What’s my line here? Ah yes: let’s get back to it.

Well, I missed a couple weeks again, so it goes. I’ve been busy and exhausted, mentally and physically, the past couple weekends. I desperately need a vacation, to tend to business in my apartment, and in my own mind and body. I’ve got one scheduled in a couple weeks, right after Metaphor comes out, hopefully I can regenerate myself somewhat.

Summary

An hour or two after making the new compass, Ahab is stalking the deck and catches sign of the neglected log and line. Remembering his earlier pledge about using it in place of the quadrant, he orders the Manxman and one of the Tahitian crewmen to heave the log and take a reading.

They obey, but the Manxman is doubtful that the log will hold, having been left to rot in the elements, unused and unattended to, for the entire voyage so far. In response, Ahab asks where he’s from, and engages in some Shakespearean wordplay, ordering him to heave it anyway, which he does, with the Tahitian’s assistance.

As soon as it reaches the end of the rope, the log snaps off and is set adrift, with the line tailing useless in the water. Ahab orders a new log to be made by the carpenter, and for the line to be repaired.

Pip wanders over, and the Manxman mockingly asks if he’s coming to help. Pip acts as though he is the one being reeled in, and tells them to let him go, as the ship has no use for cowards. The Manxman makes to chase Pip away, but Ahab intervenes, finding a kindred soul in the small Black boy, similarly traumatized. He invites Pip to live in his cabin from that day forward, and the two go off, hand in hand.

Analysis

Boy, what a plot element to introduce twelve short chapters from the end of this book. I honestly thought this happened way earlier, I think I even alluded to it coming soon when I wrote on the chapter where Pip is briefly abandoned at sea. But no, it’s at this late date, as Ahab is sliding into madness, that he finally finds someone he can truly relate to.

We’ll get into that, but first, some other business, like….

What The Heck Is A Log, Anyway?

Well, it’s the trunk of a tree that’s been cut down and-

Hold on, that’s not right, let me see here… ah yes, it’s a big book that one uses to make observations over time, much like this “web” log that I am curren-

Wait a minute, that’s not right either. No, the device featured in this chapter is a chip log, which as noted in this chapter was an archaic device even in the 1840s. Though some modern variations on the concept are still in use today.

Essentially, it is a device used to measure the speed at which a ship is currently moving. If you know that as well as the direction it’s pointed, you can keep track of where it is on the globe by drawing little lines on a map, with no need to double-check the heavens for your precise location.

The “log” is a little piece of buoyant wood which is attached to a line on a spindle. It’s given enough slack to float, and then start dragging with enough force to draw out more and more of the line from the spindle. You count how many times the spindle is emptied back and forth in a minute, and use some calculations to determine how fast you’re going.

Incidentally, this is why boat speed is measured in”knots”. Sailors would tie knots in the line at regular intervals, so the speed was determined by how many knots flew by in the interval on the hourglass timer. Kinda neat!

Of course, this is by no means an exact measurement, as it depends on the log remaining essentially stationary in the water as the ship moves away from it, which is basically impossible to achieve. So many other factors must come into play to actually determine speed, and the results are, at best, a decent guess.

Nowadays, they accomplish the same thing with ultrasonics and all sorts of fancy technology, not that it’s really as necessary for navigation.

Wandering in the Dark

So, what can one glean from the log part of this chapter? Well, there are a couple fun little bits and bobs, I reckon.

First of all, this is Ahab hilariously going through with his promise as an afterthought. Remembering, oh yeah, I still gotta run this ship, which means we need to know where we are. Suddenly coming back into his sanity, one might say, in order to resolve a small, practical issue.

And we see here what he is reduced to, relying on an old neglected tool picked up out of spite, thoughtlessly deployed in defiance of common sense. It brings us back to the idea that Ahab is just kinda playin’ this by ear. He is not a mastermind, following some grand plan, he is now trusting in his own power to an insane and hubristic degree.

This is a relatively low-stakes example, of course, compared to one will inevitably come later, but it’s an instructive one. He has thrown in his lot with the blind powers of nature over that of god (or whatever force of fate is driving the cosmos, but it’s a good shorthand). So, the log must work, because he wills it so! All the practicalities of actually making it work, in this case, will be left to other people.

Really, it’s the whole mad quest for revenge in microcosm. Ahab heedlessly tosses the ship (the log) into this pursuit of Moby Dick, and only when things go wrong does he stop and try to fix things. He is cruising ahead, perfectly self-assured that everything will work out in his favor.

And then, reality ensues. Actual physical forces will have their say, and determine the ultimate outcome.

A Small, Strange Family

In this chapter, Ahab seemingly meets Pip for the first time, and promptly adopts him. Recognizing the boy as another victim of the cruelties of fate, traumatized beyond all reason; a familiar madness in his eyes.

More specifically, Ahab sees in Pip a fellow sufferer of the incredible cruelty of god, and holds him up as an exemplar of such:

Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor’s!

Of course, Pip is in fact a victim of men as much as god, in the end. He was left abandoned on the ocean for hours and hours by his crewmates, as a punishment for his cowardice. He was driven mad by the extremity of the situation, sure, but it was caused directly by his fellow men.

I suppose you could make a similar, yet more roundabout, argument about Ahab’s predicament. After all, he was out there hunting whales on his own volition when he ran into Moby Dick, trying to make money, support his family, entwined in the vicious realities of capitalism, etc etc. But, at the end of the day, they were both overwhelmed by vast natural forces beyond their comprehension. Subjected to things that no human being should be allowed to be subjected to, Jobs of the ocean. That’s the part that matters.

We get another little clue about how to interpret things at the end of the chapter:

“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. […]”

Ahab is driven mad by his obsession with his own strength, and how it was completely overmatched by Moby Dick. With all of his power and mastery of the physical world, he was still de-legged and driven to extremities of pain by this unthinking beast. In response, he decided that what defeated him was not a mere beast, but a representation of some vast and powerful supernatural or metaphysical being. And even then, he would find a way to strike back against it, in the end.

Pip, by contrast, is driven mad by his own weakness. He was not able to simply stay in the boat, something everyone else on the voyage was able to do. This is what leads to him being left in an unbearable situation. Left alone, on the ocean, with nothing but his own thoughts and the vastness of nature, for hours on end.

The only way to escape was to no longer be himself at all. To disconnect from reality completely. As a defense mechanism, he reflexively blames and hates himself to anyone who will listen. Complete capitulation, which ultimately gives him more power over the situation.

Both of them find solace in their victimization, ultimately. One fell from the grandest of heights, and the other was crushed at the lowest of lows (how does a young black boy end up on a whaling ship? it’s not from good circumstances), but both are hurt just as badly.

Twisted Paternalism

The reason, though, that Ahab takes in the young boy is not just that he has found someone else who is as traumatized as he. No, it’s that he thinks he can help. Just in the last day, Ahab has found a new path, he has sworn himself to that pale fire, to the powers of nature, over the power of god.

Ahab is in a great mood, he’s got it all figured out, and he wants to bring this boy in and let him know it’ll be okay. Knowing the depths of pain and confusion that must abound, he wants to guide Pip to the light of atheism and worship of of the vast, unthinking, uncaring powers of nature instead.

Essentially, saying that those things which maddened him, the vastness of the ocean and the sky, are not to be feared, but are his allies agains the true enemy: the forces that put them there in the first place. We’re all in this together, against god, and that includes things like The Ocean and Lightning.

There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines.

I really think the vagueness is an asset here. Ahab is not really naming god in particular, and Ishmael was careful all those chapters ago to say that he was really looking to strike against the strange powers of fate that move beyond the knowledge of man.

One could easily interpret this as rebellion against the many inhuman systems that operate in our lives. Be it capitalism, various religions, social forces, etc. Things for which the blame lies with no particular individual, but rather the mass of humanity who has let these systems run rampant and cause more human suffering than there ought to be.

The “frozen heavens” are those who follow laws and traditions in the face of simple human suffering. Rather than just not take Pip on the whale boat, they called him and coward and punished him in a horrific and traumatizing way. Why? Is it the simple cruelty of those particular men? No, any whalemen would make the same decision.

It’s a much more radical stance, the more one considers it.

---

Ahhh, that felt good.

As always, I am merely globbing on to the interpretations I find most interesting. I’m sure there are a million things one could read into the relationship between Pip and Ahab. Abuse, racism, a pantomime of slavery, et cetera, et cetera. It is… charged, shall we say.

But, poor Melville has been dead for over a century, so I shall extend him some grace, and simple human charity.

Until next time, shipmates!