Call me Andy. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my bank account, and nothing particular to interest me out and about Austin, I thought I would read at home a little and read about the watery part of the world. Scouring the classics shelf I flipped through the printed sheets of a great many novel and settled upon a curious and mind you - lengthy choice with which to spend copious hours with. During that time a character with great fortitude and inner strength pushed me to sail - and by that I mean read - further on with him and to meet our doom together. The character's name was Captain Ahab and he led a strange crew. Now I would not have called them strange once embarking upon the blue swelled liquids of the North Atlantic Ocean or her six sisters, but using my mind's eye to see them in an earthen bound dwelling with imported tea from South Asia in hand and squirming in the comfort of cloth covered armchairs, you wouldn't be so quick to call me wrong. No - in fact you would agree that they were not meant for this solid based world. They - in all detail that mattered to an ocean adventurer, were sailors from mind to toe, from garment to heart, from followed dream to the equipment they handled. Their dream was none other than to pursue the greatest beasts to ever walk or swim the Earth. They had a fancy and that fancy was to chase the very whales around that live great lengths of their lives within liquified mansions and I, the reader of the great 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville was going along for the ride.
In nine of ten attempts to find a story to place myself in, I'm able to find just such a story, but for that one in ten, I find myself able to enter the world that story created again and again. The wordiest of writers, the first person of all first persons, the creator of contradictions, the ultimate ride along without leaving homerist, the great Herman Melville created just such a story and I would be hard pressed to present my own story to you without telling you of the magnificent impression his words placed upon my head and heart. His first person character that tells you to call him Ishmael, pulls you deep into a world of pride, madness, and the voice of reason. In a way, you become Ishmael. The first personage does not ever describe themselves and you could even argue that you're not aware of this "Ishmael's" gender for in fact, Ishmael is likely nothing more a description of who ye are to the world as you chase the White Whale than a name. None of the surrounding characters ever calls you Ishmael, but they do assume that you're a man with little experience aboard a whaling vessel. With all the biblical references found in Moby Dick, it is likely that Ishmael is supposed to be like the Ishmael that was kicked out of Abraham's house by Sarah and as such is a reference and so furthermore that reference is likely to mean 'outcast'.
In addition to Ishmael, there is another seemingly biblical character that tells a bold fortune to 'Ishmael' about his journey to hunt whales. That character is named Elijah. In the Old Testament, Elijah was a prophet so it's not too much of a stretch to label this character a biblical reference. The lesser known biblical reference is to Ahab King of Israel. In Moby Dick Ahab is the somewhat logical and authoritative captain that inspires his crew to follow him as he attempts to exact insane levels of revenge. When the novel begins, Ahab's already lost his leg trying to hunt down the white whale Moby Dick and now his only goal in life seems to be killing the previously noted sperm whale. It seems that only this will provide any level of personal justice and even though the leg of this captain is not the leg of the crew, he convinces the others on the ship that it must indeed be their leg in spirit and therefore in spirit, it is also their revenge. The captain is the lowest kind of villain the bares no ethics, he only acts on his motivation and has a willingness to sacrifice anyone to get a shot at the White Whale. Melville's description of this maleficent being inspires thoughts of some of the worst humans in history, a small number of which came after Melville penned his masterpiece. The biblical Ahab, which it is clear to me that the captain was based off of, was King of Israel and was just as putrid as his doppelganger. After Israel had been blessed by Kings that shone light upon the land like David and Solomon, the quality of kingly leaders dropped and spiraled downward rapidly until the moral fortitude of rule bottomed out with the anointing of Ahab. This King, Ahab, abandoned the God of his ancestors and worshiped the idol god Ba'al instead. The Old Testament story follows how the Prophet Elijah went in service to the Hebrew God in order to straighten out King Ahab and his people and return the beliefs of the Hebrew God to their 'rightful' place in Israel. Ahab continually challenges Elijah, is humbled time and time again only to regain his gumption to challenge the commands of Elijah and the word of God once again. In the end, King Ahab's own desires destroy him and Elijah is left standing to claim that he'd been right all along, that he was a true prophet. Just like King Ahab, Captain Ahab is humbled many times, yet still challenges Moby Dick to his doom. I find the similarities to be too much to ignore.
All this is to say that I am of the strong opinion that Melville looked to the story structure of 1st Kings and turned it into this masterpiece and it is not lost on me that after reading Moby Dick, shortly thereafter I began penning my own book about whales. However, mine was not to be about the hunting whales but instead it is about the perils that whales face in our world where the pursuit of human comforts often impedes on the success of their lives. I could talk or write all day about the merits of Melville's observational comedy about society, but I really just want to spell out the grapnel that pulled me for a Nantucket sleigh ride, the baited hook, the whirlpool that is 'Moby Dick Chapter 32: Cetology'. To be clear with you and above all else, Moby Dick is a comedy. Nothing within this comedy made me laugh more than to read Melville's 'expertise' on whales in said chapter. To paraphrase, he justifies that 'whales are air breathing fish that swim with a horizontal tail'. He's got a whole line of reasoning for this conclusion but something whispers to me quietly that he wanted to be wrong about his erroneous definitions. Afterall, he was telling the story from the perspective of someone who'd never been whaling or studied whales in their whole life. But amidst all my laughter, Melville lists off a great number of whales that I had known nothing about and that lack of knowledge stuck with me as something I wanted to remedy. With a little research I found out that cetology is nothing new, that Aristotle(~300BC) took up the occupation and declared that whales were indeed mammals. Roughly 300 years later the Roman philosopher and naturalist, Pliny the Elder contradicted the great philosopher of his time, Aristotle and declared that whales were fish. The debate continued through the years of whaling, but today there is little doubt. Whales are mammals, not fish, but it was the discussion of classifying these amazing creatures that sucked me in, not the debate of what to call them and it is the reason that my 300 plus page epic poem includes 20 different whale species. I also knew I wanted a whale like Ahab, that could convince his crew to come along for an impossible journey, but my issue was that I generally think of whales as 'good'. They seem like gentle giants at peace with the world around them so I couldn't make this persuasive orator vile like the captain or king. We all know in our hearts that not all persuasive people are evil, so why not have a kinder gentler, well meaning Ahab that cares about his mates? So this is how whales entered my mind and never left, and though they are the characters that tell this tale, the structure of the story has more to do with a different author whom I have an equal level of respect for: Attar.
Below is my interpretation of a complex set of events that conclude the story of Moby Dick(I'll explain the piece below if you're interested):
"The Conclusion of Moby Dick"
by Andy Graham
In the front of the picture at the bottom is Pip and that is me to the left wearing the orange shirt and holding the oar. I'll get back to those two later, but to me they pop out first, so I'm just making that a placeholder. To the right is Moby Dick and Moby's eye is a squared up version of the Egyptian symbol for Ra or at least it's the Eye of Ra. Ra is the sun god that continues to rise and fall for eternity. In the center is Ishmael's best friend Queequeg. He's an islander who's tattooed all over the place, but Ishmael learns to see him as just any other man. The man secured to the body of Moby Dick is Fedallah, he's a fire worshiper (Zoroastrian) from Persia. His eyes are distended because he's been dragged around for several days by Moby and has been dead for a while at the moment this was 'painted'. Moby is splintering the boat and knocks off several important crew members that are covered in the story. When Moby Dick ends, no boats are left to speak of and Ishmael floats to safety on a wooden coffin. The coffin is not pictured yet because The Pequod, the ship that the whalers all call home for three years on this voyage is sinking in the background. The coffin eventually floats up from that wreckage. On the right side of the splintered boat is Daggoo the African tribesman that the others see as a natural leader not to be challenged, left of him is Starbuck whom the coffee company Starbucks is named after. He is the voice of clarity much like your own voice after you've had coffee. Left of Starbuck is Flask who is angry at all whales, then Stubb who doesn't take much of anything seriously, then Captain Ahab. In the movies, you'll frequently see Ahab being tied to the whale instead of Fedallah, but in the book he's yanked off his small vessel when he clears a rope with his body only to get the hemp rope tangled around his neck. It is one of the final scenes and he never resurfaces. This all brings me back to Pip and myself. The entire crew is crazed with Moby Dick fever and Pip knows it. Twice he jumps ship and once they save him from the sharks that always seem to follow whalers for an easy meal of whale meat. To me, he's the 2nd most realistic character in the book and it's the reason he's not 'painted' in the same way that the others are. Lastly, I'm playing Ishmael because Ishmael is your eyes and ears and thoughts while you read this first person narrative. Ishmael is not actually on a small boat at the end of the book, he's on the Pequod and witnesses all the destruction of boats and people from her. When a large boat sinks, it pulls down things and people with it, but Ishmael luckily avoids this undertow and swims to safety, but I've symbolize his control over this situation by putting an oar in his hand. He's the only one with the power to survive this grim picture where Moby Dick destroys all that challenge him. Ishmael never truly challenges the white whale, so he (or she because frankly Ishmael could be a woman and I have a theory that supports this claim of Ishmael being a woman) is able to survive to spin the tale and no one survives to say otherwise. This piece took me 8 or 9 days to execute my ideas. I hope you enjoy it as it was not exactly great fun clicking 1000s upon 1000s of times over the last two weeks!
Talk to you later!
-AG (aka Ishmael when I'm caught reading Moby Dick)
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