Actually, I'm not sure if Melville ever gets to whale meatballs, either as a dish or location. It is interesting, though, that the sperm whale is called such becuase of the vast amounts of spermaceti in its head, and they called it spermaceti, that is, sperm of the whale, because it was originally thought that it was whale sperm, or whale spawn, that is, eggs.
My point? Ha. Well, I have to say that Melville's work reads as a thoroughly provacative work discussing and laboring over male sexuality. I couldn't possibly be the first to have this reation, but the work does scream phallocentrism to me in the worst way. I don't know that Melville knows what his argument is. I know the interaction and descriptions of the interaction between Ishamel and Queequeg are so giggle worthy, but I don't think the whole reason for their closeness is to reveal male sexuality as played out between males so much as the capacity for males to have a closeness, but the dread or the threat of homosexuality that it arouses in the reader is Melville's trap -- like, see! I knew you would go there with your judgemental mind! It's hard to me to make sense of what I feel is an impression that Melville constantly sets you up to reveal how your reaction to the novel is precisely what is wrong with society. I don't know if I think that Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship is supposed to expose the sexual nature of men in a ranked order, free from the immediate influence of women, or if it's to show that Queequeg is someone to revere, not to abhor, for his "savage" nature. But the depictions of the whale hunt, and the conversations about the whale, and there seem to be so many phallic references, that the work becomes a sort of portrait of a man struggling with desire. I have only read Bartleby and only skimmed Benito Serino (sorry Blythe), and of course, per our drawn out banter about Bartleby, I think that where Hawthorne was obsessed with the outward manifestations and restrictions on desire, Melville appears to be drowning in desire, shaken by its very existence within himself. Perhaps Melville feared that his penis was the very matirix of his desire, and all subsequent actions were controlled by it. Ahab is maimed, and although it is a leg, we, okay, me, suggested that he lost his OTHER leg as well. The loss of his member has resulted in a quashed lust for life, he only thinks of the whale, his ability to enjoy life at all lost with his penis. The knowledge of this, and the search for meaning either within this notion or outside of this notion, makes Ishmael an outcast, and causes him existential pain.
It's the most sense I can make out of the novel as a whole.
6 comments:
Please forgive me as I was cursed by a student (damn you Heather!) who informed me that the greatest gift a teacher can give her students is to call in sick. Now I'm sick. I still haven't finished completely; I forgot my copy at my office (can you believe it!!) But the ending of the novel (I assume you've gotten there) ends with a giant whirlpool sucking everything and everyone down.....leaving only Ishmael, a self-described "orphan" to tell the tale. So, in short, I think that DESIRE is absolutely something with which Melville struggles constantly. That image of a kind of "reverse birth" in which men and ship are sucked down into a giant "hole" really interests me as a comment on desire, sexuality, etc. The fact that this happens because the men are trying to "stick" a white sperm whale...well, as you said, sometimes I just want to giggle. But I fully agree with you that, ultimately, what Melville seems to do, over and over, is to confront us with ourselves. That is why he terrifies me, but absorbs me fully. I can't wait for your discussion on Wednesday!!!!
You know, just as an addendum, I almost think Melville (given that he is the first post-modern novelist heh heh)was quite a bit ahead of his time in terms of sexuality as well. So much of his work is about the ways in which facades (bodies, faces, airs, etc.) mask the true nature of a person. This is not at all well thought out (I just thought of it), but perhaps Melville wishes us to extend our vision of desire/sexuality past the facade of a body.
In other words, with Queequeg, we are asked to both look carefully at him (so much description of his body!) and, at the same time, see the true soul beneath the savage exterior -- that carefully detailed exterior, finally, doesn't really tell us anything. Everything is a "hieroglyphic" that demands and refuses interpretation (including Q's tattoos). Qeequeg's actions tell us more, but all of those actions are so filtered through the descriptions of Ishmael that, finally, we are left with essentially a mystery. Ultimately, I think that Melville wants us to look past the surface, whilst, at the same time, seems to prefigure one of my favorite Willa Cather lines: "The heart of another is a dark forest, always." Melville does this so often, and generally seems to assume that most of us "don't get it" and don't really look past that facade; maybe what he is saying is that channeling desire only to certain "bodies" is just as stupid as most of the other things humans do.
I personally don't really buy into the gay/straight dichotomy that many people seem to insist upon (oh boy I can already see the comments coming LOL); rather, I sort of see sexuality in terms of a "spectrum of desire" -- there are perhaps people who are mostly one or the other, but I really think most of us desire across a wide spectrum of "bodies" and are just "trained" to channel it a certain way by our society. To sum up: I think one can desire a person's SOUL, rather than a person's body (now I sound like the Devil) first -- the body can be secondary. And maybe this is one thing Melville is toying with. Maybe that is also why his writing does seem rather wracked with tension in regards to sexuality. Melville seems to me to be the most mysterious of writers with whom I am at all familiar -- he continually insists on the impenetratability of everyone and everything WHILST at the same time insisting that we continue to try to penetrate. Oh dear, now I have the giggles again.
As much as would like to imagine, I can't say with much certainty that Meville wasn't being VERY gender specific in Moby Dick. Although the ideas that are presented are not neccesarily limited to interpretation FOR men, I think his commentary is certainly about men, and deals very little if not at all with feminine sexuality. There is a part about female whales and their babies, and how they nurse precariously close to the whale's anus, but there doesn't seem to be any indication that women are at all important in Moby Dick. The very notion that all these men are setting sail -- leaving behind wives, children, mothers, all signs of women, for the endless ocean, which is sprinkled with other ships full of men, well, it makes one want to break out in song. Stouthearted men! And the lust that is forever hinted at in Moby Dick is always a thrusting, exploding, incredibly fast and powerful decidedly male lust. Even if a woman in the novel were described in these terms, she would be described as a male character. Even the name of the ship isn't too feminized, and it's heavily suggested that whaling is seperate from most other naval pursuits, commercial and otherwise, because of it's complete isolation from women. I view the little old Quaker woman, the one that stocked them with all the supplies, as the last vestige of womanly protection. The next time we come in such contact with a woman is when the captain brings up the moldy letter for the man who was killed on the Jeroboam (or was it the Virgin?).
I don't know why someone who wants us to disregard the body as a facade is so hellbent on holding our attention on it. Maybe he is saying putting all of your eggs in one basket, or in one pair of underpants, is a recipe for disaster. I think of this tale as a yarn. I mean, I know it's a novel, but I think of it as Ishmael telling a yarn -- one fully researched and authenticated. In this case, there should be a moral to the story. And I think that moral has to do with desire.
Alongside the argument that Moby Dick is a novel about gay desire is the broader metaphor that it is a novel about wherefore desire stems from. Is it heart? Is it head? Is it sex organs? Is the lust for power and money strictly male? Does it originate with gender? These are issues that are super relevant, even in our "enlightened" and liberated world.
Okay, so I read the part about the squid again, and it really just can't be helped; it's a huge, frightening, somehow rubbery and dangerous, vagina, trying desperately to cling and suck the life out of you. Come on Melville! It's just a 'gine! It's not that scary. At least less scary than a whale penis that is like, over six feet long! But noooo, the sailors on the Pequod have to skin the "pelt" of the whale penis and then WEAR IT LIKE PRIESTLY ROBES. Sigh. Remember Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia? Seriously.
Today in class I whipped it out for everyone: Moby Dick is about weiners. There are some *points* I made that I find really interesting, especially about the Captain of the Samuel ship, whose captain had an ivory arm, and how it just wasn't the same as Ahab losing his "leg" because his arm was still powerful, and he still retained all of his masculine power, and that Ahab was powerless without his "leg." Also that Ahab was really searching for the truth that is behind actions, the desire that leads to the lives that make us who we are. I really like this book.
Then Hailey took the cake with the squishing of the sperm! It was such a fun day.
I do hope you devoted a sufficient amount of time to the "sperm orgy" chapter.
I do believe that is one of the only passages we read straight from the book. Something like, if we could only squish into eachother they way we are squishing into this sperm. Awesome.
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