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Traces of Religion and Science in Herman Melville's Moby Dick

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Traces of Religion and Science in Herman Melville's Moby Dick 2011 International Conference on Languages, Literature and Linguistics IPEDR vol.26 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore Traces of Religion and Science in Herman Melville's Moby Dick ∗ Nasser Mahmoudi1 and Fatemeh Azizmohammadi2 1Department of Persian Literature, Shoushtar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shoushtar, Iran 2Department of English Literature, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran Abstract: It may be stated that despite his scanty schooling, Melville has shown deep interest in the prevailing trends of his age. A true representative of his age is that he struggled hard not only to resolve the conflict between the Calvinistic and the Emersonian theories but also to bring a compromise between religion and science. Though basically a Christian confronted with the complex question of human existence, his experience as a sailor offered him ample scope to develop a systematic knowledge of the outer world. This systematic knowledge of the universe endowed him with the scientific spirit to solve the basic problems of human existence. But while attempting to solve the mystery of religion, he doubted his own religious faith. His religious faith and scientific beliefs are projected in his two major characters, Ishmael and Ahab respectively. Ishmael represents the religious mind of Melville upholding all the virtues of religion; he does not have the heroic grandeur of Ahab - an unheroic hero. Ahab is a real hero, hero of Melville's scientific self that is not prepared to admit defeat from a subhuman, a Prometheus who has descended on earth in the nineteenth century to establish the supremacy of man over creation at the cost of his own life. Keywords: Moby Dick, Religion, Science, Emerson, Transcendentalism, Sin 1. Introduction The dust of controversy thickens as to the interpretation of Ahab and Moby Dick, the huge White Whale pursued by Ahab. Is Ahab the devil trying to destroy the order and harmony of the universe fighting futilely against God, i.e., Moby Dick, or attempting to become God?' Is Ahab a man with heroic proportions striving to wrest the secret of creation, or protesting against the evil of the universe? Is Ahab simply a monomaniac, irresponsible and mistaken in his quest? Does Ahab represent the "Id" and Moby Dick the Freudian "Superego"? These are a few examples of the various questions which have been asked and answered by a number of Melville scholars. In view of the medley of interpretation s concerning Moby Dick, in order to avoid critical shipwreck, I am trying to give an interpretation in the light of circumstantial evidence found in the book instead of giving a symbolic and psychological interpretation as done by D. H. Lawrence and others.' My contention is that Ahab is neither a devil, nor a monomaniac but a heroic man with a scientific self and a quite rational attitude towards life. And Moby Dick is not an incarnation of God but an evil creature with enormous strength to crush the superiority of man over creation. In fact Ahab's struggle with Moby Dick is the struggle of the scientific man with the evil of the universe for his survival, the idea being ultimately to establish the superiority of man over creation. 2. Religion and Science in Herman Melville's Moby Dick It is important to note that the medley of interpretations concerning Moby Dick is due to Melville's own religious conflict, an obvious outcome of the intellectual background of the nineteenth century. In this period of flux and turmoil there persisted an atmosphere of religious doubts in America because of the conflict between the Calvinist theory of predestination with its sense of innate depravity and original sin emphasizing ∗Corresponding author: Fatemeh Azizmohammadi, Department of English Literature, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran. E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: +98 09366612714 154 the sovereignty of God and the supreme authority of the scriptures, and Emerson's concept of "transcendentalism" which emphasized the free play of the human soul rapturously caught up in an infinite, spiritual quest. Many writers, in fact, were so severely plagued by this conflict that they doubted their own religious faith. Melville's religious conflict, in particular, drove him to make the coherence of truth itself a subject matter for deep meditation, thus extending ample scope to his critics to investigate that conflict in their own ways. But the critics are so much obsessed with Calvinistic and Emersonian theories that they have almost ignored the fundamental conflict of the age, i.e., the conflict between religion and science. My contention is that the religious doubts of Melville are the natural outcome of this fundamental conflict between religion and science, which is responsible for his dual personality representing his religious as well as scientific outlook. Moby Dick is a towering book and is generally acclaimed as a world classic. It is more than a major episode in Melville's life-long struggle with religious issues; it is considered to be his masterpiece. It not only presents his religious outlook but also the scientific attitude that he has developed through his experience as a sailor. The choice of an archetypal name for the narrator is specifically significant in the sense that Melville's intention has been to create a religious atmosphere in the narrative. Ishmael, the narrator, is named after that outcast" wrongly disinherited son of Abraham and Hagar: he and Hagar were cast out of Abraham's family by Sarah (Genesis 16:11-12). The prototype Ishmael was portrayed as a spiritual wanderer. From this point of view our Ishmael is no less a wanderer. When he finds his life on shore grim, he decides to go to the sea. He is an outcast in the sense that he has been cast out of the Pequod by God for His glorification. The Pequod is a self-contained world in itself. As the only survivor of the Pequod, Ishmael becomes an outcast of the Pequod world which, in turn, becomes a blessing in disguise. Like many an enlightened Christian of his age, Melville was not dogmatic about any particular religion or creed. Ishmael, the religious mind of Melville, reflects this liberal attitude of the author towards religion. In his view "a man can be honest in any sort of skin;" "better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian" (Melville 1972:367). That's why he does not hesitate to share the bed with Queequeg, a tattooed cannibal, who becomes his bosom friend. He cherishes "the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations" (ibidem:178). Of course he has his own religious doubts which are explicit in the statement, "Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending" (ibidem). He becomes somewhat impatient with Queequeg's queer notions about Yojo and Ramadan, his practice of unmovable posture and fasting; he fails to realize adequately the significance of fasting and other rituals by a non-Christian. But it is only the pagan Queequeg and his Yojo who bring Ishmael back to life and wholeness by suggesting the use of his outlived coffin as a life buoy. Thus Queequeg becomes the pagan or black counterpart Ishmael. Ishmael's description of Father Mapple's sermon on the Biblical Jonah helps to create an atmosphere of religious fear and has a direct relevance to the life of sailors who go on a whaling voyage. The sermon anticipates the tragic fate of Ahab and his crew who would be killed by the White Whale. Father Mapple's contention is that "if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists" (ibidem :136). In emphasizing this contention, Ishmael's purpose is to prepare his readers for the tragic end of Ahab. In the course of the narrative he will show that Ahab, who has always willfully obeyed the promptings of his self and hence has disobeyed God, deserves the punishment. But this contention is a highly controversial one as it conforms to the Calvinistic theory of predestination but not to Emersonian "transcendentalism." One can also obey his self and God at the same time which will be taken up later while considering Ahab and his egotistic self. Ahab's prototype was the wicked king who married Jezebel, a believer in Baal, and built shrines to heathen gods and killed god's prophets without paying any heed to their words. As the king of Israel, he misled his men into a fated battle and at last died with his followers. Again the choice of another archetypal name for his protagonist is doubly meaningful in the sense that Ishmael-Melville has deliberately tried to portray Ahab in the Satanic image. In Chapter 33 Ahab has been portrayed as a dictator. He has been painted as socially inaccessible: "Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it" (ibidem:250). 155 To heighten the devilishness of Ahab, Ishmael- Melville has deliberately associated him with Fedallah who serves as the evil spirit of Ahab. Ishmael takes Fedallah as a part of Ahab's self: "As if in the Parsee Ahab saw his fore thrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance" (ibidem:645). It is as if Ahab is not Ahab without Fedallah. Fedallah in Arabic ("feda" + "Allah") means "the sacrifice of god." The term was originally applied to assassins, hence refers to a messenger of destruction (Beaver 1972:800). But Fedallah is portrayed as a Parsee (an Indian Zoroastrian) who is supposed to be a fire-worshipper.
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