Ishmael." One of the most notable first lines in all literature, perhaps up there with "In the beginning,..." Melville apparently was very connected to Nathaniel Hawthorne as he began Moby Dick, and was enamored of Hawthorne's predilection to deep, religious meaning. Setting out to write something as deep, as theological as Hawthorne's work, could Melville have purposely opened the book as such, hoping for a boffo first line? Well, he was a good and popular writer—why not?

Why, also, Ishamael? Ishmael was the first son of Abraham, born of his union with a slave. When Abraham's preferred, legitimate son was born later, there was tension in the blended family. Ishamael and his mother were banished. The boy was promised by God that he'd begin an entire line of humanity. Old Testament writers use Ishmael thus to explain Arabs, the "problem kids" (to them) in the region. Islam, on the other hand, sees Ishmael as the preferred son of Abraham to begin with. (Witness the deep roots of discord in the Levant.) Christians use Ishmael as a marker between "old Covenant" (the Ten Commandments) and "new Covenant" (redemption through Christ). Ishmael could be have been seen by Melville as a character who obscures any clarity of God and his several deals with humanity across biblical history.

Then there's the instruction, "Call me Ishmael", rather than "my name is" or "I am called.." My own paranoia (minor, but there) sees a guy saying that as a way of keeping another identity a secret. ("Who am I? Never mind that—call me Ishmael...") Not so weird, thank you, when you consider the secrecy in Ishmael's timing his story: "Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—...I thought I would sail about a little..." "Never mind"? What in God's name are you hiding? (And what, maybe, do I mean by that?) Whatever the truth to these mysteries, real or perceived, they are the very stuff of greatness, a continuing lineage (the "Pynchon Line," perhaps?) of brilliant but impossible literature.

Ishmael explains why he heads to sea. He gets antsy in ordinary life and has a regular need to get to the bottom of it all. Water is elemental to life itself, and heading to sea reacquaints Ishmael with that. He enjoys the freedom he finds on the high seas, despite the necessary servitude to command. But after all, life in general is one merciless cuff after another from superiors, right? Ishmael also prefers being paid for the healthful work of a common sailor, rather than paying for leisurely passage. Spending money is a distasteful aspect he will leave on shore, an insight into Melville's Yankee sensibility where income sanctifies even the basest toil. But wait—could this be something of an American theology, if you will, that Melville lays out so he can examine it later? Or can we exploit this later as a fatal exposition of his 1850s religiosity?

Whatever happens with my own criticism of the work, Melville gives us the working basis of the book at the end of this first chapter: A whale is what fascinates him and prompts this particular voyage. Maybe whales are elemental to the sea, just as the sea is elemental to life. A whale is the thing that the Fates push him to—unless, maybe, the whale is the Fates.

We'll see.