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The novel’s first two sections, moreover, highlight the extent to which the narrator’s quest for the meaning of his story parallels Ahab’s obsessiveobsession quest for meaning through his quest for revengerevenge against Moby Dick.87 The narrator’s “systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera” (115; ch. 32); his promise to paint “something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman” (214–215; ch. 55); or his account of “the precise origin of ambergris” (317; ch. 92): these and other painstakingly detailed descriptions betray a well-nigh pathologicalpathological obsessionobsession with the subject matter of whales. Put somewhat differently, we may say that readers who find themselves exasperated by Moby-Dick’s frequent essayistic digressions on every conceivable aspect of whaling have sensed something of vital importance: that the novel as a whole has an obsessiveobsession narrative structure that is, quite simply, apt to drive one madmadness.

Intriguingly, just as Ahab fails to sustain his narcissisticnarcissism fantasyfantasy of mastery, Ishmael the narrator in many ways loses controlcontrol over the story he tells – to the extent that his very identity as a narrator threatens to dissolve.88 Ishmael’s status as a realistically conceived narrator who simply relates his own experiences is in fact precarious at best, for there are many chapters in Moby-Dick that read like classically omniscientomniscience narrationnarration.89 In the chapter entitled “The Doubloon,” for instance, the narrator never refers to himself in the first person; instead, he uses impersonal phrases such as “it has been related” and “it has not been added,” which could just as well be uttered by an extradiegetic, omniscientomniscience narrator (331; ch. 99). Moreover, it is unlikely that Ishmael, as a character, could actually have overheard what Ahab and Pip say to each other in the solitude of the Captain’s cabin, and yet as a narrator he is able miraculously to provide us with all the details of this exchange (399–400; ch. 129). In addition, the narrator refers to himself in the first person in only one of the novel’s final fifteen chapters; the other fourteen chapters conform to the paradigm of third-person omniscienceomniscience.90 More disturbingly still, at various points in the novel, the narrator’s voice disappears altogether, as in a chapter that presents us with Ishmael’s musings about the lossloss of identity that can occur to someone who meditates in solitude on the mast-head of a whaling ship (136; ch. 35). In the chapters that follow, the conventionalconventions form of narrative fiction slowly dissolves, transforming instead into something that resembles a play script rather than novelistic proseprose:

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS

(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.)

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!

Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of SpainSpain!

Our Captain’s commanded–

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR

Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me!

(Sings, and all follow.)

Our captain stood upon the deck,

A spy glass in his hand,

A viewing of those gallant whales

That blew at every strand. (145–146; ch. 40)

In these dramatized passages, the narrator virtually disappears – and as if in panic-stricken response to this lossloss of narrative mastery, the next chapter opens with an emphatic re-assertion of textual presence: “I, Ishmael, was one of that crew” (152; ch. 41).

What is striking about Ishmael’s moments of narratorial dissolution is that they are always associated with either Ahab or Pip, the two other characters whose sense of selfself proves highly unstableinstability in the course of Moby-Dick. A first example is the sequence of increasingly dramatized narrative discussed just now, which opens with Ahab announcing his quest for vengeance against Moby Dick (138–139; ch. 36) and ends with Pip voicing his fear of death and dissolution in a prayer to God (151; ch. 40). A second example occurs after the chapter in which Pip jumps overboard for a second time and in consequence remains abandoned for too long in the vast solitude of the ocean (“The Castaway”; ch. 93). This chapter precedes Ishmael’s account of how, when squeezing the spermaceti extracted from a slaughtered whale, he suddenly finds himself squeezing his co-laborer’s hands – an experience that leads Ishmael to indulge in a strongly homoerotichomoeroticism fantasyfantasy of bodily union with his fellow sailors (“let us squeeze ourselves into each other”) which he immediately proceeds to sublimate into a transcendental vision: “I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hand in a jar of spermaceti” (323; ch. 94). Though Pip’s traumatic isolationisolation and Ishmael’s erotic abandonment differ in many respects, they both involve a sense that the bounded nature of their selves is being dissolved. Finally, the scene in which Ahab mesmerizes his crew by catching the heavenly spark of St. Elmo’s fire triggers another sequence of narratorial dissolution through an increasingly dramatized style ofstyle storytellingstorytelling (ch. 118–122). We ought therefore to regard with skepticism Walter E. BezansonBezanson, Walter E.’s claim that Ishmael’s voice “is there every moment from the genesis of the fiction in ‘Call me Ishmael’ to the final revelation of the ‘Epilogue’” (647), as well as John BryantBryant, John’s assertion that “it is always Ishmael who contains and controls” (80). Rather, Ishmael is a remarkably precarious narrator who continually struggles against his own dissolution; increasingly absent from the novel’s plot as a character, he must even fear that his narratorial voice will be drowned in the maelstrom of his story.

Moby-Dick thus constitutes a prime example of what Rick AltmanAltman, Rick calls a multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narrative. In his Theory of Narrative, AltmanAltman, Rick suggests that there are three basic types of narrative fiction. In the first type, which AltmanAltman, Rick calls dual-focusdual-focus narratives narratives, the narrator shifts his attention back and forth between two groups (or two individuals) whose conflictconflict is defined by stable binarybinary oppositions oppositions (55). Such narratives, according to AltmanAltman, Rick, presuppose a set of universaluniversal values that are temporarily challenged by one or more characters, but ultimately reaffirmed by either the destruction or re-integration of those characters who have strayed (86–87). As one example of a dual-focusdual-focus narratives narrative, AltmanAltman, Rick cites Homer’s Iliad, in which the Trojans violate supposedly universal values, and where the ultimate destruction of Troy reaffirms the Greek communitycommunity (79–81). In single-focussingle-focus narratives narratives, by contrast, we typically concentrate on one main character who violates the symbolic laws of his or her communitycommunity on a quest “into previously unexplored territory, behavior, or thought”; the emphasis, in other words, does not lie on reaffirming established values but instead on discovering new ones (AltmanAltman, Rick 189). One of AltmanAltman, Rick’s examples for this second type of narrative is Nathaniel HawthorneHawthorne, Nathaniel’s The Scarlet Letter, which could easily have been told as a dual-focusdual-focus narratives narrative (with Hester Prynne embodying values opposed to the true PuritanPuritans and Puritanism faith of her communitycommunity), but which instead concentrates entirely on Hester’s quest for new and different values (AltmanAltman, Rick 99–118). While, in dual-focusdual-focus narratives narratives, the two opposing sets of values are ordered hierarchicallyhierarchy and portrayed as objective, in single-focussingle-focus narratives narratives all values “remain subject to interpretation” (189). Nevertheless, even in single-focussingle-focus narratives stories there is a stable narrative center – i.e. the main character – and this distinguishes them from multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narratives, which “thrive on discontinuity” (243). In such stories, “we find ourselves transported by the narrator from one character to another” in an unpredictable, seemingly arbitraryarbitrariness manner (263). Multiple-focus narratives thus function, according to AltmanAltman, Rick, “like a mosaic,” where the individual parts of the text “may mean something quite different” from the text as a whole (288).

Importantly, Moby-Dick initially looks very much like a single-focussingle-focus narratives narrative, and this creates expectations that the text subsequently proceeds to thwart. After plowing their way through Moby-Dick’s enigmatic introductory sections (“Etymology” and “Extracts”), readers are likely to react with considerable relief when the narrator invites them to call him Ishmael and join him on his narrative quest. We follow Ishmael to New Bedford, where he meets a new friend in Queequeg, who decides to accompany him on his journey. As is typical of single-focussingle-focus narratives narratives, the novel concentrates on its main character – until the moment when the Pequod sets sail (ch. 22). At this point, the narrative suddenly loses focus. Chapter 23, for instance, is devoted entirely to a character named Bulkington, whom we previously encountered only very briefly (ch. 3), and who will never again appear in the novel. Next comes the first of many essayistic excursions (ch. 24), and from this point on the story of Ishmael and his friend Queequeg recedes into the background, displaced by the tale of Ahab’s quest. Even Ahab, however, sometimes disappears for long stretches of the text (e.g. ch. 74–80, or 92–98), making it impossible to construe him as a new and stable textual center. As readers, we thus experience a movement from fixity of narrative purpose to textual disorientation, and according to AltmanAltman, Rick this is typical of multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narratives in general: “Many texts invite a single-focussingle-focus narratives or dual-focusdual-focus narratives reading, only to undermine the reading in favor of a multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives alternative” (255).91

Intriguingly, AltmanAltman, Rick describes the reader’s condition in multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narratives as an experience of homelessnesshomelessness, and it is plausible to argue that Moby-Dick’s disjointed narrative structure effectively undermines any sense of spiritual belonging that we may gain from the narrator’s assurances of deeper religious significance. Walter E. BezansonBezanson, Walter E., for instance, notes that readers expecting “classical form” will find Moby-Dick aesthetically unsatisfactory because “explorations of structure suggest elaborate interrelations of the parts but do not lead to an overreaching formalform and content pattern” (655).92 This statement matches precisely AltmanAltman, Rick’s characterization of how multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narratives affect their readers:

Reading dual-focusdual-focus narratives and single-focussingle-focus narratives narrative, I always feel at home – whether it is the group-based home of the dual-focusdual-focus narratives texts or the single-focussingle-focus narratives identification with an individual. Coming to multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narrative with expectations developed in another world, I sense the new form as a lossloss, a lack, a diversion from the expected path. Trained to expect coherencecoherence […], I can’t feel at home in the multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives world […]. (285)

AltmanAltman, Rick compares this effect of disorientation to the paintings of Pieter BruegelBruegel the Elder, Pieter the Elder, which confront us with images of a multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives world marked by the absence of a clear center: “We remain unable to image the drawing as a whole, to constitute visually any unity or hierarchyhierarchy, to restore a center in terms of either interest or space” (200). In Moby-Dick, this absent center is, of course, symbolized by the white whale itself: a void that structures the entire narrative but that continues to elude both the novel’s characters, its narrator, and its readers.

According to AltmanAltman, Rick, BruegelBruegel the Elder, Pieter’s technique of de-centering is complemented in multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narratives by a clash of various styles, and AltmanAltman, Rick explicitly associates this strategy with the Russian Formalist’s notion of defamiliarizdefamiliarizationation (as well as with BakhtinBakhtin, Mikhail’s concepts of dialogismdialogism and linguistic homelessnesshomelessness; AltmanAltman, Rick 217–221). In Moby-Dick, too, we encounter various contrasting styles – for instance in the novel’s juxtaposition of satirical legal history (ch. 89–90) with picaresque episodes (ch. 91) and didactic treatises (ch. 92). In thus failing to follow any predictable trajectory, multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives narratives challenge their readers to “stretch beyond the action-oriented and character-oriented questions of single-focussingle-focus narratives and dual-focusdual-focus narratives narrative” (AltmanAltman, Rick 263). Instead, AltmanAltman, Rick contends, “the multiple-focusmultiple-focus narratives form seeks out the tertium quid of conception” (269) – i.e. it encourages its disoriented, homeless readers to look for common thematic denominators, formalform and content patterns, and recurring tropes.