Читать книгу Fictions of Home - Martin Mühlheim - Страница 22

The remedy that the novel implicitly proposes against the evils of, on the one hand, Ahab’s unleashed ‘will to power,’ and, on the other, Ishmael’s (and others’) political quietism is what Henry David ThoreauThoreau, Henry David calls civil disobedience. In his essay “Resistance to Civil Government” (published two years before Moby-Dick, and later renamed “Civil DisobedienceCivil Disobedience”), ThoreauThoreau, Henry David points out that law “never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injusticeinjustice” (387). In this view, the problem with the crew of the Pequod is that even those who condemn Ahab’s quest continue to obey their captain. This is particularly apparent in the case of Starbuck, who voices his outrage at Ahab’s desiredesire for vengeance from the very outset of his commander’s quest (139; ch. 36), but who nevertheless continues to carry out Ahab’s orders. Importantly, the point here is not to argue that Starbuck should have killed Ahab when he had the chance to do so (ch. 123, “The Musket”) – and neither does ThoreauThoreau, Henry David advocate violent resistanceresistance to governmental injustice. However, it is safe to assume that ThoreauThoreau, Henry David would condemn Starbuck’s insistence on a “lawful way” to wrest Ahab’s power from him (387; ch. 123). Instead, ThoreauThoreau, Henry David maintains that those “who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a governmentgovernment, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters” (394). In other words, those who see that the law is unjust yet nevertheless choose to adhere to it are, according to ThoreauThoreau, Henry David, the most morally objectionable of all. The legitimacy of command must, in Throeau’s view, derive from justice rather than from legal authority. Indeed, in the course of Moby-Dick, we learn of no fewer than two ships on which mutinies have taken place, which confirms that one of the novel’s central interests is the potential legitimacy of insubordination.80

Moby-Dick can thus be read as an allegoryallegory of the universaluniversal dangers of power and tyrannytyranny as well as of the potential remedies.81 At the same time, many critics see MelvilleMelville, Herman’s novel as a response to more specifically American ills: a supposedly democratic and egalitarian society that is in fact based on exploitationexploitation and exclusionexclusion. The fact that the novel is set on a whaling ship to some extent supports the idea that national concerns may be central to the novel, as the U.S. was preeminent amongst the nationsnations and nationalism engaged in whaling at the time (OsterhammelOsterhammel, Jürgen 557) – a preeminence that registers in Moby-Dick in moments of national pride, as when the narrator boasts “that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years” (197; ch. 53). A whaling ship can thus be seen, with some justice, as a particularly American type of setting, and accordingly its allegorical significance might equally concern the U.S. in particular.

Critics who focus on this aspect of the novel generally highlight the discrepancy between, on the one hand, American ideals of equalityequality, and, on the other, a highly exclusive political reality. Philip ArmstrongArmstrong, Philip nicely sums up this line of argument:

As MelvilleMelville, Herman was well aware, his nation’s much vaunted ideal of democracy depended upon the exclusionexclusion of large sectors of the adult population. Many studies have shown how Moby-Dick satirically recognizes America’s dependencedependence upon the laborlabor of Native AmericansNative Americans, African AmericanAfrican American slavesslavery, and conscripted Pacific islanders. (1050)

The Pequod’s three harpooneers – Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo – are a Pacific islander, a Native AmericanNative Americans, and an African, respectively, and though their laborlabor is essential, they are effectively barred from the higher levels of command. Moreover, if the Pequod is a symbolsymbol of the American state, then the fact that the ship is named after “a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient Medes” (69; ch. 16) becomes harrowingly appropriate, for the United StatesUnited States of America themselves are founded on the basis of violent conquest.82 We need to bear in mind this underlying concern with ethnic Others when reading Ishmael’s assertion that “it was the whitenesswhiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me” (159; ch. 42), and perhaps the significance of the white whale is indeed, as Margaret CohenCohen, Margaret suggests, to challenge the “schematic use of whiteness in Western moralities” (“The Chronotopes of the Sea” 657). Moreover, if race is one of the critical faultlines in the novel, then Philip ArmstrongArmstrong, Philip points out that gender is another key problematic, since women are excluded from the allegorical ship of the state altogether, and Ahab’s complaint about the distance from his wife “involves the Captain’s recognition of the damage produced by the economic separation between the genders” (1050).

That the benefits of such a racially and sexually divided societal order are ultimately insubstantial except for those who are already in power is nicely illustrated in MelvilleMelville, Herman’s novel by the Spanish doubloon that Ahab has promised as a reward to whoever first sights Moby Dick. We have seen that the force of Ahab’s rhetoric may serve to sway others to his purpose, yet when it comes to persuading his crew to join him on his quest for revengerevenge against Moby Dick, the prospect of a financial reward is perhaps equally, if not more, effective (138; ch. 36). At any rate, when the Pequod finally encounters Moby Dick, Ahab claims that he himself “raised the White Whale first,” and that “Fate reserved the doubloon” for him (408; ch. 133). Ahab, the captain (and part owner) of the allegorical ship of the state thus himself reaps the reward that he used earlier as a bait for those amongst his crew who remained reluctant to join him. In short, the financial reward promised for collaboration in the commander’s morally dubious endeavor ultimately proves illusory.83