Well, things are finally turning around a bit.

Just a quick update on the saga of my dental problems: I had my root canal this week! At long last! Honestly, it was mostly fine, as I was simply laying there dazing in the chair hopped up on nitrous oxide the whole time. It cost a bit extra, but man it was worth it. And now the pain in that tooth is gone. Everyone talks shit about root canals, but they really do the damn thing. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, which this week is a deep, dark subject….

Summary

Continuing with its run of good fortune, as a day after running into the Bachelor, the Pequod is able to catch and kill four whales at once.

In the aftermath of the combat and slaughter, upon those ever so peaceful and serene waves of the Pacific Ocean, Captain Ahab is drawn once again into gloomy contemplation, as his prey, slowly bleeding out, turns its great bulk towards the sun.

Ahab is struck by the commonality between all living things, as evidenced by the apparent sun-worship of the whale he has killed, remarking that he has observed the same behavior in many dying whales. It reminds me of the dark, deep, unknown side of nature, the things which no man has ever seen, and could never understand. He feels camaraderie among such mysteries; rejecting his origin on the land and calling the very sea winds his brothers.

Analysis

Well! After a lot of speculation from Ishmael about Ahab’s inner turmoil, he has seen fit to furnish us with a full-blown Shakespearean monologue. It really is quite a cinematic scene, though not one that would ever be filmed, too strange and slow for any Hollywood production. But, one could certainly imagine a trained thespian really sinking their teeth into it upon the stage!

Bringing It Together

For the most part, this chapter serves as a culmination of all the speculation and ideas around Ahab in the last seven chapters or so, since he had that chat with Starbuck in his cabin.

We have the image of the Pacific as this special place of contemplation, in the opening paragraphs. The sweetnes and calmness of the waters, the placidity of the seas, which yet hide their darker and more dangerous nature. This is what inspires Ahab to finally open up about his own thoughts, in his own voice.

Now, what exactly is he saying? It’s a bit florid and roundabout, as these types of monologues often are. But really, what it comes down to is Ahab fully rejecting both the land, in general, and more specifically his christian faith.

The whale turning its head to the sun, out of some unknown instinct deep within its enormous brain, inspires Ahab to think on all the mysteries of nature.

He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!—Oh that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights. Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the Niger’s unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it heads some other way.

Specifically in reference to “pagan” places and peoples (Chinese ages, the source of the Niger river). Then he marvels at the wild and all-consuming power of the sea, as has been discussed before by Ishmael.

[…]; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round again, without a lesson to me.

And finally, he decides the power of the sea must be his new god, as a source of real, material power, which is all-consuming and destroying.

Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.

(I hate to quote almost everything here, but I really have to).

The whale, then, is the symbol of his old faith. Faith in the sun, in fire, in the light and love and hope. It is turning towards the source of life, in the simplest gesture of faith that is possible, which Ahab now rejects, utterly.

The sun does not win, in the end. Worship of fire is useless. What is dead is dead forever, the sun cannot give it life again. This is explicitly rejecting the christian idea of the resurrection, just about as directly atheist as one could be in the middle of the 19th century, before Mark Twain made it cool.

What’s interesting is that he is not only rejecting christianity, but seemingly rejecting the very concept of religion itself, which is some advanced atheism. The reference to fire worship being of course the religion of his harpooneer, Fedallah; that being the more ancient Zoroastrianism.

That Darker Power

So then, what is Ahab embracing, exactly?

To put it in the simple terms of this chapter: the sea. That is, the same sea which has been talked about as a sort of eldritch Lovecraftian horror in past chapters. The sea which smashes all of its children mercilessly on the rocks, which hides away untold terrors in its depths, and which inspires such reflection with it sweet breezes and calm waves.

It is, in effect, reality. The blank, unvarnished reality, the charnel house hidden beneath the gay facade of nature. That thing which peeks out when a white, blank animal is encountered in the wild. The sea cannot be bargained with, it cannot be persuaded, it doesn’t make covenants or lay down laws. It simply is.

Ahab finds his strength in this solid fact, sitting before him. The sea is eternal, it is real, it is all around him. It has been a constant in his life, in ways that perhaps God, despite his previous faith, has failed.

Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!

The whale had the most ancient and primal faith of all. It placed its hope in fire, in the light of the sun, in some vague and simple way. It hoped that the light and warmth would bring safety, but it was not spared the keen edge of Ahab’s harpoon. He killed it, that he may see its last breath leave its spout.

If these ancient beasts, swimming the world for ages unknown, cannot get results from their faith, what hope does humanity have?

God seems to have spurned Ahab. But in the end, that is not the target of his wrath. He doesn’t hate the church, or even God himself, but rather the direct source of his agony: Moby Dick. His faith will not bring him the revenge that he desires, so he must reject it. There is only raw reality here, of man against fish.

And for that, his only ally is the sea.

---

Hahaha, yes! Man, that really came together.

God, this is really dredging up some old, old themes from very early on in the book, huh. That’s when the last bit of atheistic writing were, from Ishmael rather than Ahab. I think it was around the visit to the church in New Bedford.

It’s easy to forget how omnipresent christianity was as a cultural force in the past, in America and Europe. I mean, it still is, by and large, but it was even moreso back then. This kind of thing, then, was very spicy, even for a villainous character like Ahab. Really cuts through a lot of the mythologizing that Ishmael has been doing, as well. What an interesting dynamic, I’ll have to come back and ruminate on that one.

Until nex time, shipmates!