The Second Personal Pronoun in Moby-Dick

Abstract

URING THE LAST THIRTY YEARS many great advances have been made in linguistic study and in the applications of the results to various fields of human endeavor. Recently, a number of articles by Archibald A. Hill, Harold Whitehall, Seymour B. Chatman, and Sumner Ives have appeared, in which linguistic methods have been applied in literary criticism.1 It is certainly open to serious question whether the procedures illustrated by these articles will ultimately supplant, even in stylistic studies, what Harold Allen called 'unverifiable esthetic judgments';2 nevertheless, the linguist has supplied the critic with a very useful supplementary tool for analysis. Several years ago, Professor Wellek hinted at a linguistic approach to stylistic analysis of a literary work as follows: '. . . to study the sum of the individual traits by which [the individual linguistic system of a work] differs from comparable systems. The method here is that of contrast: -we observe the deviations and distortions from normal usage, and try to discover their aesthetic purpose.'3 This method of approach I have applied in a small way to Herman Melville's use of the second personal pronoun in Moby-Dick (i851). A cursory reading of Moby-Dick4 will make one conscious of the many archaisms of language and especially of thou and ye forms of the second personal pronoun, apparently in contrast with you forms. (The contrast is maintained in verb forms ending with -est or -s/-es.) For example, Ishmael, the narrator, on many occasions will use an indefinite you form, but on many others an indefinite thou form. Ahab and Starbuck almost invariably use a singular thou, but Flask and Stubb almost always use the singular you. The use of singular thou forms contrasts not only with singular you forms in the novel but also with the customary usage of the day and of Melville himself.