Unfathomable: The Meaning and Significance of

Sea Monsters in Western Literature

By

Alexandra M. Tammaro

A thesis submitted to the faculty of

The University of Florida

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of the Arts in English

Department of English

The University of Florida

April 2013 Tammaro 2

Acknowledgements

As the culmination of my undergraduate research, I was allowed to write a thesis on sea monsters, starring some of my favorite stories of all time. Oh man, what a thing. So much gratitude is owed to all of the people who have made this undertaking possible, and I hope I can express just how thankful I am. Mom and Dad, thanks for mailing me gingersnaps and patiently enduring my research-induced psychosis. Ashlyn Rothenberg, Alex Flores, and Maggie Paxson, thank you for being continuous sources of love and encouragement. I shudder to think what sort of monster I would be without our adventures together. You guys make me feel like such a champ, and the success of this thesis is owed in large part to you. A special thank-you goes out to

Spencer Smigielski, who was the very first person I pitched this idea to. Just his initial excitement was enough to motivate to create the very best paper I could. I also have a rather peculiar thank-you for the Mysterious Stranger who would periodically come into the library where I work and recommend books and pitch ideas. I don’t know what sort of cosmic event caused our paths to cross, but I’m grateful to have met you!

Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Smith and Dr. Ulanowicz., the truly brilliant professors who have shaped this paper in more ways than can honestly be accounted for. The insight, encouragement, and ideas they have shared have given me such a sense of confidence and validation, and that is one of the products of this research endeavor that I value most. I hope to be a cool English professor myself one day, and if I can inspire one person the way they have inspired me, I will count myself an undisputable success.

Alex Tammaro 3

Abstract

The sea monster is a literary archetype that has been a part of the Western literary tradition since the beginning. From Leviathan to its more modern reimaginings, sea monsters have represented a spectrum of fears. This paper takes some of the most well-known sea monsters of Western literature and analyzes their role within their respective novels and in relation to the pantheon of sea monsters as a whole. Featured works include Moby-Dick, Twenty

Thousand Leagues under the Sea, “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Sea-Raiders,” and the Bible. The paper gradually comes to focus on Moby-Dick as the preeminent example of how sea monsters represent what we fear and how they act as mediums for commentaries on meaning, morality, and the questions we as humans have about our universe. Moby-Dick is specifically examined from a Biblical perspective, and the White Whale is explored as a modern reincarnation of

Leviathan.

Tammaro 4

I. Introduction

The enigmatic sea monster is a literary element that, like the oceans, spans time and space, as well as genre and meaning. However, the hub of the most influential of these stories lines up with the mid to late 19th and the early 20th century, when sea travel and industry were beginning to grow and very real sea monsters – formerly unknown species such as giant squid and sperm whales – were starting to become household subjects. With these new landscapes and new forms of life turning up at such a rapid pace, science struggled to keep pace, and this resulted in factual outlines colored with fantastical or even theological meaning, something reflected by the literature of the time through images of good versus evil, home versus the invader, and order versus chaos. While sea monsters take on many different shapes and manifestations, and while the meaning they are imbued with may vary wildly, they still represent a fundamental discomfort in the collective human conscience regarding our place in the universe.

Their role in Western literature serves as a conglomeration of our collective fears, and because of this, they make exceptionally effective antagonists.

II. The Ocean

Before a study into the role of sea monsters in literature can begin, the environment in which they exist needs to be assessed. The ocean is a uniform and immutable entity. It is vast in three dimensions, and even though the physical sea has boundaries, the oceans within literature are often characterized as boundless and infinite. Even more so than a desert, the surface of the ocean is a vast expanse of a singular image and uniform sensory input. However, despite the monotony of the surface landscape, the ocean is absolutely teeming with life, all the way down to the darkest abysses. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, we have Tammaro 5 explored less than five percent of the ocean, leaving an immense amount of uncharted territory that has never even been seen by human eyes. The ocean is seen as a primal source, both literally and metaphorically, and some of the oceanic life of today still look relatively the same as they did when life first began on Earth, such as the modern day jellyfish and the prehistoric medusozoa they are descended from (Cartwright 746), compounding the ocean's inherent primordial implications and reinforcing a sense of deep time.

Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea uses the vastness of the ocean as a device to evoke awe and facilitate his extraordinary adventure story. Captain Nemo and his crew venture into new landscapes that border on our world and the world of fantasy, such as vast forests of sea kelp, subterranean tunnels that connect oceans, and even the lost city of Atlantis. In

Chapter 35 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, “The Mast-Head,” Ishmael ponders on the same quality that captivates Professor Arronax during his time aboard the Nautilus: the “infinite series of the sea” on which one's spirit becomes “diffused through time and space” (Melville 169 and

171). Victor Hugo’s The Toilers of the Sea describes the ocean as “melancholy: tumult and silence combined” (Hugo 186). These novels, as well as the rest of the novels discussed in this paper, are “set against the backdrop of the sea and the exotic forms it contains” (Kaplan 140), creating a canvas on which a portrait of the sea monster can be applied.

The ocean is often its own character in sea monster stories, and Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem “The Kraken” is one of the best examples of how the ocean plays an important literary function. In his poem, the “abysmal sea” (Tennyson line 2) is characterized by its extraordinary depth both in time and in a physical sense. The ocean is “so deep, in fact, that direction stops making sense” (Maxwell 2). Even the light, which instructs so much of life on land, tries to “flee,” but instead of being able to escape from the Kraken, it can only “flee about” (Maxwell 2). This Tammaro 6 basic but disturbing demonstration of chaos calls the reader to challenge the natural laws that get taken for granted, as the light is lost in a “sort of endless, pointless wandering, panic dissipating into stunned bemusement” (Maxwell 2). As Tennyson establishes the depth and quality of the ocean, he then fills it to the brim with grotesque life forms, including the Kraken itself and the

“unnumbered enormous polypi” (Tennyson 9) that exist around it. As soon as the density of life in the ocean is established, Tennyson moves on to creating an overwhelming sense of time depth by describing the “ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep” of the Kraken and the “millennial growth” of the other life forms in the abyssal regions of the sea (Tennyson 3 and 6). The poem becomes a sort of relative time line, which starts with the primordial emptiness of creation – much like the empty deep of Genesis – and ends with the Kraken rising from the ocean bottom at the time of the Apocalypse. Using the Kraken as a reference point, the descriptions of time not only suggest a universe that is even older and grander than previously considered, but their effect also asks the reader to questions a universe in which a creature like this slumbering Kraken can exist.

III. Cephalomania

Sea monster literature revolves around and is perfectly embodied by a phrase in Jules

Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: “the question of the monster” (Verne 7). The question of the monster requires an assessment of what the monster is and what it is not. In other words, the global population in Verne's novel is struggling to compose and apply a definition to the entity responsible for wreaking such havoc in the oceans of the world. The two sides of the argument are relegated to the realms of science versus the supernatural. In Verne's novel, the world is buzzing with the rumors of a mysterious and exceptionally destructive sea monster, an Tammaro 7 enigmatic creature or machine which we later learn is a submarine called the Nautilus captained by a man named Nemo. Discussion of the monster is “the fashion” and “all kinds of stories were circulated regarding it” (Verne 7). As “legends of ancient times” were reawakened and “societies of savants and scientific journals” (Verne 7) both attempted to explain the beast, the question of the monster became a global issue, and the world became an arena for the science versus supernatural debate.

A real-life phenomenon inspired the one in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and it started with The Toilers of the Sea and its horrific descriptions of the devil-fish, which is essentially an under-developed image of the octopus. Entitled “cephalomania,” this late- 19th century octopus-based sensation made cephalopods a familiar creature, much like what happened with sperm whales when whale oil became a household necessity. This time period is also when the first aquariums came about, thanks to the manufacture of newly perfected formula for artificial salt water, and soon people were able to see fish and octopi firsthand (Babb 20). As cephalopods became ingrained in popular culture, cephalomania became a phenomenon that

“align[ed] humanity's fears with the increased knowledge of biology and physiology” (Babb 19).

In other words, octopi and squid became hybrids with explanations rooted in both science and the supernatural. Just like in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, discoveries of such alien- looking organisms sparked discussion of old myths, “cannily conflating the age-old nightmares of Scylla, hydras, gorgons, [and] kraken” with the scientific discoveries regarding cephalopods at that time (Babb 19). What results from this conflation is a horrifying plausibility, where despite the fact that these monsters are disturbing and totally alien, science has proven that creatures like these actually exist, leading people to wonder what else could be lurking in the deepest recesses of the oceans. Verne articulated this fear perfectly in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: Tammaro 8

The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us. Soundings cannot

reach them. What passes in those remote depths – what beings live, or can live,

twelve of fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters – what is the organization

of these animals – we can scarcely conjecture. (Verne 12)

Hugo's book is guilty of some of this attempted conjecture, as the octopus of his narrative rather gruesomely drinks the blood of whatever hapless victim strays into its lair, and this belief went unchallenged for almost a decade, when Henry Lee published a collection of essays called The

Octopus; or, The 'Devil-fish' of Fiction and of Fact in which he scientifically disproved Hugo's depiction. Regardless, Hugo can hardly be blamed for drawing from non-scientific conclusions to describe his sea monsters, since it was being practiced by society and authors at the same time.

Cephalomania is a direct product of the many discoveries being made so quickly during this time period and the consequent inability of science to keep up. Because of this disparity, a space was created that the public imagination had to fill with less-than-scientific explanations.

Herman Melville picked up on this, and in Moby-Dick, we see it mirrored through Melville's merging of “apocalyptic rhetoric [and] fastidious observation with scientific ambitions”

(Maxwell 8). The novel itself acts as one very long attempt to explain the mysteries of the deep, going from the economic benefits of whale oil to the taxonomy of whales to the representation of whales in art to the Biblical significance of whales. The narrative structure of Moby-Dick “probes into the whale from every conceivable angle” (Kaplan 141), and readers are constantly receiving and trying to consolidate different types of information that attempt to explain not only the whale, but also bigger, universal, existential problems. It is impossible to conflate all of these angles and Tammaro 9 pieces of information regarding the whale and its universe into one coherent image of Moby-

Dick itself, and in this way, Moby-Dick resembles the Bible, but that will be expanded upon later.

Even if literary sea monsters are thoroughly fantastical, such as those of H.P. Lovecraft's

“Dagon” or “The Call of Cthulhu” for instance, science is often a weapon employed to attempt to understand the monster and therefore metaphorically defeat it. Both Lovecraft and Verne

“construct stories in which all the resources of art, science, or religion are directed, on a global scale, towards picturing [the monster]” (Maxwell 8). That is, all modes of understanding are focused on engaging this monster on an objective level. In addition, the main characters in sea monster stories often exhibit some form of intellectual superiority, even if it is in a parodied manner like Melville's pseudo-intellectual Ishmael or China Miéville's trendy scientist protagonist in Kraken. In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the main character uses his uncle's scientific papers and teams up with an expert archaeologist to unravel the mystery of Cthulhu. As the narrator in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Professor Arronax embodies a “strict adherence to known science or pseudo-science [and] a journalistic style ornamented by a wealth of technical detail,” casting a scientific light on his adventures in the Nautilus and lending them a degree of credence and objectivity.

IV. Unveiling the Sea Monster

Of course there is no need to address the correlation between monsters and their fearful aspect, but trying to detail exactly why they are scary is a much trickier pursuit. There is something significant but elusive about sea monsters that makes them more disturbing than their terrestrial counterparts. It could be that sea monsters are generally larger, or it could be that nothing on land remotely resembles the things scientists find (and are still finding) in the deepest Tammaro 10 reaches of the ocean. The thought of the pitch-blackness and pressure so strong it could crush a submarine is deeply unsettling, but it could also be the vast, almost frightening potential for discovery in the undisturbed parts of the sea, where the human mind is the only limit for what sort of creature could be lurking in the dark of the “unfathomable watery depths” (Lovecraft 24).

In literary tradition, sea monsters often represent a spectrum of insecurities, one of the major ones being the fear of the invasive Other, the “threatening figure of anomaly within the well- established order of things” (Beal 4). If sea monsters represent the unknown and the collective anxieties of a community, their historical use as markers on unexplored parts of the world map sums up this notion perfectly:

On ancient maps, the terra incognita, or “unknown territory,” was sometimes

marked by images of fantastical monsters accompanied by textual warnings, the

most famous being hic sunt dracones, “here be dragons.” These monstrous figures

indicated regions of dangerous uncertainty. They show where the limits of

knowing are. They dwell on the threshold between the known and the unknown,

this world and its other-worldly beyond. These monsters are interstitial figures,

makers of the inside/outside. (Beal 194)

The cartographical role of the sea monster is precisely congruent with its literary function. Sea monsters are both known and unknown and occupy a space between normal reality and what lies beyond it. Both in literature and in real life, sea monsters “stand for the haunting sense of precariousness and uncertainty that looms along the edges of the world, the edges of society, the edges of consciousness, and the edges of religious understanding and faith” (Beal 57). Sea Tammaro 11 monsters are vessels in which an anxious population throws their fears, anxieties, and doubt.

Leviathan in the Book of Job is a “quintessential representation of the monstrous as a figure for the wholly other” (Beal 7), and this is rooted in its puzzling physical descriptions and its preeminence over all other life on Earth. Representing chaos and the cosmos, “krakenish creatures” are disturbing in that they are not as alien as one would think, and they “manage to retain their otherness even while asserting their closeness to humankind” (Maxwell 12).

Appearances aside, the sea monster “embodies 'what you fear most, what your culture and environment have taught you is the worst thing that can happen to you” (McConnell as quoted in

Babb 24). This notion is prevalent in Moby-Dick and its dealings with people of other nationalities and religions, which are often targets of misdirected fear and insecurity. The word

“monster” comes from the Latin monstrum, which is derived from the verbs “monstrare (“show” or “reveal”) and monere (“warn” or “portend”) (Beal 6), and sea monsters in literature very literally live up to these definitions. As literary devices, sea monsters threaten and destroy both physical property and established mental constructs. They represent not only an apocalyptic presence within the narrative, but an apocalyptic experience for the reader as well, since they serve as literal revelations and agents of fear.

The one consolation for the fear of the sea monster is its inability to exist outside its element. Despite its status as an apex predator in the ocean, sea monsters are utterly ineffective on land, and the only time humans fall prey to them is when they venture into the territory of the monster. For instance, Tennyson's Kraken “shall rise and on the surface die” (Tennyson 15), meaning as the Apocalypse is happening, and as the Kraken “makes his debut before an audience

'of men and angels,' he immediately expires, as does the poem” (Maxwell 6). While it makes sense that a deep-sea creature could not survive the ascent due to pressure changes, there is Tammaro 12 something significant about sea monsters downgrading from overwhelming agents of power and destruction to limp, impotent things at the surface. In Chapter 59 of Moby-Dick, “The Squid,” the men aboard the Pequod spy a dead squid bobbing at the surface, “a vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth” with “innumerable long arms [. . .] curling and twisting like anacondas”

(Melville 301). Even though this particular squid is dead, the sailors experience a palpable sense of portent, and the entire chapter is permeated by a sense of dread. A giant squid, the ultimate predator when lurking the deep ocean, is a “weak, disoriented, moribund thing” at the surface,

“horrified by air, crushed by its own self” (Miéville 9). Finding one floating dead at the surface is frightening in that it is a suggestion of what thrives below. Even though actual sea monsters cannot exist at the surface, their literary counterparts do not lose all of their potency. The story surrounding Cthulhu says he must remain sleeping under water until “the stars [are] right,”

(Lovecraft 367). Spells and the protection of his underground city are the only thing preserving him, yet the potential is what creates the most dread, the imminence of something older than

“infinities of chaos” (Lovecraft 367) waking up again. If Cthulhu were to turn up face-down on the surface, physically it would look like a big dead fish, but one with horrible cosmic significance. And if Moby-Dick were to metaphorically beach itself, it would be crushed by its own weight, but its layers upon layers of meaning and its metaphorical significance would not recede with the tide.

V. Sea Monsters, A Survey

Literary sea monsters come in many different forms. Perhaps surprisingly, what makes a monster widely varies, but there are still some constants, a formula for a creating an aquatic monster. For instance, sea monsters are generally described as very large and very old, and in just Tammaro 13 about all cases, there is an agency behind the monster that is not animal instinct but something more supernatural. Tennyson's Kraken is a monster that is, as mentioned before, almost as old as the Earth itself, and it is “a kind of creature that could practically be anybody's ancestor”

(Maxwell 5). Much like Lovecraft's Cthulhu, who sleeps in the ancient submarine city of R'yleh,

Tennyson's Kraken “is hidden away in a dark watery place, lead[ing] a restful, unconscious existence” (Maxwell 6). Moby-Dick is described as exceptionally old and large as well, and one of the biggest questions in the book revolves around his motivation, sentience, and apparent sense of divine justice.

When it comes to descriptions of size in sea monster literature, “adjectives such as

'colossal', 'gigantic', 'huge', and 'immense' are ubiquitous” (Babb 30). A positive correlation between size and fearsomeness makes sense, but in order for a literary sea monster to possess the full extent of its immensity of meaning, the literature proves it must be immense in size as well.

Historical tales of sea monsters were often characterized by sailors mistaking a sea creature for an island, and while this comparison can sound excessive, the actual measurements of the animals these stories are based on are considerable. For instance, a female giant squid can reach

43 feet long, with eyeballs 15 inches in diameter (Babb 30). Male sperm whales can reach almost

80 feet in length, making them large enough to cripple and even sink a full-sized whaling ship, an event that was not without historical precedent. In Nathaniel Philbrick's book In the Heart of the Sea, a semi-biographical account of the ramming and sinking of the whaleship Essex by a large sperm whale. This historical event inspired the ending of Moby-Dick, in which the whale is also described as being exceptionally large in size.

As far as more specific physical descriptions, sea monsters are often described through inference as opposed to direct detailing. This evasive form of non-description prompts Tammaro 14 supplementation by imagination, heightening and highlighting the uncanny parts of these monsters. The Toilers of the Sea features a specific region of ocean located between the Channel

Islands that is described as a mosaic of horrifying sea monster parts:

In this dark world roam fearful living shapes, created to be unseen by the human

eye. Vague forms of mouths, antennae, tentacles, gaping jaws, scales, claws, and

pincers float and quiver in the water, grow larger, decompose, and disappear in the

sinister transparency. (Hugo 186)

H.P. Lovecraft's literature is distinguished for this technique. Lovecraft's “nameless monstrosit[ies]” (Lovecraft 59) are meant to go beyond the human ability to comprehend, a characteristic which often leads to madness and death in his protagonists. Because the protagonists in these stories are limited by their humanity in attempting to understand the monsters they encounter, the effort leaves their minds unhinged. This phenomenon links back to the ability to metaphorically defeat the monster through being able to correctly identity and understand it, but according to God, “any hope of subduing [Leviathan] is false” (Job 41: 9), even if it is just on a comprehensive level. Readers experience this incomprehension very explicitly when it comes to the diction within Lovecraft's text, as they are first challenged to correctly pronounce “Cthulhu” and then are presented the verbally intimidating hymn associated with it: “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn” (“In his house at R'lyeh dead

Cthulhu waits dreaming”) (Lovecraft 363). When sea monsters are described in this oblique way, it plays on a religious convention where one is incapable of viewing a god in his true form, like in the Greek myth of Semele or the Biblical God, “whom no man hath seen nor can see” (1 Tammaro 15

Timothy 6:16). Tennyson's Kraken is “described obliquely and by reference” (Maxwell 7), defining the monster by its surroundings as it sits in its latent state, giving readers descriptions of its influence on the environment but very few solid descriptions of the monster itself. The Bible sets the precedent with its notoriously boggling description of Leviathan in the Book of Job:

Who can open the doors of its face?/ There is terror all around its teeth./ Its back

is made of shields in rows,/ Shut up closely as with a seal./ [. . .] Its sneezes flash

forth light,/ and its eyes are like the eyelids of the/ dawn./ From its mouth go

flaming torches;/ sparks of fire leap out./ Out of its nostrils comes smoke,/ as

from a boiling put and burning rushes./ Its breath kindles coals,/ and a flame

comes out of its mouth./ In its neck abides strength, and terror dances before it.

(Job 41:14-22)

This description literally does not allow for the formation of a coherent image. For a monster to have doors within its face and an abstract concept like terror emanating from its features, it must exist outside of the capacity of language and understanding. And without language, how else can a sea monster exist within literature? Readers are left with a mental picture of something resembling a plate-armored furnace with ghastly teeth, and this nebulous combination of incomprehensibility and frightening suggestion is something that makes sea monster literature all the more potent.

This begs the question then, what would happen if we were able to comprehend these monsters? As stated previously, it would mean metaphorically defeating them, but at what cost?

H.P. Lovecraft, through his protagonists, would argue that humanity is not meant to understand Tammaro 16 the developments of the universe. The traumatized narrator in “The Call of Cthulhu” believes

“the most merciful thing [. . .] is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents”

(Lovecraft 355). Discovering the Cult of Cthulhu and eventually encountering the monster itself drove the narrator to desperate madness, and in glimpsing “all that the universe has to hold of horror” (Lovecraft 378), he only the terrible knowledge he had gained dies with him. Miéville's

Kraken parodies this notion. His protagonist, Billy Harrow, is a scientist working as a curator at the London Museum of Natural History who specializes in mollusks and cephalopods. His scientific mastery is challenged when his prized specimen – a perfectly preserved giant squid – goes missing, and the story spirals into tales of cults and magic and situations so far outside the realm of science as to be irreconcilable. So what can be learned from sea monsters, and are they even meant to be understood? Herman Melville never provides a solid source of motivation or agency represented by Moby-Dick, but he “seems to suggest that even if the Kraken were to appear on the water, there might be nothing to learn from it except that the universe is an unplumbable riddle” (Maxwell 10). That is, perhaps sea monsters exist simply to defy what we think we know about the universe.

Sea monsters as characters come in a variety of models. There are the classically established sea monsters, a category which includes the Biblical Leviathan, Moby-Dick, Cthulhu, and so on, human sea monsters, such as Captain Ahab and Captain Nemo, as well as mechanical sea monsters and even cosmic sea monsters. While a sea monster is defined by its physical surroundings, the meaning and the consequence of its existence are what establish its place in the literary world. As previously deliberated, the Leviathan of the Bible is the progenitor of many modern sea monsters. Characterized as “the peak of Creation” in the Bible, it is the ultimate testament to the power and wrath of God as a “grand mixture of horror and beauty [and] of Tammaro 17 overwhelming power and light” (Pardes 2). Even though Leviathan is originally from the Bible, it has become an important character in modern literature as well, and it could be argued that the sea monsters of modern literature are simply reincarnations of the Biblical Leviathan.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is a special case in the world of sea monster literature, in that it features a trifecta of monsters: the giant squid and sperm whales, which together comprise the animal component, Captain Nemo, and the Nautilus. This relationship creates a conglomerated “Kraken [that] is explored through a circle of analogies among man, squid, and machine” (Maxwell 8), making the novel a discourse on the transmutable nature of monstrosity. The sperm whales and giant squid in the novel are explicitly characterized as evil, antagonistic creatures by Professor Arronax and Captain Nemo, which is surprisingly out of character for them both, given their scientific minds and intellectual authority. Captain Nemo sees these whales as no more than “cruel, mischievous creatures” that deserve to be

“exterminat[ed]” (Verne 224), and moments later, he undertakes a mass slaughter of the whales, an episode which constitutes the most gruesome part of the novel. The school of giant squid that appear later in the book are described in a similar way, and their malicious agency is attributed to

“the Creator” (Verne 267), making them, like the sperm whales, imbued with purpose and beyond the realm of simple animal life. In both of these instances, Nemo and Arronax break away from their normally objective points of view and describe these creatures in ways incongruent with science, and this firmly establishes the whales and the squid as monsters in the context of the novel.

H.G. Wells' squid in “The Sea Raiders,” display a similar malevolent motivation as

Verne's monsters. The protagonist of the story is a “retired tea-dealer” named Mr. Fison who discovers some “Haploteuthis ferox” – a fictitious name for giant squid – as he is exploring the Tammaro 18 rocky coast of Sidmouth in England (“The Sea Raiders” 184). When he encounters the squid devouring the body of a human being, the squid collectively “regarded him with evil interest”

(The Sea Raiders 185) before pursuing him, a crisis he only barely escapes. Extrapolating from the fact that these squid lack an official scientific name and therefore any nonfictional counterpart, these squid could hardly be described as simple biological creatures. Instead they are characterized by their particular malevolence and voraciousness. Mr. Fison then takes a boat out in order to “point out the exact spot of his adventure,” (The Sea Raiders 186) but ends up getting ambushed by the squid, resulting in the death of one of the boatmen. Not only does a boatman die, but the “large boat [. . .] with three women and a little child in it” he saw only moments before was “pitch[ing] clumsily, bottom upward” after the ordeal ended (“The Sea

Raiders” 190), and Wells’ decision to make women and a child fall victim further demonstrates the maliciousness and ruthless intent of the Haploteuthis.

H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu and Dagon occupy a more fantastical branch of sea monster classification. Both Cthulhu and Dagon sleep under the sea, just like Tennyson's Kraken, and they also share a “regressiveness” and “primaeval or prehistoric status” (Maxwell 2), playing on the age and theological significance of sea monsters that is common in Western literature. While these particular monsters are components of a pantheon of cosmic monster-deities, Lovecraft's short stories approach them not as unrestrained fantasy but as manifestations of the impossibly real violently invading the realm of the very real. Lovecraft creates a scenario where there is breach in what we understand to be reality, and what comes through is monstrous enough to break a human mind simply because it exists. In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the narrative is told from an objective and scientific point of view as the narrator goes through his recently deceased uncle's notes and manuscripts, all of which deal with a disturbing subconscious phenomenon and Tammaro 19 a sinister statuette made by sleeping man. The story runs on a “circulation of energies among poet, squid, and cultist” (Maxwell 8), creating a narrative undertow that eventually brings the protagonist face to face with Cthulhu and then abruptly into madness.

In addition to traditional sorts of beasts, humans can also be interpreted as sea monsters, and they are often part of a monstrous relationship, such as Captain Ahab and Moby-Dick and

Captain Nemo and the Nautilus. Friedrich Nietzche's famous quote - “Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster” – is an apt characterization of Nemo and Ahab, in that they not only create their own monsters but also act as one themselves. Ahab is driven mad by the need for vengeance on Moby-Dick, and his quest eventually leads to apocalyptic event that kills everyone on board the Pequod except for Ishmael, who lives on as a testament to one man's monomaniacal obsession, an ending strangely congruent with Captain Nemo's. While they are each associated with a monster that serves as a sort of prosthesis, Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab also symbolize how “deities reside in the human breast” (Kaplan 143). Ahab cannot exist without his monster counterpart, yet when they do encounter each other, chaos ensues. The first meeting results in Ahab losing his leg, and the second time results in the death of Ahab and those that swore their allegiance to his dark purpose. As Ishmael describes in the novel, his vengeance comes to consume him to where “all evil to crazy Ahab, [was] visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick” (Melville 200). Moby-Dick's supernatural elements - specifically those regarding its sense of vengeance or righteous fury - are never fully explained.

Readers are never conclusively told whether Moby-Dick is a sentient being that is full of

“retribution, swift vengeance, [and] eternal malice” or perhaps just a natural anomaly charged by

Captain Ahab's “intangible malignity” (Melville 622 and 200).

Captain Nemo is another human sea monster who cannot exist without his monstrous Tammaro 20 prosthesis, the Nautilus. Nemo literally lives inside his mechanical monster, as opposed to constantly trailing behind it like in Ahab in pursuit of Moby-Dick. Together Nemo and the

Nautilus cause an unspecified but very significant amount of death and destruction. The White

Whale and Ahab can never meet without catastrophic consequences, but Nemo's physical situation within the Nautilus is Verne commenting on the monstrous potential all humans hold inside themselves, in which he “set[s] aside his fear, examine[s] the monster, and identif[ies] his own role within it” (Kapplan 145). The Nautilus’ mechanical efficiency and the indomitable spite of Captain Nemo combine to create a truly formidable sea monster. In The Toilers of the Sea,

Hugo notes that “human will contained in a mechanism confronts the infinite” (Hugo 191), and this principle is directly applicable to Nemo and his submarine. In addition to being physically situated inside his sea monster, the simple fact that Captain Nemo is a misanthrope – a human that is, in essence, anti-human – creates a fundamental oxymoron that makes him more of an

Other than a part of humanity, adding to his own role as a human sea monster.

As previously mentioned, the Nautilus is a sea monster in its own right. Not only is it named after a sea creature, but it resembles one too:

The Nautilus's nearness to the animal kingdom, and especially to cephalopoda,

remains at issue throughout Verne's novel. Shelled and chambered like its

biological namesake, immense and aggressive like a Kraken [. . .]” (Maxwell 9)

As a “machine with animal affinities” (Maxwell 9), the Nautilus is not only a harbinger of destruction but a grotesque mirror of aquatic life. Armored and bright like Leviathan, the

Nautilus is a scientific marvel that navigates all the oceans of Earth, completely unhindered by Tammaro 21 borders, water pressure, or the need to stop on land. While the Nautilus is the physical agent of destruction, Captain Nemo provides the malevolent agency. Almost completely self-sufficient, the Nautilus features a “unique synthesis of mechanical and organic elements” that “protects and enables” Nemo to navigate in a world he would not otherwise be able to access and explore

(Maxwell 9), and the fact that it was created by an anti-human human adds another degree of monstrosity to the submarine.

Space is often metaphorically tied to the ocean. In all popular science fiction, people aboard spacecraft maintain the naval rank system and maritime vocabulary. Cthulhu and Dagon are both technically from space and thus fit into this category, but the best example of a cosmic sea monster is the sand worm of Frank Herbert's Dune. While the story does not take place on the ocean and even though the worms do not technically live in an aquatic environment, all of the elements that make a sea monster story are there: the actual beast, the vital significance of water, and an element of the supernatural. Instead of a liquid ocean, the worms lurk beneath an endless sea of sand on the planet Arrakis, and they are deified by the native inhabitants, the Fremen. The

Fremen refer to the worms as “shai-hulud,” which, when capitalized, is also the name of their principle god. Water plays a very different role in Dune than in other more traditional sea monster stories, but this difference makes its role even more significant and meaningful in

Herbert's novel. Water is it is fatal to the sand worms, but they are inextricably tied to it. When a sand worm comes in contact with water, it is the catalyst in creating the Water of Life, a drink that is necessary for higher-level Bene Gesserit religious ceremonies. In addition to the sacred nature of the water, its scarcity has a doubly mysticizing effect. Preserving and rationing of the water is carried out with extreme scrupulousness and reverence, down to the practice of extracting water from deceased people as a part of their funerary rites. In short, even though the Tammaro 22 sand worms and the ecosystem of Dune have an opposing relationship with water, this relationship makes water all the more important, both in the course of the story and in analysis of the novel as a whole.

In addition to the sand worms, the Martians in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds are reminiscent of sea monsters in that they bear an uncanny resemblance to the Haploteuthis ferox of “The Sea Raiders:”

These two monsters might easily be mistaken for each other. Both have 'rounded'

bodies roughly the same size; both have 'one might say' a 'grotesque suggestion' of

a face, with eyes that are 'large', 'intelligent', 'intense', and hostile; both have a

prominent, 'tentacle surrounded' 'excrescence' of a mouth resembling a 'beak'; both

have browning skin that 'glistens' like 'shiny' or 'wet' leather; and both are 'ghastly'

and 'monstrous'. (Babb 18)

Even though the Martians of Wells' novel are made to appear as unrecognizable and grotesquely foreign as possible, the people of Woking notice the resemblance, and one soldier exclaims,

"octopuses," [. . .] "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about fishers of men--fighters of fish it is this time!” (The War of the Worlds 47). The image is heightened when a tripod - a “charging leviathan” (The War of the Worlds 125) - emerges from the sea in pursuit of a ship of refugees.

VI. Sea Monsters and the Apocalypse

As previously discussed, the supernatural and even the theological are often vital components to a sea monster story, ranging from overtly religious, such as in “The Call of Tammaro 23

Cthulhu,” to very subtle, such as in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Not only are sea monsters often suggestive of religious themes, but they often carry apocalyptic implications as well. The path of destruction left by Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, the world-destroying and mind-shattering existence of Cthulhu, and the invasion of octopus-like Martians are all examples of the apocalyptic qualities of sea monsters, but Moby-Dick provides the best example. As mentioned earlier, Moby-Dick is based on an actual event, which Nathaniel Philbrick relates in his book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Essex. Even in his rendering of these nonfictional accounts, one of the prominent themes in the narrative is the baffling circumstances in which the whale attacked and the descriptions of the whale that caused the sinking of Essex.

Owen Chase, the first mate of the Essex, recorded in a later account of the event that they had been “victims of a 'decided, calculated mischief' on the part of the whale” (Philbrick 89). Chase sensed a “strange, unfathomable purpose” (Philbrick 89) in the sperm whale, and what caused this strange behavior is impossible to determine. Philbrick's book shows that not only are sea monsters impressive in size, but they tend to bring apocalyptic consequence as well, both in fiction and nonfiction.

VII. Moby-Dick as a Biblical Text

The greatest testament to the religious implications of sea monsters and their accompanying narratives is Moby-Dick, a novel that recreates and modernizes one of the most impressive monsters of the Bible, Leviathan, and makes him eminent, physical, and able to be pursued. Not only does Moby-Dick star a reimagining of the progenitor of all sea monsters, but it is also very reflective of the Bible as a book in its form, function, and purpose. While Moby-Dick Tammaro 24 certainly resembles the Bible in size, it also contains indisputable narrative and functional similarities. For instance, Moby-Dick contains 135 books with a hodgepodge of characters narrating them, creating a story “in which biblical rebels and outcasts assume center stage”

(Hutchins 20). These testimonies include parables, sermons, and prophecies, many of which involve narrative themes that reappear several times in relation to many different circumstances and characters, such as the mystery surrounding Moby-Dick, the constant reminder of the superstitious nature of sailors, and the supernatural qualities of the sea.

Like the Bible, the plot and the parables in Moby-Dick “reproduce commonplace biblical doctrines and stories” (Hutchins 29), such as themes of justice, faith, and repentance. For

Melville, Moby-Dick also serves as a reflective text, and the novel was his expression of “the sum total of metaphysical questions about himself and the universe which will not bear scrutiny or explanation” (Kaplan 142), an expectation that is often placed on the Bible. Melville received much criticism for his novel being immoral and an “attack” on Christianity for its modern ideas

(Hutchins 19), and many of its scenes are indeed blasphemous, such as Ishmael worshiping an idol with Queequeg. Melville himself called the book “wicked” in his personal letters, but he also stood behind it as a critique of modern America's outdated standards of moral behavior, saying the he wrote the “Gospels of this century” (Melville quoted in Hutchins 19). The parts of

Moby-Dick that caused so much friction with the public were the result of Melville encouraging readers “to challenge a text instead of merely accepting its lessons as a modern for moral development” (Hutchins 25), a prompt that extends to both his novel and the Bible. Melville saw the rigid adherence to outdated Biblical doctrines failing the United States, and through his novel, he did not attempt to dislodge Christianity altogether, but to create another portrayal that more appropriately addressed a modern day America. Tammaro 25

Many of the publicly instigating ideas came in the form of disguised sermons1 within the text. Monologues and soliloquies comprise much of Moby-Dick's text, yet they often adopt the form and function of what could be viewed as a sermon. Whether personal, shared, spoken, or thought, these are moments that reflect ideas that often touch on controversial morality, faith, integrity, and even blasphemous subjects, as is often the case with Ahab and Ishmael, both of whom are constantly preaching about one thing or another. Ishmael's “exegetical gymnastics”

(Hutchins 21) often test the limit of what could be considered blasphemous, especially in chapters like “A Bosom Friend,” where he not only worships an idol but also shares a bed with a pagan cannibal, albeit a very friendly one. This sermon includes the line “Now Queequeg is my fellow man” (Melville 58), a notion that is synonymous with “love thy neighbor” (Mark 12:31).

This rewording of a common Biblical axiom reinforces the notion of Moby-Dick being “a new iteration of and a commentary on the salvific narratives” of the Bible (Hutchins 19). In other words, Ishmael's reasoning for his actions is a sermon for a modern time. Melville is not disparaging the Bible itself but how people interpret (or misinterpret) its lessons and act on them.

Ishmael's potentially sacrilegious behavior is “a critique on Christian practice” (Hutchins 21) as opposed to an ostentatious disregard for it. Chapter 17, “The Ramadan,” generates a similar moral effect. Ishmael reasons that “so long as [a] person does not kill or insult any other person” for believing in a religion (Melville 94), then this person is free to practice as he wants. He goes as far as to lightheartedly criticize Christianity, saying Hell is a creation resulting from

“dyspeptic religionists,” and these insensitive practitioners “[make] this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in” (Melville 94).

On the other end of the spectrum, Ahab's sermons appeal to a darker point of view. Where

1 For the purposes of this paper, the definition of a sermon is a narrative moment in which moral lessons are taught or important ideas are explained. Tammaro 26

Ishmael's sermons aim to an outward audience and are meant to produce positive results, Ahab's are performed solely for his personal gain and to further his burning vengeance. Chapter 36,

“The Quarter-Deck,” is the first instance of Ahab's style of sermon, where he passes around a goblet in a perversion of the Communion ceremony, sealing the fates of the entire crew of the

Pequod. Chapter 119, “The Candles” is another instance of Ahab's ecstatic religious outbursts. In an intense moment of fervor, Ahab calls up to the lightning: “Leap! Leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee! I burn with thee; would fain be welded by thee; defyingly I worship thee!”

(Melville 551). Starbuck sets Ahab's blasphemy in sharp relief when he yells, “God, God is against thee!” (Melville 552). Despite his dedication to vengeance, there are instances where

Ahab grapples with his humanity. He is an “unrepentant Jonah” (Pardes quoted in Hutchins 30), and for this, he is ultimately killed whereas Jonah escaped relatively unharmed. One of the primary lessons in the Book of Jonah is “the prophecy of doom is a conditional prophecy that will come true only in the absence of repentance” (New Oxford Bible 1302). Starbucks ultimately advocates this fact, but despite the signs and warnings and pleadings, Ahab cannot avoid the confrontation with his fate, which is embodied in the whale. He is a manifestation of the hate and rage “felt by his whole race from Adam down” (Melville 200), and as the champion of this collective sentiment, he cannot stand down from his duty.

In a sense, Moby-Dick picks up where the Bible left off, thousands of years later with

God's promise of an apocalypse still hanging over the heads of the people of the world, and with this continuation in mind, Moby-Dick becomes a “modern third testament meant not to subvert but to supplement the Bible” (Hutchins 22). As purported earlier, religion often comes into play in regards to sea monster stories, and Moby-Dick is the most explicit example of this pairing.

While the Christian elements are unquestionable, Melville crafts an interesting denomination of Tammaro 27 the faith that revolves entirely around the sea. Chapter 7, “The Chapel,” Chapter 8, “The Pulpit,” and Chapter 9, “The Sermon” are the most explicit references to this sea-based religion2. Father

Mapple's sermon takes place upon a construction resembling a main-top, and he adopts the role as the captain of the congregation within this ship-like structure. As potentially blasphemous or affected as it might appear at first, Ishmael realizes Father Mapple's style of preaching is not a collection of “mere tricks of the stage” but instead “symbolizes something unseen” (Melville 44), perhaps the very same agency that motivates Moby-Dick. The Father's service is so deeply rooted in Nantucket maritime culture that it could not exist without the sea as a storytelling aid.

In fact, there is so much addition to the story of Jonah that it sounds like a tale based more on the life of a sailor out of Nantucket than a man of Biblical times. The parable of Jonah is a core component of Moby-Dick, and Hutchins notes that not only does the name Jonah occur more than eighty times in the novel, but he also views Ahab as an archetypal Jonah character, as

Ahab’s “refusal to forgive the whale that took his leg consumes him and leads to his destruction, just as Jonah's refusal to forgive Nineveh” leads to his punishment and resultant torment

(Hutchins 30-31). Father Mapple, often described as an expression of the sea itself with his chest heaving “as with a ground-swell” (Melville 52), creates a religious vocabulary, with the Paul the

Apostle becoming “Pilot Paul” and the Rock of the Ages becoming “The Keel of the Ages”

(Melville 54). Significantly, Father Mapple also says “God came upon him in the whale”

(Melville 53), a phrase that anticipates both an explanation of Moby-Dick and a Biblical justification for Ahab’s death.

In terms of structure, Moby-Dick and the Bible share a similar format, narrative style, and phraseology, all of which “borrows from the Bible stylistically” (Hutchins 22). Moby- Dick is a physically substantial book; after all, “few other works of American literature have the Bible's

2I propose “Whale-igion.” Tammaro 28 heft” (Hutchins 22), and its narrative is arranged in a way that resembles the Bible's organization.

The books of the Bible, which generally have a set principle or lesson, often resemble Moby-

Dick’s chapters, and just like the Bible, some of these chapters are told by guest-narrators, whether it is Stubb, Ahab, or any other member of the crew. While the narrative starts with

Ishmael, the text of Moby-Dick begins with “Extracts.” Directly following the preamble hailing all “Sub-subs” everywhere, is the first extract, a line from Genesis: “And God created great whales” (Melville xxv and xxvi). This Biblical commencement not only creates a tie to the Bible from the beginning, but it also creates a deified image of the most potent power in Melville's novel, the White Whale itself. And, as will be discussed later, both the Bible and Moby-Dick end with a confrontation featuring a beast and an apocalypse.

Moby-Dick does not have a singular, completely reliable narrator. Instead there is Ishmael, a conglomerate of “multiple prophetic personalities” who creates an “inherent instability of narration,” a stylistic choice that is found in both the Bible and Moby-Dick (Hutchins 22 and 23).

This instability, along with Ishmael's “alias” (Hutchins 23) – “Call me Ishmael” (Melville 1) – creates a narrative that has no figure to take accountability for it, yet it asks the readers to believe its message anyway, a request that really only makes sense a Biblical framework. From the very beginning Ishmael expresses his special relationship with the sea. The sea is his sole healer when he is depressed, and it gives his life purpose, similar in both a metaphorical and literal sense to all of the inhabitants of Nantucket, whose economy relies on the sea. Because of this connection, in no other setting could Ishmael's journey take place.

Ishmael's frequent digressions often convey an educational tone. He is constantly addressing the reader and breaking the fourth wall, as the Bible often does, yet so much of what

Ishmael says is simply incorrect. Both the Bible and Moby- Dick “refuse to provide their readers Tammaro 29 with chronological or authorial certainty; both texts ask the reader to exercise faith, to read with confidence” (Hutchins 24), and this is especially true with Ishmael narrating. While much of

Moby-Dick deals with knowledge and revelation, Ishmael's struggle with the truth “calls into question the very possibility of the 'natural verity'” that Ishmael attempts to share (Cantalupo 105 quoting Melville). Ishmael is a practitioner of if-then logic, and this inductive method is his avenue of reasoning, whether it leads him to science or the supernatural and whether the products of his reasoning are true or false. To Ishmael, his truths are valid simply because he came to them.

This sort of reasoning is what causes Ishmael to believe the whale to be a fish, despite all the hard evidence proving otherwise.

As the narrator, Ishmael explicitly asks his readers not to view the story of Moby-Dick as a “monstrous fable” or “still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory”

(Melville quoted in Cantalupo 103). Despite his plea, it simply cannot be helped.3 Ishmael's own narrative style often dips into the metaphorical and allegorical, and he himself uses stories to illustrate (his) truths. He even starts the story with how “the portentous and mysterious monster roused all [his] curiosity” (Melville 8). Ishmael invests so much metaphor and portent and symbolism into the whale, the ocean, and the characters surrounding him, that it makes him an excellent embodiment of the science-versus-supernatural conflict that invests so many sea monster stories. In Chapter 83, “Jonah Historically Regarded,” Ishmael defends the integrity of the biblical story while discrediting the attempts by a priest to give the story a more logical interpretation, saying the priest’s effort to create at explanation “shows his foolish, impious pride and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy” (Melville 401). Instead of this priest's attempt to espouse religion and science, Ishmael prefers a sermon like Father Mapple's, which lends itself to a religious understanding that endorses his particular experience. Ishmael's

3I hope Ishmael will pardon me. Tammaro 30 brand of logic does not adhere to a strictly logical code or one built entirely on faith. Instead he hovers somewhere in between, sometimes defending a biblical story and sometimes refuting solid facts. Very often within the novel he is fully aware of his portentous feelings, such as during and after Ahab's ecstatic sermon in Chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” yet he more often than not chooses to simply ignore them or explain them away.

Prophecies play a very important part in the narrative of Moby-Dick, and this inextricably ties it to the Bible, specifically to Revelations and the Apocalypse. Despite their frequent appearance and importance, Ishmael, like previously stated, is quick to demystify these prophecies through explanation. When something remotely odd happens, he is quick to step in and say in so many words, “the thing is common in [the] fishery” (Melville 454). His unwillingness to let his readers take some allegorical lesson or view a particular event as prophetic is just another manifestation of Ishmael's struggle with what is fact and what is fantasy.

Despite being part of a culture he regularly reminds us is particularly superstitious, Ishmael will not let himself be viewed that way. In Chapter 19, “The Prophet,” Ishmael and Queequeg meet

Elijah, a man who approaches them out of the blue, warning them of Ahab and the inevitable doom that attends him. Elijah's role in the book is minimal, but one has to wonder at the circumstances of his prophecy and whether he is a true prophet or a false one. Elijah warns

Ishmael and Queequeg, asking if there was “anything down [on the contract] about [their] souls”

(Melville 100), foretelling the fatal end of the crew. While Queequeg does drown at the end,

Ishmael happens to escape on an object completely imbued with symbolic value, a coffin featuring the same markings as the “twisted tattooings” on Queequeg's body (Melville 524).

While this prophecy seems dubious, Ahab and his role within the novel are defined by the prophecies that have been made about him, all of which are tied to the whale and are inevitably Tammaro 31 fulfilled. One source is an old Gay-Head “squaw” who said Ahab's name would one day “prove prophetic,” as if the Biblical precedent – the “vile” and “wicked” king Ahab (Melville 88) – was not already portentous enough. Elijah produces a prophecy that appears to have no definite source when he asks Ishmael and Queequeg if they heard “nothing about [Ahab] losing his leg

[. . .] according to the prophecy” (Melville 101). Ahab himself recalls this particular omen later in the novel when he acknowledges “the prophecy was that [he] should be dismembered,” yet he then assumes the role of prophet, a position that is usually not adopted but bestowed, and he says

“I prophecy that I will dismember the dismemberer” (Melville 183) in an attempt to thwart his predetermined fate.

One of the most important sources of prophecy and portent come from the various animals in the story. Apart from the whales, the other animals – especially the sharks, the birds, and the giant squid – are veritable “prophets of doom” (Cantalupo 102). The use of other animals as agents of portent is another facet of the science versus supernatural debate. Melville combines the supernatural and the natural in order to “call into question the new-found reliance on the scientific method as a way to truth, particularly the truth of the future – that is, prediction”

(Cantalupo 104). In other words, science cannot create prophecies. The sharks make appearances during critical parts of the novel, including Chapter 64, “Stubb's Supper,” Chapter 135, “The

Chase – The Third Day,” and finally the Epilogue. In Chapter 64, they are likened to a congregation that Fleece, the ship's cook, is being forced by Stubb to preach to. In a prophetic moment, Fleece tells the sharks, “Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint” (Melville

321). Echoing the story of Jonah, even the sharks, if they repent their “woraciousness,” can become “angel[s]” (Melville 321). When Ahab and his crew sail out to meet Moby-Dick on the Tammaro 32 third day of the chase, the sharks “maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars” (Melville 616), reducing their size with every dip into the water. Starbuck sees this as portentous, and while

Ishmael recognizes how ominous it might seem, he is quick to explain it away, as is his fashion.

In the epilogue, both the sharks and the sea-hawks follow alongside Ishmael in his coffin/life- preserver; “[T]he unharming sharks [. . .] glid[ing] by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sail[ing] with sheathed beaks” (Melville 625). When Moby-Dick destroys the

Pequod, killing everyone except Ishmael, it “fulfill[s] the prophecy of the secondary beasts [. . .] allow[ing] Ishmael to float away from the primal scene of doom intact, turning what would have been silence into a narrative” (Cantalupo 107). Thus Ishmael becomes the lone testament to what happened aboard the Pequod. Various species of birds appear in the novel, including sea-hawks, sea-ravens, and the albatross, and they all make appearances during times of particular ominousness. For instance, in Chapter 51, “The Spirit-Spout,” the sea-ravens, a colloquial name for cormorants, haunted the Pequod, which Ishmael says they see as “uninhabited” and

“appointed to desolation” (Melville 255). The cormorant is a powerful symbol in literature. In

Book 4, line 196 of Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan disguises himself as a cormorant. To suggest that Satan is following the Pequod would not only explain the supernatural phenomena that take place within this chapter, but also the uncanny nature of the voyage itself. The cormorant in

Paradise Lost “sat devising death/ to them who lived” (Paradise Lost Book IV, 197-198), which is exactly what Ishmael concludes the sea-ravens are doing as they hover around the ship. The enigmatic appearance of the dead squid was unusual enough for the men of the Pequod to “invest it with portentousness” (Melville 301), and as mentioned before, this entire chapter is characterized by this sense of trepidation. The grotesque image of the dead bobbing mass “of a glancing cream color” conjures the image of a bloated corpse, and Starbuck puts the universal Tammaro 33 feeling of dread into perspective when he says, “Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!” (Melville 301).

Fedallah is another source of prophecy, and unlike Elijah, his are strangely specific and improbable, yet they are fulfilled without fail. Fedallah's are also the most apocalyptic of all the prophecies, especially considering they involve the eventual encounter with the While Whale and

Ahab's death. The relationship Ahab has with Fedallah resembles that of Faust and

Mephistopheles. Ahab, like Faust, desires something enough, in this case revenge, to “make a bargain,” and according to the eloquent Stubb, Fedallah - “a devil in disguise,” seeks to “get

[Ahab] to swap away his silver watch, or his soul” (Melville 355). The other pagans in the story assume an interstitial role in terms of their religious involvement. While they are free from misgivings of blasphemy, as evidenced by their complete silence and total willingness to participate in hellish ceremonies, such as using their blood to temper Ahab's harpoon, they are not free from religion completely. They are often sources of prophecies themselves, and this role equates them with the “coterie of prostitutes and publicans in the New Testament” (Hutchins 20).

Significantly, they also appear to be free from the influence of Ahab, at least in terms of fear.

They participate in his blasphemous rites, but not because they are afraid. When the ship's compass goes inverted – another moment where something portentous happens but Ishmael casually explains it away – “the pagan harpooners remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hears from inflexible

Ahab's” (Melville 563). Even when the apocalypse is taking place around them in the last chapter of the novel, they “still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea” (Melville 623).

Instead of fearing for their souls in the face of their impending deaths, an emotion that would come naturally to a God-fearing man like Starbuck, the harpooners remain defiantly stoic and Tammaro 34 resolute.

VIII. Moby-Dick as Agent of the Apocalypse

While the ocean's role in sea monster literature has already been considered in this paper, within Moby-Dick it takes on a special and more specific significance. In this case, the primordial implications of the sea, specifically the bottom of the sea, are linked with Heaven,

Hell, and Eden, the latter explicitly in regards to the fatal battle over the acquisition of forbidden knowledge. The attainment of insight is constantly being addressed in the novel. In Chapter 93,

“The Castaway,” Pip gets spooked, leaps out of the whale boat, and is then left to float in the ocean for hours, where he is fundamentally changed by the effects of “the intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity” (Melville 453). Yet it was not simple madness that overcame Pip, but instead something like extreme self-consciousness paired with the utter isolation, and it refined his mind into something so clear and even prophetic as to appear like madness. The question remains, then, what quality the ocean has that could change someone in such a profound way. When he is rescued, Pip talks about how he was drowned and is still lost at sea, and Ishmael provides an explanation:

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths,

where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his

passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and

among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,

God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the Tammaro 35

colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom. . . . (Melville 453)

Separation from the physical body and the resultant revelation of divine knowledge made Pip into an oracle-like character, one whose seemingly insensible rabbles became eerily foreboding, and this insight appears to come straight from the source, not only from God within the novel, but also from Melville as an author. For example, Pip asking “how did it get there?” about the wedding ring his father found in a tree is actually a question of “the future as present” and is applicable to the fate of the Pequod, making it prophetic (Cantalupo 102-103). Instead of insanity,

Pip comes to acquire “celestial thought” from this episode (Melville 454), one which resembles an exaggerated baptism or a religious initiation, and it comes not from trauma or hypothermia, but from the acquisition of knowledge. Ishmael and Ahab seek tirelessly to know this monster, but they are thwarted by the “impenetrable veil” of the sea (Melville 145) and the limits of human understanding. Ishmael vocalizes this difficulty perfectly:

To grope down into the bottom of the sea after [the sperm whales]; to have one's

hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this

is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan!

(Melville 147)

As mentioned earlier in this paper, to know a monster is to metaphorically defeat it, but the cost, whether it is faith, sanity, epistemology, or even the fate of the Earth, is often what creates the central conflict of the story. Within this beautiful mirror of an underwater Garden of Eden, Pip sees creation and eternity unfolding. However, like Moby-Dick, it has an immensely dark side in Tammaro 36 addition to a beautiful one, where one encounters a “whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors”

(Melville 529), and this stems from the “ancient concept that the netherworld is found in the deep” (New Oxford Bible 1304). After Jonah gets swallowed by the whale, he says he called God from “the belly of Sheol” (Jonah 2:3), another instance that ties the bottom of the sea to Hell.

Because Moby-Dick drags all of his victims down under the water as opposed to killing them on the surface, there is a sense that he is physically delivering them to the underworld in an act of final judgment, and this instills Moby-Dick's method of killing his pursuers with divine intention.

In a moment of foreshadowing, Starbuck cries “[s]hall we be towed by [Moby-Dick] to the infernal world?” (Melville 611), correctly identifying Moby-Dick's modus operandi.

The search for Moby-Dick is inseparable from the pursuit of knowledge, whether it is in relation to the various prophecies or the simple act of sitting on the mast-head and descrying a whale. The mast-head is a sort of nexus of revelation, and Ishmael attributes it to the mystic quality of the sea:

“he [. . .] takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue,

bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen,

gliding beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of

some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts

that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood,

thy spirits ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and

space. (Melville 173)

With the sea as an agent of revelation and Moby-Dick as the Beast of Revelation, there is a sense Tammaro 37 that while the human soul is constantly called to the sea, it is a realm that can never be fully revealed to humans, at least in their physical human form. The passage blends the idea of heaven and the sea and insinuates they are one in the same, and this recurring theme facilitates the notion that Moby-Dick is a modern Biblical text. In Chapter 23, “The Lee Shore,” the sea is characterized as “indefinite” and “infinite” as God, and later in that same chapter, the sailor

Bulkington is promised an “apotheosis” (Melville 117) by way of the ocean.

Moby-Dick is just as transmutable as the sea. Some of the most beautiful descriptions in the book are his, yet so are some of the most frightening. Whales in general are imbued with special distinction in Moby-Dick, as they are all regarded as descendants of Leviathan. Therefore, they are classified by the degree of Leviathan they contain, at least according to Ishmael. This classification takes place largely in Chapter 32, “Cetology.” The chapter is characterized by a pseudo-scientific arrangement of whales that is based more on poetics and flourish than any scientific information. Ishmael starts with a disclaimer, saying he is attempting a “classification of the constituents of chaos” (Melville 145), and this hints that such a feat should not even be ventured. He backs this notion by borrowing quotes, and therefore the credibility he does not he himself own, from “those lights of zoology and anatomy” who testify to the “unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters” (Melville 145). In other words, since the ocean is so impenetrable and since the best scientists in their fields cannot categorize whales, the responsibility to correctly organize them is certainly not his. Ishmael uses his own sort of logic in order to categorize the whales, and he starts by establishing that despite all the factual evidence and hard science, whales are actually fish. Then he arranges them by size, with the larger whales containing more “Leviathanism” (Melville 157) than the smaller ones, as if creating a pedigree from the original Leviathan. The whales’ descriptions are fraught with religious images, Tammaro 38 including that of the Finback, the “banished and unconquerable Cain of his race” (Melville 147), the Black Fish's “Mephistophelean grin” (Melville 153), and the Sulphur Bottom whale with its

“brimstone belly” gained by “scraping the Tartarian tiles” at the bottom of the ocean (Melville

152). Once again Ishmael embodies the science versus supernatural dispute through his mix of scientific and supernatural descriptions, but he later says it is a necessary mix when writing about whales. In relation to all other members of the animal kingdom, these descriptions would be

“unwarrantably grandiloquent, but when Leviathan is in the text, the case is altered” (Melville

496). Posing the whale above all other animals, the whale adopts the role as “king of the boundless sea” (Melville xxxvii). In fact, according to Ishmael, penning its description deserves a “condor's quill” and “Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand”4 (Melville 497) and results in extreme exhaustion.5 With whales holding such a prestigious place in the animal kingdom, Moby-Dick's place as the “old great-grandfather” (Melville 478) hints at his position as an agent of God and the bringer of Apocalypse.

As a whale of “uncommon magnitude and malignity” (Melville 194), Moby-Dick is perhaps the most famous and most potent sea monster in literature. The image, or perhaps the illusion, of Moby-Dick is one that Melville keeps purposefully cryptic. The most information regarding the whale comes in the form of hearsay, speculation, stories shared by other whalers, and superstition, which is important in creating the ultimate image of a deadly sea monster. The question of his existence, purpose, or sentience is never definitively addressed, but judging by what Ishmael shares (as well as Melville), he is far from an ordinary whale. Moby-Dick is sovereign of the sea with an apparent supernatural agency over other creatures, suggested when

Ishmael talked of sharks “dash[ing] themselves against the rocks” in their attempt to flee from

4Again, I hope Ishmael pardons me. 5I personally know this to be true. Tammaro 39 the whale (Melville 197). Chapter 41, “Moby Dick,” is a collection of stories told by Ishmael that constructs the most complete picture of the whale in the entire novel, although it is still an enigmatic portrayal. Ishmael has not personally encountered Moby-Dick yet, but he paints a monstrous portrait. Readers are led to understand Moby-Dick as a malicious god, one that doles out judgment and death and one who is both an agent of nature and a divine emissary, a bona fide

Leviathan. Moby-Dick is a supernatural force who mirrors the blasphemer he must inevitably meet at the end of the novel.

Among the many unanswered questions surrounding Moby-Dick, the whale's level of sentience and its intent is a pivotal one. Moby-Dick's appearances seem to have definite purpose and meaning. When Ishmael describes how injury and death always follows its appearances, it seems Moby-Dick exists in order exact justice. At one point, sperm whales are described as

“judiciously malicious” (Melville 224), which implies that the fatalities caused by sperm whales are prescribed by a higher power. The purpose of Moby-Dick's existence is akin to a holy purge, where his “desperate hunters” with their “inflamed, distracted fury” are wiped out, leaving

“serene, exasperating sunlight that smile[s] on, as if at a birth or a bridal” (199). This description creates the image of a degenerative blight on the Earth, personified by men like Ahab, and

Moby-Dick, by destroying sources of malignancy, as the force that restores balance. Moby-

Dick’s “sickle-shaped lower jaw” (Melville 199) compounds this image of the whale as a reaper.

Ishmael's stern reminder that “not a gallon [of oil] you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it” reinforces the idea of balance and sacrifice (Melville 224).

As a sea monster, much of Moby-Dick's fearsomeness is partly a psychological phenomenon. Within the novel, the whale is a very real character, but he is also tied to the

“monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some men feel eating in them” Tammaro 40

(Melville 200). While Ishmael makes it clear that Ahab projects all of his “bodily [. . .] intellectual and spiritual exasperations” onto Moby-Dick (Melville 200), he presents the whale as a psychological construction in itself by constantly alluding to the extraordinary superstitiousness of sailors and the fact that Ahab's greatest battle – the one that encompasses most of the book – is his inner one. Like the sea, Ahab's “larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted” (201), and, like Moby-Dick, readers never get a definitive conclusion regarding his violent madness. Ahab is ascribed a lethal purpose, but “what Ahab is unable to see is that the evil he externalizes in the whale also exists in himself” (Gilmore 157). This implies that only death could be the conclusive end for Ahab, for if he did not have that externalized evil to hunt, if he did not have Moby-Dick, he would not only lose his purpose for existing but also the coping mechanism that keeps him from burning from the inside out. In the end, he is “doomed to disaster because the object [of his revenge] is really himself” (Gilmore 157).

Part of what reinforces Moby-Dick's status as a monster is the sheer amount of weight it holds in the minds of the specific subset of humanity it is relevant to, the sailors. This particular culture is partly characterized by “the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors” which abound within the maritime community (Melville 195). Yet what sets this legend-based culture apart from corresponding cultures on land is the fact that sailors have to face the monsters they learn to fear, and when they do, they face not only a physical sea monster, but one whose dreadful reputation precedes it. Moby-Dick is a fearsome whale with a long trail of destruction in his wake, and “those repeated disastrous impulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors” upon him create a monster much worse than could have ever actually roamed the seas (Melville

159). The White Whale is a partial product of the “half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which eventually invested Moby-Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that Tammaro 41 visibly appears” (Melville 196), and Ahab's obsession is a more focused and therefore more caustic version than that of the general sailing population.

Ahab's relationship to Moby-Dick is perhaps the strongest bond in the entire novel, surpassing Ishmael's love for Queequeg and even Stubb's love of his pipe. Nothing could dissolve Ahab's need for revenge, a vengeance of Biblical proportions, and even when he seems to realize the journey will kill him, he presses on because it is his fundamental purpose for existing. Ahab is essentially an angry Job; a man dealt an injustice that he is unable to endure patiently. When God asks Job, “Can you fill [Leviathan’s] hide with harpoons?” (Job 41:7),

Ahab’s monomaniacal passion answers instead of Job’s stunned silence. When God declares, “If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!” (Job 41:8), Ahab sails around the world in furious pursuit. Ahab literally cannot contain his hatred, and instead, he is overwhelmed with a “frantic morbidness” (Melville 200). Ahab is described as devilish and obsessed to the point of cruelty, yet his humanity peeks through every once in a while, reminding readers that at least some part of him is still human, pitiable, and burdened. However, it is soon made clear his destiny involves facing Moby-Dick and exacting his “audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge” on the whale; all his life led up to this one climax (Melville 202). In addition to the slew of prophecies that inextricably ties him to the whale, it seems fate ordained such a meeting too. When Ahab descries Moby-Dick, he says “none of ye could have raised the

White Whale first” (Melville 595), which reinforces the influence of fate on their meeting. On the second day of the chase, Ahab actually smells the whale before anyone else can even see it, and while Ishmael in his characteristic way dismisses this event to being common enough amongst whalers, in this context, it appears like destiny. To Ahab, it is. He believes the “whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed [. . .] a billion years before this ocean rolled” (Melville Tammaro 42

611). Compared to the amount of time described in the last line of the novel – “And the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it had rolled five thousand years ago” (Melville 624) – Ahab's fate actually holds more water.

Ahab and the White Whale are both cryptic characters; most of their personal descriptions come in the form of second-hand information, from menial hearsay all the way to legends and prophecy. Captain Ahab pursues a task that “was not for mortal man” (Melville 197). Finding one whale in the vastness of the ocean is highly improbable, yet despite having the whole sea to roam, Moby-Dick still “revealed his identity [. . .] to those who knew him” (Melville 199). The impossible fact that Moby-Dick appears to Captain Ahab proves some sort of divine intent is at play, that this second meeting was destined to happen. Melville solidifies Moby-Dick's relation to Leviathan by choosing the 41st chapter of Moby-Dick to introduce the whale, reflecting

Chapter 41 of the Book of Job, which is where the famous monologue given by God to Job about

Leviathan takes place, a portion of which is quoted earlier in this paper. The first line of this chapter, “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook?” (Job 41:1), is precisely what Ahab intends to do. Ahab is Job with a dark temper and a prodigious need for vengeance, and “the relevance of this prophecy to Ahab is confirmed” by making the chapters the same (Gilmore 159). Ahab is the defiant answer to God saying, “No one is fierce enough to rouse [Leviathan]” (Job 41:10).

The final battle – the apocalyptic scenes that comprise the last three chapters of the book

– creates an ending that carries the “unmistakable accents of Revelation” (Gilmore 157). Before the chase starts, a final portent makes itself known to the men of the Pequod. The first man that went up to the mast-head to keep a look-out for Moby-Dick falls overboard and never surfaces and neither does the life preserver thrown after him. The crew saw this “not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfillment of an evil already presaged” (Melville 570). This is the Tammaro 43 start of the End. Finally all the portents and prophecies and warnings and foreshadowing begin to reveal their consequential truths. It starts with the “ghostly baptism” (Melville 588) bestowed upon the Pequod by the Delight when the crew of the Delight throw the corpse of one of Moby-

Dick’s victims overboard. When Moby-Dick is descried on the first day of the chase, the scene does not immediately dissolve into splintered boats, flying harpoons, and “a boiling maelstrom”

(Melville 608). Instead readers are presented with a beautiful image that is undeniably heavenly:

. . . the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical

rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters

interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on

either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side... A gentle joyousness – a

might mildness of repose in swiftness invested the gliding whale... the glorified

White Whale as he so divinely swam. (Melville 596)

This is the Moby-Dick from the “The Spirit-Spout,” an ephemeral and solitary entity that represents the gem of all creation. However, when the battle begins, Moby-Dick's character drastically changes, and there is “retribution, swift vengeance, [and] eternal malice [. . .] in his whole aspect” (Melville 622). The dual personalities of Moby-Dick make him an interesting case for a sea monster. In no other work of literature covered in the scope of this paper has there been a sea monster that simultaneously represents both the resplendent divine and the malicious yet judicious reaper. As Moby-Dick is “vibrating his predestinating head” (Melville 622), another instance that proves Ahab’s life is inescapably tied to this moment, the captain’s fate is officially sealed. As the battle begins, Moby-Dick becomes charged with the “malicious intelligence” he is Tammaro 44 known for (Melville 598). Directly preceding Ahab's death, Moby-Dick seems “combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven” (Melville 618), evoking the image of Lucifer, the most beautiful of angels who returns in the Book of Revelations as the ultimate enemy, and this analogy gives the impression that Moby-Dick is exacting his own vengeance on Ahab. The final image is one absolutely abundant with apocalyptic implications:

[. . .] and so the “bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak

thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went

down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had

dragged a living part of heaven along with her and helmeted herself with

it. (Melville 624)

However, unlike the Bible, there are none who gain admittance to the kingdom of Heaven after the Judgment has been wrought, save for Ishmael, the lone survivor and “solitary heir to the covenant” (Gilmore 161), floating on as the sole source of testimony regarding the Apocalypse of the Pequod.

Moby-Dick is often alluded to as an “American Apocalypse” (Marx 3), in that the novel is an apocalyptic story that hits closer to the heart of Americans than any other nationality. As a

“symbolic matrix” (Marx 3), various examples of questionable morality in American history, culture, and society could be applied to the fate of the Pequod, from geopolitical fears to a fear of tyranny and Communism (Marx 3). As stated previously, Melville wrote Moby-Dick as a modern

American edition of the Bible, a reminder to never forget “the fullness of the Bible's moral messages” (Hutchins 33). In a time when America was becoming a player in the world market, Tammaro 45 especially because of its whaling industry, “the myth of national destiny [. . .] dominated

American thought” (Gilmore 154), leading people like Melville to ascribe some meaning to a future that was difficult to discern from where they were standing.

VIX. Conclusion

Some of the most famous characters in Western literature are sea monsters: Captain Ahab and Moby-Dick, Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, and Leviathan, the patrimonial monster, who is constantly being summoned and channeled into various new incarnations through literature, music, art, and other mediums. These monsters influence so many aspects of life, and they represent a spectrum of unknowns. We live on a planet that is still so alien to us, and the monsters that riddle our literature slide by in the dark recesses of the ocean – and our minds – at this very moment. When we evoke sea monsters in our literature, we are confronting the insecurities present in our life, from geopolitical anxieties to crises of faith, and in order to defeat these sea monsters, we challenge them through our reading and interpretation of their roles in literature.

Tammaro 46

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