The Call of Solitude - Assignment Example

Literary analysis of Moby Dick Although Melville was not deeply read in science, Moby-Dick (1851) prophetically details the great scientific upheavalof 1859: the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. A primary subtext of Melville's novel is the passing of pre-Darwinian, anthropocentric thought, espoused by Ahab, and the inauguration of a version of Darwin's more ecological evolution, proffered by Ishmael (Buchholz 50). With Ahab's demise end the related pre-Darwinian beliefs that man, through his rational faculties, sits atop and controls the great chain of being; that civilized man is fundamentally different from and superior to uncivilized men and wild beasts; and that transformations in man and nature proceed according to design. The rise of Ishmael at the novel's close points to an alternative world, one controlled more by the forces of nature than by humans, one in which the civilized is not fundamentally different from the savage and the animal, one guided not by a linear plan but, to use Darwin's famous phrase, by an "inextricable web of affinities" (Buchholz 50). Indeed, Moby-Dick itself exhibits the principle of natural selection, for it suggests that species like Ahab are not adapted for survival and therefore face extinction while variations like Ishmael are well suited to thrive and flourish. This essay treats Moby-Dick as an allegory signifying the rise of Darwin and the consequent dethroning of man, the victory of evolution over essentialism. The novel constitutes a prophetic parable of what Freud called the second great blow to man's sense of domination (after the astronomy of Copernicus and before Freud's own psychoanalysis): the emergence of the evolutionary theory that "put an end to this presumption on the part of man" by showing that "man is not a being different from the animals or superior to them; he is himself of animal descent, being more closely related to some species and more distantly to others" (cited in Ancona 17). Certainly Ahab instances a tension between both versions of the pre-Darwinian chain: the spatial and the temporal. On the one hand, he yearns for a static scale of nature, in which hierarchically grouped animals and men are utterly fated to be what they are, moving with the regularity of machines. On the other, he wishes for himself to progress, to evolve, to the very top of the chain, from which place he will hold the other species below him. From either position, he maintains, violently, the shared assumptions of both pre-Darwinian chains of being: anthropocentrism, hierarchy, design (Ancona 16). Ahab's ship is a pre-Darwinian world in miniature; it is ordered by a chain of being, seemingly static and spatial. Ahab maintains firm control of his ship's hierarchy, reaching from the bottom, the lowly crew, to the savage harpooners, to the third, second, and first mates, to Ahab himself at the top. In the "Knights and Squires" chapters, Melville details a hierarchy of men ordered by degrees of consciousness, the ability for reflection (Ancona 15). Closest to the hyper-reflective Ahab is the first mate Starbuck, pious, speculative, prudent; next is Stubb, the second mate, utterly carefree, with no interest in abstract thought; under him is Flask, the third mate, ignorant, virtually unconscious, utterly indifferent to the mysteries of whaling. Beneath these mates are the harpooners, likewise divided into hierarchy (Buchholz 51). Ahab is well aware of this hierarchy and sees his job as keeping it in place. Indeed, his first words in the novel work to reinforce the hierarchy he heads. After Stubb has hinted to Ahab that he would like him to tread more softly around the deck while others are trying to sleep, Ahab responds by forcefully reminding Stubb of his place: "Down, dog, and kennel" (127). The Captain knows that he is "above the common," having been in colleges and among cannibals (79), that his command ranges from the institutions of civilization to the habitats of the uncivilized. At the same time, he intimates a more temporal chain of being in expressing his desire to progress to the very top of the chain, over sun and God. After Starbuck assails Ahab for blasphemously wishing to exact vengeance on a dumb brute, the Captain responds: "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me" (164)(14). This famous speech of Ahab bends the crew to his will, making the briefly defiant, rational Starbuck shiver and pale, the "unrecking," unreasoning "pagan leopards and crew" (164) become mere "wheels" on Ahab's "cogged circle" (167-68). While he controls the crew with little difficulty, he experiences trouble in keeping the whale in its place. Indeed, one reading of Ahab's monomania is that he fears that a mere animal might be more powerful and cunning than he, and thus he must overcompensate for this fear by constantly asserting the ascendancy of his own ego (Buchholz 52). He finds the whale's seeming superiority inscrutable; it does not fit into his well-ordered divisions of the world, divisions that keep humans and animals under him. It thus must be destroyed so that it will no longer threaten his supreme position. While Ahab revels in a stasis that favors his ascendancy, that keeps first mates, cannibals, and whales under, he also, paradoxically, expresses a desire to evolve, to progress (Ancona 16). Traditionally, the sun and the planets and of course God hold higher places on the chain than man. As the oration on the quarter-deck shows, however, Ahab is prepared to assume their places, believing nothing - sun or God - is over him. His hubris is the logical extreme of Agassiz's progressionist views; if man is evolving toward increasing perfection, what is to stop him from becoming a God Ahab, we might say, is torn between the spatial and temporal chains of being, wishing the spatial to apply to those under him, while wishing himself to progress in time to increasing perfection (Ancona 17). This oration exhibits yet another feature that Ahab shares with the pre-Darwinian thinkers: he believes in design, in an invisible force, perhaps God, controlling visible phenomena. Visible phenomena are merely masks covering a reasoning, yet inscrutable principle that determines their actions. Moby-Dick is meaningless as a whale, as a living, biological being; he gains significance only as a sign of something invisible, of which he is either active bearer (agent) or prime exemplar (principle) (Ancona 15). Ahab's monomania -perhaps the logical extreme of anthropocentrism--is exacerbated by his inability to understand why this invisible design will not work in his favor. As custodian of the man-centered great chain, he must annihilate any threat, even if issuing from design, to the chain's well-appointed links (Ancona 17). Like Agassiz, Ahab desires a secure universe; though humans might have progressed from the ocean, from the fish, once they are above animals, there should be, the anthropocentrist thinks, no reversals. Indeed, most of Ahab's actions as well as the imagery associated with him are manifestations of his will to a steady-state, well-controlled, predictable cosmos. Works Cited Ancona, Francesco A. Hope Sinks: Pandora, Eve and the Obsession of Ahab. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. 2003: 15 Buchholz, Ester. "The Call of Solitude." Psychology Today Jan.-Feb. 1998: 50. Read More