Yard. A long piece of timber, tapering slightly toward the ends, and hung by the centre to a mast, to spread the square sails upon.
Yard-arm. The extremities of a yard.
Yard-arm and yard-arm. The situation of two vessels, lying alongside one another, so near that their yard-arms cross or touch.
Yaw. The motion of a vessel when she goes off from her course.
Yoke. A piece of wood placed across the head of a boat’s rudder, with a rope attached to each end, by which the boat is steered.
INSPIRED BY MOBY-DICK
The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.
—Moby-Dick
Visual Art
Melville’s boast that Moby-Dick couldn’t be painted has been challenged many times. Painters Jerry Beck, Richard Ellis, Sam Francis, Mark Milloff, Jackson Pollock, Theodore Roszak, Frank Stella, and Gilbert Wilson, among many others, have chosen the whale, as well as Ahab or Queequeg or the Pequod, as their subject. Elizabeth A. Schultz, in her book Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art (University Press of Kansas, 1995), traces the whale’s appearance in art during the last century. She considers not just paintings but works in media as various as sculpture, architecture, mixed media, and comic books, and offers an exhaustive study of the way in which the image of the whale has insinuated itself into the modern consciousness.
Moby-Dick is arguably the most frequently illustrated American novel. Illustrators as diverse as Barry Moser, Garrick Palmer, Boardman Robinson, and Bill Sienkiewicz have tried their hands at rendering the great Leviathan. Pop artist LeRoy Neiman collaborated with marine biologist Jacques Cousteau on a collector’s edition of Moby-Dick published in 1975. Rockwell Kent’s classic Moby-Dick illustrations—280 images first published in 1930 in a three-volume limited edition from the Chicago Lakeside Press and a one-volume edition from Random House—were celebrated with the 2001 release of a U.S. Postal Service stamp on which the whale’s tail flings a whaleboat and its crew into the air.
Film Adaptations
John Huston’s Moby Dick of 1956 is the best-known film adaptation to date. Huston, legendary director of The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen, wrote the screenplay with Ray Bradbury, the prolific author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451. The film version of Moby Dick establishes itself quickly—New England, 1841, a slew of convincing sailors. Gregory Peck, perhaps too handsome for the part, is cast as the obsessed, peg-legged Ahab. Frederick Ledebur (the German Leader in Slaughterhouse-Five) excels in his performance as the tattooed “cannibal prince” Queequeg. Reasonable Starbuck, played by Leo Genn, is given an expanded role—he nearly assassinates Ahab in one tense scene. Huston focuses the narrative on Ahab’s quest but allows for traditional Hollywood action in whaling scenes enhanced by impressive special effects and elegantly edited. Philip Sainton’s rich score, at some points thunderous and at others restless, includes a choral version of the hymn—beginning “The ribs and terrors in the whale”—that precedes the Sunday sermon delivered by Father Mapple (Orson Welles). Shot in Ireland and off the coast of Portugal, Huston’s Moby Dick offers stunning and memorable images strengthened by a color scheme that imparts a quality of old illustrations to the frames. When it was first released, Huston’s adaptation—like Melville’s novel—garnered neither critical acclaim nor commercial success, but it has since come to be regarded as a classic.
A two-and-a-half-hour epic production of Moby-Dick, directed by Franc Roddam, appeared on television in 1998. Patrick Stewart glowers as a menacing Ahab, silencing rowdy sailors under the deck with the thudding of his deliberate gait. Henry Thomas (of E.T. fame) is cast as the narrator Ishmael, and first mate Starbuck is played by Ted Levine (who was in Silence of the Lambs). In an interesting allusion to Huston’s film, Gregory Peck plays the role of the intense Father Mapple, who booms the sermon about Jonah and the whale. In one memorable scene, Stewart, who does not appear in the first forty-five minutes of the film, seduces a hypnotized crew into taking a blood oath, a pledge to find the whale. The whaling scenes dazzle; the white whale itself is made believable and scary with the help of well-done computer graphics. Moby-Dick is beautifully photographed; executive producer Francis Ford Coppola delivered a production comparable to most films released in theaters.
Literature
In the world of letters, Moby Dick has come to stand for a great many things: for some, man’s ferocious battle with nature; for others, the bestiality of human nature throbbing beneath our “civilized” skin. D. H. Lawrence and Toni Morrison have both pointed to the whale as a symbol of the white race. Most broadly, the shadow of Melville’s whale looms over every attempt in literature to tackle the subject of the sea, be it Joseph Conrad’s ambiguous adventure tales, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, or the more modern novels of Peter Benchley.
American poet Hart Crane shared Melville’s sense of the grand. He is best known for The Bridge (1930), an attempt to create a modern American epic centered around a technology-inspired metaphor. Crane was fascinated by the advances of the subway, the airplane, and especially ships. In 1932, at age thirty-two, he leapt from the S.S. Orizaba and drowned, somewhere off the Florida coast. The poem below—from Crane’s first collection, White Buildings (1926)—is reproduced here courtesy of Liveright Press.
At Melville’s Tomb
by Hart Crane
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps,
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the history of the book. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
D. H. LAWRENCE
What then is Moby Dick?—He is the deepest blood-being of the white race. He is our deepest blood-nature.
And he is hunted, hunted, hunted by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness. We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal conscious hunt of ourselves we get dark races and pale to help us, red, yellow, and black, east and west, Quaker and fire-worshipper, we get them all to help us in this ghastly maniacal hunt which is our doom and our suicide.
—from his Studies in Classic
American Literature (1923)
LONDON LITERARY GAZETTE
Mr. Melville cannot do without savages so he makes half of his dramatis personae wild Indians, Malays, and other untamed humanities.
—December 6, 1851
CHARLESTON SOUTHERN QUARTERLY REVIEW
[Ahab’s] ravings, and the ravings of some of the tributary characters, and the ravings of Mr. Melville himself, meant for eloquent declamation, are such as would justify a writ de lunatico against all the parties.
—January 1852
<
br /> NEW YORK UNITED STATES MAGAZINE
AND DEMOCRATIC REVIEW
Mr. Melville is evidently trying to ascertain how far the public will consent to be imposed upon. He is gauging, at once, our gullibility and our patience. Having written one or two passable extravagancies, he has considered himself privileged to produce as many more as he pleases, increasingly exaggerated and increasingly dull. . . . Mr. Melville never writes naturally. His sentiment is forced, his wit is forced, and his enthusiasm is forced. And in his attempts to display to the utmost extent his powers of “fine writing,” he has succeeded, we think, beyond his most sanguine expectations.
The truth is, Mr. Melville has survived his reputation. If he had been contented with writing one or two books, he might have been famous, but his vanity has destroyed all his chances for immortality, or even of a good name with his own generation. For, in sober truth, Mr. Melville’s vanity is immeasurable. He will either be first among the book-making tribe, or he will be nowhere. He will center all attention upon himself, or he will abandon the field of literature at once. From this morbid self-esteem, coupled with a most unbounded love of notoriety, spring all Mr. Melville’s efforts, all his rhetorical contortions, all his declamatory abuse of society, all his inflated sentiment, and all his insinuating licentiousness.
Typee was undoubtedly a very proper book for the parlor, and we have seen it in company with Omoo, lying upon tables from which Byron was strictly prohibited, although we were unable to fathom those niceties of logic by which one was patronized, and the other proscribed. But these were Mr. Melville’s triumphs. Redburn was a stupid failure, Mardi was hopelessly dull, White-Jacket was worse than either; and, in fact, it was such a very bad book, that, until the appearance of Moby Dick, we had set it down as the very ultimatum of weakness to which its author could attain. It seems, however, that we were mistaken.
We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from Moby Dick. The London journals, we understand, “have bestowed upon the work many flattering notices,” and we should be loath to combat such high authority. But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville’s.
—January 1852
HERMAN MELVILLE
I have a sort of sea-feeling here in the country, now that the ground is all covered with snow. I look out of my window in the morning when I rise as I would out of a porthole of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship’s cabin; and at nights when I wake up and hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, and I had better go on the roof and rig in the chimney.
Do you want to know how I pass my time? I rise at eight—thereabouts—and go to my barn—say good morning to the horse and give him his breakfast. (It goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can’t be helped.) Then, pay a visit to my cow—cut up a pumpkin or two for her, and stand by to see her eat it—for it’s a pleasant sight to see a cow move her jaws—she does it so mildly and with such a sanctity.
My own breakfast over, I go to my workroom and light my fire—then spread my M.S.S. on the table—take one business squint at it, and fall to with a will. At 2-½ P.M. I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by request) continues till I rise and go to the door, which seems to wean me effectively from my writing, however interested I may be.
My friends the horse and cow then demand their dinner—and I go and give it them. My own dinner over, I rig my sleigh and with my mittens and rubbers start off for the village—and if it be a ‘Literary World’ day, great is the satisfaction thereof.
My evenings I spend in a sort of mesmeric state in my room—not being able to read—only now and then skimming over some large-printed book.
—from a letter to his close friend
Evert Duyckinck, editor of The Literary World, written from Melville’s farm, Arrowhead, in Pittsfield, Massashusetts (December 12, 1850)
HERMAN MELVILLE
The Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (and I was the merrier for it) when Crash! comes Moby-Dick himself (as you justly say) and reminds me of what I have been about for part of the last year or two. It is really and truly a surprising coincidence, to say the least. I make no doubt it is Moby-Dick himself, for there is no account of his capture after the sad fate of the Pequod about fourteen years ago.
—From a letter to Duyckinck in reference to the disaster of the whale ship Ann Alexander, from Arrowhead (November 9, 1851)
Questions
1. D. H. Lawrence saw Moby-Dick as an allegory of “the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness” trying to destroy what the whale represents. Given this reading of the novel, what would you say the whale represents?
2. Some critics have found the technical information about whales and whaling intrusive and in the way; or boring; or an example of Melville showing off. Are they right? How would one defend this material? Is Moby-Dick less a novel and more an allegory, or something else?
3. From the attitudes, worldviews, and values at play in Moby-Dick, would you say that Puritanism is an issue? Even aside from the occupation of whaling (which, after all, goes on elsewhere today), the novel is often felt to be quintessentially American. To see whether people who feel that way are right, you might ask yourself how a novel about whaling written by Joseph Conrad would be different.
4. What do you make of the whiteness of the whale?
FOR FURTHER READING
Fundamentals
The commentary about Melville is enormous. The works listed here are some of those helpful to the general reader, and they can also lead to more specialized study. It’s good to start with a solid, basic collection of essays about the author’s work that will illustrate the wide variety of topics and approaches.
Editions of the Novel
Two editions of Moby-Dick contain much additional material.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. Edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. First published in 1988 as vol. 6 of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Writings of Herman Melville. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001. The most important critical edition, part of the scholarly edition of Melville’s complete works, this volume has an editorial appendix with much information about the circumstances of publication and reception, as well as detailed notes on the establishment of an authoritative text.
——. Moby-Dick. Edited by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent. New York: Hendricks House, 1952. This earlier edition contains extensive “Explanatory Notes” that are valuable for understanding Melville’s use of his sources.
Scholarship and Criticism
Higgins, Brian, and Hershel Parker. Introduction to their anthology Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992. A compact historical survey of Melville scholarship and criticism.
Hayes, Kevin J. The Critical Response to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. A more extended account of the history of Melville scholarship.
Selby, Nick, ed. Herman Melville: Moby-Dick. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Another important critical collection.
For ongoing reports about detailed scholarship, see the annual series American Literary Scholarship, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963 to the present. Each volume describes the work published two years earlier; there is a chapter on Melville.
Handbooks
Bryant, John, ed. Companion to Melville Studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Gale, Robert L. A Herman Melville Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. This book is intended particularly for the general reader.
Kier, Kathleen E., ed. A Melville Encyclopedia: The Novels. Second edition; 2 vols. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1994.
Levine, Robert S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Biography
Hardwick, Elizabeth. Herman Melville. New York: Viking Press, 2000. A compact and graceful introduction to Melville’s life and work, intended for the general reader.
Howard, Leon. Herman Melville: A Biography. 1951. Reprint: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. An earlier life, still dependable.
Leyda, Jay, ed. The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville. 2 vols. Reprint with supplement: New York: Gordian Press, 1969. An important gathering of documents relevant to Melville’s life and works.
Melville, Herman. Correspondence. Edited by Lynn Horth. Part of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition. Evanston, IL, and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and Newberry Library, 1993.
Parker, Herschel. Herman Melville: A Biography. 2 vols. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, 2002. By far the longest, most detailed, and most authoritative biography.
Robertson-Lorant, Laurie. Melville: A Biography. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1996. A balanced and readable account.
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