The Ungraspable Phantom
Take your Second Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick and put a little post it on page twenty. Underlining lines 4-8 on that page wouldn't be a BAD idea, and, if the library gets mad at you, go ahead and tell the library police that I told you to. It is not rare that a book gives you "the key to it all" so early on, just barely two pages into the text, but it is extremely rare to do it so well. Here are the lines, uttered towards the end of Ishmael's redirect from his thoughts of shuffling off this mortal coil to an extended reverie about the allure of water:
"An still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."
If there is one thing Charter students excel at, it is knowledge of myth. You can look at the footnote (and you should look at footnotes), and see that Melville alters the standard story of Narcissus. Narcissus, as you know, was a beautiful man, desired by all, disdaining all. Echo puts a spell on him that casts him into a slumber, a magical slumber. The spell dictates that the first person Narcissus sees when he awakes from this slumber he will fall in love with. Echo tries to be this person, but Narcissus rolls the other way and sees himself reflected in a pool of water. Ovid's version is that he stares at himself and wastes away. (Echo also wastes away and becomes only a voice, sadly a voice which can only repeat what she hears.)
Melville tells a different version, slightly--and he SHOULD. It's a MYTH. You should bend it to your own purpose. Waste away? No. Dive in and drown.
But how is this the key to it all?
There is an obvious reference here to what is often called the Socratic injunction: Know thyself. This, on the surface, seems quite simple, but the self--the soul? the mind? the spirit?--is an image well-described here as both mild and tormenting. If we could figure it out, we'd have something, wouldn't we? The problem is we see ourselves reflected, but literally can't grasp it. What happens when you reach out and touch your reflection in the water? See it another way. It's quantum physics! The more you see the torment, the less you see the mild--and vice-versa. We as stuck in a continual state of partial knowledge.
Pay attention as we travel through this novel to instances where characters gaze over the side of the ship into the water. The key to the novel is in these reflections.
"An still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."
If there is one thing Charter students excel at, it is knowledge of myth. You can look at the footnote (and you should look at footnotes), and see that Melville alters the standard story of Narcissus. Narcissus, as you know, was a beautiful man, desired by all, disdaining all. Echo puts a spell on him that casts him into a slumber, a magical slumber. The spell dictates that the first person Narcissus sees when he awakes from this slumber he will fall in love with. Echo tries to be this person, but Narcissus rolls the other way and sees himself reflected in a pool of water. Ovid's version is that he stares at himself and wastes away. (Echo also wastes away and becomes only a voice, sadly a voice which can only repeat what she hears.)
Melville tells a different version, slightly--and he SHOULD. It's a MYTH. You should bend it to your own purpose. Waste away? No. Dive in and drown.
But how is this the key to it all?
There is an obvious reference here to what is often called the Socratic injunction: Know thyself. This, on the surface, seems quite simple, but the self--the soul? the mind? the spirit?--is an image well-described here as both mild and tormenting. If we could figure it out, we'd have something, wouldn't we? The problem is we see ourselves reflected, but literally can't grasp it. What happens when you reach out and touch your reflection in the water? See it another way. It's quantum physics! The more you see the torment, the less you see the mild--and vice-versa. We as stuck in a continual state of partial knowledge.
Pay attention as we travel through this novel to instances where characters gaze over the side of the ship into the water. The key to the novel is in these reflections.
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