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The White Whale As Hero in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

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The White Whale As Hero in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick DOI 10.6094/helden.heroes.heros./2018/A/05 Klara Stephanie Szlezák 41 “Famous”, “Immortal” – and Heroic? The White Whale as Hero in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick Introductory remarks which he is in the first place: an animal. Reading Moby-Dick from the perspective of critical animal Rarely has an animal figured so centrally in a studies, the article aims to re-direct attention to work of American fiction as has the white whale, the animal that provides the novel its title and to Moby Dick, from the eponymous 1851 novel by describe his role in the story as a heroic figure. Herman Melville. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, as As the goal of critical animal studies is the full title reads, has been the subject of count- to question dominant Western articula- less readings from a broad range of criticisms. tions of the human/animal binary that Whereas, arguably, Moby-Dick ranges as “the overwhelmingly view this division of the great unread American novel” (Inge 696), it may world into human and animal as a fact easily be one of the most researched works of (Gross 2) American literature. Scholarly studies of Moby- Dick abound as the academic interest in the novel the perspective allows us to suspend the division has been unbroken since the so-called Melville between human and animal and thus challenge revival that set in during the 1920s. As early as the notion that certain sets of traits or attributes the mid-1990s, Leonard Slade observed that are specifically human and inapplicable to ani- mals. The attributes (loosely) subsumed under […] the number of interpretations of the the concept of heroism are a case in point. White Whale is nowadays almost too Besides being a meaningful symbol on the great to be surveyed, and the arbitrariness metaphysical level of the novel or a mere projec- which has been frequently displayed in tion surface for Ahab’s obsessions, Moby Dick is these interpretations is almost proverbial. in fact a fictionalized historical animal based on (Slade ix) early nineteenth-century reports of a white whale Some twenty years later, the number has mul- called Mocha Dick as well as a huge whale in- tiplied, making a comprehensive survey all but volved in the sinking of the ship The Essex in 3 impossible.1 1820. As this article aims to demonstrate, Mel- Among the wealth of academic investigations ville’s combination of legends surrounding indi- of the novel, studies focusing solely on Moby vidual whales and contemporaneous zoological Dick are comparatively rare. While the lion’s knowledge about whales into the construction of share of studies center on the ship’s mono- Moby Dick has resulted in a heroized portrait of maniac captain, Ahab, and the charismatic narra- the whale. Despite the multiple references in the tor, Ishmael, the whale itself has been accorded novel to the whale as “monstrous” (Melville 62, far less scholarly attention. More often than not, 177) and even “malicious” (160, 178), this article Moby Dick is read in his2 relation to Ahab, and reads Melville’s white whale as a highly complex in the majority of studies the whale is treated as element in the novel whose monstrosity is a form a symbol or an allegory rather than an actual of superiority over the human characters consti- character in its own right: as a symbol of evil or tuting the basis for a heroizing discourse. The of goodness, of man’s relationship with the uni- heroization of the whale in the novel is achieved verse, as a phallic symbol, as a symbol of the by means of a natural-historical discourse that universe itself, as a symbol of the father (in his lays the foundation for the animal’s superior capacity to punish), or the mother (in the symbolic powers; by means of ascriptions of agency, es- equation of the maternal womb and the tomb) pecially in the animal’s response to his human (cf. ibid. ix-x). While the argument of this article attackers; by means of such qualifications of the is certainly not to deny the symbolic and allegor- animal as majestic, dignified, or indomitable; as ical dimension of the whale in the novel, it never- well as by means of the possibility of his immor- theless proposes a reading of the whale as that tality as an inherent characteristic of heroes. helden. heroes. héros. Klara Stephanie Szlezák 42 Of whales and men: Critical animal (Robles 3). In Moby-Dick, chapters as diverse nd studies and Moby-Dick as the 32 chapter, “Cetology”, which is dedi- cated to the natural characteristics and natural history of the animal, or the 42nd chapter, “The The prerequisite for approaching Moby Dick as Whiteness of the Whale”, revolving around the a hero in the novel is to accord an animal char- metaphysical implications of the whale’s colour, acter the capacity to assume heroic qualities, demonstrate the all but endless diversity of ways which traditionally are so firmly tied to the notion in which an animal can be constructed through of human superiority and their resulting exclusive literature. As has been noted, “[as] a symbol the claim to heroism. Heroic figures, as Ralf von White Whale in Moby-Dick is endlessly suggest- den Hoff et al. have described, may be real or ive of many meanings […]” (Slade 1) – and so fictitious, dead or alive, but they are generally he is as an animal and hero. If it is within the assumed to be human (cf. von den Hoff et al. power of literature to establish a strict in-group/ 8; cf. also 10). The present approach, then, has out-group dynamic between humans and ani- become feasible with the help of critical animal mals, by implication it is also within its power to studies, which is a fairly recent criticism within undermine, or even eliminate it. Robles further literary and cultural studies. Since the early specifies: 2000s, a wide range of studies have staked out the field of critical animal studies and have intro- […] our relation to non-humans has most duced significant parameters for the reading often been premised on our willingness and rereading of (predominantly western) litera- to assert our domination over nature. The ture and culture with a special focus on animals. invention of the animal has thus been in- Seminal works among them are Paul Waldau’s strumental in the development of human Animal Studies: An Introduction (2013), Dawne culture by creating the conditions of pos- McCance’s Critical Animal Studies: An Introduc- sibility of our own invention as civilized beings. (Robles 4) tion (2013), and The Oxford Handbook of Animal 4 Studies, edited by Linda Kalof (2017). This divide, which made possible humans’ self- One perspective within the field of critical perception as civilized, at the same time meant animal studies is the exploration of “human self- conception through animals” (Gross 4). Aaron the manipulation of animals by making Gross, in the introduction to his 2012 co-edited them not only inferior to humans but, to volume Animals and the Human Imagination: A the precise degree that they do not pos- Companion to Animal Studies, asserts that sess the attributes that make humans dis- tinctive, also incapable of objecting to how […] to make animals present [rather than they are treated. (ibid 14) to see them as absent referents], we first need to gain some purchase on how ani- Yet, when we turn our attention to Moby-Dick, it mal others are embedded in human self- becomes clear that the white whale’s defiance to conception – in the human imagination (the being slaughtered is indeed a form of objection landscape of our mind) and the imagin- to the way whales are treated; it is a form of re- ation of the human (how we imagine the sistance to the usual course of events in which meaning of humanity). (ibid. 16) the whales are hunted, killed, and different parts of their bodies are turned into commodities, as In this sense, considering Moby Dick a hero in various chapters in the novel detail. In this sense, the novel brings the animal from the margins a challenge to the assumption that animals are to the center as, arguably, more often than not incapable of objection equals a challenge to the humans take centre stage in “the landscape of related assumption that humans are superior our mind”. Likewise, interpreting Moby Dick as and (by implication the only) civilized beings. It is a hero in the novel affects “how we imagine the in this challenge to these assumptions that one meaning of humanity”. As the whale takes on a may find the very foundation of Moby Dick’s hero- typically human role – that of the hero – and the ism. two characters swap, to a certain degree, sup- posedly human and non-human qualities in the struggle with his antagonist Ahab, readers are urged to inquire into the very meaning and the Famous, supernatural, immortal: scope of the term ‘humanity’. Moby Dick and the categories of the Mario Ortiz Robles, in his 2016 book Litera- heroic ture and Animal Studies, explores the implica- tions of the “strict division Western culture es- When young whales at large are called “brawny, tablishes between humans and animals” and buoyant heroes” (Melville 303) in the novel, this finds that it is in its essence “literary in nature” helden. heroes. héros. The White Whale as a Hero all but invites an interpretation of the white whale fœtal suggestions of supernatural agencies, 43 as a hero and betrays his basic aptitude for this which eventually invested Moby Dick with status.
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