I have taught Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) many times during my long career. It has always seemed relevant to the modern world. Today, it seems prophetic. Some literary works speak to the future as much as they do to their own time in history. Moby Dick is one of those literary works.
The novel was largely ignored in Melville’s lifetime (1819-1891). It even destroyed his career as a writer of South Seas adventure stories. Today, however, Moby Dick is viewed by many as our greatest literary work. Some—including me—believe it prophesized the authoritarian world we see emerging globally almost two centuries after its publication.
Melville understood the bible, literature, and world history as well as any author who ever lived. Almost all of it was self-taught, as he spent much of his early life on ships. In time, he became to American literature what Leo Tolstoy is to Russian literature and William Shakespeare to British literature. Many of the character types in Moby Dick, especially Captain Ahab, are even modeled after similar types in Shakespeare’s plays. Like Shakespeare, Melville understood the patterns of history and the flawed personalities that create the periodic destruction of entire nations.
Moby Dick is, among other things, a morality play that reappears periodically throughout our history, from the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692 to the McCarthy era in the early 1950s to the current debate regarding the forces of evil in the modern world. As such, Moby Dick can teach us much about who we are and where the forces shaping the future are taking us.
Melville intended for the ship the Pequod to be the very symbol of America, but also all countries. The sailors on the ship represent virtually every ethnic group and philosophical point of view. Captain Ahab, however, is the dominant figure—and he is the symbol of historical worldwide authoritarianism that has come to power in virtually all times and all places.
Ahab is convinced that he alone understands the forces of good and evil that control the universe. He is oblivious to the fact that he has become a monster in his narcissistic, monomaniacal, and megalomaniacal attempts to pursue and destroy the legendary white whale. When other sea captains the Pequod encounters try to convince Ahab that he is putting his entire crew at risk, he contemptuously dismisses them and sails away. He is supremely, arrogantly convinced that they are fools—albeit their collective wisdom accurately predicts the fate of the Pequod.
Captains Peleg and Bildad, the part-owners of the Pequod, symbolize the theme of religious hypocrisy that is as relevant today as it was when Moby Dick was first published. They pose as Christians because it is good for business, even as they relentlessly exploit the members of the crew. Although they claim they want an all-Christian crew, they immediately drop that requirement when Queequeg, a “pagan” harpooner, demonstrates uncanny skill with his harpoon. They hire him immediately.
Queequeg, a complex character like many of Melville’s characters, tries to peddle preserved and tattooed human heads from New Zealand, but he also demonstrates a spirit of brotherly love. When a sailor falls overboard, Queequeg is the one who leaps in to save him. Ahab, who is consumed by his efforts to purge the world of evil, doesn’t even want to stop to rescue the drowning man.
Later in the story, Ahab refuses to help the captain of the Rachel search for his 12-year old son who is lost at sea. Ahab is so indifferent to human life, and so obsessively determined to kill Moby Dick, that he ignores basic maritime law and humanitarian considerations. He is a man incapable of empathy.
Ahab is also relentless in his attempts to force his will and fanaticism on the crew. At first the crew resists, but Ahab threatens, intimidates, humiliates, and fills them with fear until they relent. Finally, his is the only point of view left on the Pequod.
By the time the white whale turns on the Pequod and sends it to the bottom of the ocean, even the most sensible crew members have become convinced that the whale is the embodiment of all that is evil. Their ability to think freely has been consumed by Ahab’s megalomania and narcissism.
Ishmael, the narrator of the story, is clearly the antithesis to Ahab’s fanatical vision because he sees the interplay between good and evil as a far more complex series of relationships. He realizes the universe is probably beyond all human understanding and must be viewed from multiple points of view. He also recognizes that good men can do evil things without even understanding that they have become monsters.
Most important, Ishmael gradually recognizes that Ahab’s indifference to the rest of humanity—as exemplified by his indifference to the fate of the crew—is a far greater evil than anything the white whale might represent. And he learns that others throughout history who have tried to purge the world of evil have often created a form of evil that far surpasses anything they were attempting to destroy.
Ishmael is the only member of the crew to survive Ahab’s insane pursuit of the white whale. After Moby Dick destroys the ship, a wooden coffin from the Pequod suddenly bobs to the surface next to Ishmael. He floats on top of the coffin for several days until a passing vessel, the Rachel, rescues him. The captain of the Rachel is still searching for his lost son, something Ahab was reluctant to help him do for even a few hours.
During the time that Ishmael is floating on the coffin, he ponders life’s many great mysteries. He becomes even more convinced that God cannot be adequately contained in any one philosophy or religion. The power that created this universe is too magnanimous and too awe-inspiring to be twisted, distorted, and grossly oversimplified by authoritarian fanatics who use it as a weapon against all others.
Mostly, Ishmael comes to realize that the crew members who went to the bottom of the ocean with the Pequod were the victims of the ultimate evil. Ahab’s arrogant, stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he was setting himself up as God is what destroyed them.
Today, the world is increasingly controlled by authoritarian figures who are as dangerous as Ahab. Melville warned us to be aware of their type, lest their authoritarian visions destroy entire nations—and perhaps even the human race.
Moby Dick, the novel that readers rejected in Melville’s lifetime, may be showing the way to a better future than the one powerful authoritarians are creating.
References
Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
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