Commodore Perry as White Phantom: Moby-Dick in the Context of the Modern Age

Abstract

In “The Advocate,” Ishmael declares that “If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due.”1 Certainly American whale-ships were already “on the threshold” of Japan. But the actual “opener” of Japan’s bolted door, in the eyes of the Japanese of late Edo Period, that is to say, in the Bakumatsu era (1853-1867), was the “white phantom” personified by Commodore Perry. I propose that Perry can be interpreted as the threatening figure of the Modern Age looming over Bakumatsu Japan. In “Loomings,” Ishmael mentions Narcissus in discussing “the image of the ungraspable phantom of life.” He goes on to say, “this is the key to it all” (NN MD 5). Certainly the Narcissus myth plays a key role throughout MobyDick. It suggests, first of all, the fate of monomaniac Captain Ahab. But more important is that the reflected images in the narcissistic mirror are all projected from one’s mind. In other words, the images are created as products of one’s self-reflection. Therefore, Ishmael (and possibly Melville) is here expressing a series of ambiguous images emerging from the depths of his own mind. If this “phantom of life”—we should notice the significant word “life”—beyond its illusory images connects with Melville’s consciousness of the physical and historical world, we can also presume that the word “phantom” projects Melville’s sense of the impending modern age. Ishmael closes Chapter 1 with more references to “phantom,” in particular, “one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air” (NN MD 7). Needless to say, this “white phantom” is a prefiguration of the awful White Whale. From this moment on, Ishmael’s narcissistic mind begins expanding upon the mysterious White Whale. Likewise, in the mind of Captain Ahab, the same White Whale appears as “some unknown but still reasoning thing [that] puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask” (NN MD 164).