Whiteness And Novelty

          Firstly, a brief explanation of the connection between the words whiteness and novelty should be stated before I endeavor to dissect the bowels of an immortal creature. In this case the term whiteness refers to a sometimes subtle, or in other cases blindly obvious, trait like absence of clarity; what is white until it has been contrasted? In my belief, it builds to nothing. Now as for the word novelty, all I mean is something original and inspiring, so it appears possessing a novel or new idealism is inherently married to the subjective ambiguity of whiteness. Allow me to entertain this notion in greater scope.

Skimming through most of Melville’s Moby-Dick one gets the feeling that all of his details are unnecessarily burdensome. “To grope down into the bottom of the sea after [whales]… this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose if this leviathan!” (Melville, 147). Here the isolated author is describing a vain attempt to decipher and contour a palpable portrait of something like the Sperm whale. Yet what seems to make his craftsmanship such a fathomless and unjustifiably lengthy work of art is because of its obvious tangents of seemingly random catalogu-ing. So while preserving the heart of fiction that is a novel, Melville also manages to synthesize his book in which several essays are composed like non-fiction; and this unwonted facet is something I find rather interesting. It’s been taught that the infantile genre known as creative non-fiction has only recently emerged from a coldly object-tive chrysalis of rhetoric like research reports, journalism, and traveling catalogues.  But apparently this isn’t so, for even just the slightest dip of an eclectic spirit can easily impute a vast array of flowery facts suffused across Melville’s descriptions of whaling, and in this way I believe the writer gives the novel genre a sort of intrigue or novelty. That literary achievement is notable isolated, but I believe there lays another deeper, more pervasive idea that expands its roots throughout every aspect of life and throughout that Shakespearean sea-voyage: whiteness.

That color, or rather shade, is a noun, adjective, and even sometimes a verb in which the human culture has used to describe the indescribable or lack of existence. Confusing? I agree. In any case it seems as though there are few ways to pin down and flesh out the true definition of such an ineffable topic, but this is where I think Melville shines without comparison. “Is it by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind… when beholding the white depths of the milky way?” (Melville, 212). And there you have it, by creating something out of nothing one finds that they themselves are manu-facturing a terror out of nothing. Or is it possible that the terror already existed and we simply discovered it haphazardly? Honestly I prefer neither choice considering I acknowledge that while bliss may require ignorance, I at least am vouchsafed the opportunity to choose which areas to apply my lack-of-knowledge. 

The Leviathan's Portent and Cannibalism

            Throughout history the whale has meant several things to a multifarious sundry of cultures and societies. To some it was the mystic, picturesque beauty of the unknown and gave the seemingly infinite universe a graspable contour. To others it represented the ineffably wanton incarnate of the devil himself. “there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form” (Melville 204). Ahab’s decrepit rumination reveals the once again sublime ambiguity that lies in the back of his deranged psyche. Yet as all-consuming and inherently unwonted his monomania may appear, one might stumble upon the realization that the idea of such a rampant fear lurking about people’s minds is exactly what Melville is trying to evince with a seemingly soporific syntax.

          The inclusion of a sperm whale, albeit characteristically alabaster, defines the continually evolving notion of the man’s fear against the unknown because it treads between the haunting realism of killer, and the romantic caricature of a monstrous idea [Note: for a more detailed explanation of ambiguity refer to a previous prompt titled Melville’s Writing]. More than once has humankind struggled to chart out the endlessly recondite depths of life, whether it be the soul-sucking sea, carnivorous cannibals, or the rapacious ruthlessness of religion. “In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slid” (Melville 300). Here it’s descried that another seemingly unfathomable creature is eddying about the ocean’s temerarious waves. Yet soon the crew finds out the monster is a hellishly prodigious cephalopod proposed by some to be the whirlpool-generating Kraken. What specifically this might present for the forlorn future of Ishmael and his fellow mates is hard to pin-point, but one could proffer that it is a rather deleterious portent considering its violent associations with the Sperm whale. Then again, it would seem more likely that the Shakespearean author is attempting to uncover a much more subtle point; for example the viciousness of life itself.

          Employing several similes that include cannibalism, the eclectic writer has painted a portrait in which the average person can relate to; although, it seems the use of cannibalism is more metaphorical than literal. For example, the Quakers in Moby-Dick appear ready to preach love and charity, yet when the time comes for such amiable actions they instead turn on their listeners by attempting to cheat men like Ishmael out of a fair lay. In the same way savage islanders may enjoy the palatable dish they've cooked up, supposedly "Christian men" will anxiously turn to and fro waiting for the chance to stab and extort an innocent loggerhead. 

Melville's Writing

            One thing that always interests me about nineteenth century writers is the ways in which they tend to over-indulge how many words they use whenever explaining something. Whether it’s Hawthorne commenting on the irony of life or Melville subtly portraying a harsh hypocrisy that tainted every living soul during his time, I’ve noticed that few authors chose to be blunt; although Alcott was a good exception to this generalized critique. “But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast” (Melville 13). These details are hardly random but instead are meant to insight awe toward the obscurity and terror consummating such picturesque objects. The sublime feeling galvanizing this single work of art demonstrates how innate the emotion of fear and power hidden within our subconscious psyche continues to eddy boundlessly.

          Perhaps Hawthorne’s dear friend is merely foreshadowing an ineffably frightening and ambiguous event, which if be the case, a great white humped whale should suffice. Then again it may be something more prodigious like the unsolicited and surreptitiously constructed ideologies that prevailed during the beginning of our nation; an invisible propriety that remains ubiquitous even in the twenty-first century. “But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked… Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan” (Melville 62). In Victorian times people tried hard to stay irksomely pious, and they vehemently believed that anyone who strayed from the norms and codes of conduct were condemned to a life of eternal misery. Yet this didn’t stop Melville from charting a course to unveil the convoluted mask of a sinful society. He knew every “Christian” individual at one point or another was capable of lying or hypocrisy; better still, he knew people typically enjoyed part-taking in such squalid behavior. The employment of constant cynicism throughout Moby-Dick is greater than simply a tool to chisel out the mien of Ishmael. It was a vigorous, but light-hearted way to engage the readers to stop and contrast their own opinions about the world with Melville’s rugged character.

          In any case I thought it was rather interesting how Melville chose to enumerate several ideas without explicitly condemning them. That isn’t to say that Ishmael doesn’t outright denounce certain facets of his fleshly world, but that sometimes it is so entrenched with humorous harangue that one fails to take the observations seriously. Personally I prefer a blunter chastising of American society, but at least Melville’s sailor story involves no otiose scriveners (thank goodness).