Transformation and Mixture in Moby-Dick
By Holly Thompson
Classroom discussions of Moby-Dick often result in a heightened awareness of Melville’s depictions of duality in nature; for example, the contrasting sky and sea respectively represent heaven and hell and the foul-smelling whale in Chapter 92 produces a fragrant and valuable substance called ambergris. But interpreting Melville’s Moby-Dick only as an exercise in duality limits the scope of this complex novel. Melville’s contemporary, Margaret Fuller, also seems aware of the confining notion of duality and states in Woman in the Nineteenth Century:
Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens into solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman…Nature provides exceptions to every rule (Fuller 293-4).
Fuller explains that duality is a limiting and artificial concept, especially when used to describe nature. Transformation and mixture are concepts that more accurately characterize both nature and the writings of Fuller and Melville. Multiple perspectives are ideal for these authors, as is evident in Melville’s multifaceted Ishmael. At the end of the novel only Ishmael survives because he is able to view life and nature in an all-encompassing fashion.
Melville is preoccupied with coffins in this novel, exploring the connection that this object has to nature -- an object that is made from nature (wood) and holds another part of nature (a body) after a natural progression has taken place (death). Melville seems fascinated by this odd and frequent custom of humankind of burying bodies inside a wooden box. Even seamen who remain unattached to land, such as Queequeg, desire such a ‘burial’ at sea. This coffin motif begins within the first few lines of Chapter 1, "Loomings," when Ishmael thinks of funerals:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral procession I meet… (Melville 3).
This statement in the beginning of the novel introduces the reader to the coffin imagery that Melville uses throughout Moby-Dick and serves as the metaphor for transformative mixture throughout this paper.
In Chapter 110, "Queequeg in his Coffin," Chapter 126, "The Life-Buoy," and the Epilogue, Melville explores many different and interesting representations of Queequeg’s coffin. Queequeg’s coffin cannot be defined only in terms of duality – it is not simply just a coffin and a life-buoy. In the first paragraph discussing Queequeg’s coffin, in Chapter 110, Ishmael tells the reader:
He [Queequeg] called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes… (Melville 521).
The coffin that Queequeg desires becomes a transformative mixture of representations in this excerpt. In its practical nature it will hold Queequeg’s body after his death, but this coffin-canoe also allows Queequeg to express his dual connections to his homeland and to Nantucket. This "dark canoe" becomes a place for both a whaleman and a warrior to lie in peace. It is a representative sanctuary as a symbol of Queequeg’s life. This item made from nature becomes a transformative mixture of death, life, home, and occupation.
But Queequeg recovers from his illness in Chapter 110, and the coffin-canoe develops new uses and meanings:
"With a wild whimsiness, he [Queequeg] now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body" (Melville 524).
The canoe-coffin goes through further transformation in this section near the end of the chapter. What began as a resting place for Queequeg has now developed into a storage chest and artistic outlet. Melville, through Ishmael, informs us that monomania is dangerous, and that multiple meanings are possible in everything, including something as mundane as a coffin. Ishmael’s understanding of this concept allows him to take notice of these multiple representations and include them in his narrative.
Not only does Melville’s characters reflect his attachment to transformative mixture, so does his writing style. Moby-Dick contains prosaic narrative sections, poetic speeches from Ahab, sea terminology from the crew, and mad monologues from insane Pip. Sentences interspersed throughout this novel, and specifically in Chapter 110, contain inverted word order. These sentences call upon the reader to focus on them, perhaps speculating some of the reasons why Melville would have chosen an odd sentence structure. Two consecutive sentences at the end of the first paragraph follow:
Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then (Melville 519).
These parallel sentences are both pleasing and unusual. Neither one of them contains a comma at all; this contrasts with other sentences that frequently begin with a long introductory clause and many commas. "Top-heavy" begins the first sentence, and the use of the inverted word order -- the adjective coming before the linking verb and the corresponding noun -- makes the sentences seem top-heavy as well. The simile itself creates an entertaining picture in the mind. The next parallel sentence also contains an adjective as the beginning word and serves as a complement to the first sentence. By mixing his sentence structure in this particular place, Melville uses these "top-heavy" sentences to evoke the unbalanced nature of the Pequod.
The transformative mixture contained in Queequeg’s coffin continues in Chapter 126, "The Life-Buoy." One of the crew fell from the mast-head and drowns. The life-preserver, suffering from infrequent use, "followed the sailor to the bottom" (Melville 570). Queequeg recognized the need for another life-preserver and suggested that his canoe-coffin be made into this much-needed device. Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask all consider the proposition:
"‘A life-buoy of a coffin!’ cried Starbuck, starting.
‘Rather queer, that, I should say,’ said Stubb.
‘It will make a good enough one,’ said Flask, ‘the carpenter here can arrange it easily.'" (Melville 571)
The canoe-coffin quickly develops another level of meaning through this dialogue; it has transformed from holding death, to containing clothes and serving as a means of expression, to being made into something that can save lives. Queequeg’s canoe-coffin contains a mixture of transformations in two chapters alone.
Queequeg’s canoe-coffin fulfills its role as a life-buoy in the Epilogue and is the means by which Moby-Dick’s narrator survives. Ishmael tells the story of his survival:
Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy show lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. (Melville 625).
The canoe-coffin retains part of its original connotation at the end of Moby-Dick, for Ishmael realizes that it could actually become his own coffin. Yet it does not; Ishmael is rescued by the Rachel. The canoe-coffin comes full circle from its original intention of holding death to ultimately becoming a preserver of life. There are many transformations through the journey of the canoe-coffin; it encompasses a great mixture of representations and transformation.