International Journal of Management and Humanity Sciences. Vol., S (4), 4258-4273, 2014
Available online at http://www.ijmhsjournal.com
ISSN 2322-424X©2014
The Carnival of Herman Melville's Moby Dick
1Pouyan Rezapour*, and 2Pyeaam Abbasi
1- M.A. Student, Department of English Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
2- Assistant professor of English literature, Department of English Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
*Corresponding author E-mail: pn.rezapour@yahoo.co.uk
Abstract
This study aims to scrutinize the extent to which Bakhtin's theory of Carnivalesque is pertinent to Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Published in 1851, the novel was taken by many critics as another simple adventure narrative in the same manner as Typee or Redburn, a romance of adventure illustrated by the author's two-year experience as a harpooner. But it turned out to be something quite new when it was reviewed. Melville bravely and cleverly touches upon the taboos of mid-nineteenth century American life, and the utopian freedom, community, and equality in the social domain of Bakhtin's carnival can be found in this novel. The overturning of popular culture, the mingling of the sacred with the profane and the sublime with the ridiculous, allow the voices to dethrone the authority of official culture. Certain actions and events in Moby Dick are nothing short of the renowned theory by the celebrated Russian linguist.
Keywords: Melville, Moby Dick, Bakhtin, Carnivalesque, Grotesque imagery, Folk laughter, Marketplace.
Introduction
Bakhtin's Carnival
The Carnivalesque as a theory of carnival, sub culture, and folk culture is both a historical event and a literary pattern. The carnivals, profane celebrations tolerated by the church before Lent, of medieval Europe attracted Bakhtin's attention and were eventually considered by him as instances in which all hierarchies temporarily "turned upside down" and "inside out". Bakhtin constructed the theory by carrying out a categorical study on Rabelais and Dostoevsky and their works. Carnival theory is explained and deciphered in much of his works but it is by and large developed in Rabelais and his World and Problems of Dostoevsky. The carnival theory has three inseparable and originally conjugated principles which are recognized as, carnival, carnival sense of the world, and carnivalization. As a sublimation of the other two constituents, carnivalization is the most important. The theory is based on Bakhtin's study on carnival life and his dialogical genre theory. The serio-comical, the source of the dialogical genre, is what he gives the notion of carnivalized literature, ―that was influenced – directly and without meditation, or indirectly, through a series of intermediate links – by one or another variant of carnivalistic folklore (ancient or medieval)‖ (Bakhtin, 1984a 107). The typical examples of carnivalized literature are Socratic and Menipean, the serio-comical is the first.
According to Bakhtin, by helping to shape new genres, carnivalization is an important element in the history of literature. The importance is highlighted in the fact of it being influential in the content of medieval literary composition and a determining factor in the generic foundation of a work. In Bakhtin's words, ―carnivalization becomes a purely literary tradition‖ (Bakhtin, 1984a 131).
Bakhtin believes that, ―the source of carnivalization is carnival itself‖ and ―the clamping principle that bound all these heterogeneous elements into an organic whole of a genre […] was carnival and a carnival sense of the world‖ (Bakhtin, 1984a 131; 134). So for Bakhtin carnival is the source and base for carnival theory and presents the materials to develop a new genre for literature composition given in carnival. Carnivalization is the mere transformation of the carnival and the carnival sense of the world into literary works. By creating the carnival sense of the world, Bakhtin abstracts all the similarities and commonness in carnival. By making carnivalization possible, the carnival sense of the world consequently returns to carnival and the carnival sense of the world. Therefore carnival is the source and origin of the carnival sense of the
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world and literary carnivalization. Thereupon as an integrative theory the three components are closely linked to each other.
What made the carnival immortal was that it finally led to new ideas in public discourse through mocking the permanently set social rules and beliefs and belittling organizations of whatever sort. According to Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World, "the suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of particular significance. Rank was especially evident during official feasts; everyone was expected to appear in the full regalia of his calling […] and to take the place corresponding to his position. It was a consecration of inequality. On the contrary, all were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age"( Bakhtin, 1984b 10). The medieval powers governing the society resolutely believed in hierarchical background and class divisions.
"Therefore, such free, familiar contacts were deeply felt and formed an essential element of the carnival spirit. People were, so to speak, reborn for new, purely human relations. These truly human relations were not only a fruit of imagination or abstract thought; they were experienced. The utopian ideal and the realistic merged in this carnival experience, unique of its kind" (Bakhtin, 1984b 10). The theory that Clark and Holquist have is that Bakhtin ―is exploring the interface between a stasis imposed from above and a desire for change from below, between old and new, official and unofficial‖ (Clark et al., 1984 297). Basically Bakhtin's carnival is, ―the second world and the second life outside officialdom‖ or "people's second life, organized on the basis of laughter‖. Carnival ―is festive life‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 6, 8).
In Bakhtin's own words the carnival is "the temporary suspension of hierarchical rank," a celebration of riddance from "established order" which consequently raises the "gay relativity" and leads to "the peculiar logic of the "inside out" (de l'envers), of the "turnabout", of a continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crowning and uncrownings‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 11).
During the carnival everything customary and official is mocked and reversed and seen as absolutely grotesque. In his book, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), De Certeau asserts that lifestyles such as urban nomadism, poaching or bricolage are used by the everyday man to warp and debase the authoritarian state power. If the state attempts to suppress the masses each and every individual will have his own micro possibility of resistance. For Gardiner all these things ―constitute a crucial resource through which the popular masses can retain a degree of autonomy from the forces of socio cultural homogenization and centralization‖ (Crossley et al., 2004 39).
Therefore the carnival is the dream of a free world in which nothing is craved or missing, "no dogma, no authoritarian, no narrow-minded seriousness can coexist" for it is a ―second world‖ that reliefs the inhabitant from oppressive established hierarchy by rebelling against the very establishments propagating social standards (Bakhtin, 1984b 3; 196).
The carnival sense of the world has three firmly intertwined elements that need to be clarified. Grotesque imagery, folk laughter, and the marketplace are the three elements that are the building blocks of the theory. According to Bakhtin, ―the world of Romantic grotesque is to a certain extent a terrifying world, alien to man. All that is ordinary, commonplace, belonging to everyday life, and recognized by all, suddenly becomes meaningless, dubious and hostile‖ in grotesque imagery (Bakhtin, 1984b 39); ―the grotesque expresses not the fear of death but the fear of life‖ (ibid 50). Concepts such as utopia and dystopia are under question in carnival and grotesque. Wolfgang Kayser's four part conception of the grotesque is mentioned by Bakhtin as: ―(1) the grotesque is an estranged world; (2) the grotesque appears to be an expression of an incomprehensible, inexplicable, and impersonal force; (3) the grotesque is a play with the absurd; (4) the creation of the grotesque is an attempt to invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of world‖ (Adams et al., 1997 17).
Carnival and the grotesque are anarchical movements that intend to annihilate the hierarchies temporarily and to defy powers such as capitalism and race or gender issues. Rudimentary features of the grotesque style are exaggeration, hyperbolism, and excessiveness. Carnivalesque grotesqueries and profanities are fundamentally binaries, their laughter, language, and even symbols have an inherent duality. The recurring linked and inverted oppositions worth mentioning are, birth and death, laughter and sorrow, the sacred and the profane, and finally the spiritual and the carnal. The world's cyclical movements and fertility are attended to quite a lot in relation to the mentioned oppositions. New life is the fruit of death and consumption, hence the ideology/credo of carnival is inherently positive and optimistic.
Bakhtin believes Kayser to be generalizing about the definition of the grotesque throughout all periods; he asserts that the principal meaning of the grotesque can be found in the Renaissance, ―linked to the culture of folk humor‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 46). He advocates that Kayser's definition just shows the desolate and dark grotesque world exclusively experienced by the author. Actually gloom, up to the Romantic era, is entirely foreign to the development of the grotesque world. The medieval and Renaissance grotesque is abundant with the Carnivalesque euphoria, it emancipates the world from all that is dark and evil. Taking away all fears
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it is gay and lively. All frightening things in real life are "turned into amusing or ludicrous monstrosities" (Bakhtin, 1984b 46). Therefore instead of the dark monstrosities of the romantic grotesque, Bakhtin sees the grotesque as ―the festival of spring, of sunrise of morning‖ (ibid 41).
Furthermore this grotesque imagery is filled with the grotesque body, images of ―exaggeration, hyperbolism [and] excessiveness‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 303). Here Bakhtin does not mean the physiological body in the modern sense, because it is not "individualized", but a universal, cosmic and ―at the same time an all-people character‖ (ibid 19). The grotesque conception of the body which was that of a flawed and shapeless entity was in absolute contrast to the "classical" notion of the body which is associated with the complete, finished, individual entity (ibid 28-29). So the grotesque body becomes an appropriate substitute for the classical body within which the classical epitomizes "the ideology of official culture and its fixed conventions and static view toward life", whilst the grotesque one denotes ―a body in act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body‖ (ibid 317).
The most conspicuous feature of grotesque imagery is that of degradation which according to Bakhtin is, ―the essential principle of grotesque realism i.e. the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level, to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 19). On this subject Linda Hutcheon asserts that ―there is a specific and wholesome transfer from the elevated, spiritual, ideal plane to the material and bodily reality of life‖ (Hutcheon, 1983 84). Sue Vice adds that, ―its [degradation's] central trait is an ambivalent act […] this ambivalence, particularly when it involves the new birth implicit in death, or the resurgence implicit in being toppled, is the characteristic principle of both grotesque realism and carnival itself‖ (Vice,1997 155). Regarding this dilemma in meaning, Bakhtin maintains that, ―degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 24) or in other words, death, taken in a positive light, is followed by a rebirth and regeneration of the utmost eminence.
Laughter is the second aspect of Carnival to be noted. Carnivals are formed on the "basis of laughter" for Bakhtin; "laughter degrades and materializes‖ (Bakhtin, 1984c 7; 20). It is considered by him a vengeance on the gravity and severity of the medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture. This counter culture of the people reveals "the unofficial aspect of the world" (ibid 195).
In his essay ―Epic and Novel,‖ Bakhtin asserts that laughter ―has the remarkable power of making an object come up close […] turn it upside down, inside out‖ (Bakhtin, 1981 23). And further guarantees that ―carnivalistic laughter […] is directed toward something higher – toward a shift of authorities and truths, a shift of world orders‖ (Bakhtin, 1984a 127). Parody, the factor that undermines authoritative discourses, is the end result of laughter. According to Bakhtin parody is a closely knit element to the Carnival and ―to the carnivalized genres it is […] organically inherent‖ (ibid.). The parody of the sacred is an instance of parody that is of considerable importance. In this form of parody there is no boundary left to distinguish the sacred from the profane, therefore it is polyphonically and dialogically charged. Anthony Gash declares that Bakhtin's conception is ―Kierkegaardian rather than Hegelian,‖ for Bakhtin is believed to have adopted Kierkegaard's statement that humor is ―the incognito of the religious‖ (Gash, 1998 180).The ambivalence of the laughter should not go unmentioned. That is the fact that it is also a self- addressed laughter, there is no distinction between the person who laughs and the person who is laughed at, because of the use of masks and role playing.
The final piece to the carnival puzzle is that of the marketplace, the place where grotesquery and laughter occur. The unofficial site controlled by the masses is the place where people can experience their collectivity: "The Carnivalesque crowd in the marketplace or in the streets is not merely a crowd. It is a people as a whole, but organized in their own way, the way of the people. It is outside of and contrary to all existing forms of the coercive socioeconomic and political organization, which is suspended for the time of the festivity" (Bakhtin, 1984b 255).
Bearing all the above in mind, what can be grasped from the carnival is that it intends to promote and propagate change and freedom, and it stresses on the dependence of the classes in the cultural framework. If "the official feast asserted all that was stable, unchanging, perennial: the existing hierarchy, the existing religious, political, and moral values, norms, and prohibitions," the carnival celebrated the temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order [...] All the symbols of the carnival idiom are filled with this pathos of change and renewal [...] the peculiar logic of the "inside out" [...] of a continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings (Bakhtin, 1984b 9-11).
Therefore carnival could lead to social disorder, but being a festive, second life to the people which is organized and based on laughter and outside any form of social, economic, or political organization all suspended for the time of festivity. Although it challenges the ideological system's validity and the chance of existence of alternative truths and organizations, it acts as a vent for the social tensions. Gardiner believes that the carnival has "the arbitrariness [...] of a whole range of institutional arrangements and social roles right down to our conceptions of history, of individuality and sexuality, and even of time itself. It demonstrates that other, less rigid and hierarchical social relations are possible and indeed desirable" (Gardiner, 1992 94).
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Bakhtin ―bemoans the demise of carnival and its partial transformation into bourgeois frivolity‖ (Gardiner, 1992 34). To understand Bakhtin, concepts such as commodification, class struggle, gender struggle and even race struggle need to be considered. The upper class, which has always been associated with high culture and art, is also the producer of low culture. Nowadays the social aim of the grotesque show of the carnival has faded and is being commercially abused. Webb maintains that Bakhtin's notions have been over- utilized and believes that a "geographical class regulation" (Webb, 2005 125), will result in class distinctions. Feminist critic Strinati (1995) explains that high culture, i.e. art, most often than not is fraternized with masculinity, production, work, intellectual activity, and writing (191). On the other hand, mass culture, i.e. popular culture is sororitized with femininity, consumption, repose, passivity, and reading.
Such prejudices are the direct result of a bourgeois sensibility, and the lives of the masses are under complete influence of the images they are fed by the multibillion dollar media industry. The infantilization of the body is another example of the impact of the mass media. The superhuman muscular body of the Hollywood actor and the Barbie slim physique of the actress for instance and the taboo of naming diseases because they would remind the viewer that they would die one day are all being fed to the masses under the veneer of perfection. The postmodern TV shows such as "Big Brother" and "the Hero" turn the viewer into a kind of voyeur, a stalker, who glorifies the show's participants' tedious life on TV.
Under the impression of all these forces the spectator would mimic what he sees in order to become spectacle. Guy Debord the French Marxist theorist 1967 book The Society of Spectacle clarifies this as, "understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society‘s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations – news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment – the spectacle represents the dominant model of life". The spectacle is the ubiquitous "affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process‖.
The Argentinean carnivals are popular events but they are merely shows in which everyday people do not participate, the masses only watch the spectacles on TV. Carnival was culture in which the masses participated; "Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it and everyone participates because it's very idea embraces all the people" (Bakhtin, 1984b 7). Albeit the carnival was and still is a festive part of the people's life, "but the basic carnival nucleus of this culture is by no means a purely artistic form nor a spectacle and does not, generally speaking, belong to the sphere of art. It belongs to the borderline between art and life" (ibid). The escapist quality of the modern day "carnivals" are the reason that Bakhtin mourns for the metaphoric death of the carnival.
Discussion
The Carnivalesque in Melville's Moby Dick
In the time known as the decline of his popularity in the 1850s, Herman Melville published his universally known masterpiece which, during his lifetime, did not even sell the initial 3000 published copies. Dedicated to his friend and mentor Nathaniel Hawthorne, Moby Dick or The Whale could be regarded as the best read in order to come to grips with the nineteenth century American thought and life. Referred to as a world classic it can be interpreted as a complete guide book on religion, philosophy, history, sailing, and whaling. It is no doubt an existentialist Shakespearean tragedy in that it is the fight of empty handed man against a hostile, or at best, apathetic universe. Man finds himself in a Godless and purposeless world, a world in which life is futile and meaningless because of its purposelessness. Nature is open to man's wise and planned observation and maneuverings. However, at the end of the day man's destiny is at the mercy of Nature, for Nature cannot be manipulated at its core. Man's transcendentalist absurdity is accounted for when he attempts to overpower and overcome Nature. The very thought is the damnation of man. Godlessness, futility and absurdity are clearly evident in Melville. The main theme of alienation on its tripartite level, between man and man, man and society, and man and Nature, is evident to the readers of the novel. Alone with his one leg, Ahab is Melville's criticism of the concept of the Emersonian self-reliant individual. He is regulated by his own will and selfhood and will not be subject to any other kind of law. In short, the entire universe exists just to serve his egoistic monomaniac self. It is worth mentioning that Romantics such as Melville were in opposition to this nineteenth century culture. What the self reliant individual is expected to do is to be aware of and avoid false consistency and conformity. He encourages individuals to trust their inner voice and rely on themselves rather than the conventions of society. Emerson wanted people to shape their own lives based on what they truly believed in instead of being molded into the obliging citizen the society wants. Free citizens breaking away from the social order and undermining the hierarchies are what the philosophy of "Self Reliance" (1957) propagates.
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In the final lines of his essay "Self Reliance" Emerson says that, "a political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles" (Emerson 1957). An individual is believed to be happy that is his own source of happiness. Ahab is noted to be the Melvillian critique of Emerson's Self-Reliant individual. He believes solely in himself and nothing else. Before he sets sail he has made up his mind to take his revenge from the dumb animal. What is implied by his behaviour throughout the voyage is that he is not concerned with the social conventions, precisely speaking the sailing rules and regulations. He does give in to the fact that they have to hunt down a few whales in order to keep the crew happy but other than that he does not care about the rest of his shipmates' ideas, feelings and character whatsoever. He is, one could say, on the far too radical side of the philosophy of "Self Reliance". He can be said to be a comic self -reliant individual. His not valuing the hierarchies and conventions are so drastic that they take on a humorous quality. He makes a carnival out of the social order and consistency by giving the utmost amount of importance to his beliefs. What in the end persuades readers that Melville is somehow criticizing Emerson's philosophy is the grim fact that the ship and its entire crew, save for the narrator, are lost and nothing of value is gained through Ahab's over-emphasized version of self reliance.
In comparison to earlier works taking a swift glance at the text the reader will notice the difference. Melville is not humble anymore in talking about his texts, and refers to the novel at hand as the best work ever carried out on the topic of whaling. In the first two chapters he defines the subject matter as the whale; what is more is the description of the way various people and customs take on the subject matter culturally and linguistically. The vast variety of languages mentioning and describing the whale highlight the fact that language is a subject equally important to the novel as is the whale.
Melville boasted about the "great novelty" of the work and stated that, "I do not know that the subject treated of has ever been worked up by a romancer; or, indeed by any writer, in any adequate manner" (Letter to Richard Bentley, 1850, 163) and he does a hell of a job at writing the novel bearing in mind the "generic expansiveness" and "the range of discourses" that he includes in the novel (Weinstein, 2006 10). "The inextricable relation between the whale as nature and the whale as text" is another fact that is inferred. Believing a piece of whale skin to have "a magnifying influence" (MD 306) on the text "in ‗‗The Blanket‘‘ Ishmael uses a translucent piece of whale-skin as a bookmark in his book about whales" (Lee, 2006 6). Here Melville mixes up the whale as a natural being and the whale as a subject to text.
Saying that he "will divide the whales into three primary books" (MD 137) he implies that they are classified but the chapters, or the so called books, in the end have overlapping boundaries and are not distinguished by Melville. ‗‗Some sort of popular comprehensive classification‘‘ (MD 136) is not reached nor does he ‗‗hit the right classification‘‘ (MD 140) through the claimed division. Consequently, instead by imitating its procedures he shatters the classification and makes a carnival of the hierarchies.
Reading the novel one simply cannot overlook the fact that it does not follow the norm of the novel writing enterprise of the period regarding structure. It's structure changes from a comedy, Ishmael's sleeping with Queequeg and getting married and setting off on a whaling expedition, to Ahab's popping out of nowhere and his almost farcical leadership, turning the novel into a play with dialogues, soliloquies, asides, stage directions, with no trace of the main character to be found. Becoming the central narrative voice of the novel Ishmael then returns in chapter 41 by narrating the personal life of Ahab without having had the slightest possible chance of observing what he is narrating.
The next stage is the mutation of Ahab's drama into an encyclopedia on whales and whaling. This too is the result of the ponderings of Ishmael. By the time we reach the chapter "Doubloon" we are reading the captain's drama again and from this point on the dramatization of the tale are stepped up. His soliloquies, clashes and contradictions with God and his crew, all build up to reach the climax of the novel. Then the chapters named "The Chase" with their film-like description are followed by the return of Ishmael and the final chapter of the novel. Beginning with comedy then turning into a tragedy and also the conversion from lyric meditation to drama the novel is evidently a deviation from the set rules and standards of the normal linear novels of the nineteenth century.
Melville's best friend Nathaniel Hawthorne was called the American Shakespeare and Melville himself had a strong tendency toward Shakespeare and Shakespearizing his works especially Moby Dick. Melville takes full advantage of Shakespeare "placing the mantel of Shakespeare on Ahab who lives and breathes but also dies by Shakespeare" and at the same time tries to transcend Shakespeare by the survival of the "lyrically poeticized" Ishmael and the death of the "Shakespearized" Ahab. Therefore, "Moby-Dick figures forth a revolution of politics, sexuality, and mind" in order to rid himself of Shakespeare (Bryant, 1998 6).
The novel's revolutionary politics were hidden to the readers and critics of the time of its publication. But modern readers and critics are aware of such instances as the prophetic allegory of the ship as the state of America racing to its doom of Civil War. Ahab the hunter could be read as a ravaging Capitalist whose sheer
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insatiability exploits nature and mockingly undermines the social order. In other light Ahab could be the personification of the individualist who by undermining the expansionist ideology of the society shatters the slightest hope for a voice for the democracy's lobbies and parties. Or even as the Abolitionist by chasing after the whale because of its supremacy for being white he could be taken as the radical destructive racism of the puritan culture of the era. Each and every single one of these instances is an example of how the social order is undermined and shattered which results in the foregrounding of a Bakhtinian carnival.
The rhetorical schemes employed in the structure of Moby Dick serve as a camouflage for the novel's clandestine message of objection and protest. And last but not least is the fact that the novel by involving the reader in radical politics is nowadays taken as politically revolutionary. The end result of the binary opposition of Ishmael's comic and poetic mode and Ahab's ironic and theatrical mode is Ishmael's success. Furthermore it should be acknowledged that Ishmael's qualities shape those of Ahab and that Ishmael's comic state is given form through Ahab's tragic theatricality. It seems that the doubt that Ishmael is supposed to endure and overcome by disposing of the satanically compassionate and understanding Ahab is the tale of Ishmael's outgrowing Ahab. After this process what we are left with is Ishmael as the lone survivor of this twisted adventure. Confused on the edges of Ishmael's maelstrom we relieve ourselves of doubt through Transcendental meditation. But transcending is not under question as much as returning from the ideality of Ahab to the reality and the deceit ridden society.
Ahab's oscillation between thoughtless belief and doubt is nothing short of the "Flash-of-Lightning" faith Emerson experiences (Emerson, 1957 203). The cycle of faith, doubt, and repose drive Ahab to his gloomy death. Unlike Ishmael, Ahab the monomaniac is obsessed and cannot find faith. Afraid that there is nothing beyond life and roaming in the doom and gloom of doubt, Ishmael freely and willingly goes on the whaling expedition. On the other hand Ahab personifying his fear as the white whale sets sail to hunt down his version of nothingness.
The postmodern assertion of "nothing exists in itself" (chapter 11, The Nightgown) is Ishmael's salvation; he takes a positive stance. The assertion could be interpreted as the idea that everything is connected and exists because of its relation to other things. "'Nothing' exists in itself" could be expounded to mean nothingness as an idea exists in itself and because of itself and that there is no supernatural reality at work. But this also could be inverted to mean that nothingness exists and a higher reality could be at work. All these inversions and revolutions result in Ahab's madness. But they have quite a different effect or impact on Ishmael. In the chapter "The Mast-head," Ishmael loses his identity after imagining himself in an other-worldly dream. This nothingness causes him to feel a certain compulsion to keep hold of his being and identity, "his little self in the midst of the larger universal self".
The contemplation on this fact drives Ishmael to atheism, nihilism, and alienation. Later on, he comes to the conclusion that obsessing over Ahab's obsession of being and nothingness can have no result other than self eradication and the political loss of morals and ethics. Eventually Ishmael finds hope and something to hang on to until he alleviates his dilemma. In the chapter "the Squeeze of the Hand" he resolves to allay his distress through the joys of "the wife, the heart, the bed" (MD 416). The masturbatory images of chapters 1 and 95 with the physical and imaginary hand provoking Ishmael psychosomatically change his path for good and ironically bring about his salvation. Sex out of wedlock and masturbation were taken as illegal and immoral at the time and the ironical salvation of Ishmael through acts that were ousted by the religious and social orders and conventions is nothing short of the definition of Bakhtin's carnival of the conventions and consistencies.
It should not go unnoticed that instead of resorting to higher, more mature forms of spiritual aids and relief, Ishmael becomes content with physical pleasures as means of resolving his dilemma and problem. The fact is reminiscent of the Bakhtinian theory of the preference of the physical or bodily over the spiritual dimensions. This body actually merges the borders and boundaries between individuals. Thus ―the material bodily principle is not contained in the biological individual, not in the bourgeiois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed‖ (Bakhtin, 1984b 19). Hence the body is not perceived as one singular closed matter but open, the Bakhtinian idea the grotesque body is based on the notion of the openness of the body, the cavities of that body and how they are put to use. The mouth, the anus, the vulva, the different liquids secreted from these body parts, trespassing the borders of both sexes in a bodily and a social sense they inevitably degrade whatever and whoever that is taken to be superior. Bakhtin describes the openings as Utopian and privileges them over spiritual dimensions during the merry time of carnival. Ishmael through resorting to bodily pleasures manages to keep himself in the realm of the mentally sane. What is expected of Ishmael in accord with the society he is a part of is that he resort to religion an institute regarded as the only means of salvation by the puritan hierarchies. Not able to save a young soul Melville is said to be implying the failure of the religious dictatorship of the puritans.
Another subject of contemplation in this thought provoking novel is the colour white and the whiteness of the whale. The colour white is more often than not associated with goodness, virtue, purity, and honesty. But peculiarly in this novel the whiteness of the whale associates the whale with evil and terror. In order to clarify
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the terror evoked from the colour Ishmael refers to the polar bear, the arctic albatross, and the steed of the prairies. By relating the colour white to evil the belief in the holiness and goodness of the colour is undermined and overturned. Furthermore through giving examples of other white animals Melville is implying that this attribute adds to the evilness and wickedness of the creatures. Consequently another established order is overturned by its extreme opposite ensuing in yet another carnival of the conventions.
Seeing the whale as infinitely large and infinitely powerful makes the description of the whale fit Kant's mathematic and dynamic sublime. Mathematically sublime things are perceived as sublime because of their sheer size, and dynamically sublime things are attributed the adjective sublime because of their sheer power. Ahab finds the creature as a symbol of "outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it" (MD 157). This perspective makes the viewer imagine the white object at hand infinite and consequently horrific and dreadful. Ishmael concludes that the infiniteness of the colour white brings about forth "the heartless voids and immensities of the universe" (MD 57).
Thus when the universe is perceived as infinite, humans are taken as finite in comparison, which results in the horror and fear of termination. Thus is observed the whale and its colour intensify the feeling, consequently bringing about the characters' hatred and horror of the whale. The whiteness of the polar bear, the arctic albatross, and the great steed of the prairies has the same quality and bring about the same feelings. To Ahab the power that these creatures have is provocative resulting in his hatred. This power he believes should be in the hands of men rather than animals which don‘t possess the power of thought.
The nature's ideal of making and innovating is reversed by Ahab for he believes in demolition and annihilation; the demagogue rouses anger and excitement out of Pequod's crew by picturing Moby Dick as a "pasteboard mask" (MD 197), and even evil incarnate. In order for him to exceed the ideal of nature he has to destroy its symbols. This negative attitude results in the resolution of his dilemma but it is counterproductive. Ahab's other tragic flaw is the fact that he cannot accept death and nullity. "Sometimes I think there is naught beyond,", "But 'tis enough" (MD 157), an atheist in denial Ahab believes and simultaneously cannot stand the idea that underneath the symbolic Moby dick the absence of God or any other transcendental power. By taking symbols as mere matter Ahab comes up with a cheap type of transcendentalism and its ideality is taken by him as a negative force rather than a positive one.
Ishmael's pun on nothingness is repeated by Ahab in the form of "naught's an obstacle"; thinking about his undeterable will for killing the whale, on the face of things he means that nothing can get in his way. But its core meaning is the fact that "the idea of nothingness" itself is an "obstacle" (MD 158). Ahab and Ishmael cleverly play with words but there is a fundamental difference. Ishmael means for what he is saying to be double layered in meaning, and Ahab, on the other hand, is closer to a gaff than a clever pun.
The "transcendental structure" results in the two different stories of Ishmael's and Ahab's; one on "doubt" and one on "denial". As said above "Ishmael's meditation" is what Ahab's play is based on! Ishmael's double sided, bipolar stance in regards to his unrelenting question of transcendence is manifested in the chapters titled "Ahab" and "Whale" and after the two chapters Ahab has, to some extent, the same thoughts and feelings. Ishmael takes to analyzing the symbolic whiteness of the whale and tries to find out what it is exactly that is so frightening about this quality of Moby Dick. This pursuit leads to his being "stabbed [...] from behind with the thought of annihilation" (MD 186). Learning of an "absence of colour" he eventually plunges into "a colorless, all color of atheism". Taken as the symbol of nothingness, it is said that "whiteness symbolizes paradoxically that symbols do not exist" (Bryant, 1998 10).
In just a couple of chapters later in "the Chart" Ahab ephemerally turns into a zombie and becomes "a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself" (MD 192). Ahab's fear of nothingness sounds quite similar to Ishmael's fear of the whiteness. Showing this fear and madness through the eyes of his narrator an unsettled state of uncertainty and confusion is implied. The vocabulary used for the fear of nothingness innate in both the characters is the same.
In contrast to almost all other synchronic texts which are regarded as male oriented, Melville's magnum opus is said to be otherwise. Melville's sexuality is that of gender-crossing, for the boundaries and limits of sexuality are through implication found to be transgressed and turned upside down. Ishmael's obsession with Being leads him to a stage that he acts as the wife of his marriage with Queequeg, who is, one could say, the perfect representative of maleness and being the other, being a pagan in contrast to Ishmael's belief in Christianity. The crossing of the boundaries is in the fact that sexuality is reversed and confused and that the civilized Ishmael and the savage Queequeg are brought together.
The Carnivalesque held in the novel's sexuality is also apparent when Ishmael whose thoughts imply the fact that he is not very familiar with the other sex instead of having memories of being with women like Stub, Starbuck and the notorious Ahab; he makes up his memories from his male identity rather than from a woman's. Here in the case of Ishmael the physical experience is denounced and reprioritized by the thought of the act.
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Taking Leslie Fiedler's assumption in An End to Innocence (1948), that Queequeg and Ishmael are "ambiguously intertwined", up a notch it could be claimed that they in fact are clearly and explicitly married and that they even symbolically have a child. Their bed is the landlord's marriage bed, "it's a nice bed: Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that" (MD 23-24). Just as expected of the new bride to go to bed before the bridegroom, Queequeg, anxiously waits for the husband to perform his wedding night duty: "I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he turned round - when, good heaven, what a sight" (MD 25). Seeing the "bald purplish head" of this "purple rascal" like a shy bride lies in bed without a flinch in anticipation of his physical encounter (MD 26). When Queequeg undresses he jumps into bed and under the covers with his "tomahawk" (MD 31) which in reaction Ishmael "shrieks out" and starts "kicking about" which is a reminiscent of the landlord's reference to the erotic suitability of the bed. Then Queequeg starts "feeling" Ishmael which causes him to jump out of bed and the landlord barges into the room and convinces Ishmael that it is safe. Ishmael goes back to bed and sleeps with the" clean, comely looking cannibal" (MD 29). With "Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner", is how Ishmael wakes up and continues with, "you had almost thought I had been his wife"(MD 29). What further secures the assumption of their marriage is the "his bridegroom clasp" and "hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style" is how Melville describes Queequeg's embracing Ishmael. Although symbolically their marriage even has a fruit, "Throwing aside the quilt, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby" (MD 31). Listening to Father Mapple's sermon of "the adulterer [...] in old Gomorrah" and "one of the missing murderers from Sodom" Ishmael feels guilty as he hasn‘t legalized his marriage via the Church (MD 45). Smoking a pipe on the same mat both of Queequeg's sisters had been married on and as Ishmael puts it, Queequeg "pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said henceforth we were married"(MD 54). The same night while in bed with his new bridegroom Ishmael muses that, "There is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other [...] thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair" (MD 55).
Thinking over what has taken place; Ishmael finds himself having a great deal of respect for his new friend and concludes that tattoos and appearances "cannot hide the soul" (MD 52). Moreover, this marital bond is referred to as a kind of Polynesian version of blood brothers by Ishmael. In chapter 72 Ishmael in the course of describing the event referred to as "Monkey Rope" (MD 301) in whaling uses the same wedding imagery. The event is basically the roping of two seamen together in order to prevent one of them from plunging into to the shark-infested water. In this case the newlyweds are tied to each other. It is said that this made up event by Melville gets the work place involved in the sexualized male friendship of the solitude of home too. Ishmael again, referring to his marriage with the pagan savage, says that they "were wedded, and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake" (MD 302).
The friendship of the two men, Ishmael the white civilized Christian and Queequeg the black savage pagan, is nothing except for an undermining and overruling of the authority and norm of the puritan society let alone the homosexual bond between them and their so called "marriage". All these events take place to provoke a reaction out of the readers. Another undermining of rules and authority that could and should be referred to is the fact that Ishmael calls his relationship with Queequeg a brotherhood bond and that the sacred bond is marred by what Ishmael is connecting and relating to, that is in the eyes of the strict puritan society Melville lived in and wrote for. Furthermore, Melville tries to imply the fact that the lower classes were perceived to be commodities and products whose sole purpose is to reel in profit for the Capitalists ruling class in this case the whaling industry by showing the sailors at work while attached to each other and connected to life through a piece of rotten rope.
The lines are the same lines that Ahab gets hanged by; furthermore, they are used to catch live whales and also to rap the killed ones to the ship. The lines are said to be symbolic of possession. From this ownership Melville through Ishmael, in "Fast Fish and Loose Fish", hints at and satirizes the laws concerning marriage and divorce and the branch of the law concerning the right of the husband to the belongings of his divorced wife. What is concluded from this comparison is that women like the hunted whale are no more than a property and commodity. By the next chapter Melville has harshly criticized the Imperialistic colonization of India by Great Britain and that of Mexico by the United States. The love between Ishmael and Queequeg is not something new to Melville's readers. Toby in Typee, the Polynesian Marnoo again in Typee, and the friendship between boys in Pierre, have all in some form or another the overtones of sexual attraction, sexual intimacy and love between the male sex in them. Although this love is lost in many instances, this homosexual love is reincarnated in Ishmael and Queequeg.
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In Billy Budd Melville's appreciation of the beauty of Billy is much more significant and even stimulates desire. The ban which was conducted in the American culture brought about the suppression of the chance of the existence of homosexual tendencies within the fiction of the period. Even so through layers and layers of camouflage and symbols, and whatnot Melville in, one could dare say, all of his novels brings up the idea and the chance of the existence of such tendencies and desires. He usurps the high seat of the authoritarian puritan society and culture of antebellum America through his referring to such desires. On the other hand some critics assume that all of these instances imply that Melville himself was a repressed homosexual like Ahab.
Like other chapters Melville tries to criticize the rules and authority of the society in which he lived and to provoke a reaction out of the citizens of that very society. What should be noted is the fact that his campaign was clandestine so as not to be smitten by the authoritarian policies of the time. He gives the leads to the readers and lets them figure out the meanings of his "symbols". Melville makes the reader infer from the being and sexuality of his characters, the character's politics rather than having the character blab on about their ideologies and world views.
One of the instances of the grotesque body is that of the captain of the Pequod, Ahab. Ahab who has lost his leg in an expedition to hunt Moby Dick has become obsessed with the whale and replaced the amputated leg with a whale bone. In the chapter "Ahab's Leg" the monomaniac is comically hit in the groin when his prosthetic leg brakes under his weight. Meditating on this event Ishmael concludes that Ahab has not only lost his leg to Moby Dick but is also sexually wounded, he is in fact castrated and sterile. Saying that the pain Ahab feels breaking his peg leg is "the direct issue of a former woe" (MD 435) clarifies the doubts of Ahab's castration. The prosthetic leg is an obvious symbol for his sexual wound and is taken by many as a substitute for his phallus. In contrast to the comfort the new couple have together it is asserted that Ahab is bleakly repressing his homosexual nature.
Ahab's hatred toward Moby Dick is actually stemming from this amusing and simultaneously bitter fact. Consequently the misery befallen him shapes his ideology and in fact his politics. He has become a monomaniac whose detrimental character believing in the estrangement and anarchy and death in the society is the direct result of the wounds, physical and mental, inflicted on him by Moby Dick. Ishmael then goes on to relate this pain and "grief" to the "genealogical" questions formed in Ahab's one dimensional mind. In other words the pain is "genealogically" related to "the source less primogenitures of the gods." This can only be simplified as the fact that God has inherited everything from a "source less being". The knowledge of this fact leads Ahab to the belief that he is superior to God who is unaware of the source "less source" that He is heir to (Bryant, 1998 14).
Believing himself to be aware of something higher than the understanding of God, Ahab feels superior to the source of superiority and shatters this divine hierarchy, and in Bakhtin's words brings about "the temporary suspension of hierarchical rank"(Bakhtin, 1984b 10) . It is Ahab's obsession with being that results in this carnival of hierarchy, the being that pre-exists God is given a gender by the mad captain. He relates to this existence as his beloved mother and in fact associates it with the lost mother figure. This analogy makes God the Father figure for Ahab and by verbally attacking the father figure he defies the superiority of God.
As mentioned above, Melville is both influenced by Shakespeare and repelled by him. Being influenced by Shakespeare he dramatizes his novel as Shakespearan and the fact that he the atricalises Ahab's tragic flaws can be named a carnival. Drama is considered to be politics; the type of politics that stands up to the authority, the oppressive totalitarian authority and religion of the time and mocks it. This at the time had to happen under several layers of symbolism, and analogy. Melville is revolting against the authority of the world he lives in and tries to bring about change in his own way by the theatricalising of Ahab the authority of the world that Ishmael lives in, The Pequod. He is basically showing what the so called democracy of the period was heading to through Ahab's politics. This effect is achieved through "parody" and "Carnivalistic laughter".
Putting the self obsessed monomaniac Ahab in the highest rank of the ship Melville is depicting the authority of a bigger world, America. The over dramatized authority of the sailing expedition parodies the rulers of the antebellum America that capitalized people and their ideologies. Ahab by fulfilling his self reliance ideal to the max usurps the entire law and order governing the ship and leads the expedition to their doom by following the white whale. Through his grandiloquent speech he brainwashes the crew into a frenzy of hunting down Moby Dick. The religious and the political authority of the society Melville lived in too talked the masses into following the puritanical teachings and ideologies of the elite.
James Perrin Warren points to the ‗‗culture of eloquence‘‘ in "the antebellum era" and says that a fluent orator can move the listeners to "moral and social perfection" however on the other hand if the speech is given by a demagogue or a dictator the very citizens of the previous example would be driven to anarchy. In Moby Dick, Melville "mimics high and low, sacred and profane oratorical practices" (Lee, 2006 7). Ahab is the idea of a demagogue incarnate, and in Alan Heimert's, Donald Pease's, and Wai-chee Dimock's opinion Ahab is symbolic of the "political oratory of the time". His fluent and impressive speeches are also
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reminiscent of Shakespeare's King Lear. In the course of the novel he gives an exciting and grandiloquent speech and rouses the crew into frenzy to hunt down and kill the whale in the crews amazement to ‗‗how it was that they themselves became so excited‘‘ by Ahab‘s fiery speech (MD 154). Remarkably Ishmael the character who stands for reason in the novel later on confesses that he too was mesmerized by the spell bound speech, ‗‗I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest [...] a wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab‘s quenchless feud seemed mine‘‘ (MD 169).
This speech leads to a scene which is one of the best examples of the "gay relativity" that Bakhtin points out as a category of the Carnivalesque. After the speech the crew shifts into a state of euphoria, forget about the authority figure, Ahab, and start to drink and dance and show a lot of sexual desire and deviation. Their partying leads to a racist remark, and a fight breaks out between the crew which gives way to a full scale uprising and revolt similar to those breaking out in the society Melville lived in. So again the Shakespearizing of Melville pops up to mind and the best answer for it would be the political fact that Melville, just like his role model, was under constant pressure from the demands of the society in which he lived. The only difference is that Shakespeare had to live up to the Elizabethan standards and Melville to those of the Puritans.
Besides from the grandiloquent speech addressed by the captain the other characters also have some form or another of speech. The slang of the sailors is represented, so is the pidgin tongue of Queequeg, and the dialects of the African Americans most notably "Fleece‘s sermon to the sharks in ‗‗Stubb‘s Supper", ‗‗Dough you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious . . . ‘top dat dam slappin‘ ob de tail!‘‘ (MD 280)
Melville in this scene is said to be mimicking the 19th century American form of entertainment that is referred to as the minstrel show or the minstrelsy. The show is basically the performance of a white blackface entertainer who mocks the stereotyped African Americans. Fleece's speech is projected in a way that it is considered to be humiliating and degrading. The peculiar grammar of the pigeon tongue and the ridiculously sincerity applied to the speech by Melville is the perfect example for the minstrelsy referred to.
The speech is delivered in order to carry out an order given by Stubb "the humorist". This is taken by some critics to mean that Melville's intention is to show "that everyone is in some way a performer and slave". Taking the utmost advantage of the 'racist vernacular of minstrelsy" Melville both has the desired comic effect and highlights and reflects the "race and classed based" (Lee, 2006 9) in the America of the antebellum era that David Reynolds refers to as ‗‗radical-democrat‘‘ (Reynolds, 1988 541).
But there is a major problem with the Shakespearian drama, an obvious flaw, it is nothing but the fact that Shakespeare is said to be very class conscious and is considered to be on the side of the elites rather than the masses. This very quality at the time Melville was Shakespearizing his works would arouse the sensitivity and disapproval of the masses. What is of further interest is the reality that Melville had ambiguous usage of Shakespearean qualities also arouses suspicion.
In the course of chapter 70, "The Sphynx", Melville while continuing the dramatization mentioned has the two major characters' conflict ensue in front of the head of a whale. Ishmael takes the silence of the sea as a wisdom engulfed silence, but for Ahab the stagnant sea is the "deadly" foreshadowing of the doom of his mission. Silence is the answer of the decapitated whale to Ahab whose tragic flaw is that he cannot "believe, create, and transform" (Bryant, 1998 22).
Ahab is said to be brought onto the stage by Ishmael to talk to the whale while resting his weight on a shovel is symbolic of Oedipus and the sphinx and the "three legged" old man in the riddle of the sphinx. The irony is in the fact that although Ahab has the three legs he isn‘t able to answer the riddle of "Being" of the whale. In chapter 114 Ahab's soliloquy leads to an epiphanic moment for him in which he concludes that the life of a man is cyclical. What he comes up with is that as a person ages he begins with "infancy's unconsciousness, boyhood faith, adolescent doubt, true skepticism, then disbelief, then finally "manhood's pondering repose of If"" (Bryant, 1998 22). But this, in his opinion, is not gone through once but happens a lot of times in a man's life. "No steady unretracing progress" (MD 460) can be achieved, for it is a never ending cycle. This is his problem he cannot stop this cycle in his life.
Bakhtin in Rabelais and his World introduces a new concept: "The culture of laughter" which according to Bakhtin "was accorded the least place of all in the vast literature devoted to myth, to folk lyrics, and to epics" (Bakhtin, 1984a 4). Referred to as "the unofficial aspect of the world" (ibid 191) Bakhtin believes this "folk culture" is the answer of the masses to the gravity and severity of the medieval totalitarian and authoritarian culture. Carnival laughter is directed at everyone and everything and nobody despite their rank and authority is an exception.
The "gay relativity" and laughter is the reason Ishmael does not choose the first two Inns he goes to. Furthermore Ahab's speech as referred to results in the partying and "laughter" of the crew, under the tension of the hunt they try to relieve themselves of the pressure through merrymaking, drinking, dancing, and obviously laughing.
Just like the "monologic" puritan society which was justly criticized by Nathaniel Hawthorne for its monomaniacal preaching of its laws and religious beliefs, Melville too brought about the concept of polyphony as was proposed for every novel by Bakhtin into his world of whaling. "Therefore, Heteroglossia
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as ―a double-voiced discourse" (Bakhtin, 1981 324) is forged, and this monologic view is undermined." The narrator of the novel loses or seems to fade into other characters and his voice is sometimes difficultly made out from that of other characters (Pirnajmuddin, 2013 7).
Carnivalization can be applied to any one of the literary genres and Melville has instances of the carnivalization of the Menippean or Varronian satire. Bakhtin describes it as, "very characteristic for the Menippea are scandal scenes, eccentric behaviour, inappropriate speeches and performances, that is, all sorts of violations of the generally accepted and customary course of events and the established norms of behavior and etiquette, including manners of speech" (Bakhtin, 1984a 117). A character from the novel who can be applied this quality is Ahab who is an unorthodox, off beat, even psychotic captain or even person for that matter in the eyes of his crew.
Another character that, unlike Ahab, loses his sanity in the course of the novel and becomes the laughing stock of the crew is Pip. After getting stranded at sea while hunting Moby Dick and getting rescued after quite some time the crew take his new behaviour as madness and make fun of him on a frequent basis. What is interesting and I would like to refer to is the fact that the only person who is not intimidated by the eccentricities of Pip is Ahab the other mad man on board. The "adaptation of the fool, Stubb, to complex themes of comic regeneration" (Bryant, 1998 18) is another example of the occurrence of Menippean Carnivalization in the novel.
The "most significant event" befalls "the most insignificant of Pequod's crew" leading to Pip's realization of an important truth, the "Ideal" truth of Plato (MD 388). In this instance the reversal of hierarchies is the result of the "scale of significance" which according to Virginia Massie "points to the element of ―anti-structure‖ that Turner identifies as a feature of "liminality"."Anti-structure" is basically the reversal of the social hierarchies and conventions (Turner, 1974 112).
At times when one is experiencing absolute solitude one feels ―totally at one with another person, or totally at one with the universe, are such deep experiences that, although they may be transient, they cannot be dismissed as mere evasions or defenses against unwelcome truths‖ (Storr, 1988 39). Such instances of euphoria arouse Freud's. But survivors are all of mind about the ―intense experiences of feeling that some kind of higher order of reality existed with which solitude put them in touch‖. Most of them though ―had also become more aware of horrors lurking under the surface‖; which lead Storr to the conclusion that ―the human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven‖ (Storr, 1988 60-61).
Turner's liminality is "the state of being in between [. . .] social milieus dominated by social structural considerations, whether formal or unformalized, is not precisely the same as communitas, for it is a sphere or domain of action or thought rather than social modality. Indeed, liminality may imply solitude rather than society, the voluntary or involuntary withdrawal of an individual from a social-structural matrix. It may imply alienation from rather than more authentic participation in social existence" (Turner, 1974 52). Pip's involuntary leave of the ―social structural considerations‖ of the ship results in his new state of segregation from the rest of the crew, ―the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul‖ (MD 391).
Stranded in the ocean Pip turns ―his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest‖ (MD 391), as the sun is stranded by the society, Pip is another cast away. Nature and the society are taken as binary oppositions and Melville's puritan society clearly segregates nature from society. What's more the preference of the body over the soul and mind is also worth noting, which brings the grotesquery of the Carnivalesque to mind. The idea of the superiority of the body is especially manifest in the Thirty five chapters of the novel which are more commonly known as "The Cetology" chapters For Pip is certainly not the same guy and is said to have lost his mind.
Back to the topic of polyphony and the dialogic quality of the Carnivalesque being evident in Melville's magnum opus, Ishmael's dilemma on the vital question of faith and doubt is reminiscent of Bakhtin's description of Dostoevsky's narrators. According to Bakhtin, "The narrator-a 'certain person'-is on the threshold of insanity (delirium tremens). But that aside, he is already a person not like everyone else; that is, he is one who has deviated from the general norm" (Bakhtin, 1984a 138).
According to Andrew Fieldsend what makes Ishmael and this novel be polyphonic is the fact that Ishmael, as the novel progresses, comes to the understanding that he has to perceive everything as having a background voice. The background voice is what is behind the character or the objects meaning and intention when highlighting this background voice and bearing it in mind when mentioning something you begin to talk in the tongue of that thing or character and have a gap and a gap between your tongue. Ishmael isn‘t just a character, nor is he only the narrator in the novel, "his oxymoronic status is that of a personalized non-personal first person narrator" (Softing, 1995 18).He is free; free to ‗‗speak the sane madness of vital truth,‘‘, free to write the way he wants (Weinstein, 2006 8-9).
Some of the serious events taking place during the novel have a comical tone to them and lead to what Bakhtin refers to as "reduced laughter" furthermore seriousness and laughter are both taken to be double
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sided. "Serious smiling", as Bakhtin puts it, results from ambivalent scenes and encourage the characters and the readers to contemplate on the matter at hand. One simple instance of this "is Ahab‘s narcissistic and deadly account of Moby Dick comes up against Ishmael‘s more capacious and comic understanding of the whale" (Weinstein, 2006 10-11).
Another instance of the grotesque body in the novel and the mock laughter is the lack of Ishmael's knowledge over the whale's body and the extraction of the bits and pieces of the whale which are the aim of hunting down the animal. "Throwing his hands up in mock despair" (Lee, 2006 2) Ishmael finds his lack of knowledge and expertise amusing and one could go as far as pathetic. He cannot "figure out what comes out of the whale‘s spout, or where the skin ends and the blubber begins, or even what a whale is". And amusingly enough he is on this expedition and is on the verge of figuring out his existential ambivalence through the ‗‗vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor‘‘ (MD 352).
"Cutting across generic lines" the novel has obvious dramatic forms such as asides, soliloquies, and stage directions which make critics such as F. O. Matthiessen and Charles Olson (1941, 1947) approve of the fact and also critics such (as Alan Ackerman, Jr. has argued) in its foregrounding of spectacle within the public sphere. It is clear that most of the fictions at hand "are omnivorous in their literary samplings" but this novel oversteps the boundaries. After his unsuccessful mutiny Steelkilt flies from the consequences of his illegal deed and severe prosecution and cannot be found. The truth that totalitarian and authoritarian governments can be defied and stood up to is highlighted by Melville here. The possibility of undermining the hierarchies even in such systems and their evasion is Melville's intention. The tale of the mutiny is told orally by Ishmael by asking questions then digressing from the point and drinking lots of wine, simply a carnivalistic scene is created by the audience of the tale. Melville also shows that information at the time went around in "unofficial, oral, cosmopolitan, and even Carnivalesque channels" (Lee, 2006 2; 9).
Another instance of Bakhtinian Carnival is the "Town Ho's story". Steelkilt's mutiny, had some secrets that were revealed by ‗‗three confederate white seamen,‘‘(emphasis added) which not only reveals the unofficial and underground unions but it is also a reminder that the class conscious society of Melville's time still was obsessed with racial segregation and the superiority of the whites over the blacks (MD 231). This racial profiling reappears in other chapters such as the "Midnight".
Ishmael is told the secret tale of the Town Ho in "the Gam", a word coined by Melville for this novel which basically means a meeting at sea or ashore between ships. Such tales are told behind the backs of the captains and consequently they aren‘t aware of the existence of such stories. Somehow Melville is trying to overturn the hierarchy and superiority of the written form over the vernacular of the sailors.
What for the people of the fictional land of Tranque is God, for Ishmael and his fellow crew members is only a prey. Set to write a book describing whales as effectively as possible Ishmael tries to measure the skeleton of a great sperm whale which is being "worshipped" by a group of "priests". After quite a row between the priests who use their "yard sticks" as weapons on each other, Ishmael succeeds in measuring the whale's bones and has the measurements tattooed on his arm. Interestingly enough Ishmael makes his ‗‗green measuring-rod‘‘ "according to no authoritative standard" (MD 423).
Ishmael's "yard stick" and acquired measurements of the whale skeleton are validated by him only because he guarantees them and gives his testimony. The same fault with bible was found. The truth of the bible was based on "fallible testimony, history, and translation". Horace Bushnell argues that its language is metaphoric; hence meanings are dependent on the readers' interpretations. "Fresh boards shrink over time" and through this Melville is insinuating that holy texts like the bible and the whale skeleton, in this text, have and acquire different meanings depending on the vast variety of readings of the text (Lee, 2006 13).
In "The Try Works" chapter Ishmael explains "the glorious, golden, glad sun" to be the "the only true lamp – all others but liars!" and tells the readers to "believe not the artificial fire when its redness makes all things look ghastly," (MD 400). The sun which is the source of light is to be worshipped and respected as the image of the Father, the image that everyone seeks. But in "The Doubloon", Ahab by nailing a doubloon, a gold coin, to the mainmast as the prize for the first person to spot Moby Dick averts the crew's attention from the main source of light to the golden coin that reflects it. The mirror, not the lamp consequently temporarily challenges the hierarchy of sun over its reflections.
Determined to rebel against his Maker, Ahab in "The Blacksmith" and "The Forge" while supervising the crafting of his harpoon takes "the artificial light" to be the perfect guide to lead the Pequod to Moby Dick. Ahab's rebellion is heightened when instead of baptizing the newly crafted harpoon in holy water and in the name of the holy Trinity he baptizes it in the blood of three of his crew members and in the name of the devil and consequently effectively denies his dependence on his "Maker".
The instance of mock and temporary decrowning occurs when Ahab loses his hat. The lost hat which stands for his crown and is a sign of power is a foreshadowing of the loss of power and the death of the entire crew except for Ishmael. This unfortunate and miserable fate is said to be the wrath of "god or the gods which Ahab selfishly defies and angers.
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In "grotesque realism" or the concept of the grotesque body Bakhtin states that the suspension of the hierarchies includes the preference of the bodily and physical aspects of life over the spiritual ones. According to James Bair in "Ishmael's New Testament: Salvation in Moby Dick" (1998) in this novel "the picture of salvation is more physical, more worldly, like the restoration of Job or Jonah or the sparing of Noah in the Old Testament." Ishmael is the only member of the crew that survives the ship wreck.
Floating in the buoy-coffin he is rescued by another ship, the Rachel who, "...in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan,". His salvation is double fold; he is also being watched by God who "padlocks" the mouths of the "unharming sharks" and "sheaths" the beaks of "the savage sea hawks". Melville shows God as the force behind nature and at the same time He is protecting Ishmael from nature with its ambivalent temper, at times kind and at times cruel (MD 533).
"Call me Ishmael" isn‘t the beginning of the novel but, in Edward Said's opinion, ―[w]hen we point to the beginning of a novel, for example, we mean that from that beginning in principle follows this novel‖ (Said, 1985 6). Assuming that the novel begins with ―Call me Ishmael‖ it would only imply that that "the story is Ishmael‘s, that the narrator is singular, and that the narrative‘s authority lies in this character." But in the two unnumbered chapters "the whale" is introduced at the beginning even the original title and subtitle is "The Whale" which signifies the whale as general and the whale as a specific character in the novel. Being associated with language Melville beautifully depicts this fact with his "whale-as-book taxonomic scheme"(Tally Jr., 2007 4).
The narrator who is under the influence of each and every situation he encounters becomes a different character according to the circumstances. For instance he is a geologist in "The Fossil Whale" (MD 431); in "The Bower of the Arsacides" he is transformed into "a tattooed poet"(MD 376), finally in ―The Town-Ho‘s Story‖ (MD 280) he teleports to Peru, in all probability smoking cigars and speaking Spanish with the locals. Robert T. Tally Jr. in a paper titled Anti-Ishmael: Novel Beginnings In Moby-Dick (2007) asserts that the authority of the narrator in the cetological chapters isn‘t taken seriously by many of the readers and that Melville's intention is "poking fun at the authorities and authority itself". This is because the "authoritative comments" are usually parodic and humorous. For instance the narrator of "The Fountain" asserts that, ―from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts‖ (MD 313), it is difficult to take the narrator seriously. Furthermore Moby Dick is said to be a "world text" because its ―geographical frame of reference is no longer the nation-state, but a broader entity—a continent, or the world-system as a whole‖ (Moretti, 1996 50).
As Ishmael signs up for the Pequod's quest he is not one person or a body anymore, he becomes a part of the singular body of the crew. One instance of his merging into the crowd is when he becomes one with the choral singing of the shipmates when they are squeezing the sperm, "Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it" (MD 393) consequently he and the crew obtain one goal.
Porter on the topic of Bakhtin's polyphony asserts that Ishmael has a "double-voiced discourse" which basically is when he uses a discourse and parodies it simultaneously he simply "acknowledges a recognized discourse only to plunder it of its authority" Ishmael has been enabled to subvert the authority of a culture or society. The discourse, legalistic, scientific, or philosophical, is stripped of its authority through Ishmael's use of irony and parody. Porter believes that Ishmael's voice is "a virtual sponge, capable of soaking up an infinite number of voices and squeezing out their discourse into a pool as large as the ocean he sails" ("Covenant, truth, and "the ruthless democracy" of Moby Dick" 82-83).
Trying to accommodate a room Ishmael ends up at the Spouter Inn whose landlord, Peter Coffin, he has to communicate with despite his lack of excitement toward human communications. What is instantly recognized is the fact that Ishmael's language is completely in contradiction with Coffin's. Ishmael's standard register is that of, one could dare say, the social elite. He sounds nothing like the regular sailor that he intends and pretends to be. The response he receives is highly belittling and contrasts his implied character, he should share a bed. Coffin tries to find out if Ishmael is as grandiose as he shows to be and furthermore hopes to get him "used to that sort of thing" (MD 18).
Not talking Coffin's language, the sailor's slang, Ishmael doesn‘t understand that he is being mocked, which, "is a necessary consequence of linguistic (and social) purity" by Andrew Fieldsend's standards. Ishmael's sanctity is through its entitlement to authority. "Ishmael speaks the official, grammatically-regulated tongue "which is used by the social elite and consequently the authority, but this authority is undermined when Ishmael steps in to the "savage" sailing world (Fieldsend, 1995 3-4).
What the first two inns had in common that repelled the misanthropist narrator of the novel is that they were "too jolly and expensive"; the joviality of these places reminds one of Bakhtin's notion of the market place which is crowded with the common folk who are joking and laughing their time without regard for any authority (MD 13).
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Queequeg is the grotesque incarnate. The grotesque basically ". . . seeks to grasp in its imagery the very act of becoming and growth, the eternal, incomplete, unfinished nature of being. Its images represent simultaneously the two poles of becoming: that which is receding and dying and that which is being born" (Bakhtin, 1984b 52).The grotesque and the profane have a never ending cyclical nature, they tend to mock and degrade whatever that is held to be hierarchical. The "apparent (false) unity, of the indisputable and stable" is revealed and overturned. Whatever that is taken to be familiar and standard "suddenly becomes alien . . . precisely because there is the potentiality of a friendly world, of the golden age, of carnival truth" (ibid 48).
Here Ishmael is associated with "the classic images of the finished, completed man, cleansed, as it were, of all the scoriae of birth and development" (Bakhtin, 1984b 25) but Queequeg is in absolute contradiction with this "image" and he is associated with "…a grotesque, earthy world of decaying and rejuvenating bodies, of death and birth." (Fieldsend, 1995 8)
Because Queequeg acts as a savior to the crew and saves them from death, throughout the novel life and death is associated with him. In chapter 13 although he is the butt of the jokes of a "young sapling" and mocked he saves the young man when he is swept overboard. The cannibal is against the tide of the white Americans who consider themselves superior to other races. Through his actions Queequeg forces them to respect him and ask for his pardon at such sensitive and crucial instances where the people who take themselves as superior and the authority dare do nothing; "Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done" when the young man was drowning (MD 62).
It is at times when the world order is disrupted and the self imposed authority of the self opinionated Westerners is overturned that the other, the inferior character saves the day, brings about the salvation of the dumbfounded jingoist and "brings life out of death."The theme of bringing life out of death as proposed by Andrew Fieldsend can be better shown in chapter 78 where Tashtego is about to drown inside of the head of a sperm whale which is sinking. The images of death are explicit for instance, "the drowning Indian, the dead whale, the oil-filled tun, the sinking, carved-up corpse". But again Queequeg without having the slightest fear of death just as in other scenes metaphorically "delivers Tashtego from a lifeless womb" (Fielsend, 1995 8).
He averred that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be and might occasion great trouble, he had thrust back the leg and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way -- headforemost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected (Chapter 78).
Except for his actions, his belongings and the objects associated with him are also suggestive of life and death. His tomahawk is both a weapon and a means of nourishment, being a pipe. His harpoon, a weapon, is used as a razor to shave with in chapter 4; in the 5th chapter he uses it as a spoon, and in chapter 36 he drinks from it. He is maintaining his life with what he uses as a weapon to kill whales. Being a cannibal he eats the flesh of humans which itself is another instance of maintaining life out of death. What keeps Queequeg alive brings about death.
Queequeg challenges "any sense of completedness, of a self-enclosed, higher, intellectual existence" for he is a walking tattoo parlor, he carries a human head with him, and he doesn‘t speak the language properly but broken and ungrammatical. Basically he reminds everyone of the material and mortal side of life, that human beings are nothing more than animals and lives like them too. His life projects the fact that intellectual existence is inferior to physical existence "within a community of constant decay and regeneration". The Spouter Inn is chosen by Ishmael because, according to Fieldsend, he personifies with the "dilapidated" and "decaying state" of the Inn. He doesn‘t expect to undergo the "process of rebirth and rejuvenation" through befriending Queequeg and adopting his world view (ibid, 1995 10- 11).
Even in death Queequeg brings life out of death and saves a life. When sick he gets a coffin be made for him. When the coffin is finished he sleeps in it but wakes up to find out that he has defeated the illness. In the epilogue the Pequod is sinking and Ishmael who is stranded in the ocean is drawn into the vortex and out of nowhere the coffin pops out and becomes a savior to Ishmael who then is saved by the Rachel who has lost a son.
Conclusion
Herman Melville's magnum opus, Moby Dick, or The Whale, is nowadays considered to be a literary phenomenon; in this article, based on the mentioned sources, the novel's magnitude regarding its Carnivalesque qualities, intentionally or accidentally hewn into the novel, were highlighted. The authoritarian puritan society of antebellum America was not ready to receive the harsh criticism that it deserved for its medieval values; thus, under the guise of Bakhtin's Carnivalesque, Melville like Hawthorne brings the idea of polyphony to light for "the most ideological and monological cultures" (Pirnajmuddin, 2013 13). The dialogues and monologues of Ishmael, the narrator, and Ahab with the other characters Melville depicts are
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the revolution he would like to see in the society he lives in. This is done through nothing other than the Carnivalesque theory of Bakhtin. Putting all that goes on throughout the novel together one could conclude that through grotesque imagery and laughter Melville undermines the utilitarian authority of the period and crowns the underdogs no matter even if for a short while.
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