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| Moby Dicks looks satisfied and frustrated all at the same time! |
It was a good question in class what we thought about the ending of Moby Dick. Of course the reasonable side of me knew that Ahab and Queequeg would die and Ishmael obviously lives, and how else would the book kill off both Ahab and Queequeg without killing everyone off??? But a part of me held on to the hope that the foreshadowing was a fake out, that it wasn’t leading to the ultimate demise of the ENTIRE ship!
The important question here is, could Ahab have turned around after his touching conversation with Starbuck???
I want to scream YESSSSSS, but really what I know is that while I would have been happy to no end, I think if that would have happened I would have been ill satisfied with the result. We needed to see the ending we did. We needed to see who would win between Moby Dick and them. Yet, should we all have known that Moby Dick would win? That this mythical creature was not to be destroyed by some ship, that whale is bigger than man, and if they have a vendetta against man, it’s obviously who loses.
So if we were only to conclude this epically long book with three chapters of Moby Dick and the TOTAL destruction of the ship… did we need every single one of the 500 pages?
What was the point I guess is what I’m getting at. Paglia would said that it’s some sexual protest, and that maybe it’s more of a story about the masculine journey and not about the climax. Maybe it’s an establishment of Melville’s anti-woman literature… Whether or not it is actually some sexual protest I do agree with Dr. Campbell’s interpretation of “The real honeyed crotch in which we all drown is the womb-tomb of mother nature”. I can see the honey crotch as the sea, where everyone sits at the masthead and feels lost in eternity, where everyone is literally lost at sea. 
I hope we can get back to that idea tomorrow, Ashina.
ReplyDeleteI too wanted to hope that Ahab could have turned back and everyone could have survived. But I agree with you. The epic climax had to come down to Moby-Dick versus Ahab. And I am glad that Moby-Dick had his vengeance. Although I was horribly mad at Ahab. The whale just kept wrecking the ships and leaving, he didn't want anything to do with it!! And yet, Ahab pursued him. Now that's a mad captain. I know the ending had to have people die. I think I'm more upset about the concept of the whole thing just being a story to tell instead of an actually experience that would have shaped Ishmael. But then again, if Ishmael is every man then I don't know how every man would react. Personally I might be a little sad to lose my lover/best friend Quequeeg- but hey... that's just me.
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