Adrian Salgado
Dr. Luszczynska
ENG 5048
5 December 2018
Queering Moby-Dick: Representations of Same-Sex Relationships, Masculinity and Homoerotic Undertones in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851)
As a novel, Moby-Dick constitutes a journey of an individual man, Ishmael, partaking on a whaling journey on board the ship, the Pequod, where he encounters other individual men on land and on board a whaling vessel to create seamlessly, yet complex relationships enveloped with constitutions of sexuality and gender. As such, the theme of homosexuality, intertwined with gender identity and masculinity, is a prominent representation in Melville’s Moby-Dick through the character relationships of Ishmael, Queequeg, Captain Ahab and Moby-Dick, the whale. The same-sex relationship of Ishmael and Queequeg, while encompassing that of a homosocial endeavor, creates homoerotic and homosexual tendencies as well as sexual desire throughout the novel in combination with the depiction of Captain Ahab’s vengeful tendency to kill Moby-Dick, regaining his identity and manhood.
Moby-Dick and Queerness: Reevaluations, Interpretations and Constant Meanings
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was published in 1851 when the term “homosexuality” was not yet utilized in discourse. As such, the concept of homosexuality was not made known until 1869 when Swiss doctor, Karoly Maria Benkert, coined it (Sullivan 2). However, the novel presents questions of queerness through the characters, Ishmael, Queequeg and Ahab since the word “queer” could be used “…to signify something strange…to refer to negative characteristics (such as madness or worthlessness) that one associates with others and not within the self…to denote one’s ‘strangeness,’ positively” (Sullivan V). In relating queerness to Moby-Dick, the interpretation that the characters of Ishmael, Queequeg (and Ishmael and Queequeg as a dynamic relationship and force) and Ahab is prominent to the study of what it means to be queer, where it is “…by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positively but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative…” (Sullivan 43). The text of Moby-Dick, then presents a vessel for interpretations that are not based on just one definite factor, but many different aspects coming together to create various meanings “…that [have] the potential to challenge normative knowledges and identities” (Sullivan 44). As characters, Ishmael, Queequeg and Ahab present different, yet similar identities where otherness is associated with their behaviors, interactions and attitudes. In turn, as it is “…in the face of a resolved and insistent unknowability, it remains clear that Queer means” (Sullivan 47) and how “Moby-Dick is a postmodern novel in the same way that queerness is a postmodern concept: They both do not try to achieve holistic meaning but celebrate the psychological fragmentation and organic fluidity of (postmodern) subjectivity. Constant re-evaluation is what keeps both Moby-Dick and queerness alive and kicking” (Hartner 179). If queerness remained defined and identified with finitude, then queerness would not then be what it is: to constantly be meaning, interpreted and brought into focal knowledge and reevaluations.
In addition, homosexuality in the nineteenth century remained undefined and difficult to pinpoint the exact definition of what it meant for homoerotic acts and such. For example, “…the only terms one could use to describe close relationships between men were “friendship” and “sodomy”…” (Rantatalo 33). As such, in the nineteenth century, there was not a clear definition of what it meant to be homosexual and it is with this that “…the sexual system of the nineteenth century did not draw a neat line between men who were sexually attracted to men and men who were sexually attracted to women” (Rantatalo 32). In other words, the nineteenth century and homosexuality remained having vague understandings between that of the relationships that formulated between men and the terminology for having such feelings for men (such as Ishmael’s feelings towards Queequeg), which was limited and never allowed for a full understanding of its nature. However, by viewing the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg; Ahab and Moby-Dick; and other instances of homoeroticism, it is clear that these undertones become present in it of itself throughout Moby-Dick.
The Queer Atlantic: The Ocean and the Queer Dynamic of Ishmael-Queequeg
Ishmael's relation dynamic onto Queequeg creates a complex interloping of race and queerness: a bounty of otherness and strangeness that comes with initial interactions with Ishmael’s physical body. In Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley’s “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage,” Tinsley proposes that the Atlantic is a place of fluidity where there appears to be an intermeshing of blackness and queerness and how “…water, ocean water is the first thing in the unstable confluence of race, nationality, sexuality, and gender…The waterness is metaphor, and history too. The brown-skinned, fluid-bodied experiences now called blackness and queerness surfaced in intercontinental, maritime contacts hundreds of years ago” (Tinsley 191). The water provides a space for the meshing of race, nationality, sexuality and gender where the individuals in whaling and other sailing vessels proved to have fluid-bodied experiences with those they interact with and those they share time with on land and on board while at sea. This concept that the water and ocean are metaphors for fluidity, where sailors would remove themselves from their identity and engage in a dynamic of otherness is seen with Ishmael and Queequeg on land before ever entering the fluid space of the ocean. The first initial interaction and observation of Ishmael’s gaze at Queequeg show the predisposed interest of that of the other:
…I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian Ridge in Virginia. (Melville 29)
In this passage, there is a combination of strangeness, fascination and astonishment when it comes to the impression made by Queequeg to Ishmael. With this, “Queequeg, who remains Ishmael’s main object of gazing, serves as a sort of bridge between the civilized and the natural world…The ‘unity of otherness (racial, cultural, religious, sexual) in the character of the savage is part of Ishmael’s fascination for Queequeg” (Hartner 185). This reiterates Tinsley’s idea of a fluid space where these factors of identity correlate and create a queer space. In addition, this space is a site of “crosscurrents” (as stated by Kale Fajardo, an anthropologist), where “Oceans and seas are important sites for differently situated people. Indigenous Peoples, fisherpeople, seafarers, sailors, tourists, workers, and athletes” (Tinsley 192). These various identities then give a substance of agency as it proves to be a site for togetherness. The identity of Queequeg is presented as “strange” and “Ever since Ishmael finds the foreign items in Queequeg’s room and meets Queequeg for the first time, it is evident that he and Queequeg are very different. A mixture of various traits makes it impossible to trace Queequeg’s origin to a single non-white culture. Thus, the only thing that Ishmael can determine is that he is someone foreign” (Rantatalo 20). However, while there is no exact identity that can be associated with Queequeg, Ishmael eventually gains a liking and personal relationship with Queequeg later on as if this “strangeness” brings them closer together.
As stated by Tinsley, “The queer black Atlantic…navigates these crosscurrents as it brings together enslaved and African, brutality and desire, genocide and resistance. Here, fluidity is not an easy metaphor for queer and racially hybrid identities but for concrete, painful, and liberatory experience” (Tinsley 193). This “liberatory experience” is what brings about Ishmael’s view of Queequeg. Queequeg is described and othered by Ishmael, but he does not try to enact a sense of manhood of a nineteenth century individual man because he lives by his own standards and self-identity (Hartner 185). This identity shows that Queequeg tries to disassociate from that of the norms of his time and reconstitutes another state of individuality. However, this brings about otherness as it is reiterated by Ishmael’s standoffish nature towards Queequeg and his strangeness.
Moreover, Ishmael creates an initial resistance of sleeping in the same bed with Queequeg since he expresses how “No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping…” (Melville 29). The emphasis on that of the male is present in Ishmael’s words as he speaks of sleeping next to a man and not a woman. However, he then makes a generalization of how everyone prefers to be private when they are sleeping. This private space as Ishmael puts it is disrupted by Queequeg entering into that private space that Ishmael describes. In this attitude, a “homosexual panic” is present whereas Hartner relates to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, denotes “…the situation in which a man while becoming aware of attraction to another man resorts to paranoia” (Hartner 184). This tension is created by Ishmael’s initial reaction and observation of Queequeg. Melville’s choice of narration in the placement of passages is crucial to this relationship, since Ishmael describes Queequeg in such an expression, but then goes against his own desires by negating any form of desire to sleep with Queequeg in the same bed.
Ishmael attains this homosexual panic where there is this fear of being consumed by the other: “Because Ishmael cannot express his fears of homosexuality directly (simply because he lacks the terminology for this 20th-century concept), he unconsciously translates them into fears of cannibalism” (Hartner 184). Melville’s aim in correlating cannibalism as a closeness for this related “panic” further signifies how “…oceans and seas are sites of beauty and pleasure–solitude, desire, and resistance” (Tinsley 192). The dynamic relationship of Ishmael and Queequeg represent these ideals as the fascination of Queequeg is obstructed by Ishmael’s resistance to appreciating the beauty of Queequeg’s body and as stated by Caleb Crain in “Lovers of Human Flesh: Homosexuality and Cannibalism in Melville’s Novels,” “When a man becomes aware, however liminally, of attraction to another man, he resorts to paranoia and projection…It is a desperate defense. The attraction becomes revulsion, horror, and even violence” (Crain par. 31). This “desperate defense” is seen in Ishmael’s expressions of his resistance to having to sleep with another man in the same bed as he expresses: “The more I pondered over this harpooner, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooner, his linen or woolen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over” (Melville 30). Ishmael tries to resist any type of mindful awareness towards Queequeg, but he cannot. It is as if Queequeg contains this power over Ishmael that Ishmael cannot get rid of. His first locked gaze at Queequeg constitutes this locking of one onto to the other. The separation that grants togetherness until the very end of the novel when Queequeg dies. The separation and trying for resistance is unavoidable and challenging. As such, Ishmael tries to make associations with Queequeg’s “linen” as being the “tidiest.” This further goes with his sense of resistance by finding other aspects to individualize with that of Queequeg. It removes the sense that there is the physical body that Ishmael is turned to. By appropriating that of garments, removed from the body and then brought onto the body, Ishmael tries to keep the resistance going and avoiding the body of which he is drawn to. It becomes so removed by Ishmael that his own body expresses a physical reaction to that thought of sleeping in the same bed with another man. It is almost as if Ishmael’s mind wants to totally negate any interaction with Queequeg and instead turns to physical inanimate objects even though those objects themselves are still part of Queequeg’s personal property.
Same-Sex Relationship of Ishmael and Queequeg: Queer as Homosexual?
The initiating relationship on land between Ishmael and Queequeg that is developed in the confines of a public (an inn), yet private space (a bedroom), have queer representations. While queer could be that of homosexuality, the strangeness that is shown by Queequeg to Ishmael continues to reiterate that of the other and its representations. As a result, the difference between that of just having a homosocial relationship or that of a relationship with homoerotic undertones is present in the complex relationship between these two characters. The strangeness of Queequeg is acknowledged by Ishmael, yet that “strangeness” is what makes the interpretations of these characters queer in it of itself. In other words, the mere fact that these two men are involved in a relationship who become shipmates is bound to be a queer form of a relationship. For example, this concept is depicted further by Tinsley where,
…regardless of whether intimate sexual contact took place between enslaved Africans in the Atlantic or after landing, relationships between shipmates read as queer relationships. Queer not in the sense of “gay” or same-sex loving identity waiting to be excavated…Queer in the sense of making disruption to the violence of normative order and powerfully so: connecting in ways that commodified flesh was never supposed to, loving your own kind when your kind was supposed to cease to exist, forging interpersonal connections… (Tinsley 199)
While the relationship of Ishmael and Queequeg does not consist of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic, their relationship is still formed upon their boarding of the Pequod on the start of their whaling voyage. As such, these identities, as stated by Tinsley, are read as a queer relationship. The question between Ishmael and Queequeg having a physical, homosexual relationship could remain in speculation, but the idea that Ishmael starts to realize who Queequeg is as a person is important in clarifying Tinsley’s claim of the sense of “queer.”
For example, before Ishmael starts to gain a liking to Queequeg, his immediate uncomfortableness is displayed and even Ishmael regards the strangeness as queer itself by expressing how “All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell into which I had so long been under” (Melville 35). The “queer proceedings” that Ishmael mentions are those of Queequeg’s activities that Ishmael witnesses, where Queequeg “…seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner” (Melville 35). The strangeness in Queequeg’s activities presents a discomfort by Ishmael. It becomes a constant internal battle with Ishmael as Queequeg’s mere strangeness becomes an object of desire, attraction and curiousness. Again, the order of passages being presented is important as Melville constitutes strangeness into familiarity. Ishmael goes from expressing his uncomfortableness in one passage to then expressing normalcy in a proceeding passage. In other words, this “normative order” that Tinsley constantly expresses parallels with that of Ishmael and Queequeg in how Ishmael describes the strangeness, yet attractiveness towards Queequeg as he comes to terms with his feelings for Queequeg: “He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself–the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him…” (Melville 36). It is with this that even though there does not need to be any sexual contact between the two, there is this resistance that shows Ishmael finally seeing that there is no purpose in judging another man because of his otherness. In turn, the otherness that Queequeg displays produces a connection and almost attractiveness with that of Ishmael.
In regards to the concept of same-sex marriage, Melville created a world of homosexual symbolism where, as stated by Steven B. Hermann in “Melville’s Portrait of Same-Sex Marriage in Moby-Dick, “Melville was well aware that, to orthodox religion, to write a myth about same-sex “marriage” would be condemned as evil from the standpoint of three monotheisms. He used his gift as a writer to express a psychological and religious truth about same-sex marriage to pre-bellum America, through the hidden language of allegory and symbol” (Hermann 71). It is with this that Melville was able to allow interpretations of queerness in that of having a same-sex marriage represented by Ishmael and Queequeg through the use of “hidden language” that is reexamined, reinterpreted and continues to present differentiated meanings as that of what it means to be queer and how queerness, as stated earlier, continues to be thought of and constantly meaning.
Moreover, it is possible that Melville’s interactions with other men proved to have instances of same-sex affection, love, etc. and garnered the queerness of the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. For example, Hermann argues that Melville suffered two important losses in his life prior to the writing of Moby-Dick and the relationship between his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne proved to be significant as well. The first death consisted of Melville losing his father at the age of thirteen and the second death being the death of his brother and these experiences “…reopened the painful father-gash in his psyche and evoked his feelings of a deep homoaffectionate longing for the two most important males in his life…Melville’s medicine for this type of cumulative trauma was to be found in the seeding-Ground of the homoerotic imagination and in his relationships with men” (Hermann 76). The emotion of having a “homoaffectionate longing” could be translated to Ishmael’s individual character and his past history. In other words, finding Queequeg could have been that gateway and his furthering inspiration to go on a whaling journey that puts behind his past and the land he walks on. Melville’s personal experiences and inspirations could have potentially framed a basis for the same-sex relationships presented in Moby-Dick and how those relationships showed homoeroticism in their classification and the mere expressiveness of male-male affection and even “marriage” as seen between Ishmael and Queequeg.
In addition, the symbolic nature of this same-sex marriage between Ishmael and Queequeg produces a prominent factor in that of spirituality and religion, especially as the connection between Ishmael’s Christian beliefs are formed into the predisposed notion of a homonormative representation of marriage between man and woman. For example, in Chapter 10: “A Bosom Friend,” Ishmael expresses how “[He] was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood?…But what is worship?–to do the will of God…to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me…” (Melville 57). This constant going back and forth in Ishmael’s mind expresses this longing, yet removal of Queequeg’s presence. He understands that Queequeg is his “fellow man” and how Ishmael wants Queequeg to unite him with his placement of worship. Ishmael makes the act of marriage a product that is carried out in his own mind as Hermann makes the claim that “…in his literary imagination, he has in effect “married” his tayo, Queequeg, in a sacrament with Polynesian, Native American, African and Islamic elements” (Hermann 73). The image of marriage in Ishmael’s mind is acted out and the very act of bonding and closeness with Queequeg as he “…kissed his nose, and that done, [they] undressed and went to bed, at peace with [their] own consciences and all the world” (Melville 57) is shown through a vision of “multispiritual/multicultural embrace [where] no national government, church, nor any judicial body have the power to infringe upon their human rights” (Hermann 73). The togetherness of bodies in such a close form express that of affection and a loving nature, alluding to sexual intimacy. The symbolic nature of these acts manages to reiterate what Melville as an author was trying to do: bring about familiarity with same-sex relationships and how they can prove to be spiritual, affectionate, etc. In turn, the act of “queering” Moby-Dick becomes an integral part of Melville’s work, which it “…suggests…that redemption comes through the healing function of the homoerotic imagination and the interpersonal spirit of male love and friendship between the author and fellow men” (Hermann 76). As such, spirituality and transcendence is found in other instances in the novel where the interaction between men serve as proposing homoerotic undertones with that of the mere act of sailing on board a vessel.
“A Squeeze of the Hand:” Transcendence, Homoeroticism and Male Connectivity
In Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand,” notions of same-sex intimacy paired with ideas of homoeroticism are present when Ishmael describes how the process of squeezing the lumps present in sperm are transformed back to fluid. It is with this experience on board a sailing vessel that “The eroticized friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg is replaced by the affectionate male togetherness of the workers on board the whaling ship” (Hartner 186). There is a “replacement” since after going on board the Pequod, Ishmael and Queequeg’s intimate relationship is put on hold as they start their whaling voyage. Also, Ishmael’s gaze for Queequeg is somewhat altered as “Ishmael's descriptions move away from the phallic nature of Queequeg’s cultural regalia to the phallicism that Ishmael sees in the work on board the Pequod and in the nature of the whale” (Hartner 186). Ishmael expresses the duty of squeezing the sperm to be of the utmost importance as he says how “It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid” (Melville 322). The descriptiveness of the sperm itself translates to the transcendent experience when the performance of such squeezing is done by Ishmael and the rest of the crew on board the Pequod, where it was described as “A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetner! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier!” (Melville 322). Ishmael goes on to describe his own personal experience detached from that of his experience with the other men while performing the action, where “After having [his] hands in it for only a few minutes, [his] fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize” (Melville 322). This description of Ishmael’s own personal connection with the sperm is a foreshadow for the experience that he is going to participate in with the other crew members.
The passage that follows is the main central focus of the homoeroticistic nature that is found on board the Pequod and the interactions that are prominent with Ishmael and the other members of the whaling ship:
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…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. (Melville 323)
The mere act of squeezing the sperm brings about a transcendental experience for Ishmael. It was almost as if “that sperm” had this overbearing power on Ishmael that it was impossible to put it into words accurately. The passage itself presents an erotic form of brotherhood, in a sense, and allows Ishmael to bond and associate on a deeper level with these men on board. The act of meshing Ishmael’s hands with the “gentle globules” and the other laborers’ hands brings about unity and relates to his relationship with Queequeg at the beginning of the novel. Their intense connection then forms what Ishmael is feeling in this scene with his fellow laborers. The sense of touch is prominent here and associates “gentle” with the laborer’s hands. Even if this is a laborious activity, a man’s presence to Ishmael is somewhat calming and creates a sentimental notion that is probably scattered throughout a sailor’s life, but it is during moments like these that it tends to become more intense and amplified. In Ishmael’s description saying, “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” (Melville 323), the words “affectionate,” “friendly” and “loving” bring about a sort of complex integration with varying degrees of meaning. It is interesting to note that it is possible that the order of the words is important, where being affectionate constitutes friendliness and then that friendship brings about a loving nature that Ishmael then feels towards all these men around him. This also mirrors the initial interactions between Ishmael and Queequeg at the beginning of the novel. Ishmael first notices Queequeg’s strangeness then eventually a touch factor is present, which then brings them closer and are formed into a “marriage.”
While these notions of sentimentality and homosociability are present, the homoerotic undertones in this passage become visible as Ishmael is relating an almost sexual experience with the other crew members surrounding him. Since Ishmael and the rest of the individuals on board the Pequod are, in fact, confined to the social environment of the ship, they only have themselves to rely on, communicate with, interact with, etc. The homoeroticism present in this passage shows how Ishmael’s closeness with the other men is portrayed as something that is not ordinary, yet proves to be a way of exerting oneself from the boundaries of the terrain while they are removed from the land.
In addition, the sexual imagery that is present in this passage, in turn, relates to the way that these homoerotic undertones come to be. It is the bounding affection and touch of the man that brings Ishmael so close to a transcendental and spiritual “awakening.” An awakening that allows him to see that a man is the companion that he is bound to on a whaling vessel who are separate from the women who are living on land. It allows Ishmael to experience something new and not always have the constraints of a society brought onto him. In “The Serious Functions of Melville’s Phallic Jokes,” Robert Shulman states that Ishmael uses “…sexual…imagery to satirize and reject the social norms of the respectable community and to wryly affirm another radically unorthodox alternative–here, a quite conventional and social despised kind of “sociality” (Shulman 184). It is with this resistance that Ishmael becomes further removed from the restrictions of society and allows himself to garner a newly found experience from the moment he met Queequeg to the moment he embarked on the whaling journey. The “brotherly love” that is present in this passage is not a type that is approved of in Anglo-American communities and it is that even though “The conventional ideas of sociality, love, and comradeship are there,…they are deliberately associated with homosexuality or–what is equally offensive to those who accept conventional social standards–with bisexuality” (Shulman 184). These “conventional ideas” become present, while Melville brings about the associations with the homosexuality present in the passage. Ishmael feels himself having such a different experience and “…the process of squeezing the lumps of sperm into fluid, [he] feels himself carried away” (Shulman 184). By having such a feeling as being carried away, the uplifted feeling and emotion creates a sense of going against, as stated before, the confines of a terraneous environment onto the oceanic environment that presents a way for sailors to garner new intimate experiences between men.
It is important to note the passage after this main passage where Ishmael states that even though he could continue squeezing the sperm for a long time, “…in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle…” (Melville 323) shows that there is always the potential to come back to the heteronormativity presence. It is in this statement that Ishmael acknowledges outside ventures of a sailor’s life other than having whale labor as the center of their lives. The inclusion of a wife shows that these men may be involved with a woman, but then that separation would grant a closer bond with the men they associate with on board a ship hunting whales. While “…Melville is effectively rejecting normative masculinity and the taboo of homosexual desire in favour of intense, emotional and physical intimacy between men,” (Kennedy 11) Melville still follows that “transcendental experience” with the notion of a “normative masculinity,” since the “felicity” of man must be bounded “…in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country…” (Melville 323). These factors, including that of the wife, the bed, the country, are all inclusive of the masculine normativity that Melville tries to reject, yet follows that passage of going against it with a passage that relates Ishmael’s thinking back to the way a man “should” be in the heteronormative scape.
Ahab’s Representation of Manhood and Masculinity
The relationship between Captain Ahab and Moby-Dick, the whale, shows Ahab’s mere form of desire toward something that depleted him of his identity, his manhood. Captain Ahab’s goal is to engage on a quest for the white whale and the following passage shows Ahab’s personality as a man who will do anything to get what he wants. He will risk his life and his morals in order to appropriate vengeance:
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event–in the living act, the undoubted deed–there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. (Melville 140)
The removal of Ahab’s leg by the white whale is that of a displacement of his manhood. His sense of dignity and his humanity. It brings out his want for revenge on Moby-Dick. While the whale caused a removal of a body part of Ahab, he and the whalers are those individuals who take part of the whales (whether that is for oil, meat, etc.) for possession and use. In this sense, the whale is diminished entirely, yet Ahab may be as equally destructed because his manhood and respectability is the most prominent part of a man’s character, of Ahab’s character. It is removed from him as such is the whale’s life also when the whale-fishers deplete the whale of its valuableness. Losing a leg not only removes a part of Ahab in a physical sense, but in a mental sense, it places a grand psychological toll on his mind and makes him act out. Even though the act of taking revenge on a whale may seem out of the ordinary, the grief inflicted on Ahab is different because the leg represents something that was taken from him. Ahab has so much anger inside of him that he will do anything to restrain his manhood. He thinks that no one and no thing can overcome him as he would even “…strike the sun if it insulted [him]” (Melville 140). Again, the sun being a symbol of strength. Something that is larger than him and imposes potential downfall on Ahab as an individual, human being and a man.
In terms of the appropriate behavior towards the act of revenge, Starbuck seems to look at the overall sense of what a whale is and how it cannot really do anything that would cause so much hatred from another living thing. While Starbuck does not see the whale as something that should be taken much emotion towards, he expresses that the whale is “…a dumb brute” (Melville 139). The whale is not as intelligent as a human or is very violent and animalistic in terms of its characteristics, so Starbuck is claiming that the attention of revenge itself is not necessary. Starbuck characterizes Ahab as using the words: “Madness!” and “…blasphemous” (Melville 139). It is important to note the difference between using “madness” and “blasphemous” for describing Ahab versus “dumb” and “brute” to describe the whale, Moby-Dick. It is almost as if “madness” and “blasphemous” gives a human connotation. In order to be “mad,” one needs that of human intelligence and using the human mind (which then leads to vengeance) to then get to that certain state of mind. A whale is considered “dumb” or “brute” because it is an animal and Ahab believes he is above that whale in terms of power. However, that does not mean that a whale is not intelligent in its own form.
In turn, Ahab is almost intimidated by the white whale as he expresses, “He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it” (Melville 140). By seeing the whale as having strength beyond that of Ahab, he is wanting to push through that “pasteboard mask” (Melville 140) and show the whale that even though it is enormous in size and proves to be stronger, Ahab’s human power and intelligence will overcome that as he decides to hunt for this whale and get his revenge that he is in search of. It is interesting to note that Ahab almost wants to strike through the exterior of this creature to understand what it is (a creature) that removed his leg from his body. Ahab wants to understand the nature of the whale and wants to see how and why it performed such an act on Ahab. It is almost like if Ahab has a sort of obsession with uncovering the whale’s motives of sorts, if any.
As a result, the whale then becomes a drive for Ahab and brings on this hyper-masculinity performance so he can bring back a sense of manhood into this identity. As such, the acts that Ahab performs before his final encounter with Moby-Dick is prominent in his gender identity, which “…is neither natural or innate, but rather, is a social construct which serves particular purposes and institutions” (Sullivan 82) and how “Gender…is the performative effect of reiterative acts, that is, acts that can be, and are, repeated…” (Sullivan 82). This type of “performance” is found in Ahab’s personality in which he wants to break apart “That inscrutable thing [which] is chiefly what [he] hate[s]; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, [he] will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to [him] of blasphemy, man; [he’d] strike the sun if it insulted [him]” (Melville 140). Ahab’s obsession to stand by his masculinity is prominent and according to Mark M. Hall in “The Journey is the Destination: Pursuing Masculinity,” there comes a point that hyper-masculinity becomes a flaw in Ahab’s personality and pursuit of Moby-Dick, “Whereas Ahab’s words suggest that he believes his living acts constitute his masculinity, his monomania with Moby-Dick suggest instead that he believes he must kill the whale to regain his manhood. Ahab’s hyper-masculinity, like his pursuit of Moby-Dick, is a relentless performance-as-evidence of his desired supreme authority and masculine power” (Hall 23-24). The words of showing his fierceness of striking through the mask of the whale presents this performed masculinity that Ahab believes will lead him to his act of final revenge upon the whale. The whale, as this desirous object, removed Ahab of his masculinity and removed part of his physical body. Ahab’s masculine performance is reiterating that he is the one who no one or no thing will undermine, even if, as stated by Starbuck, it is a dumb and unintelligible creature.
Hence, with the combination of same-sex desires and homoerotic undertones present throughout Moby-Dick, Melville creates a resistance to that of the homonormative societal factors that become present throughout the 19th century and emerges a new and profound avenue to presenting concepts such as same-sex marriage and homosexuality through individual characters. While the question of homosexual nature is still ongoing, the inclusion of such sexual
imageries, representations and other factors, bring about a queer text that constitutes more than just a bond between men on board a whaling vessel. Understanding and acknowledging the existence of reevaluations that are constantly being brought onto Moby-Dick makes it the queer basis for furthering knowledge and what it means for such a queer reading of a novel.