Oh man, it has been far too long.

I can only beg your forgiveness, shipmates. I have been overwhelmed with stress in my life in recent months, and thus have not found the fortitude to continue this project, preferring to distract myself with video games and movies and other amusements. But now, many things have been resolved, and I may once again take to the sea and do some deep thinking about whales.

For a quick explanation: I had a project at work that was dragging on way too long, and I felt very guilty about it. Then in January I went to a new dentist and found out I may need some very expensive work done. I was also trying to figure out how to get curtains put up over my windows, both finding the right type and size, and also someone to help install them.

That’s all resolved now, basically. I now reside in a nice, dark, less echoey apartment, and my teeth are on the mend. That project is… well, not finished, but over the hump. Mentally, I’m feeling better than I have in many years.

Summary

Ahab and Pip are in the captain’s cabin, when Ahab goes to leave.

Ahab says that he must leave, because being around Pip makes him too sane, and he must be mad to continue his quest for Moby Dick. If he stayed, he would never leave the cabin again. He tells Pip to stay in the cabin, so he can enjoy all the privileges of captaincy that Ahab can no longer appreciate.

Pip implores him to stay, saying he would do anything, not wanting to be abandoned again, but to no avail. Ahab leaves the cabin, and Pip sadly monologues, descending once again into his own madness, though he feels hope when he hears Ahab’s ivory leg clomping along the deck above him. He resolves to stay in the cabin, as he was ordered.

Analysis

Ah, a very tragic chapter, in its way. Another off-ramp shows itself to Ahab… a way to keep on living and escape from his self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. Alas! He is smart enough to avoid it, and crazy enough to want to.

Necessary Madness

Ahab and Pip find in each other what they need to heal their wounds. Ahab’s scorning of the world for its cruelty and harshness finds itself thawing in the presence of someone so bereft. As I wrote before, his overwhelming self-confidence and paternalistic pride cannot abide abandoning all hope in the face of such a hopeless soul as Pip. And meanwhile, the kindness Ahab shows Pip works to restore his own sense of self and self-confidence.

If the world isn’t worth saving, then why does it have such a perfect innocent as Pip? And if Pip is so worthless, then why is such a great and powerful man as Ahab caring for him so tenderly? They cure one another, simply by being near.

But Ahab cannot abide that. In his heart of hearts, he knows that this will offer him the rope that he needs. He can climb out of the depths of despair, but that’s not what he wants. The calculating part of him, the part that plots and plans and made this voyage happen, doesn’t want to get better. It wants to kill Moby Dick and spit in the face of God.

There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.

Ahab is pot committed to seeing this thing through. Part of abandoning his worldly pleasures in pursuit of his goal is complete negation of his own worldly desires, including his own happiness. If it gets in the way of his mission, then it must be chucked overboard (not literally in this case, lucky for Pip).

Honestly, I can relate. I’ve been there! Sometimes you’re so deep into despair that you don’t want comfort. You don’t want the help you so desperately need. It takes real effort to pull out of a tailspin, and this is one of many reasons why. Being in a certain emotional state can become comfortable, even if it’s sadness or anger.

It’s no small feat to overcome that desire for familiar despair, and instead decide to do something different.

The Comfortable Cabin

In the story thus far, the cabin has been one of the primary symbols of the comfort of Ahab’s station. He avoids it like the plague, when he can. Early on, we heard that he spent most of his time on deck, all hours of the day, and only went back for a few hours, to lay on top of his bed and brood.

Now, we have it as an even more powerful symbol of healing, and he must flee it forever. It is a retreat, and oasis from the pain and chaos of the sea, the slaughter of whales, the madness of Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick. All the scenes where Ahab reconsiders his mad quest, where he doubts his conviction, happen belowdecks.

Ahab still desires to save Pip, to spare him the fate that he has chosen for himself. And thus, he is banished to the cabin while Ahab flees it. Away from that intolerable horizon, the infinite expanse that addled Pip’s poor young mind. Enclosed, dark, safe, and warm; protected from the elements, protected from the rest of the crew who might slader and mistreat the young lad.

Black & White

The character of Pip is really where the racial politics of this book become hard to parse. He speaks in a dialect, but not as thick as the cook, obviously. He refers to Ahab as his master, but that doesn’t seem very different from how anyone else on the crew talks about him, particularly in the heightened shakespearean mode that this scene is operating in.

Perhaps it really is as dead simple as Ishmael/Melville wanting to draw the comparison to Moby Dick himself. To draw out in big capital letters “WHITE = BAD, BLACK = GOOD” for all to see. The enormous, inhuman, omnipotent white whale, and the small black child, so painfully human and weak. One the cause of all of Ahab’s pain, and the other the (potential) cure for it.

Of course, that is only how Ahab sees the situation, which is interesting in and of itself. Pip now figures into his personal legendarium, the story he tells about himself to keep this whole thing going. He is torn between these great pillars of mystical power, between the raw strength of nature and the simple human weakness that appeals to his still-human heart.

So, personally, I’ll chalk it up the same way I did earlier: Melville’s heart is in the right place, even if he is using the terminology and tropes of the era in which he lived, which may clang to our modern ears.

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Ahhh, man it was nice to get back to this. I feel like working through this helped me understand what’s going on better, as usual.

While I was on yet another hiatus, I received more fan letters. This always feels a bit awkward because it’s hard to respond. My email address isn’t anywhere on my site, so if I just write back it’ll look like some rando is responding to the thing they sent in with a form on the site.

So let me just say here and now: if you wrote in, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I appreciate it more than words can say. It genuinely makes me feel much better about this whole endeavour, and is the reason I keep returning over and over. I also enjoy the comments people have been leaving as they read through, always a delight to see people engaging with literature like this.

I will not abandon this project. It is my mad quest, and it’s almost finished now! And hopefully it won’t end with my death, haha.

Until nex time, shipmates!