All that most maddens and torments: Geek Out, part three
Recently, but not too recently, a colleague asked me what my favorite book is. Moby-Dick. It's not even a question to me. The automatic nature of my response prompted this rejoinder, though.
"Really?"
As if.
There are moments now, alone of in the classroom, when I read a passage and literally--LITERALLY--get gooseflesh. The novel chills me to the marrow of the marrow. A passage deep in chapter forty-one is just such a passage.
Ahab reveals a portion of his quest to Starbuck in chapter thirty-six, he gives away a little more to us in chapter thirty-seven, where makes himself both prophet and fulfiller. It all comes out of the fog here, though, and, as we see it, we can see Frodo simply walking into Mordor, ring on a string, ready to end the control that evil has on mankind.
We first learn--veeerrrrrrrry slowly--of the nature of Moby Dick. He is called ubiquitous and immortal. Indeed, our speaker muses that if one were to apparently kill Moby Dick (plant a spear in his side? oh, what a give away!) it would be a deception. For Moby would be swimming on in "unensanguined waters." Yes, Moby Dick is compared to God--all three parts of the Trinity, if anyone is keeping score. And you should be.
Ahab comes into the picture here:
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
Ahab and Moby Dick are described as taking part in an Arkansas duel. Here let it be noted that an Arkansas duel is a knife fight like the one depicted in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video. (It's on YouTube. Scroll to about 3:20.) In other words, the two are tied together around one wrist and hold a knife in the untied hand. It's a knife fight you cannot run from and from which you can't escape uncut.
As Ahab takes his futile run at Moby Dick, a six inch blade trying to pierce flesh which is six feet thick, Moby Dick takes his leg, like a lawnmower takes a blade of grass. The leg injury MIGHT be a reference to THIS PASSAGE in the Old Testament book of Genesis, in which Jacob wrestles with God and leaves with a pronounced limp. A struggle with God has been more than hinted at. Note especially the words of Elijah (named after the Old Testament prophet who prophesied against, well, King Ahab). Ahab killed a man in a church. Ahab has spat in a communion vessel. That's some serious stuff!
The question, though, is always why. The answer is in the passage. It makes sense to be angry at an entity which took your leg. Ahab is angry at the entity behind that entity, the creature whose features are behind the whale mask.
It's a thing I call the guano factor. When I was eight, my family went to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and it was there I discovered that bat poop is called "guano." There was no stopping me. Guano guano guano. Much later, I was watching an episode of a sit-com and one character said, "Hey, man, you just dumped quite a load of guano on me." Something clicked. That's the name for the bad stuff that falls on us, regardless.
And it isn't fair. And we deserve an explanation. And. No. Thomas Aquinas and John Milton did NOT satisfy me with theirs. And, Ahab being who he is, having been to colleges as well as among cannibals, seems unsatisfied, too.
On top of that, he loses a leg.
He wants an answer to the guano factor question, not just for himself, but for everyone.
And it is stated oh-so-exquisitely.
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
He's in this to save all of us.
"Really?"
As if.
There are moments now, alone of in the classroom, when I read a passage and literally--LITERALLY--get gooseflesh. The novel chills me to the marrow of the marrow. A passage deep in chapter forty-one is just such a passage.
Ahab reveals a portion of his quest to Starbuck in chapter thirty-six, he gives away a little more to us in chapter thirty-seven, where makes himself both prophet and fulfiller. It all comes out of the fog here, though, and, as we see it, we can see Frodo simply walking into Mordor, ring on a string, ready to end the control that evil has on mankind.
We first learn--veeerrrrrrrry slowly--of the nature of Moby Dick. He is called ubiquitous and immortal. Indeed, our speaker muses that if one were to apparently kill Moby Dick (plant a spear in his side? oh, what a give away!) it would be a deception. For Moby would be swimming on in "unensanguined waters." Yes, Moby Dick is compared to God--all three parts of the Trinity, if anyone is keeping score. And you should be.
Ahab comes into the picture here:
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
Ahab and Moby Dick are described as taking part in an Arkansas duel. Here let it be noted that an Arkansas duel is a knife fight like the one depicted in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video. (It's on YouTube. Scroll to about 3:20.) In other words, the two are tied together around one wrist and hold a knife in the untied hand. It's a knife fight you cannot run from and from which you can't escape uncut.
As Ahab takes his futile run at Moby Dick, a six inch blade trying to pierce flesh which is six feet thick, Moby Dick takes his leg, like a lawnmower takes a blade of grass. The leg injury MIGHT be a reference to THIS PASSAGE in the Old Testament book of Genesis, in which Jacob wrestles with God and leaves with a pronounced limp. A struggle with God has been more than hinted at. Note especially the words of Elijah (named after the Old Testament prophet who prophesied against, well, King Ahab). Ahab killed a man in a church. Ahab has spat in a communion vessel. That's some serious stuff!
The question, though, is always why. The answer is in the passage. It makes sense to be angry at an entity which took your leg. Ahab is angry at the entity behind that entity, the creature whose features are behind the whale mask.
It's a thing I call the guano factor. When I was eight, my family went to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and it was there I discovered that bat poop is called "guano." There was no stopping me. Guano guano guano. Much later, I was watching an episode of a sit-com and one character said, "Hey, man, you just dumped quite a load of guano on me." Something clicked. That's the name for the bad stuff that falls on us, regardless.
And it isn't fair. And we deserve an explanation. And. No. Thomas Aquinas and John Milton did NOT satisfy me with theirs. And, Ahab being who he is, having been to colleges as well as among cannibals, seems unsatisfied, too.
On top of that, he loses a leg.
He wants an answer to the guano factor question, not just for himself, but for everyone.
And it is stated oh-so-exquisitely.
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
He's in this to save all of us.
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