Today we will look at the most famous arbitrariness of the American writer Herman Melville, or rather his summary. "Moby Dick, or the White Whale" - a novel based on real events. It was written in 19651.
About the book
“Moby Dick, or the White Whale” (a brief summary is presented below) became the main work of G. Melville, a representative of American romanticism. This novel is replete with numerous lyrical discussions, has references to biblical stories, and is replete with symbols. Perhaps this is why it was not accepted by his contemporaries. Neither critics nor readers understood the full depth of the work. It was only in the 20s of the 20th century that the novel seemed to be rediscovered, paying tribute to the author’s talent.
History of creation
The plot of the novel was based on real events, which can be confirmed brief retelling. Herman Melville (“Moby Dick” became the pinnacle of his work) took as the basis for his work an incident that happened on the ship “Essex”. This ship went fishing in 1819 in Massachusetts. For a whole year and a half, the crew hunted whales, until one day a huge sperm whale put an end to it. On November 20, 1820, the ship was rammed several times by a whale.
After the shipwreck, 20 sailors survived and managed to get on boats to Henderson Island, which was uninhabited in those years. After some time, some of the survivors went to look for the mainland, the rest remained on the island. The travelers wandered at sea for 95 days. Only two survived - the captain and another sailor. They were picked up by a whaling ship. They were the ones who spoke about what happened to them.
In addition, the pages of the novel also included personal experience Melville, who sailed on a whaling ship for a year and a half. Many of his then acquaintances turned out to be heroes of the novel. Thus, one of the co-owners of the ship appears in the work under the name Bildad.
Summary: “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” (Melville)
The main character is a young man Ishmael. He is experiencing severe financial problems, and life on land is gradually starting to bore him. Therefore, he decides to go on a whaling ship, where he can make good money, and it is generally impossible to get bored at sea.
Nantucket is the oldest American port city. However, by the beginning of the 19th century, it ceased to be the largest fishing center; it was replaced by younger ones. However, it is important for Ishmael to hire a ship here.
On the way to Nantucket, Ishmael stops in another port town. Here you can meet savages on the streets who have moored ships on some unknown island. The buffet counters are made from huge whale jaws. And preachers in churches climb up to the pulpit.
At the inn, the young man meets Queequeg, a native harpooner. Very quickly they become good friends, so they decide to board the ship together.
"Pequod"
This is just the beginning of our summary. “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” is a novel that begins in the port city of Nantucket, where Ishmael and his new friend are hired on the Pequod ship. The whaler is preparing for a circumnavigation of the world, which will last 3 years.
Ishmael learns the story of the ship's captain. On the last voyage, Ahab, having fought with a whale, lost his leg. After this event, he became melancholic and gloomy and spends most of his time in his cabin. And on the way back from the voyage, as the sailors say, he was even out of his mind for some time.
However, Ishmael did not attach much importance to this and some other strange events associated with the ship. Having met a suspicious stranger on the pier who began to predict the death of the Pequod and its entire crew, the young man decided that he was just a beggar and a swindler. And he considered the vague dark figures that boarded the ship at night and then seemed to dissolve on it to be simply the fruit of his fantasies.
Captain
The oddities associated with the captain and his ship are confirmed by the summary. Moby Dick continues with Ahab leaving his cabin only a few days after the voyage began. Ishmael saw him and was struck by the captain’s gloom and the imprint of incredible inner pain on his face.
Especially so that the one-legged captain could maintain balance during strong rolling, small holes were cut in the deck boards into which he placed his artificial leg, made from the jaw of a sperm whale.
The captain gives the order to the sailors to look out for the white whale. Ahab does not communicate with anyone, he is closed and demands from the team only unquestioning obedience and instant execution of his orders. Many of these commands cause confusion among subordinates, but the captain refuses to explain anything. Ishmael understands that some dark secret lurks in the captain’s gloomy reverie.
First time at sea
“Moby Dick” is a book whose summary tells about the feelings experienced by a person who goes to sea for the first time. Ishmael carefully observes life on a whaling ship. Melville devotes a lot of space to these descriptions on the pages of his freedom. Here you can find descriptions of all kinds of auxiliary tools, and rules, and basic techniques for hunting whales, and the methods by which spermaceti, a substance consisting of animal fat, is extracted from fish.
There are chapters in the novel that are devoted to various books about whales, reviews of the structures of whale tails, fountains, and skeletons. There are even references to sperm whale figurines made from stone, bronze and other materials. Throughout the novel, the author inserts various information about these extraordinary mammals.
Golden doubloon
Our summary continues. Moby Dick is a novel that is interesting not only for its reference materials and information about whales, but also for its exciting plot. So, one day Ahab gathers the entire crew of the Pequod, who sees a golden doubloon nailed to the mast. The captain says that the coin will go to the one who first notices the approach of the white whale. This albino sperm whale is known among whalers as Moby Dick. It terrifies sailors with its ferocity, enormous size and unprecedented cunning. His skin is covered with scars from harpoons, as he often fought with people, but invariably emerged victorious. This incredible resistance, which usually ended in the death of the ship and crew, taught the whalers not to make any attempt to catch him.
A chapter-by-chapter summary tells about the terrible meeting between Ahab and Moby Dick. G. Melville describes how the captain lost his leg when, finding himself among the wreckage of the ship, he rushed in a rage at the sperm whale with one knife in his hand. After this story, the captain announces that he is going to chase the white whale until its carcass is on the ship.
Hearing this, Starbeck, the first mate, objects to the captain. He says that it is unreasonable to take revenge on a creature devoid of reason for the actions that it committed in obedience to blind instinct. Moreover, there is blasphemy in this. But the captain, and then the whole crew, begin to see the image of a white whale as the embodiment of universal evil. They curse the sperm whale and drink to its death. Only one cabin boy, the black boy Pip, offers a prayer to God, asking for protection from these people.
The pursuit
A summary of the work “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” tells how the Pequod first met sperm whales. Boats begin to be lowered into the water, and at that moment those same mysterious dark ghosts appear - Ahab's personal crew, recruited from people from South Asia. Until this moment, Ahab hid them from everyone, keeping them in the hold. The unusual sailors are led by a middle-aged, sinister-looking man named Fedalla.
Even though the captain is only pursuing Moby Dick, he cannot completely give up hunting other whales. Therefore, the ship tirelessly hunts, and the barrels with spermaceti are filled. When the Pequod meets other ships, the captain first asks if the sailors have seen a white whale. Most often, the answer is a story about how Moby Dick killed or maimed someone from the team.
New ominous prophecies are also heard: a distraught sailor from a ship infected with an epidemic warns the crew about the fate of the sacrileges who risked entering into battle with the embodiment of God's wrath.
One day, fate brings the Pequod together with another ship, whose captain harpooned Moby Dick, but as a result was seriously wounded and lost his arm. Ahab speaks to this man. It turns out that he does not even think of taking revenge on the whale. However, he reports the coordinates where the ship collided with the sperm whale.
Starbeck again tries to warn the captain, but all in vain. Ahab orders a harpoon to be forged from the hardest steel on the ship. And the blood of three harpooners goes into tempering the formidable weapon.
Prophecy
More and more, Moby Dick becomes a symbol of evil for the captain and his crew. Short description focuses on the events that happen to Queequeg, Ishmael's friend. The harpooner falls ill from hard work in the damp and feels his imminent death. He asks Ishmael to make a funeral boat for him, on which his body would glide on the waves. When Queequeg recovers, they decide to convert the canoe into a rescue buoy.
At night, Fedallah tells the captain a terrible prophecy. Before he dies, Ahab will see two hearses: one made by an inhuman hand, the second from American wood. And only hemp can cause death to the captain. But before that, Fedalla himself will have to die. Ahab does not believe - he is too old to end up on the gallows.
Approximation
There are more and more signs that the ship is approaching the place where Moby Dick lives. The chapter summary describes a ferocious storm. Starbeck is convinced that the captain will lead the ship to destruction, but does not dare to kill Ahab, trusting fate.
During a storm, the ship meets another ship - the Rachel. His captain reports that he was chasing Moby Dick the day before, and asks Ahab to help him find his 12-year-old son, who was carried away along with the whaleboat. However, the captain of the Pequod refuses.
Finally, a white hump is seen in the distance. The whale's ship chases it for three days. And then the Pequod catches up with him. However, Moby Dick immediately attacks and bites the captain's whaleboat in two. With great difficulty he manages to save him. The captain is ready to continue the hunt, but the whale is already swimming away from them.
By morning the sperm whale is overtaken again. Moby Dick smashes two more whaleboats. The drowning sailors are lifted aboard, and it turns out that Fedalla has disappeared. Ahab begins to be afraid, he remembers the prophecy, but he can no longer give up the pursuit.
The third day
Captain Moby Dick beckons. The summary of all the chapters paints a picture of dark omens, but Ahab is obsessed with his desire. The whale again destroys several whaleboats and tries to leave, but Ahab continues to pursue him in the only boat. Then the sperm whale turns and rams the Pequod. The ship begins to sink. Ahab throws the last harpoon, the wounded whale sharply plunges into the depths and carries away the captain entangled in the hemp rope. The ship is pulled into the funnel, and the last whaleboat, where Ishmael is located, is also pulled into it.
Denouement
Only Ishmael is left alive from the entire crew of the ship by Melville. Moby Dick (the summary confirms this), wounded but alive, goes into the depths of the ocean.
The main character miraculously manages to survive. The only thing that survived from the ship was the failed and tarred coffin of his friend. It is on this structure that the hero spends a day on the open sea until the sailors from the ship “Rachel” find him. The captain of this ship still hoped to find his lost child.
In the literary history of the United States, the work of Herman Melville is an outstanding and original phenomenon. The writer has long been ranked among the classics of American literature, and his wonderful creation “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” is rightfully considered one of the masterpieces of world literature. Melville's life, his writings, correspondence, and diaries have been thoroughly studied. There are dozens of biographies and monographs, hundreds of articles and publications, thematic collections and collective works devoted to various aspects of the writer’s work. And yet Melville as a person and as an artist, the lifetime and posthumous fate of his books continue to remain a mystery, not fully solved or explained.
Melville's life and work are full of paradoxes, contradictions and inexplicable oddities. For example, he did not have any serious formal education. He never studied at university. Why is there a university? The harsh necessities of life forced him to leave school at the age of twelve. At the same time, Melville's books tell us that he was one of the most educated people of his time. The deep insights in the fields of epistemology, sociology, psychology, and economics that the reader encounters in his works presuppose not only the presence of acute intuition, but also a solid stock of scientific knowledge. Where, when, how did he acquire them? One can only assume that the writer had an amazing ability to concentrate, which allowed him to absorb a huge amount of information and critically comprehend it in a short time.
Or let's take, say, the nature of the genre evolution of Melville's work. We are already accustomed to a more or less traditional picture: a young writer begins with poetic experiments, then tries himself in short prose genres, then moves on to stories and, finally, having reached maturity, takes on the creation of large canvases. For Melville, it was the other way around: he started with stories and novels, then took up writing stories and ended his career as a poet.
IN creative biography Melville did not have a student period. He did not make his way into literature, he “broke into” it, and his first book – “Typee” – brought him wide fame in America, and then in England, France and Germany. Subsequently, his skill increased, the content of his books became deeper, and his popularity inexplicably fell. By the beginning of the sixties, Melville was “deadly” forgotten by his contemporaries. In the seventies, an English admirer of his talent tried to find Melville in New York, but to no avail. To all questions he received an indifferent answer: “Yes, there was such a writer. What happened to him now is unknown. He seems to have died." Meanwhile, Melville lived in New York and served as a cargo inspector at customs. Here is another mysterious phenomenon that can be called “Melville’s silence.” In fact, the writer “fell silent” in the prime of his strength and talent (he was not yet forty years old) and remained silent for three decades. The only exceptions are two collections of poems and a poem, published in scanty quantities at the expense of the author and completely unnoticed by critics.
The posthumous fate of Melville's creative legacy was equally extraordinary. Before 1919, it seemed to not exist. They forgot about the writer so completely that when he actually died, they couldn’t even correctly reproduce his name in a short obituary. 1919 marked the hundredth anniversary of the writer’s birth. There were no solemn meetings or anniversary articles on this occasion. Only one person remembered the glorious date - Raymond Weaver, who then began writing the first biography of Melville. The book was published two years later and was called “Herman Melville, Sailor and Mystic.” Weaver's efforts were supported by the famous English writer D.H. Lawrence, whose popularity in America during these years was enormous. He wrote two articles on Melville and included them in his collection of psychoanalytic articles, Studies on Classical American Literature (1923).
America remembered Melville. Yes, how I remembered! The writer’s books began to be republished in mass editions, unpublished manuscripts were retrieved from archives, films and performances (including operas) were made based on Melville’s writings, artists were inspired by Melville’s images, and Rockwell Kent created a series of brilliant graphic sheets on the themes of “The White Whale.” .
Naturally, Melville’s “boom” extended to literary studies. Literary historians, biographers, critics, and even people far from literature (historians, psychologists, sociologists) got down to business. The thin stream of Melville studies turned into a torrent. Today this flow has subsided somewhat, but has not yet dried up. The latest sensational splash occurred in 1983, when two suitcases and a wooden chest containing Melville's manuscripts and letters from members of his family were accidentally discovered in an abandoned barn in upstate New York. One hundred and fifty Melville scholars are now busy studying new materials, with a view to making the necessary adjustments to Melville's biographies.
Let us note, however, that Melville’s “revival” has only a distant connection with his centenary. Its origins should be sought in the general mentality that characterized the spiritual life of America in the late tenths and early twenties of the 20th century. General move socio-historical development of the USA at the turn of the century and especially the first imperialist war gave rise in the minds of many Americans to doubt and even protest against the bourgeois-pragmatic values, ideals, and criteria that guided the country throughout its one and a half century history. This protest was realized at many levels (social, political, ideological), including literary. It was laid as an ideological and philosophical foundation in the works of O’Neill, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Anderson, Faulkner, Wolfe - writers who are traditionally classified as the so-called lost generation, but who would be more correctly called the generation of protesters. It was then that America remembered the romantic rebels who affirmed the greatest value of the human personality and protested against everything that suppresses, oppresses, and reshapes this personality according to the standards of bourgeois morality. Americans rediscovered the works of Poe, Hawthorne, Dickinson, and at the same time the forgotten Melville.
Today it would no longer occur to anyone to doubt Melville’s right to be placed on the literary Olympus of the United States, and in the Pantheon of American Writers, being built in New York, he is given a place of honor next to Irving, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne and Whitman. He is read and revered. An enviable fate, great glory, which the writer could not even imagine during his lifetime!
Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819 in New York in the family of a middle-class businessman engaged in import and export operations. The family was large (four sons and four daughters) and, at first glance, quite prosperous. Today, when we know how closely Melville’s personal and creative fate is intertwined with the historical destinies of his homeland, the very fact of his birth in 1819 seems significant. It was this year that the young, naive, full of patriotic optimism and faith in “divine destiny” experienced a tragic shock: an economic crisis broke out in the country. The Americans' complacent belief that in America “everything is different from what they have there in Europe” received its first tangible blow. However, not everyone was able to read the fiery writings on the wall. Melville's father was among those who did not heed the warning and were severely punished. The business of his trading company fell into complete decline, and in the end he was forced to liquidate his enterprise, sell his house in New York and move to Albany. Unable to withstand the nervous shock, he lost his mind and soon died. The Melville family fell into “noble poverty.” The mother and daughters moved to the village of Lansingburg, where they somehow made ends meet, and their sons scattered around the world.
A young American with the biblical name Ishmael (in the book of Genesis it is said about Ishmael, the son of Abraham: “He will be among men like a wild ass, his hand against everyone and the hand of everyone against him”), bored with being on land and experiencing difficulties with money, accepts decision to set sail on a whaling ship. In the first half of the 19th century. the oldest American whaling port, Nantucket, is no longer the largest center of this fishery, but Ishmael considers it important for himself to hire a ship in Nantucket. Stopping on the way there in another port city, where it is not unusual to meet on the street a savage who has joined the crew of a whaler who visited there on unknown islands, where you can see a buffet counter made of a huge whale jaw, where even a preacher in a church climbs to the pulpit on a rope ladder - Ishmael listens to a passionate sermon about the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed up by Leviathan, trying to avoid the path assigned to him by God, and meets the native harpooner Queequeg at the inn. They become bosom friends and decide to join the ship together.
In Nantucket, they are hired by the whaler Pequod, which is preparing to set out on a three-year voyage around the world. Here Ishmael learns that Captain Ahab (Ahab in the Bible is the wicked king of Israel who established the cult of Baal and persecuted the prophets), under whose command he will go to sea, on his last voyage, fighting with a whale, lost his leg and has not been out since then out of gloomy melancholy, and on the ship, on the way home, he was even out of his mind for some time. But Ishmael does not yet attach any importance to this news or to other strange events that make one think about some secret connected with the Pequod and its captain. He takes a stranger he meets on the pier, who makes vague but menacing prophecies about the fate of the whaler and everyone enlisted in his crew, for a madman or a swindler-beggar. And the dark human figures, at night, secretly, ascending to the Pequod and then seeming to dissolve on the ship, Ishmael is ready to consider as a figment of his own imagination.
Only a few days after sailing from Nantucket, Captain Ahab leaves his cabin and appears on deck. Ishmael is struck by his gloomy appearance and the inescapable inner pain imprinted on his face. Holes were drilled in the deck boards in advance so that Ahab could, by strengthening a bone leg made from the polished jaw of a sperm whale, maintain balance during the rocking. Observers on the masts were ordered to look especially vigilantly for white whales in the sea. The captain is painfully withdrawn, demands unquestioning and immediate obedience even more harshly than usual, and sharply refuses to explain his own speeches and actions even to his assistants, in whom they often cause bewilderment. “The soul of Ahab,” says Ishmael, “during the harsh blizzard winter of his old age hid in the hollow trunk of his body and there sullenly sucked the paw of darkness.”
Having gone to sea for the first time on a whaler, Ishmael observes the features of a fishing vessel, work and life on it. The short chapters that make up the entire book contain descriptions of tools, techniques and rules for hunting a sperm whale and extracting spermaceti from its head. Other chapters, “whale studies” - from the book’s prefabricated collection of references to whales in a wide variety of literature to detailed reviews of a whale’s tail, a fountain, a skeleton, and finally whales made of bronze and stone, even whales among the stars - throughout the novel complement the narrative and merge with it, imparting a new, metaphysical dimension to events.
One day, by order of Ahab, the Pequod crew assembles. A gold Ecuadorian doubloon is nailed to the mast. It is intended for the first person to spot the albino whale, famous among whalers and nicknamed Moby Dick. This sperm whale, terrifying with its size and ferocity, whiteness and unusual cunning, carries in its skin many harpoons that were once aimed at it, but in all fights with humans it remains the winner, and the crushing rebuff that people received from it has taught many to the idea that that hunting him threatens with terrible disasters. It was Moby Dick who deprived Ahab of his legs when the captain, finding himself at the end of the chase among the wreckage of whaleboats broken by a whale, in a fit of blind hatred rushed at him with only a knife in his hand. Now Ahab announces that he intends to pursue this whale across all the seas of both hemispheres until the white carcass sways in the waves and releases its last fountain of black blood. In vain does Starbuck's first mate, a strict Quaker, object to him that taking revenge on a creature devoid of reason, striking only by blind instinct, is madness and blasphemy. In everything, Ahab answers, the unknown features of some rational principle are visible through the meaningless mask; and if you must strike, strike through this mask! A white whale floats obsessively before his eyes as the embodiment of all evil. With delight and rage, deceiving their own fear, the sailors join in his curses on Moby Dick. Three harpooners, having filled the upside-down tips of their harpoons with rum, drink to the death of a white whale. And only the ship's cabin boy, the little black boy Pip, prays to God for salvation from these people.
When the Pequod first encounters sperm whales and the whaleboats are preparing to launch, five dark-faced ghosts suddenly appear among the sailors. This is the crew of Ahab’s own whaleboat, people from some islands in South Asia. Since the owners of the Pequod, believing that a one-legged captain could no longer be of any use during a hunt, did not provide rowers for his own boat, he brought them onto the ship secretly and still hid them in the hold. Their leader is the ominous-looking middle-aged Parsi Fedalla.
Although any delay in searching for Moby Dick is painful for Ahab, he cannot completely give up hunting whales. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the Indian Ocean, the Pequod hunts and fills barrels with spermaceti. But the first thing Ahab asks when meeting other ships is whether they have ever seen a white whale. And the answer is often a story about how, thanks to Moby Dick, one of the team died or was mutilated. Even in the middle of the ocean, prophecies cannot be avoided: a half-mad sectarian sailor from a ship stricken by an epidemic exhorts one to fear the fate of the sacrileges who dared to fight the embodiment of God’s wrath. Finally, the Pequod meets an English whaler, whose captain, having harpooned Moby Dick, received a deep wound and as a result lost an arm. Ahab hurries to get on board and talk to the man whose fate is so similar to his. The Englishman does not even think about taking revenge on the sperm whale, but reports the direction in which the white whale went. Again Starbuck tries to stop his captain - and again in vain. By order of Ahab, the ship's blacksmith forges a harpoon from especially hard steel, for the hardening of which three harpooners donate their blood. The Pequod heads out into the Pacific Ocean.
Ishmael's friend, the harpooner Queequeg, having become seriously ill from working in a damp hold, feels the approach of death and asks the carpenter to make him an unsinkable coffin-shuttle in which he could set off across the waves to the starry archipelagos. And when unexpectedly his condition changes for the better, it is decided to caulk and tar the coffin, which was unnecessary for the time being, in order to turn it into a large float - a rescue buoy. The new buoy, as expected, is suspended from the stern of the Pequod, quite surprising with its characteristic shape of the team of oncoming ships.
At night, in a whaleboat, near the dead whale, Fedalla announces to the captain that on this voyage he is not destined to have either a coffin or a hearse, but Ahab must see two hearses at sea before he dies: one - built by inhuman hands, and the second, made of wood, grown in America; that only hemp could cause Ahab's death, and even in this last hour Fedallah himself would go ahead of him as a pilot. The captain doesn’t believe it: what does hemp and rope have to do with it? He is too old to go to the gallows.
The signs of approaching Moby Dick are becoming more and more clear. In a fierce storm, the fire of St. Elmo flares up on the tip of a harpoon forged for a white whale. That same night, Starbuck, confident that Ahab is leading the ship to inevitable death, stands at the door of the captain's cabin with a musket in his hands and still does not commit murder, preferring to submit to fate. The storm remagnetizes the compasses, now they direct the ship away from these waters, but Ahab, who noticed this in time, makes new arrows from sailing needles. The sailor falls off the mast and disappears into the waves. The Pequod meets the Rachel, who had been pursuing Moby Dick just the day before. The captain of the "Rachel" begs Ahab to join the search for the whaleboat lost during yesterday's hunt, in which his twelve-year-old son was, but receives a sharp refusal. From now on, Ahab climbs the mast himself: he is pulled up in a basket woven from cables. But as soon as he gets to the top, a sea hawk rips his hat off and carries him out to sea. There is a ship again - and on it, too, the sailors killed by the white whale are buried.
The golden doubloon is faithful to its owner: a white hump appears from the water in front of the captain himself. The chase lasts three days, three times the whaleboats approach the whale. Having bitten Ahab's whaleboat in two, Moby Dick circles around the captain, thrown aside, not allowing other boats to come to his aid until the approaching Pequod pushes the sperm whale away from his victim. As soon as he is in the boat, Ahab again demands his harpoon - the whale, however, is already swimming away, and he has to return to the ship. It gets dark, and the Pequod loses sight of the whale. The whaler follows Moby Dick all night and catches him again at dawn. But, having tangled the lines from the harpoons pierced into it, the whale smashes two whaleboats against each other, and attacks Ahab’s boat, diving and hitting the bottom from under the water. The ship picks up people in distress, and in the confusion it is not immediately noticed that there is no Parsi among them. Remembering his promise, Ahab cannot hide his fear, but continues the pursuit. Everything that happens here is predetermined, he says.
On the third day, the boats, surrounded by a flock of sharks, again rush to the fountain seen on the horizon; a sea hawk again appears above the Pequod - now it carries away the torn ship’s pennant in its claws; a sailor was sent up the mast to replace him. Enraged by the pain that the wounds received the day before cause him, the whale immediately rushes onto the whaleboats, and only the captain’s boat, among whose rowers Ishmael is now, remains afloat. And when the boat turns sideways, the rowers are presented with the torn corpse of Fedalla, fastened to Moby Dick’s back with loops of a tench wrapped around the giant body. This is the first hearse. Moby Dick is not looking for a meeting with Ahab, he is still trying to leave, but the captain’s whaleboat is not far behind. Then, turning around to meet the Pequod, which had already lifted people from the water, and having guessed in it the source of all its persecution, the sperm whale rams the ship. Having received a hole, the Pequod begins to dive, and Ahab, watching from the boat, realizes that in front of him is a second hearse. There is no way to escape. He aims the last harpoon at the whale. The hemp line, whipped up in a loop by the sharp jerk of the stricken whale, wraps itself around Ahab and carries him into the abyss. The whaleboat with all the rowers falls into a huge funnel on the site of an already sunken ship, in which everything that was once the Pequod is hidden to the last chip. But when the waves are already closing over the head of the sailor standing on the mast, his hand rises and nevertheless strengthens the flag. And this is the last thing that is visible above the water.
Having fallen out of the whaleboat and remaining behind the stern, Ishmael is also dragged towards the funnel, but when he reaches it, it has already turned into a smooth foamy pool, from the depths of which a rescue buoy - a coffin - unexpectedly bursts to the surface. On this coffin, untouched by sharks, Ishmael stays for a day on the open sea until an alien ship picks him up: it was the inconsolable "Rachel", which, wandering in search of her missing children, found only one more orphan.
“And I alone was saved, to tell you...”
Retold
American novel writer Herman Melville"Moby Dick, or the White Whale", written more than a century and a half ago, continues to be popular. The story of the crew of the whaling ship "Pekhod", whose captain is obsessed with the idea of revenge against a huge white whale, the killer of whalers, fascinates readers and viewers of numerous film adaptations.
The events that formed the basis of the novel unfolded three decades before it was written. But Captain George Pollard, which became the prototype Captain Ahab, managed to survive.
On August 12, 1819, the ship Essex left the harbor of Nantucket Island to go whaling. The crew planned to fish off the west coast for the next two and a half years. South America.
The Essex was an old ship, but its voyages were profitable, for which the ship was nicknamed “lucky.” A young crew set out to hunt whales in August 1819: Captain George Pollard was 29 years old. First Mate Owen Chase 23 years old, and the youngest crew member was cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, who was only 14 years old. In total, the crew consisted of 21 people.
Hike to the "Sea Land"
Problems began just two days after leaving port, when the Essex ran into a squall. The ship was badly battered, but the captain decided to move on without wasting time on repairs.
By December 1819, the Essex reached Cape Horn, where it was stuck for five weeks due to stormy weather. There was talk among the team that trouble at the beginning of a hike is a bad sign. However, Captain Pollard managed to quell discontent among the crew members.
In the end, the Essex arrived safely in the fishing area and previous conversations about possible disasters were left behind. The fishery was going well, but the resources of the area were clearly coming to an end. At this point, the Essex encountered another whaling ship, whose crew reported a new open fishing area known as "Sea Land". Captain Pollard thought about it - the indicated area was located in the south Pacific Ocean, at a distance of more than 4,500 km from the place where they were located. In addition, according to rumors, the local islands were inhabited by cannibalistic savages.
As a result, the captain of the Essex decides that the game is worth the candle and heads to the Sea Land. But first, Pollard calls at the Ecuadorian port of Atacamez to replenish water and provisions. Here he escaped from the ship sailor Henry Devitt.
Sailor Chappell's bad joke
Pollard, however, was more worried not about the disappearance of the sailor, but about the danger of being left without food. Therefore, he decided to also go to the Galapagos Islands to catch giant tortoises there. This was a common practice of the time - turtles could live on a ship without food or water for a whole year, which turned them into an ideal source of meat supplies.
The sailors caught more than 300 turtles until an unpleasant incident occurred on Charles Island. While the crew was hunting, sailor Thomas Chappell decided to light a fire in the forest in order to play a trick on the other sailors. However, just at this time the drought peaked, and the fire soon got out of control, quickly surrounding the hunters. The crew barely broke through to the Essex and was forced to urgently sail, and the island burned to the ground.
In November 1820, the Essex reached the fishing area. The first days were unsuccessful, and on November 16, the bottom of one of the whaleboats with whalers was pierced by a whale. The sailors were not injured, but the boat could not be restored.
Tension began to grow on the ship again, and now not only the sailors, but also the first mate Chase began to show dissatisfaction. Despite this, the fishery continued.
commons.wikimedia.org
The giant goes to ram
On the morning of November 20, 1820, the team saw a fountain in the sea and set off in pursuit using the three remaining whaleboats.
The boat, commanded by First Mate Chase, managed to harpoon the whale, but it damaged the whaleboat, and the whalers had to urgently cut the harpoon rope in order to return to the Essex for urgent repairs.
While Chase was busy making repairs, Pollard and the rest of the crew managed to harpoon another whale, which was dragging the Essex's whaleboats.
Those who remained on the ship suddenly noticed a very large whale that appeared not far from the Essex. At first he lay motionless on the surface of the water with his head towards the ship, and then began to move towards the ship, picking up speed with small diving movements. The whale rammed the Essex and went under it, tilting the ship. Then the sperm whale surfaced on the starboard side and positioned itself along the ship, with its head towards the bow and its tail towards the stern.
Having recovered from the first attack, the whale rushed into the second, pointing its huge head straight at the bow of the ship. He broke the bow, throwing the ship back. The aggressive whale then disappeared.
This attack is believed to be the first confirmed case of a whale attacking a whaling ship.
Illustration for an early edition of the book “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Three boats in the middle of the ocean
Essex was doomed. The team hastily began to unload property and provisions onto the repaired whaleboat. The ship in distress was approached by two boats that had previously pursued the whale. Captain Pollard, seeing what happened, was in an extremely depressed state. After all, it was his idea to go to this remote area, and now because of this they found themselves in a catastrophic situation - without a ship, on three whaleboats not intended for sea crossings, thousands of kilometers from the nearest settlements.
"Essex" went to the bottom. There were 20 sailors in three boats, who managed to unload about 270 kilograms of biscuits, several turtles and 750 liters of water from the ship, as well as a musket, some gunpowder, about a kilogram of boat nails and other tools.
This would be enough if the land were nearby, but the nearest islands were about 2000 kilometers away. In addition, disagreements began again among the sailors - first mate Chase and some of the sailors opposed the captain’s intention to go to the nearest islands. They believed that on the islands there was a risk of falling into the hands of cannibals.
This time Pollard did not dare to argue and conceded. It was decided to reach the coast of South America, for which, due to the characteristics of the winds in this area, it was necessary to cover a total of about 5,000 kilometers.
Island of Faint Hope
Having built something like masts and sails on their boats, and using boards to raise the height of the sides to protect them from waves, the whalers set off.
The provisions on the boats were damaged by sea water that got inside during heavy seas. Food soaked in salt water was still eaten, but this only increased thirst, which, given the limited supply, fresh water turned into an insoluble problem.
Suffering from thirst, the sailors were forced to constantly repair the whaleboats.
After a month of travel, exhausted by hunger, thirst and the scorching sun, the whalers from the Essex reached the uninhabited island of Henderson, part of the Pitcairn archipelago.
Here they managed to find a source of fresh water. As for food, the island had birds, eggs and crabs. However, in just a week of their stay, two dozen men, exhausted by hunger, had seriously reduced the supply of what could be eaten on this piece of land.
And again the question arose: what to do next? The majority decided that it was impossible to stay and that it was necessary to swim. However, three crew members - Thomas Chappell, Seth Weeks And William Wright- decided to stay on the island, believing that this way they would have a better chance of salvation. The future showed that these three did not make the worst choice.
“In the Heart of the Sea” Still from the film
Yung was almost eaten a few hours before the rescue
On December 26, 1820, three boats set sail towards Easter Island. The supplies produced at Henderson quickly came to an end, and the relentless wind drove them past their intended target. As a result, it was decided to try to reach the island of Mas a Tierra, part of the Juan Fernandez archipelago. It was on this island that the prototype was landed Robinson Crusoe, Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who lived on it for 4 years and 4 months completely alone.
But reaching this island also turned out to be an unrealistic goal for the Essex crew. The most terrible part of their misadventures began. January 10, 1821 died of hunger and thirst Second Mate Matthew Joy. His body was sewn into a bag made from his own clothes, a weight was tied and sent to the bottom of the ocean.
On the night of January 12, during a strong squall, the boats were scattered over a long distance, and the whaleboat, where the eldest was First Mate Owen Chase, separated from others.
In addition to Chase, four remained in this boat: Coxswain Benjamin Lawrence, sailors Isaac Cole And Richard Peterson And cabin boy Thomas Nickerson. On January 18, Richard Peterson died, unable to bear the hardships. He, like Matthew Joy, was buried at sea.
In early February, there was no food left on Chase's boat. The sailors were dying. Isaac Cole passed away on February 8th. But this time the body was not thrown overboard - Chase invited his comrades to eat the deceased. The moral torment did not last long, and soon all three greedily devoured human flesh. They survived on this diet for another week, but then hunger again began to torment those still alive.
On the morning of February 18, cabin boy Nickerson announced that he was ready to die. Chase and Lawrence, however, decided not to rush the natural process. As it turned out, they did not take another sin on their souls quite correctly - a few hours later they were picked up by the British whaling ship Indian. A week later they were taken to the Chilean port of Valparaiso, where the three survivors were given all the necessary assistance.
The most terrible lot
The remaining two boats ran out of provisions on January 14 and 21, respectively. At the end of January, three black sailors died one after another - Lawson Thomas, Charles Shorter and Isaiah Shepard. All three bodies were eaten alive. On January 28, another black sailor, Samuel Reed, died while sailing in Captain Pollard's whaleboat. The next night, the two remaining boats lost each other in the darkness of the night. The whaleboat containing Obed Hendricks, Joseph West and William Bond was lost forever. It is believed that they did not manage to get to land.
The body of Samuel Reed was eaten in the captain's boat, but by early February the food problem again required resolution. Four survived - captain George Pollard and sailors Charles Ramsdell, Barzillai Ray and Owen Coffin.
On February 1, it was decided to draw lots to decide who would sacrifice themselves by becoming food for the others. The lot fell on 17-year-old Owen Coffin, the captain's cousin. The second draw indicated that Charles Ramsdell would kill Coffin. Coffin was shot with a pistol, after which the three sailors began to eat.
There was no need to choose a new victim - Barzillai Ray died on February 11. Having eaten the body of this unfortunate man, the surviving captain and sailor began to look at each other, wondering which of them would be left alone. However, on February 23, 1821, they were encountered by the whaling ship Dauphin. On March 17, Pollard and Ramsdell were taken to Valparaiso.
"In the heart of the sea." Still from the film
The captain of the Essex ended his life as a night watchman
After the survivors spoke about their three comrades remaining on Henderson Island, the American frigate Constellation headed there. On April 5, 1821, hungry, exhausted, but alive people were taken aboard an American ship.
The surviving eight sailors returned to Nantucket. The terrible story that happened to them did not change their way of life - a few months later they went to sea again.
But Captain Pollard turned out to be a monstrous failure in his profession. Having gone fishing at the beginning of 1822 on the whaling ship "Two Brothers", he was again wrecked. The crew was rescued, but Pollard ended up on a merchant ship, which... also crashed.
Returning home, Pollard was going to take command of the new ship Yonah, but its owner, after another wreck of the unsuccessful captain, refused his services.
Pollard retired and began working as a night watchman. Until the end of his days on November 20, he locked himself in his room and alone commemorated his fallen comrades from the Essex.
Moby Dick, personifying the vast, mysterious “space,” is beautiful and terrible at the same time. He is beautiful because he is snow-white, endowed with fantastic strength, the ability for energetic and tireless movement. He's terrible for the same reasons. The horror of the whiteness of the whale is partly due to associations of death, shroud, ghost. Whiteness in various connections can symbolize both Good and Evil at the same time, that is, by its nature it is indifferent. But the main thing that makes whiteness terrible for Ishmael is its colorlessness. Combining all colors, whiteness destroys them. It is “essentially not a color, but the visible absence of any color.” Whiteness, personifying something in the human mind, in itself is nothing: there is neither Good nor Evil in it, neither beauty nor ugliness - there is only one monstrous indifference in it. Moby Dick's strength and energy are also aimless, meaningless and indifferent. This is also terrible. Ishmael perceives Moby Dick as a symbol of the universe, therefore, in Ishmael’s universe there is no higher rational or moral force: it is uncontrollable and aimless; without God and without providential laws. There is nothing here but uncertainty, heartless emptiness and immensity. The universe is indifferent to man. This is a picture of a world without meaning and without God.
To the question posed to himself: “Is there some higher power in nature (“the universe”) that is responsible for human activity and the life of human society?” Melville answered negatively. His nature has no morality. In his universe there is no absolute spirit, no Puritan God, no transcendentalist God in man. Following the paths of idealistic philosophy, Melville spontaneously stepped over its boundaries. Literary history of the United States. T. 1. - M., 1977. - P. 172..
Moby Dick, according to Melville, is not an instrument of any kind higher powers or their personification. All the Evil that Ahab sees in the White Whale is a projection of some part of his consciousness. Evil is an element of Ahab's own consciousness. Melville's thought has a double movement: from reality to consciousness and then from consciousness to reality. Those images and ideas that Ahab’s consciousness projects onto the White Whale ultimately have their source in objective reality. This move takes Melville from the field of epistemology to the field of ethics, for the question arises of what kind of phenomena public life And public consciousness generate a “sphere” of Evil in the consciousness of Ahab. Researchers assess this Evil differently. This and “The Evil of the World”; and Evil in "Ahab's Presbyterian Conscience"; and the constraining limits that people limited by conventions (Starbeck), mercantile Philistines (Stubb) and simply fools (Flask) try to impose on human consciousness; and transcendental solipsism.
Melville belonged to the last generation of American romantics. He created his novel at that moment in history when, as it seemed to him, social Evil intensified and concentrated its forces. He saw his task as combining the elements of this Evil together. Scattered throughout the novel, they merge in Ahab’s consciousness, causing him a furious protest. At the same time, the concept of Evil inevitably turns out to be abstract, without clear outlines. So that Ahab could bear such a load, Melville made him a titan; so that he would dare to rebel against all Evil, Melville made him mad.
Melville did not accept Emerson's idea of "self-trust." Objectively, this idea contributed to the strengthening of bourgeois individualism and egocentrism. Melville sensed a hidden social danger in this idea. From his point of view, exaggerated “self-confidence” played the role of a catalyst that activates and repeatedly strengthens the elements of social Evil in human consciousness. Ahab's madness is an Emersonian moral idea taken to the level of solipsism. Ahab is the image of a man moving towards his goal. This goal is alien to the entire population of the state called “Pequod”. But Ahab doesn't care about this. For him, the world does not exist separately from his self-sufficient Ego. In Ahab's universe there is only his task and his will.
The most significant and clearly expressed part of social Evil is associated with the characteristics social development America at the turn of the 1840s - 1850s. Here the united protest of American romantic thought against bourgeois-capitalist progress in its national American forms is presented in a concentrated form.
In the novel Moby Dick, epistemology and ontology do not coincide. The ontology of the world is given in its unknowability. This is revealed through symbolism, through the image of nature. The main image of the work is the White Whale. Knowledge and peace are overcome by the death of man. The plot is based on eschatological myths. Eschatologism is based on the sense of personality, on the self-awareness of the individual. Existential consciousness itself starts from the problem: “There is a God - there is no God, is there only one person in the world?” The problem of God lies precisely in its problematic nature, its lack of clarity. This is represented in a number of characters, in a number of types. Each character reflects a different type of attitude. Stubb is ignoring Evil through irony. He ignores the alien, the hostile. For example, Stubb laughs even when the whale swims to the ship. The next character is Starbeck. For him, the boundaries of the human world are delineated by religion. Starbuck's consciousness is higher than that of Stubb, who eats with the sharks. This reveals Stubb's epicureanism. Particularly prominent among the characters in the novel is Fedala, who prophesies the death of Ahab. This is where Eastern consciousness comes into play.
The narrator also stands out in the novel. The novel is narrated by two persons - Ishmael and Ahab, who express opposite points of view on the world. At the same time, Ishmael cannot be called a person, since there is no specification of him. This is the image of consciousness that enters reality. Ishmael's position is not measurable. The positions of Ahab and Ishmael are related philosophically. Ahab presents the position of confrontation between man and the world. A person always opposes himself in some way to the world around him. Ishmael’s narrative position is a desirable position, but unattainable Kovalev Yu. Novel about the White Whale // Melville G. Moby Dick, or the White Whale. - M.: Khud. literature, 1967. - P. 19..
Ahab, expressing the value of the world, is presented as a superperson. It concentrates philosophical questions. The rebellion against Moby Dick is a rebellion against God as an unknowable, hostile force. If God is not good to man, then what is he. God's hostile attitude towards man makes him the Absolute. Therefore, Ahab worships the elements of nature. The whale is associated with the pagan god Baal. Ahab is not a Christian, he transgresses the boundaries of human morality (meeting with “Rachel”). Ahab is the captain, he leads all mankind. In his rebellion, denying the higher principle, he personifies it with himself. Ahab does not tolerate the indifference of higher powers (example: talking to the wind). The stronger the personality, the stronger its egocentric claims, the more meaningless its subjectivity. In the chapter “Symphony,” Ahab realizes that his will is bound up with necessity, and this changes his sense of self. The need that Ahab feels is represented in the theme of fate.
The theme of fate is not only doom. It is based on biblical, religious images. The names of the heroes themselves contain a moral principle that connects a person with reality. There is meaning in this world, which is also in the human soul. The symbolism of the path is the ship as suffering. Exchange of blood for blood, whales for people. The subjectivism of consciousness should not be absolutized. The form that becomes the test condition is death. It presupposes the unity of man with the world. Both Ishmael and Ahab accept death. Death is the umbilical cord that connects a person to the world (chapters “Line”, “The Monkey’s Leash”). Death defines a special unity. If every person accepts death, then he will accept peace. Ishmael speaks of a world of wonders. This world, reflected in consciousness, arises only when a person accepts death. Accepting death provides a position for understanding the world. In reality, the two texts are separated: “Moby Dick, or the White Whale.” Or is an adversative conjunction that becomes a connecting conjunction.
The novel presents the theme of a lonely human soul, torn away from the world, thrown into the ocean of despair. A person seeks participation, kindness and joy. The image of Ishmael is taken from the Bible. This is a wanderer, an exile, an orphan of the world. Program for knowledge: accept the Evil of the world, if you have accepted the world; accept Death if you have accepted life. The ending of the novel is a cosmogony of a new existence. The new space is idyllic. There are no ships, blood or death here. The primary and main thing for cognition is the position of existential responsibility (not rebellion, not impersonal rejection).
There is a line in the novel: “We wove a mat.” It defines the system of poetic construction of the text. The plot is related to the fact that this is a movement towards death. But death does not make it meaningless, but focuses on eschatological myths. The world is created from the whale. Death is a transition to another state. Therefore, the motive of death is very important in the novel. Historical times are flattering. Hence many Christian allusions. The Bible gives a lot to the novel. Ahab has a cult of the Sun, Baal is associated with the figure of a whale. And, according to the Bible, Ahab submits to the cult of Baal. The idea of God is not made clear. The problem of faith is not solved in the novel and cannot be solved.
The characters in the novel reveal different attitudes towards the world. Stubb expresses a laughter consciousness, Starbeck a religious consciousness. One position is Ahab, who opposes the world, the other position is Pip. Ishmael is on the verge of texts. The world of Ishmael is a world of non-ideological ideas. Ishmael does not approach the doubloon. He is present, but not personally and objectively. It makes the world an existential experience.
Temporal overlaps constantly occur in the novel: the plot moves towards death, but in the inserted short stories another time shines through - this is the world after death. This reveals the dialectic of Good and Evil. It is most fully revealed in the chapter “Symphony”, before the pursuit of the White Whale. Ahab remains an individualist and comes to the conclusion that struggle is instilled in him by God. “You will stay, and I will die,” he tells Starbuck. There is no God in the world. The essence is concentrated in the world itself. The universe is initially disharmonious. The novel shows two possible ways person in this disharmonious world: 1. Pip is a sliver man. 2. Ahab - fighting the world, building it anew.
The world is material. Ishmael’s position: you must not lose your will. You need to find something in the world itself. But this world is nothing. The whiteness of Moby Dick is all-color. God is that which turns into nothing (Nicholas of Kuzansky). The Absolute certainly passes into Nothing. The world and the human soul are equal in size. A person not only gets to know the world, but he also gets to know himself. Ishmael is looking for points of support for an equal dialogue with the world. The ocean is something added to the Earth; it is the dark side. The ocean is a certain depth, this is a similar state, this is what is beyond it??dpt (image). Ugliness can be perceived as ugly. Keith is some kind of ugly everything.
The symbolism in the chapter “The Patchwork Quilt” is very important. Queequeg's hand lies on the blanket, and the ghost's hand as a child. It is difficult to separate a hand and a blanket, and it is also difficult to separate a whale and a man (Stubb smokes, and the whale smokes, a school of whales is like convicts). The great armada of whales is human space. But, at the same time, a whale with a blunt muzzle. The hand presses, it’s bad under the hand, i.e. suffering that makes it possible to distinguish what is from the world and what is from a living being. You can understand only by becoming involved in suffering. Biblical realities are present along with other mythological realities.
Travel replaces a bullet in the forehead for Ishmael, therefore, swimming is a continuing death. The novel includes the theme of death, which is revealed in the chapters “The Tench” and “The Monkey’s Leash.” If one falls, the other will fall too. The moment of my sin is reduced. An initiation that is resolved philosophically. In the chapter “The Salotop” it is shown that the world is all vanity, the world is sorrow. The theme of Ecclesiastes (vanity of vanities) appears. What does a prolonged death give? The chapters "Plankton" and "The Great Armada" show external and internal space. In the chapter “Amber”, ambergris is an analogue of peace, an island of happiness.
Any name found in the novel is not accidental. Thus, the name of Dante is mentioned. The novel is built on the Dantean model. The plot involves nine encounters with ships, which are comparable to Dante's nine circles of Hell. Dante's hierarchy is maintained throughout the novel.
One of the meanings inherent in the name of the ship “Pequod” is from the English adjective peccable - sinful. The ships that encounter the Pequod highlight the mission of the ship itself. There is also irony: the last ship encountered is called "Delight".
For Ishmael, freedom is not a renunciation of the world. The freedom that death gives is entry into the world. Ishmael is not there since he entered the world. This is the unity of man with the world. Thus, in the novel “Moby Dick” Melville showed a kind of navigation through the world of Good and Evil.
