Sample Articles

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, or, The Whale (1851) describes Captain Ahab of the Pequod and his quest to kill the white whale that had taken his leg on an earlier whale hunt. This self-destructive mission ends with the death of Ahab and his crew, with the single exception of Ishmael, the book's narrator. The novel dramatizes the concerns of mid-nineteenth-century American middle-class men in an emerging capitalist marketplace. At a time of economic change, the novel negotiates meanings of bourgeois manhood and same-sex relations, as well as man's precarious relationship to nature.

The characters of the novel and their relations with one another represent two models of Victorian manhood:  a traditional ideal of “artisanal” manhood defined through small producer values, economic autonomy and self-sufficiency, and an emerging ideal of “entrepreneurial” manhood, defined by competitive individualism, the exploitation of natural resources, and control over other men in the workplace.  Artisanal manhood is represented by Ishmael, who goes to sea to escape from urban alienation, and Queequeg, the South Sea islander.  The two men are joined in a sentimental, homoerotic relationship that enables them to resist Ahab and the entrepreneurial manliness he represents.  Ahab's first mate, Starbuck, shares Ishmael and Queequeg's commitment to an artisanal manhood, but his attraction to entrepreneurial manhood and desire for economic gain make it impossible for him to resist the madness of the captain's quest.

While Ahab represents the destructive potential of mid-nineteenth-century entrepreneurial capitalism, the white whale represents nature.  The purpose of the Pequod is to hunt whales for whale oil, or "sperm."  By means of the whale hunt, capitalist enterprise symbolically converts the masculine erotic energy of nature—represented by the "sperm"—into cash.  Ahab's quest for revenge, however, leads the crew beyond its capitalist purpose of exploiting nature for pecuniary gain and on a path toward the destruction of ship and crew.

In Moby-Dick, the homoerotic bond between Ishmael and Queequeg serves as the foundation for a radical social critique of capitalist economics and commodity fetishism.  The socially and sexually transgressive relation between the two men, who share a bed and undergo a "marriage" ceremony, has liberating potential.  Initially drawn to Ahab, Ishmael separates himself from the murderous crusade through his bond with Queequeg. Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship challenges the violently coercive entrepreneurial masculinity and phallic power represented by Captain Ahab.  The non-competitive union of the two men becomes the foundation for a reexamination of men's relation to one another and to nature.  In the end, only Ishmael survives at sea by using Queequeg's coffin as a flotation device.  Queequeg's symbolic reaching out to Ishmael from his own death is suggestive of the maternal love and devotion that Victorian middle-class Americans considered necessary to men's spiritual salvation.

Moby Dick can be read as a homoerotic, sentimental critique of an emerging definition of bourgeois entrepreneurial manhood, which sustains and perpetuates itself through the exploitation of natural resources and the domination of other men in the workplace.  The novel contains a plea for an ideal of artisanal manhood and the need to resist the forces of entrepreneurial capitalism.  While the novel suggests that men could prevail over forces of economic change, it also conveys Melville’s pessimism about the impact of capitalism on American masculinity.

Bibliography:

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, or, The Whale. Edited by Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford. 2nd. ed. Norton Critical Editions. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.

Gilmore, Michael T. American Romanticism and the Marketplace. Chicago: The University of

            Chicago Press, 1985.

Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

            1989.

Martin, Robert K. Hero, Captain, Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique, and Literary

            Form in the Sea Novels of Herman Melville. Chapel Hill: The University of North

            Carolina Press, 1986.

Further Reading:

Bellis, Peter J. No Mysteries Out of Ourselves: Identity and Textual Form in the Novels of

            Herman Melville. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

Cameron, Sharon. The Corporeal Self: Allegories of the Body in Melville and Hawthorne.

            Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.

Castronovo, Russ. Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom.

            Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography: 1819-1851. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

            University Press, 1996.

------. Herman Melville: A Biography: 1851-1891. Baltimore: The      Johns Hopkins University

            Press, 2002.

Tolchin, Neal L. Mourning, Gender, and Creativity in the Art of Herman Melville. New Haven:

            Yale University Press, 1988.

Related Topics:

Artisan; Body; Capitalism; Industrialization; Individualism; Homosexuality; Market Revolution; Mother-Son Relation; Patriarchy; Property; Sentimentalism; Victorian Era; Violence

—Thomas Winter