Herman Melville’s Moby Dick can be tackled from different angles and analyzed within many different contexts. It’s a dense novel about the sea, about God, about obsession, about evil. In the reader’s search for an ultimate meaning, Moby Dick presents them with several possibilities for analysis. It is fitting that the most complex and grandiose mammal on earth, the whale, is the driving force of the story in this novel. Melville develops many themes throughout the novel that lead some to believe Moby Dick is a giant allegory for seeking the meaning of life. Much of the novel is driven by Ishmael’s descriptions of the crew members and their interpretation of Moby Dick. Yet, Ishmael avoids any personal interpretation of the whale and, maybe not so coincidentally, is the last surviving crewmember at the end of the journey. This symbolizes that the individual must keep an open mind to the meanings of life and combat ignorance and intolerance against other beliefs and lifestyles. Melville gives several examples to support this reading, including the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, the religious hypocrisy of Christianity, explorations into whiteness, the coffin as a symbol of life and death. Melville’s goal is to alert the reader to the many meanings and interpretations of life and to avoid narrow-mindedness; that which is not understood should not be irrationally feared.
Much of the early part of the novel shows the development of Ishmael’s relationship with Queequeg, a cannibalistic, dark-skinned pagan who perhaps would surprise the close-minded individual with his true warm nature. Before Queequeg’s introduction to the story, Ishmael shares the intimidating backstory he has received about the mysterious cannibal. The landlord of the Spouter Inn warns Ishmael: “That harpooner is a dangerous man” (18). All of the characteristics Ishmael receives about Queequeg lead him to believe that he is a barbaric, fearsome man; these include his pagan worship, his cannibalism and his “unearthly” tattoos (48). Ishmael even admits that Queequeg’s culture “convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen” (22).
But Ishmael is not ignorant, nor intolerant. He allows Queequeg to prove his harmlessness. When the two shared a bed together the first night they met, Ishmael woke up the next morning and “found Queequeg’s arm thrown over [him] in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife” (24). Melville is attempting to entice the reader to not merely accept appearance and gossip but to remain open minded enough to discover the true nature of any person or situation, as Ishmael does with Queequeg. If Ishmael had refrained from interaction with Queequeg because of his rugged characteristics, he would have remained ignorant of Queequeg’s true nature.
Melville also uses Queequeg’s foreign pagan religion to uncover the hypocrisy of Christianity and challenge conventional Western thinking. Queequeg told Ishmael about a group of Christians who treated him very poorly and did not understand how their nature aligned with the teachings of Jesus Christ that his disciples claim to follow. Queequeg was “fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him” (55). By reversing the assumed roles of the good natured Christian with the savage pagan, Melville wants to coax the reader to question any unfounded assumptions or generalizations they may have that could be fueling ignorance and prejudice. He also builds Ishmael’s character and places him on a pedestal above the conventional Christian, who may object to worshipping an idol by having him partake in Queequeg’s idolatrous rituals. Ishmael justifies his actions by explaining:
“I 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? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator.” (58)
Melville warns readers to not trust appearance as he explains the vastness and unpredictability of the sea through the narration of Ishmael. Ishmael directly addresses the reader: “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure” (267-268). Ishmael warns the reader that it can be easy to forget about the dangers of the ocean while admiring its tranquility and beauty, similar to the way he had previously misjudged Queequeg’s appearance to be dangerous and intimidating while he proved to be loving and good natured. Melville continues to warn the reader not to take what appears to be true for granted but to always ask questions and seek true answers.
The downfall of Captain Ahab is another symbolic warning against narrow-mindedness. Ahab’s obsession with Moby Dick comes from his inability to view the whale as anything other than the embodiment of evil. It is a complex, mysterious creature that he struggles to attach meaning to. Because of Ahab’s stubbornly concrete interpretation of the whale, he dedicates his entire life to destroying it. Melville is showing the reader that what we perceive to be evil may only be something that we do not truly understand. He warns the reader not to be like Ahab and to remain open minded about what they may not understand.
For the majority of the novel, the coffin serves its conventional purpose of burial after death. When Queequeg is dying at sea, a carpenter builds him a coffin to die in. However, even a coffin does not have to be associated with death and the negativity that comes with it. At the end of the novel, the coffin is the reason Ishmael survives the wreck. “A life-buoy of a coffin!” Starbuck exclaims (503). The coffin becomes a central figure to explaining the theme that Melville is writing toward: the conflict of accepting a different meaning of something despite preconceived notions that may be fueling narrow-mindedness and ignorance to the positives in life. The carpenter exclaims, “Are all my pain to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it… I don’t like this cobbling sort of business — I don’t like it at all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place” (503). The carpenter struggles to accept the new meaning of the coffin. He had always associated it with death, but now it was keeping him alive. This is symbolic of the carpenter’s inflexible vision of life. Melville is telling the reader to be flexible, be adaptable and be open minded or else they will be unable to understand the real nature of things, which will ultimately defeat them in life. The carpenter, like Ahab and other characters in the novel, only feels comfortable with simple, clear-cut concepts. If they do not find one, singular answer to their problems, they become overcome with frustration over the ambiguity of things. This is what condemns them to their fate by the whale, a symbol of complexity.
Unlike the carpenter, Ishmael is able to accept a different meaning of the coffin, symbolic of his ability to adopt a larger understanding of Moby Dick, of Queequeg’s nature and of life beyond just one purpose or meaning as portrayed by their appearances or generalizations. Ishmael explains: “I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex… liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side” (552). Ishmael does not only associate the coffin with death, as many would based on its traditional use, he sees the opportunity for life through the use of a symbol of death. Even something representative of death can be reimagined completely and made to represent life.
This is not the only time Ishmael is able to reimagine life and death. Growing up, Ishmael had an urge to go to sea despite its association with mystery, the danger of storms, sea creatures, disease and possible death. His explains this urge to go seaward early in the novel: “Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land?” (3). Ishmael feels the need to escape to the sea for spiritual rejuvenation. The sea made him happy, and despite the likelihood that he would die at a younger age, his spirit would die if he never explored his wonder of the seas. To Ishmael, life at sea serves as an awakening. His ability to see past the rigid generalizations of life at sea in order to satisfy how he desires to live his life is another example of Melville challenging the reader to explore and to question things. Conventional choices and lifestyles is not always the best way to discovering meaning in life.
In chapter 24, titled “The Whiteness of the Whale,” Melville again advocates for multiple ways to understand life through Ishmael’s analysis of the color white. Ishmael explores the multiple ways to understand the color white, perhaps pertaining to the Whale. These include the ability of the color white to enhance natural beauty, and the superiority of the white race over “every dusky tribe” (181). White is also explained to be “the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power,” and having religious connotations, in “the celebration of the Passion of our Lord” (181-182). These connotations all place the color white on a pedestal.
However, Ishmael, as a man who can see the multiple meanings of life, warns that white also possesses many negative connotations. He cautions, “There yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood” (182). These connotations include white’s ghastliness, its association with apparitions, and the “supernaturalism of this hue” (184). Ishmael explores the nature of the “Albino man” who “repels and often shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! (184). He also explains, “As an essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors” (188). Ishmael refuses to reserve one particular meaning of the White Whale, Moby Dick, by offering these wide ranging definitions and associations of the color white. Captain Ahab is only able to associate Moby Dick with evil, while Ishmael embraces all interpretations of the White Whale and does not limit his view.
Ishmael is the character through whom Melville clarifies to the reader that one must be open to different perspectives in life. Without his open-mindedness, the reader would most likely follow along with Ahab’s definitions of the evil whale. Queequeg would remain the barbaric, idolatrous savage that others characterized him as. The coffin would be representative of only death. The only meaning of this story would be Ahab’s quest to destroy the evil whale. But Ishmael wonders, “Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head?” (367). Ishmael questions how evil the whale truly is, as he acknowledges he does not understand the whale. This is just as he questions what he had heard about Queequeg and made an effort to understand him and his culture. Andrew Smith once said, “People fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t conquer,” and that is precisely what Melville is warning against in this novel. All of the examples explored illustrate Melville’s ultimate theme of coming together by being open-minded and adaptable and refusing to simply accept traditional standards or unaffirmed claims. What is not understood should not be feared, but investigated.