Undigested Apple-Dumpling
I would love to cite the source, trust me, and I spent the last fifteen minutes looking for it, but suffice it to say I'm quoting someone smart, some Shakespeare scholar, probably, and that smart someone said, "Everything Shakespeare is ambiguous."
That, to quote Fitzgerald (as he wrote about Daisy Fay Buchanan) is the "siren's song of it."
I will add here: Everything Melville is ambiguous.
When last we spoke, the AP wrote a little bit about the way religion seems to be portrayed in Moby-Dick, and the answers were various because the portrayal IS various. Melville, like his buddy Hawthorne--and a few other American authors--are British or even continental style Romanticists (big R Romantics, not guys who buy flowers and candies), but he has a lot in common with his almost exact contemporary Walt Whitman (look it up--uncanny) who wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself--I am large; I contain multitudes." Melville spoke the truth as it appeared to him when it appeared to him. If it changed, he changed, and spoke it perhaps more loudly. He is post-modern in that way. He introduces, for instance, a character in chapter three, Bulkington, spends a good deal of time on him, brings him back in chapter twenty-three for exactly a page and then lets him slip away. I think it's because he came up with Starbuck, whom you will soon meet, and just said, well, there it is.
But I digress.
The simplest answer to the whole "attitude towards religion" question I so very evilly asked is found at the beginning of chapter eighteen, as Ishmael is trying to talk the two Quaker captains into letting his bosom friend Queequeg join their crew. They wonder whether this tattooed savage is a Christian; Ishmael replies that Queequeg is a member of "the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshiping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands." Here, "Catholic" means (as it really does in real life, though we don't use it that way) "universal." One universal church of all people who believe in God. How relativist! How ecumenical!
At his best, this is Ishmael, but there's more going on than hippy dippy you be you I'll be me hug a tree in Ishmael, and we saw it just a few pages before, as he literally breaks down the door to find his friend unresponsively deep in meditation. The words he shares in this chapter are telling. After just a few words treating Queequeg's "ramadan," which, it should be noted, is in few ways related to the Muslim concept or Ramadan or the Christian concept of Lent. He says, "I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name." To paraphrase, "I respect everyone's religion, no matter how stupid it is."
By the end of the chapter, Ishmael is trying to talk Queequeg out of his devotional activities, despite the fact that Ishmael himself has joined Queequeg, as his first act of friendship, in worshiping his god, Yojo. Ishmael accepts half of Queequeg's life savings, fifteen of his thirty silver coins. (Judas accepted the full thirty to betray Jesus--Ishmael, then, must be HALF betraying.) It is clear that this worship is a way to bond more closely with his friend, a means to an end.
Indeed, if you look at the word "religion" you see "lig" the root of "ligament." Religion, then, is a tie that binds--people to God, people to people. I could get all Freudian or Marxist, but I won't.
Suffice it to conclude what Bildad and Peleg concluded. They knew that that "young Hittite" Ishmael was "skylarking" them about Queequeg. As soon as they saw him throw a harpoon, they didn't care.
There's this world. And there's the next. They are living in the balance.
That balance is very important in this novel. Trust me.
That, to quote Fitzgerald (as he wrote about Daisy Fay Buchanan) is the "siren's song of it."
I will add here: Everything Melville is ambiguous.
When last we spoke, the AP wrote a little bit about the way religion seems to be portrayed in Moby-Dick, and the answers were various because the portrayal IS various. Melville, like his buddy Hawthorne--and a few other American authors--are British or even continental style Romanticists (big R Romantics, not guys who buy flowers and candies), but he has a lot in common with his almost exact contemporary Walt Whitman (look it up--uncanny) who wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself--I am large; I contain multitudes." Melville spoke the truth as it appeared to him when it appeared to him. If it changed, he changed, and spoke it perhaps more loudly. He is post-modern in that way. He introduces, for instance, a character in chapter three, Bulkington, spends a good deal of time on him, brings him back in chapter twenty-three for exactly a page and then lets him slip away. I think it's because he came up with Starbuck, whom you will soon meet, and just said, well, there it is.
But I digress.
The simplest answer to the whole "attitude towards religion" question I so very evilly asked is found at the beginning of chapter eighteen, as Ishmael is trying to talk the two Quaker captains into letting his bosom friend Queequeg join their crew. They wonder whether this tattooed savage is a Christian; Ishmael replies that Queequeg is a member of "the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshiping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands." Here, "Catholic" means (as it really does in real life, though we don't use it that way) "universal." One universal church of all people who believe in God. How relativist! How ecumenical!
At his best, this is Ishmael, but there's more going on than hippy dippy you be you I'll be me hug a tree in Ishmael, and we saw it just a few pages before, as he literally breaks down the door to find his friend unresponsively deep in meditation. The words he shares in this chapter are telling. After just a few words treating Queequeg's "ramadan," which, it should be noted, is in few ways related to the Muslim concept or Ramadan or the Christian concept of Lent. He says, "I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name." To paraphrase, "I respect everyone's religion, no matter how stupid it is."
By the end of the chapter, Ishmael is trying to talk Queequeg out of his devotional activities, despite the fact that Ishmael himself has joined Queequeg, as his first act of friendship, in worshiping his god, Yojo. Ishmael accepts half of Queequeg's life savings, fifteen of his thirty silver coins. (Judas accepted the full thirty to betray Jesus--Ishmael, then, must be HALF betraying.) It is clear that this worship is a way to bond more closely with his friend, a means to an end.
Indeed, if you look at the word "religion" you see "lig" the root of "ligament." Religion, then, is a tie that binds--people to God, people to people. I could get all Freudian or Marxist, but I won't.
Suffice it to conclude what Bildad and Peleg concluded. They knew that that "young Hittite" Ishmael was "skylarking" them about Queequeg. As soon as they saw him throw a harpoon, they didn't care.
There's this world. And there's the next. They are living in the balance.
That balance is very important in this novel. Trust me.
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