THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR OF "MOBY-DICK"

Author(s): Susan VanZanten Gallagher

Source: Christianity and Literature , SPRING 1987, Vol. 36, No. 3 (SPRING 1987), pp. 11-
25
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44311541

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ARTICLE

THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR OF

MOBY-DICK

By Susan VanZanten Gallagher, Calvin College

Prophetic figures and their proclamations form an integral part

of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Accompanying these
prophetic characters are a number of ominous incidents which
predict the subsequent outcome of events. Examined only by the
number of references to it, prophecy becomes, in Nathali
Wright's words, "the great motif' of M oby -Dick A Melvill
creates a sense of excitement with this motif, and the dramatic
force of Ahab's relentless search for the white whale evolves in
part from the conflicting attitudes toward prophecy manifested
by the captain and his crew. However, Moby-Dick also explains
how prophets are formed. The novel both shows Ishmael's
education as a prophet and manifests the result of that education
in his narrative.
As the narrator of Moby-Dick, Ishmael has long provoked
critical problems. He disappears from the dramatic action
midway through the book, he reports scenes and conversations
which he could not have witnessed, and his style varies
erratically. Early critics attributed this narrational mayhem to
Melville's lack of artistic skill and contended that he changed
from a first-person narrator to an omniscient perspective. More
recent critics view these inconsistencies either as part of
Melville's purposeful experimentation with structure and form
or as the product of a persona who asks us to call him Ishmael.2
One way to approach this troublesome persona is to view him as a
prophetic narrator. Ishmael's frenzied tone, occasionally
omniscient viewpoint, and oddities of narration are prophetic
traits, not artistic lapses on Melville' part.
Moby-Dick tells the story of Ishmael's initiation into
prophethood. During the course of his adventures, the apprentice
encounters so many prophets and prophecies that D. H. Lawrence

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12 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

speaks of the book's "terrible fatali

Doom! "3 This solemn knell is soun
benefit but also for Ishmael's tuitio
Moby-Dick show Ishmael the amb
compulsion that characterize Melville's
While boarding the Pequod, Ishmael m
the elusive Elijah, a master of the art
inquires whether Ishmael and Queeq
Pequod but rapidly shifts the subject
souls. "He's got enough, though, to m
of that sort in other chaps," Elijah
reference to Ahab.4 This begins an ex
about the captain of the Pequod that co
to Ahab's mysterious past. In Ishma
Elijah, the prophet alludes to the sha
stealing aboard the ship and states, "
against - but never mind, never m
specifically delineates anything. He
about Ahab, but he never clearly comm
Other prophecies are equally ambig
Ishmael the original vague prophecy ab
Tistig, at Gay-head, said that the na
prophetic" (p. 77, my emphasis). Man
Fedallah's cryptic three-part prophe
Ahab's death resembles the vague pr
oracle as well as the similar predictio
Macbeth. The statements of the prophe
only "old wives' darkling hint[s]" and b
Those who deliver these riddles are all
one way or another. Fedallah's affil
separates him from the rest of the sh
other prophets. More like a Cassa
namesake, Elijah issues an incoher
Ishmael tells him, "that all this gibberis
know, and I don't much care; for it seem
a little damaged in the head" (p. 87). Ga
on board the Jereboam, also is set apar
nineteenth-century prototypes in th
Melville's home in Pittsfield, he ann
archangel and issues commands. "
delirium was in his eyes," Ishmae
"gibbering insanity," Gabriel for

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 13

Jereboam' s chief mate Macey and wa

Dick (p. 267).
Elijah, Gabriel, and Fedallah all seem
of compulsive drive to deliver the
obsession of the prophet is speci
Mapple's sermon on Jonah. The
recognized as a crux of Moby-Dick
lesson" (p. 45). However, most interpr
strand, which is directed at sinners:
heed to repent of it like Jonah" (p
directed to prophets. Jonah is "an
speaker of true things," who flees
Tarshish (p. 50). A prophet's duty is "
face of Falsehood," and Father Mapp
of the living God who slights it"
account of Jonah shows a proph
performing his duty at Nineveh
emphasizes Jonah's initial refusal
responsibilities and the consequent
drives every Jonah to his Nineveh.
Father Mapple is himself a prophet,
and a forthteller. His two-stranded
both Ahab's and Ishmael's fate - Ahab as a sinner and Ishmael as
a prophet. Isolated in his prow-like pulpit with the rope ladder
drawn up after him, Father Mapple feels the pressures of
prophetic responsibility. He admits, "Shipmates, God has laid but
one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me" (p. 50).
Following the sermon, he "covered his face with his hands, and so
remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was
left alone in the place" (p. 51). Ishmael's narration thus notes
both the "physical isolation" and the oppressive responsibility of
Father Mapple (p. 43).
The chaplain's prophetic example, however, extends beyond the
compulsion, isolation, and ambiguity demonstrated by Elijah,
Gabriel, and Fedallah. While all these prophets are types of
narrators in delivering their messages, Father Mapple's
rhetorical technique demonstrates how to relate a prophetic
message while telling a story ß The sermon vividly demonstrates
how a prophet uses a historically based fiction which also contains
hidden meanings outside of the literal narrative. The narration is
based on fact - the Biblical account - but soon it becomes
imaginative as Father Mapple extrapolates descriptions, dialogue,

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14 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

scenes, and even actions. The sermon

dramatizes the story of Jonah. When t
"slouched hat and guilty eye," comes
sailors for the moment desist from hoi
the stranger's evil eye" (pp. 45, 46). Fat
realistic details and further contemp
couching it in colloquial language and b
For example, the preacher creates
sailors' initial suspicion of Jonah by
interspersing Biblical and nineteenth-ce

Strong intuitions of the man assure the ma

innocent In their gamesome but still seri
the other - "Jack, he's robbed a widow;" o
he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he
jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the
Sodom." (p. 46)

Father Mapple also fictitiously notes th

making out his papers for the Customs"
Jonah's guilt, he charges him three tim
passage (p. 46). These invented details and realistic
characterizations effectively dramatize the simple Biblical story.
Father Mapple is also alert to the deeper significance of his tale.
The sermon has two overt morals, but it also contains other
instances of symbolism, which Father Mapple carefully notes. He
cautions about the fact that Jonah was searching specifically for a
ship to Tarshish: "There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded
meaning here." Then he proposes his own interpretation of this
fact (p. 45). Similarly, he points to the Biblical detail that Jonah
paid his fare before sailing and asserts, "taken with the context,
this is full of meaning" (p. 46). But in this instance, he does not
supply the meaning. Father Mapple's method resembles Jonah's
own reading of his circumstances when he compares the straight-
hanging lamp in the crooked room to his conscience in his
sinnning soul. Implicit symbolism as well as an explicit moral
lend more, ambiguity to Father Mapple's text. These techniques
of prophetic narration serve as examples for Ishmael's own
account.

But before Ishmael can become a prophet, he must learn to

acknowledge a controlling power greater than himself and the
often complex interrelation of free will and fate. His
retrospective narration reports how he felt and reasoned before

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 15

his experiences on board the Peq

adventures, Ishmael seems to be a s
assured individual, as his initial int
He admits in the first chapter of M
believed in his "own unbiased fr
judgment" (p. 16). Father Mapple's ser
that free will is not always all-powerf
the whaling voyage soon shows him t
While weaving with Queequeg, Ishma
will, and necessity - no wise incom
[are] working together" (p. 185). B
hold for long; Tashtego's wild crie
resembling "some prophet or seer be
cause "the ball of free will" to drop f
These cries heralding the creature of
temporarily to lose control of his life
Other aspects of the whaling voyage
life's limitations. After his first
abandonment on the ocean, Ishmael l
the mate has over his crew. Similar
monkey rope to the dangerously s
perceives "that my free will had re
that another's mistake or misfortune
into unmerited disaster and death" (p. 271). External
circumstances also threaten to affect Ishmael's life as he sits
precariously in the whale boat amidst the whizzing whaleline.
But, "all men live enveloped in whale-lines," he claims (p. 241).
Although a whaling voyage depicts the realities of life in
particularly vivid terms, free will suffers in all walks of life.
These experiences teach Ishmael that fate - in the guise of
strength, leadership, relationships, or circumstances - plays a
very important role in his life. Referring again to life as a loom,
he points to the value of retrospect in understanding the true role
of fate: "The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he
deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming,
we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we
escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it"
(p. 374). When he has escaped the loom of the voyage of the
Pequod, Ishmael can see that his former belief in complete free
will must needs be tempered by the hand of the weaver-god.
In retrospect Ishmael can see the shift in his own attitude toward
fate. He reflects:

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16 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that t

Fates, put me down for this shabby part . .
all the circumstances, I think I can see a little
motives which . . . induced me to set about
did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that
from my own unbiased freewill and discrimi

At the time he believed his free will prom

now he sees that he was "induced." Lookin
recognizes fate's role in involving him in
Ishmael's initial belief in freedom of
admission of the influences of outside for
balance between free will and fate cre
structure of Moby-Dick. But the striking
lesson Ishmael has learned causes him to e
of fate in his telling of the story.
Bulkington to be his shipmate; the Pequod
fate" into the Atlantic; an "infernal fatal
of the crew (pp. 23, 97, 162). Near the e
the narrative momentum increases along
Ishmael's fatalistic references compo
predestinated day," "the sometim
predestinated craft," and the whale's "
(pp. 295, 344, 468). About his solitary su
so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappe
the Fates ordained to take the place ofAh
In his retrospective narration, Ishmael st
fate.
A more balanced approach appears in his narration of "The
Town-Ho's Story," an independent incident in the larger story.
The Pequod meets the Town-Ho to exchange news, and the crew
hear the tale of the latter ship's encounter with Moby Dick.
Ishmael has told this story often, and for his "humor's sake," he
recounts it as he once narrated it in Lima (p. 208). During this
rendition, Ishmael refuses to relate the larger tale of Moby Dick
and becomes faint when the young Spaniards press him on this
point. But he is not as affected by the story of die Town-Ho , for
he was not an actor in these events. Consequently, he does not
have the dual perspective of present and past, and he can
incorporate a balanced depiction of fate and free will into his
narration.

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 17

Ishmael's account points to the fatality

will as well as that originating in im
Some of his descriptions resemble the
larger story. He calls Radney "the pred
"the fool had been branded for th
(pp. 213, 214). Yet he spends a great d
background and emotional make-up o
the conflict. The fact that Radney is a
Lakeman from Buffalo is important fo
Ishmael explains about his elaborat
mention all these particulars so that yo
how this affair stood between the two
story as told in Lima further emphasiz
origins, for the questions inserted by t
has determined the identity of t
Spaniards' ignorance of CanaÚers only
the fact that Steelkilt's comrades were Canallers. Ishmael thus
suggests the important role that personal identity played in the
events on the Town-Ho.
But the compatibility of free will and impersonal fate - that
arising from an outside source - is even more strikingly
revealed. After an initial conflict, the Lakeman determines to kill
the mate Radney: "Twenty-four hours after . . . that fatal hour
was then to come; and in the foreordaining soul of Steelkilt, the
mate was already stark and stretched as a corpse" (p. 221).
However, this decision arising from Steelkilt's will is carried out
by impersonal fate: "For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself
seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning
thing he would have done" (p. 221). Steelkilt's will and fate as
represented by the power of Moby Dick coincide to destine the
mate's death. A conscious decision, the inner necessities of
identity, and the chance encounter with brute strength compound
to form the "strange fatality [which] pervades the whole career of
these events" (p. 222). In this story when Ishmael is only the
narrator and not an actor, he clearly depicts a complex
relationship between fate and free will.
Besides giving him a new understanding of the power of fate,
Ishmael's experiences also teach him the inevitability of
ambiguity. His eagerness at the outset of his adventure to assign
meaning to everything resembles Ahab's reluctance to accept
mystery. The captain claims, "That inscrutable thing is chiefly
what I hate" (p. 144), and Ishmael initially has a similar attitude.

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18 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

His reaction to the mysterious pai

suggests his original distaste for am
squitchy picture truly, enough to driv
Yet was there a sort of indefinite, h
sublimity about it that fairly froze you
took an oath with yourself to find
painting meant" (p. 20). Similarly, he a
meaning of Father Mapple's action in d
after climbing into his pulpit and to ex
bow-like pulpit. "What could be mo
pondered in the Whaleman's Chapel,
standard allegorical interpretation, "
earth's foremost part; all the rest co
leads the world" (pp. 43-44). This search for meaning
characterized Ishmael even at an early age. After awakening as a
child to feel an invisible hand holding his, he repeatedly tries to
understand the experience: "for days and weeks and months
afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the
mystery" (p. 33). Before the voyage, Ishmael wants to decipher
every symbol and explain every mystery.
His efforts to solve the problem of the universe and to seize the
ungraspable phantom of life are associated with this fear of
ambiguity. Ishmael attributes his willing participation in the
quarter-deck scene to "the dread in my soul" evoked by Moby
Dick (p. 155). Although the crew submits because of their weak
will and fatalism, Ishmael takes the oath out of fear. He attempts
to explain this dread in "The Whiteness of the Whale" and cites
the "vague, nameless horror" evoked in him by the ambiguous
color of the whale (p. 163). Ishmael admits that white has
beneficent associations, but he insists, "there yet lurks an elusive
something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes . . .
panic to the soul" (p. 164). He then enumerates the many
malevolent associations of whiteness. This multiplicity of
meaning, this ability to represent both innocence and evil, is what
terrifies Ishmael and prompts his dread.7
As a character Ishamel fears ambiguity, and, like Ahab, he
wants to break through it to meaning. As a character he can
assuredly assert about his own interpretation of symbols, "What
could be more full of meaning?" But as the narrator, Ishmael is
more tentative about hidden meanings. His narrative reflections
are deliberately ambiguous. He concludes his thoughts on how
meditation and water are associated by hoping, "Surely all this is

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 19

not without meaning" (p. 14). He c

"some certain significance lurks in al
attempt to give his own reading o
(p. 358). The narrator's distaste f
emerges in his disdain for those who
as a monstrous fable, or still worse a
and intolerable allegory" (p. 177). I
the necessity for ambiguity, as his n
further demonstrate.8
The lessons Ishmael learns during
ambiguity help prepare him to be
Gabriel, and Fedallah. He develops a
of the balance between free will a
prophets of the voyage, emphasizes f
final acceptance of ambiguity allows
puzzling tale with multiple levels
obscure prophetic books of the Bi
debated by Melville's contemporaries.
Perhaps influenced by Father Mappl
Moby-Dick appears especially interest
Jonah, and references to this r
experiences pervade the book. Jonah
the "Extracts": the third extract r
prepared a great fish to swallow
initially mentions the prophet wit
whale's engulfment of Jonah. At the
arched bone of the whale's jaw . . .
destruction, like another cursed J
withered old man" (p. 21). Ishm
Historically Regarded" focuses on the
whale. And several of "the Monstrous Pictures of Whales"
appearing in Bibles and old primers purport to display Jonah's
whale.
This minor obsession with Jonah is understandable in view of
Ishmael's own experience as a castaway. Like Jonah, he has
undergone a harrowing experience that has drastically changed
him. Adrift on the immense ocean, he watches the Pequod sink,
stove in by Moby Dick. He miraculously escapes the ever-present
sharks. For three days he floats on Queequeg's coffin, until the
Rachel saves him. Ishmael's salvation is not granted because he
possesses some spiritual insight deeper than the rest of the
crew.10 He reaches his balanced view of fate and free will and his

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20 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

acceptance of ambiguity only when he

Ishmael is saved deliberately to become
prophet who speaks forth truth. He
Epilogue, "And I only am escaped alone
emphasis). After experiencing three so
immensity of nature, like Jonah, Ishm
prophetic truth. His narration of Mo
half of the Biblical story of Jonah: the
As Ishmael writes about the whale, his
parallel Jonah's. He admits that he ha
Jonah alone; the privilege of discou
(p. 373). He takes "the road that Jonah
of the whale (p. 282). Like Jonah, Ish
the whale. By admitting that he joins
"heroes, saints, demigods, and prophet
St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishn
his narrative pursuit of the mysterie
prophetic role (p. 306).
Besides his affinities with Jonah, Is
steps of the crazed Pip. The similiari
Pip's suggests that Ishmael also has b
upon the treadle of the loom" and h
(p. 347). But unlike Pip, Ishmael beg
strong sense of will and so does not
identity. He does become isolated fro
experiences wildly fluctuating mood
outcast, he asks. The power of the e
especially near the end of the book, ca
person temporarily from the narration
obliterates himself. After his exper
continually talks about himself in t
complete disassociation of self occurs i
description of his abandonment by Ah
The informal personal tone of most
Ishmael. The moments when he loses
"hypo," frantically discourses, or
presentation indicate the tempora
isolation of a prophetic narrator. H
comes from the supernatural prescience
Ishmael is both a foreteller and a forth
Moby-Dick. Although he does not lit
since he utters his prophecies after

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 21

Ishmael employs foretelling as a ficti

Greek chorus. He reveals Queequeg's f
"From that hour I clove to Queequ
poor Queequeg took his last long div
as a castaway, Ishmael announces, "In
it will then be seen what like ab
(p. 347). This kind of narrative
cetological chapters, most of which
reader for the catastrophe. Ishmael
whaling disasters" concerning wh
denouement of the story. He delibera
nature of these chapters. For ex
peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a
mind in the fishery; and to be remem
subsequent scenes" (p. 279). Foretell
Ishmael's narrative forthtelling.
As he attempts to portray a deeper a
Ishmael moves beyond prediction i
Like Father Mapple's ideal prophet,
truth to the face of falsehood. Ear
points to the connection between h
landlessness alone resides the highest
as God" (p. 97). As he takes the reader
from the shore in his narrative, Is
vision of truth by describing the even
by focusing especially on the object o
whale. He reveals his mission some
constant refrain of "in truth" which underscores his
descriptions.13 Ishmael's "in truth" stands opposed to the many
other authors who have inaccurately written of the whale. For
Ishmael, knowing about whales is necessary for facing ultimate
truth: "unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth" (pp. 285-86). His system of "cetology"
and other verbal associations of the whale with God further
suggest the link between understanding the whale and grasping
the highest truth. But neither the whale nor truth can ever be
completely fathomed; they both remain shoreless and indefinite.
Ishmael's heroic attempt to describe all aspects of the whale and
to place him in historical, cultural, and religious perspective
ultimately ends in his acknowledgement of the impossibility of
the task. The whale, like truth, can never be represented. The
mysteries of the whale compound under further examination: the

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22 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

difficulty of phrenologically analyzing

the comparative smallness of his brain
his spoutings, the amazing agility o
"Dissect him how I may, then, I but go
and never will" (p. 318). The impossibil
to face suggests the impossibility of
truth. In the final analysis, the boo
Queequeg's tattoos, another darkling hi
The way that Ishmael delivers this amb
a prophet. His narration partakes equal
supernatural, facts and visions. H
experience on a whaling ship as wel
whaling books which he liberally utiliz
His occasional visionary experiences are
the book in scenes such as "The Masthe
Hand." Ishamel's sensitivity to both
natural parallels his acceptance of b
consequently describes factual events bu
surface details lies a deeper truth. L
like Shakespeare and Hawthorne - bot
prophetic - Ishmael clothes his sto
Charles Feidelson, Jr., perhaps best
Ishmael when he writes, "As Ishmael
deeply into his symbolic world, h
presence, a visionary activity, rather th
The multifaceted nature of the boo
prophetic genre. Besides Ishmael's
natural and the supernatural coincid
employs the story-telling techniques o
the facts or history of this voyage, an
he fictionalizes, dramatizes, hypothe
to illuminate his theme. His strictly n
his subject as history; his dramatic mo
"Sunset," resemble poetry. He also freq
tense rendition, reliving the voyage wi
Ishmáel's final prophetic trait is his c
over and over. Like Job's servant, h
story, and his narration of the Town
Golden Inn suggests that he has told h
at many times. This telling and retellin
his story meaning,15 but instead is an a

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 23

manifest itself to his audience. Hi

meaning to the story or draw a mora
"The Town-Ho's Story" shows Ishmae
narrates an enthralling story and
audience believe that story. He follow
Bible held by a priest: "So help me H
story I have told ye, gentlemen, is in
true" (p. 224). Ishmael's compulsive
Moby Dick are prophetic utterances
driven to deliver God's message to th
Viewing Ishmael as a prophet he
complexities of Moby-Dick better.
omens and prophets, subdues his pass
above all else, Ishmael learns to
marvelous tale of the quest for the w
and visions can be welded into a
symbolic perception of life. Me
prophetic narrator and creation of
Moby-Dick represents his greatest ar

NOTES

^Nathalia Wright, Melville's Use of the Bible (Duke University Press,

1949), p. 78.
2On Moby-Dick as an experiment in structure and form, see Richard H.
Brodhead, Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel (University of Chicago
Press, 1976); and Edwin M. Eigner, The Metaphysical Novel in England and
America: Dickens, Buliver, Melville, and Hawthorne (University of
California Press, 1987). Warwick Wadlington sees the persona of Ishmael
as a trickster who plays with language and rhetoric. The Confidence Game in
American Literature (Princeton University Press, 1975). Paul Brodtkorb,
Jr., thinks Ishmael is a Kantian: "Because the character Ishmael changes his
mind with his mood, it becomes possible to think that the narrator Ishmael
may change his moods sometimes, and thereby change self and reality."
Ishmael's White World: A Phenomenological Reading of Moby-Dick (Yale
University Press, 1965), p. 17. William B. Dillingham presents an
alternative way of explaining narrational inconsistencies by noting the
affinities between Ishmael and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. "The Narrator
of Moby-Dick," English Studies 49 (1968): 20-29.
3D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (New York:
Thomas Seltzer, 1923), pp. 237-38.
4Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ed. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker
(New York: Norton, 1967), p. 86. Subsequent references are in this edition
and will be noted parenthetically.
5The range of interpretations runs from Thompson's ironist reading of
Mapple's "deceptive equivocation and sneer at Christian doctrine" to
Vincent's insistence that the sermon forms the moral basis whereby all the

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24 CHRISTIANITY & LITERATURE

characters are judged. Lawrence Thompson, M

(Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 162; How
out of Moby-Dick (Boston: Houghton, 1949),
contends, "Father Mapple has a conception of t
the whole narrative," p. 82.
6Most analyses of the rhetorical nature of Fa
recognize the preacher's use of the techniques th
"prophetic" authors such as Hawthorne and Sh
"Hawthorne and His Mosses." F. O. Mattheissen, in his American
Renaissance : Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
(Oxford University Press, 1941), pp. 126-28, thinks the sermon is in the
"metaphysical style" and is very successful. Conversely, Brodtkorb argues
that the style quickly becomes ludicrous in its strange juxtapositions: "There
is a colloquial effectiveness in it, but there is also a basic inappropriateness to
the subject matter of his sermon in that he dramatizes the mythically remote
miracle story of Jonah in anachronistically everyday terms," p. 56. I find this
odd combination of colloquialism and metaphysics to be a prophetic style of
narrative and also evident in Ishmael's own account
7Two major interpretations of Ishmael's understanding of the whiteness of
the whale have emerged. The first connects whiteness with annihilation and
atheism; the second stresses the emptiness of nature and man's creation of a
relative meaning to fill this emptiness. These approaches are defined in G.
Thomas Tanselle, "A Further Note on Whiteness' in Melville and Others,"
PMLA 81 (1966): 604. Edgar A. Dryden emphasizes the "blankness" of
whiteness in his Melville's Thematics of Form: The Great Art of Telling the
Truth (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968). Brodtkorb analyzes
whiteness as an emptiness which humans are compelled to fill with meaning,
pp. 115-119. My argument participates in the second tradition of
interpretation but stresses Ishmael's terror and dread of the multiplicity of
meaning implied by relativism.
8Michael T. Gilmore also points to Ishmael's initial drive "to uncover the
hidden significance of things and events" and notes the narrator's warning
"that man is inherently limited, and that his desire for full comprehension can
never be gratified." "Introduction," in Twentieth-Century Interpretations of
Moby-Dick (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977), pp. 1, 6.
9Space does not permit a complete discussion of nineteenth-century interest
in Biblical prophecy. A great deal of this interest emerged from millenial
enthusiasm. According to a leading religious historian, "America in the early
nineteenth century was drunk on the millennium .... Americans seemed
unable to avoid - seemed bound to utilize - the vocabulary of Christian
eschatology." See Ernest H. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism :
British and American Millenarianism , 1800-1930 (University of Chicago
Press, 1970), p. 42. A key element in this vocabulary was the interpretation
of Biblical prophecy. The millennium refers to a thousand year period of
peace and prosperity upon the earth predicted in Revelation 20, which will
occur somewhere near the end of the world. Millennialists constructed a
chronology of future events based on the interpretation of the prophecies in
Daniel, Isaiah, and Revelation concerning the end of the world. This
movement focused the attention of thousands of Americans upon the
prophetic books of the Bible and on sometimes widely conflicting
contemporary explications of these books. The numerous debates over

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THE PROPHETIC NARRATOR 25

Biblical prophecy emerged from its am

historical references.
l°Ishmael actually admits his complicity
motivation was different from that of th
for the opposing view that Ishmael earns hi
insight, p. 390.
11 Carolyn L. Karcher notes the parallels be
near fatal experiences with whales and their
that waits an unrepentant people." Howe
Ishmael's prophecies as focusing on the sla
from mine. Also, she does not discuss Ishm
comparison of himself to the Biblical pr
Promised Land : Slavery , Race, and V
(Louisiana State University Press, 1980), p
12Melville, p. 95. George R. Steward argu
Melville originally planned to have Queequ
"last dive" could predict his death on boa
recently, Harrison Hayford has suggested
were added after rather than before the voy
make this statement clearly prophetic of th
George R. Steward, "The Two Moby-Dicks
417-48; and Harrison Hayford, "Unnece
Writing of Moby-Dick" New Perspectives
(Edinburgh University Press, 1978), pp. 12
13For example, he writes, "So that, in real
of the Pequod might more properly be said
in it" (p. 134); "It may seem unwarrantab
masthead standers of the land with those of
so, is plainly evinced . . ." (p. 136); "In tru
problematical whales that seem to dry up
dyspepsia or indigestion" (p. 337).
14Charles Feidelson, Jr., Symbolism and
of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 31.
15Brodtkorb claims, "Each telling is a new a
by his experience of Ahab and the whale,
Also see Dillingham, p. 26.

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