Missing the Point of Moby Dick

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Before I started reading Moby Dick, I thought I knew what this book was about.  Captain Ahab swears vengeance on the sea monster that robbed him of his leg.  The crew of the Pequod searches for the whale, finds him, and it turns out that overweaning lust for vengeance is a poor trait in a sea captain.

Not only is this the story I’d been told about Moby Dick, it’s the story that’s been adapted from Moby Dick.  When the story’s retold into other genres, especially science fiction, the vengeance quest is the center—that’s how it works in Wrath of Khan and First Contact and Nova, for example, and Railsea is full of good-natured ribbing on mole-train captains and their vendettas against unfeeling giants of the deep.

I’m reading Moby Dick now and while Ahab’s an important part of the story, I’m struck by how small a part he is, and how little the book’s actually about revenge.  For every one chapter about Ahab there are six or seven about the Pequod being a normal whaler, and for each such slice-of-life chapter, there’s another four or five about whales, their beauty, biology, history, mythology, the lies told about them, the way they move, the way they die.  While Ahab’s psychodrama is cool, and Queequeg and Ishmael have an epic bromance, the book’s more about this vast world of whales and whalers and whaling.  Ishmael’s experience of whaling seems less about man struggling with nature and more about man’s most direct and overpowering encounter with nature.

(For all Melville saw, the things he didn’t see are more interesting—I think we’re supposed to see Stubb as a charming jokester, which makes his off-the-cuff racism pretty overwhelming.  It also never seems to cross his mind that all this hunting might actually endanger the whales as a species.  I don’t know much about historical thoughts on extinction though.  When did we first start to think that species might die out from human action?)

Anyway, I’d love to see a science fictional story with a whaling to revenge mix closer to the novel’s—where the captain’s quest for vengeance is even smaller and stranger set next to the immensity and majesty of his quarry, where the quarry’s closer to the center of the book.  Making the whale a MacGuffin seems to miss the point.

7 Responses to “Missing the Point of Moby Dick”

  1. Katrina Lantz

    I was surprised when I started reading this, too. I haven’t finished it, but I got a good way in before other projects demanded attention (nobody is paying me to read it, LOL). The prose in the beginning about man’s draw to the sea is just… ah, chicken soup for a reader’s soul. I really enjoyed it. I think that excellent writing is what makes it a classic (not the revenge story), and it’s also the type of writing that made me want to write in the first place. I’m reading Gone with the Wind for book club (another behemoth), and the prose about the setting is just as delicious as Melville’s. Just saying, you can see why these are classics. Some other classics? Meh, not so much.

    I’ll look forward to your science fictional retelling of Moby Dick!

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  2. Zack Westenhoefer

    I always felt that there were two books intertwined in Moby Dick. The first book was about the Pequod’s voyage, Captain Ahab’s revenge, and all the other fun stuff going on. Melville realized that the average reader would have no appreciation of that book without the second book, though, which is why he wrote that second book: an encyclopedia on whaling. The second book makes the first book accessible to a general audience. He broke up the encyclopedia into digestible chapters, then combined the two books, alternating their chapters between the two books to maintain the reader’s attention.

    To illustrate, think about American football. To the first-time viewer, there are a bunch of uniformed men on a field tackling each other to grab at the oblong ball of pigskin. It takes a much deeper (and perhaps somewhat boring) understanding to really appreciate the game: the rules, the various types of players on the field and their roles, the coaches, the fans, the teams, the officials, and especially the stakes. There’s a whole world to football, and it could take years of studying it to be able to appreciate its many fine points. And the increased appreciation makes the game that much more exciting to watch.

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  3. max

    Zack, that’s an interesting perspective. I especially enjoy the football analogy, as that’s about my level of understanding of the game (uniformed men, field, pigskin). I think the whaling chapters are more than background material, though. The more the reader understands whaling as Melville understands it, the stronger the story about Ishmael, Queequeg, and the crew becomes, and the weirder and more out of place Ahab seems. That’s why I’m saying that versions of the story that a focus on bloody vengeance and forget the immense amount of worldbuilding feel like they miss the point.

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  4. Alana Joli Abbott

    Have you been to Mystic Seaport? Threestripe took me there when I was taking a course on Melville for which, of course, we read Moby Dick. Actually hanging out on a whaling ship for an afternoon was *great* material for applying it to my reading. I only have vague recollections of my reading experience, honestly, but I remember the Queequeg/Ishmael relationship being far more the center of the book than Ahab. Making it Ahab’s story is like saying the whole book is about the villain, rather than the rather interesting protagonist, who may or may not be a reliable narrator. (Now I want to go dig up whatever essays I wrote in that class and see why that bit of an idea about the book stuck in my head…)

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  5. Zack Westenhoefer

    I did something similar…just as I was finishing Moby Dick, I made a trip to New Bedford and Nantucket. In New Bedford I visited the Seaman’s Bethel and the whaling museum across the street, and I stayed overnight in a bed and breakfast that used to be the home of Herman Melvillle’s sister. I slept in the Herman Melville room, named so because it was most likely the same room he stayed in when he was visiting his sister. This was a weekend trip made in some cold days in November, so it was similar to the cold start of Moby Dick…and it was inexpensive, too. I saw a bar/restaurant in Nantucket called Queequeg’s, but didn’t go inside.

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  6. Magnus Roe

    The possibility of whales going extinct IS pondered on an occasion, and some general ambivalence about slaughtering whales is also clear in several sections.

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  7. Thomas H.

    Moby Dick’s white whale is probably not the best example of a MacGuffin, because so much time is spent with the details of whales and whaling, yet I don’t think there’s much doubt that Moby Dick is really a story about how an obsessive narcissist can bring himself and those around him to ruin (no reference to contemporary American politics intended, of course). You can learn a lot about whaling but without the psychological profile of Ahab, it’d just be a catalog of facts.

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