Cosmopolitanism and Tragic Silence 167The universal orientation of Ishmael’s descriptions of human
practices is accentuated in the chapter that immediately follows the
whale hunt. Entitled “The Honor and Glory of Whaling,” the chap-
ter presents Ishmael offering an extended panegyric on the history,
culture, and development of the practice.^85 Ostensibly unaware of
the irony, he informs us of how “impressed” he is by the “great hon-
orableness and antiquity” of whaling, which has provided humanity
with a profession that is “gallant” and that establishes a heroic “fra-
ternity” among its practitioners.^86 The clear contrast in tone between
these two chapters therefore exemplifies the protagonist’s profound
psychological contradictions. Although he does not entirely efface
the violent or “immoral” aspects of his work, Ishmael nonetheless
resembles the Swede in his tendency to celebrate the artistic or cul-
tural “values” that are expressed in a mode of employment that is, at
the very least, ethically ambiguous.
In Levov’s case, these elements of ethical dubiety are not conveyed
as explicitly as they are in Ishmael’s narrative. Nevertheless, they
can be observed in the sequence in which he describes with typical
insouciance the privileged life he leads in Puerto Rico as a capitalist
factory owner. Using a tone that suggests work of great charity and
magnanimity is being undertaken, he boasts that when he opened
his second factory on the island, he hired an additional 300 workers,
training “a lot of good people to do the intricate work of making a
glove carefully and meticulously” (p. 27). One can observe a sense
here that, having been spurned by the riots, violence, and apathy
of his native Newark (not to mention the “deadly” taxes), Levov is
forced to relocate to another, more favorable location: one in which
the people are more assiduous and grateful for opportunity. Such
laudable sentiments begin to lose their charm, however, when he
complacently reveals to Zuckerman an alternative reason for want-
ing to relocate to the island: “because his family so much enjoyed the
vacation home he’d built some fifteen years ago on the Caribbean
coast, not very far from the Ponce plant. The life the kids lived there
they just loved [... :] sailing, scuba diving, catamaraning”(p. 28).
While we are not told a great deal about the living conditions of
the average Puerto Rican laborer and his recreational habits (Levov
usually refers to Puerto Ricans only in terms of their cheapness or