Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael series (Ishmael (1992), My Ishmael (1997), and The Story of B (1996) ) is, at the surface, the story of a gorilla named Ishmael (specific species unrevealed) that can somehow communicate telepathically with the “students” who answer his newspaper ad. This plot functions as a springboard for a philosophical conversation in which Quinn examines the state of the world resulting from the actions of what he calls Taker Culture. Interestingly, the major concepts Quinn is addressing seem to be a much more involved, and in some ways a more abstract, explication of the things going on under the surface of Moby Dick.Because I can’t assume the reader’s familiarity with Quinn, there is the difficulty of attempting to explain some of these concepts while comparing them to Melville’s work. As a result of this, a list-like format is required. Let the reader bear in mind that this is by no means a synopsis of all three Ishmael books, nor are the concepts examined chronologically through plotlines. Indeed, much of Quinn’s message has been ignored here, simply for the fact that it is so wide-ranging in specifics that to examine them all would take up a whole book in itself. However, enough will be made clear that the reader will be unable to ignore the similarities and parallels to Melville’s piece. Perhaps what will make this more difficult is that few of the characters in Moby Dick occupy only one archetypal slot. Ishmael the whaler may at one moment be a Leaver, and at the next be the very epitome of the Taker dream.
First there is the nature of the names of our main characters. Ishmael (in both books) is a mystery to the reader, for the most part. The opening line of Moby Dick, “Call me Ishmael,” is just as arbitrary as the manner in which Ishmael the gorilla is named, in that the reader is left to simply accept the name given. For all we know, the gorilla really was Goliath (Ishmael, 18), and the narrator in Moby Dick is really named Bob. The point being that both characters are ambiguous, even mysterious, in their own particular ways. Examined in tandem, this phenomenon serves to create a certain degree of removal from the philosophical precepts being discussed, perhaps making the reader feel a little safer, more remote from the lives and emotions in the books.
Quinn’s Takers are a specific human culture that developed in today’s Near-East, and by nature of its structure (totalitarian agriculture) began to spread rapidly. For Quinn, Taker culture supercedes concepts of East and West and all the connotative impressions involved (see Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God). Instead, the Takers are one of two world-wide archetypal cultures. In Moby Dick, Ahab permanently occupies this seat. He is the Takers. His monomania mirrors the enthusiasm with which Taker culture is pursuing its systematic destruction of all things not Taker, i.e. outside the realm of their immediate and total control. Concurrently, Moby Dick himself is one of the other few permanent archetypes, at once representing nature, the planet, and, indirectly, Leaver philosophy (though this is a bit of a stretch). The reader will never see him represented as a Taker. The easiest way to draw the parallel to Melville is with a statement of the Taker myth: The gods made the world for man, and made man to conquer and rule it (Ishmael, 80). This makes our job a bit easier. In Ahab’s mind, for whatever reason, the only reason Moby Dick exists (and perhaps by extension whales in general) is for Ahab to conquer and kill him. Indeed, he was “consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick” (Moby Dick, 204). This is also manifested to a degree by Ahab’s viewing Moby Dick as “the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them” (Moby Dick, 176). Moby Dick is the cause of all Ahab’s distresses, his death Ahab’s reason for existence, the highest possible manifestation of his purpose.
The Leavers, like Moby Dick himself, are the diametric opposite of the Takers. Generally tribal in nature, these cultures exist today where they haven’t been eradicated by the Takers (though the process is far from over). This is perhaps the most difficult concept to pin down in Moby Dick, particularly because there is no specific character that permanently occupies this one symbolic niche. Ishmael, our narrator, may be seen as a reformed Taker, or an almost reformed Taker. He still exists, for the most part, in their world, haughtily berating the “common man” who would disagree with the established norms of the whaling industry (the Taker dream). He even names one of his chapters The Honor and Glory of Whaling. However, as a result of his experiences he is unable to continue to support the pursuit of Ahab’s madness (this is implied, for the most part). We can see this waffling most specifically in his early descriptions of Queequang, who represents recently assimilated Leaver cultures, being a savage who has subscribed to the Taker philosophy of subjugating the world (Moby Dick) into destruction. Similar archetypal niches are occupied by most of the “savage” crew of the Pequod (Tashtego, Dagoo, Pip, etc.) Ishmael runs a range of emotion from alienation to fear to acceptance and friendship with this savage “wild cannibal” (Moby Dick, 23), only eventually abandoning the disgust for all things non-Taker that has been bred into him by Mother Culture.
The reader may question why there is no actual Leaver represented in Moby Dick, and I can only postulate that this is because Moby Dick is a Taker story, written by a Taker, for Takers.Totalitarian Agriculture is a system of agriculture geared towards the production of human food and human food only, eliminating competition, and then locking up all surplus food so as to force cooperation out of members of Taker culture, which mirrors Quinn’s portrayal of the inception of division of labor (My Ishmael, 54). The concept of Totalitarian Agriculture is treated specifically in chapters 89 and 90 of Moby Dick. In chapter 89, Ishmael goes into a lengthy description of the rules of ownership in whaling, referring to fast and loose fish. To hear Ishmael tell it, any whale (land) not occupied (held) by a Taker culture (ship) is a loose-fish, up for grabs to the strongest arm. Chapter 90 is perhaps the most representative of the totalitarian agricultural system. Here, Ishmael relays the tale of the Lord Warden, who lays claim to a whale caught by some local fisherman (Moby Dick, 387). The fishermen did the work, and immediately their winnings (food) are to be taken away, essentially locked up, so as to force the fishermen to work even more for the goods that they originally produced. This scene is paralleled in My Ishmael with the tale of Terpsichore, a planet where inhabitants are forced to dance in order to receive the food that they’ve helped to produce (My Ishmael, 51); which story is again indirectly mirrored by the story of Steelkilt (Moby Dick, 234). Steelkilt’s refusal to cooperate results only in his (symbolic) destruction.
Quinn states that The Great Forgetting was and is a process enacted in the Taker culture by which they convinced themselves that nothing prior to the birth of Taker culture is of any real value. According to Quinn, this is where the ambiguous term “prehistory” comes from, as well as the (now long defunct) theory that the earth is only about 5000 years old. This is represented in Moby Dick when Ishmael addresses the head of a beast who “has moved amid this world’s foundations . . . and [yet] not one syllable is thine!” (Moby Dick, 302). The reader gets the same impression, though perhaps less defined from Ishmael’s condescending attitude towards opinions outside the fishery. Without question, it is Ishmael’s opinion that the fishery is one of America’s greatest enterprises, and those who belittle it members of the uninformed, savage masses.
The Flying Machine is another of Quinn’s metaphors. He uses the flying machine prototype as a model of cultural systems. Previous designs that didn’t work have been discarded (Aztec, Inca, etc.) and despite the increasingly obvious uselessness of the Taker model, the Taker culture continues to insist on its being the only correct model for a flying machine, or cultural system in Quinn’s case (see Ishmael). One of the easier correlations, the reader can see Quinn’s flying machine in the Pequod, a boat much like any other whaling boat, valiantly and courageously sailing the seas in pursuit of the Taker dream. Ahab’s monomania prevents even the sad tales of failed ships like the Jeroboam (Moby Dick, 303) from stopping his pursuit of the white whale. It is precisely this refusal that leads to the destruction not only of Ahab, but of his ship and crew: the complete collapse of the world he has dedicated himself to (see “The Collapse of Values,” The Story of B, 276).
Perhaps the easiest of Quinn’s concepts to examine chronologically through Moby Dick is that of the boiling frog, a metaphor for the current worldwide state of Taker culture. A frog placed in a pot of boiling water will immediately jump out. A frog placed in a pot of tepid water will float calmly as the temperature is consistently increased, until the water is boiling and the frog is dead. The increasing number of bubbles in the pot Quinn likens to the increasing frequency of human disasters (famine, plague, gang violence, drug addiction, etc.). By far the most directly parallel metaphor, we see the plight of the Pequod increasing by stages, beginning with the Starbuck’s disastrous pursuit of a whale in a dense fog (Moby Dick, 217). The pressure increases with Tashtego’s falling into the emptied head of a Sperm Whale (Moby Dick, 331), and yet again when Ishmael’s whaling boat is becalmed in the center of a mob of confused but still very dangerous Sperm Whales (Moby Dick, 372). This progression is perfectly (though more extensively) paralleled in The Story of B as “B” continually relates increasing “signs of distress” in the world at large(Story of B, 262).
So what does it all boil down to? Melville and Quinn both seem to be telling us something very important about what we’re doing here. Quinn’s work is a warning (as well as a possible path to correcting the problem). What Melville gives us is not the warning, but the story of what’s happening now, and where it’s going. It is no mistake that Moby Dick was the victor, just like it is no mistake that Ishmael the convert was the only survivor. What we will or can do with the information they’ve presented us, that is the real test.
Bibliography:
Campbell, Joseph. THE MASKS OF GOD, 1959-1968 (4 vols., Primitive Mythology, 1959; Oriental Mythology, 1962; Occidental Mythology, 1964; Creative Mythology, 1968)
Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael. Bantam: New York, 1992.
Quinn, Daniel. My Ishmael. Bantam: New York, 1997.
Quinn, Daniel. The Story of B. Bantam: New York, 1996.
Jan 3, 2007
Moby Dick: An Allegory of the Human Condition as Compared to the Work of Daniel Quinn
Oxymorons
Our educators can be some of the most moronic people ever.
Read this first
Now:
" The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron . . . . It is called the World Wide Web."
-Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea
1st:
"World Wide Web" indicates ONLY that the communication network/ informational dispersion system in question extends througout the globe (which even at this point is technically untrue). The "World Wide Web," or the internet as anyone living in the 21st century calls it, is completely familiar with private information. Even Live Journal and MySpace have options to make information viewable ONLY by the author. The internet abounds with information accessible only by username and password. To make a statement indicating that simply posting ANYTHING on the internet makes that information "public" is a grave and sadly typical misunderstanding on the part of people responsible for educating our children and American society in general these days.
2nd:
Simply "monitoring" a students communications based on the "concerns" of friends, family, or ADMINISTRATION (and dont' kid yourself) is an invasion of privacy. Even the police (who, let's admit it, generally do whatever the fuck they want), are technically required to go through some kind of legal channel before searching someones home or confiscating their personal correspondence or "diary" work.While I'll admit that concern over the safety of schools after the incident in Columbine is much more important than in the past, this concern can not be met at the expense of the basic rights of every person on this planet, regardless of any man-made law you can think of.How are we supposed to teach our children to be inventive, creative individuals in a complex society if we use the first third of their lives instilling in them a fear of "thinking out of line."
THAT'S on oxymoron.
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