Ishmael's Reading of The Great White Whale: A Prophecy of the Second Coming

Abstract

Margaret D. Bauer Ishmael's Reading ofThe Great WhiteWhale: A Prophecy of the Second Coming Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. fromW. B.Yeats, "The Second Coming" One critical issue brought up repeatedly in analyses of Herman Melville's Ishmael is whether or not he is to be taken seriously . Readers of the last two or three decades may find an answer to this question in their understanding of posttraumatic stress syndrome . Like a war veteran, Ishmael is the sole survivor of a hellish battle. With guilt similar to that of surviving veterans, he ponders Logos 1:4 1998 146 Logos the question, "Why me?" He was not the worst man on board the Pequod, but he was not the best either. (In fact, he may have been saved by the best—Queequeg, whose coffin served as his lifeboat.) Janet Reno has discussed in detail the responsibility Ishmael feels for the fate ofhis shipmates. She points out the strange occurrences Ishmael witnessed before the ship set sail, the memory of which "might trigger survivor's guilt, because it suggests that he has endorsed an undertaking that has resulted in the deaths of others." Reno also notes that Ishmael's recollection that he soon became a more active participant in the events aboard the Pequod "increases his awareness of his own culpability."1 To relieve his guilt, Ishmael convinces himselfthat he has been saved for a particular purpose— which will be the focus of my analysis of the novel. He therefore sets out to find some significant meaning in his experience and consecrates himself a prophet to warn others about what he believes they can anticipate on Judgment Day. As he writes the tale of his salvation, he recasts the characters and events so that the battle they fought with Moby Dick becomes analogous to the prophesied final battle between Christ and Satan. Bainard Cowan notes the significance of the story being told in retrospect, and in doing so, supports the notion proposed here that Ishmael is creating meaning out of his experience as he narrates: "It is of the very character of Moby-Dick as allegory that it begin retrospectively , long after the disastrous whale hunt is past, when the sole survivor of the Pequod has had sufficient time to meditate on and interpret his mysterious and overwhelming experience."2 Further on in his study, Cowan agrees with the view of Ishmael as prophet: As Dante's pilgrim returns to earth to write his poem, Ishmael returns to the land to bear witness to the whale and truth. . . .They have been given a mission, and both know that their earthly lives continue only to fulfill that mission. . . . Consequently, both poets' omission of any detail about life after their voyages, except what pertains immedi- Ishmael's Reading of The Great White Whale ately to their job of writing or telling, demonstrates an awareness of what their narratives are for—not "my life story," autobiography, but testimony to an unexpected reality in which they participated, a grander, truer reality that had both a beginning and an end in their temporal experiences—and that their lives as survivors are justified only in their product, the text.3 As suggested above, Reno also reads Ishmael's story as a "survivor 's narrative," arguing similarly in Ishmael Alone Survived that Ishmael tells his story in order to heal himself after his terrifying experience. Her focus differs from mine, however, in that she provides a psychological case study of "post-traumatic Ishmael." She illustrates how Ishmael demonstrates the "three major problems of survivors": "a painful sense of isolation,""an overwhelming sense of chaos," and the sense of loss "of the dead" and "of the innocent untraumatized self."4 I am more concerned here how, with this healing, Ishmael begins to associate the whale with God. Reno points out that it is natural for a survivor to turn to...