760 Melville, Herman
and through the power of his magnetic personality
enlists Pequod’s crew to join in his vengeful hunt for
Moby Dick. Prominent figures in the novel’s drama
include Starbuck, Ahab’s first mate (who futilely
tries to oppose his captain’s mad plan for revenge);
Stubb, the second mate; Flask, the third mate; and
the ambiguously sinister Fedallah.
Moby-Dick’s structure is complex and can be
difficult to follow. The novel’s early chapters focus
on Ishmael’s motives for going whaling, yet Ishmael
quickly recedes from the novel’s action once he and
Queequeg board the Pequod. The narrative begins
to focus primarily on the drama of Ahab’s hunt
for Moby Dick, and the development of Starbuck,
Stubb, Flask, Fedallah, Queequg, Tashtego, Daggoo,
and Pip as characters. Yet Ishmael does not disap-
pear altogether from the text. The many seemingly
tangential chapters devoted to educating the reader
about matters related to whales and whaling are
provided by Ishmael, who punctuates the story of
Ahab’s tragedy with his occasional reflections and
meditations. Though difficult to perceive, the novel’s
structure has a deep unity: It weaves together the
varied “cetological” speculations of Ishmael (which
often have a deeply philosophical character) with
the compelling story of Ahab and his quest to
destroy Moby Dick.
Essentially, Moby-Dick is the story of two people
on two different quests. It is the story of Ahab in his
mad quest to destroy his nemesis, the white whale;
and it is also the story of Ishmael the survivor, who
continues to seek in the whale a symbolic clue that
would help him comprehend the mysteries of life
and the universe.
Aaron Urbanczyk
race in Moby-Dick
The mid-19th-century whaling industry was literally
global; consequently it was multicultural as a matter
of practical necessity. Thus, Melville does not exag-
gerate in populating Moby-Dick with figures from
many and diverse continents, countries, and cultures.
The economic dynamic of race relations, as Ishmael
unabashedly observes, places white Americans at the
pinnacle of economic privilege, while all other racial
groups are essentially exploited as cheap labor: “not
one in two of the many thousand men before the
mast employed in the American whale fishery, are
Americans born, though pretty nearly all the offi-
cers are. . . . [The] American liberally provides the
brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying
the muscles” (chapter 27). The fascinating racial
pairing in Moby-Dick gives evidence of this socio-
economic racial dynamic. Most of the significant
powerful white characters are explicitly coupled with
at least one racially diverse counterpart: Starbuck
with Queequeg; Stubb with Tashtego; Flask with
Daggoo; and Ahab with Fedallah and Pip. Indeed,
the comic pairing of Ishmael with Quee queg as
fellow bedmates who become best friends and
shipmates early in the novel offers a scathing cri-
tique of Western society’s cultural and religiously
imperialistic presumptions and hypocrisies vis-à-vis
non-Western cultures and religions. While Ishmael
maintains the superiority of his “infallible” Presbyte-
rianism (chapter 10), he comes to admire the nobil-
ity and humanity of his pagan (and cannibal) friend,
even to the point of joining Queequeg in worshiping
his idol, Yojo (chapter 10).
Yet Melville’s representation of racial difference
does not reside merely at the level of highlighting
cultural imperialism and economic exploitation.
Racial difference becomes a favorite trope for
Melville to delve into the complex topics of human
psychology, ethics, metaphysics, and religion in
Moby-Dick. Non-white ethnicity becomes, in cer-
tain sequences in the novel, the equivalent of pagan
infidelism and moral evil. For instance, in chapter
96, “The Try-Works,” the pagan harpooners gath-
ered by night around the flaming try-works appear
particularly demonic to Ishmael’s imagination, and
Ahab deliberately calls upon his non-white, non-
Christian harpooners (Queequeg, Tashtego, and
Daggoo) when he blasphemously baptizes his har-
poon “in the name of the devil,” using their blood
(chapter 113). Further, Fedallah and his crew, Asian
in ethnicity, are described as “tiger-yellow” in com-
plexion, “like the aboriginal natives of the Manil-
las—a race notorious for a certain diabolism of
subtlety” (chapter 48). Once Fedallah surfaces from
his hiding place below deck, he is ever described in
the novel as a demonic shadow to Ahab, leading
Pequod’s captain to his doom with perverse council
and evil intent.