Still Chasing the White Whale

The first of an occasional series discussing “Books That Have Influenced Me”

Film director Ron Howard’s latest project, In The Heart of the Sea, tells the story of the nineteenth-century whaling ship the Essex.  Despite being based on harrowing true events, being directed by an Academy Award winner, and starring the "sexy" and talented Chris Hemsworth, the movie seems to be both a critical and commercial disappointment since its release last week.  While critics and audiences may not have appreciated the movie, the promotions I saw on television reminded me of a favorite book of mine and the novel the story of the Essex inspired – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

The "Peche du Chachalot" by Ambroise Louis Garneray (1783-1857, French)
graced the cover of my first copy of Moby Dick, which I still own.
Image at and available from The Newport Daily News

I first read Moby Dick during my junior year as part of my high school English class.  The third year English curriculum was American Literature.  While Mr. Kroc, my teacher, assigned several short stories, poems, other texts for my classmates and me to read that year, Melville’s novel was the culmination of everything we had read to that point.  Itself an adventure tale, reading the book promised to be its own adventure.  That promise was fulfilled the first time I read Melville’s magnum opus and has been with each reading since then.

This book first resonated with me for several reasons.  One was the way Mr. Kroc contextualized it.  Melville was writing during the Romantic period of American literature.  Mr. Kroc characterized Romanticism as a response to Transcendentalism.  Transcendentalist literature, he explained, dealt with themes of man seeking the meaning of life and understanding the human condition by engaging the natural world.  That is, people could understand both God and man as well as the relationship between them by encountering nature.  That Melville worked within a literary movement that countered what preceded it interested me.  The idea that authors could disagree and argue with one another through their fiction intrigued me.  I also appreciated Mr. Kroc’s explanation of Moby Dick reflecting Melville’s own reading Shakespeare and the Bible while writing the novel.  The notion of writers finding inspiration from what they read and incorporating it into their own work appealed to me.  I also liked how Melville inspired later writers of Realism, like Stephen Crane.  Finally, and perhaps most significant, was the novel’s core idea.  By reacting to Transcendentalism and making his tale one of a sojourner taking to the sea on a quest to hunt one of nature’s magnificent beasts, Melville essentially argued that man cannot understand God and that man’s quest to do so is pointless and can only lead to man’s death and destruction.  In short, God doesn’t care if man goes on a quest to find Him nor does He care what happens to man when he does.  As a 17 year-old Catholic schoolboy with a rebellious religious streak, I found this all very appealing indeed.

Granted, it was my adolescent self that was drawn to Mr. Kroc’s interpretation.  Yet, Moby Dick has continued to influence me since I first read it.  Certainly, what appealed to me initially does so still.  As I have matured, however, I have come to appreciate the situational symbolism of Melville’s writing.  Captain Ahab is driven by anger seeking revenge against the White Whale that deformed him.  As such, Ahab serves as a proxy for anyone of us who has struggled with understanding this thing called life or who have grown angry with what life has dealt us.  Ahab’s zealous quest, however, ultimately destroys him and those around him (save Ishmael, the sole survivor and storyteller.)  I think that applies to most quests.  Pursuing things like fame, wealth, or power can be destructive, especially when they are motivated by anger or revenge.  And yet, who doesn’t want to be famous, wealthy, or powerful, especially if we can rub it in the faces of those who we feel have wronged us?

As I said, we all struggle with this thing called life.  Ultimately I think that is why Moby Dick continues to influence my thinking about the world and my place in it.  The novel may be a tale of revenge against nature or one of anger with God, but it also is a story of struggle – any struggle - and how we choose to deal with it.  Professor Andrew Delbanco,Director of the American Studies Program at Columbia University persuasively argued a similar point during his recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

I will leave it to you to decide if he and I are right.