Recognizing Melville's epic tale
A YEAR ago, as an exercise in understanding how legislation becomes law, 83 students from an elementary school in Pittsfield submitted a bill proposing "Moby-Dick" as the official state book of Massachusetts. Although it is only one of many great books written here in Massachusetts, I cannot think of a better candidate for this distinction. Written in Pittsfield, "Moby-Dick" has been translated into dozens of languages and is widely regarded as America's national epic.
Although most of Herman Melville's story takes place aboard a whaling ship, Ishmael's flight from suicidal despair takes readers on an intellectual and spiritual voyage through history, geography, philosophy, archaeology, theology, astronomy, and cetology - the subject of a chapter spoofing man's attempts to know whales by classifying them as an antiquarian classifies old books. Meditating on these magnificent creatures gives Ishmael, in Melville's words, "a sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways." He empathizes with the whales that the crew cruelly slaughters and comes to see Ahab's monomaniacal quest to destroy the white whale as demonic and insane.
No other Massachusetts book rivals "Moby-Dick," not even "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," by Frederick Douglass, an eloquent account of the author's courageous self-emancipation. Some might suggest other books: Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays, Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," Emily Dickinson's poems, Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," or the poetry of Robert Lowell.
None of these works has the linguistic resonance and epic scope of "Moby-Dick." Melville's biblical and Shakespearean cadences resonate with readers on a subconscious, archetypal level. His global perspective embraces diverse ethnicities and cultures and encourages critical thinking, questioning, and daydreaming. Students accustomed to gagging on the tasteless, predigested food of textbooks revel in Melville's prose and savor his audacious overturning of myths and stereotypes.
They delight in Ishmael's iconoclastic friendship with Queequeg, the tattooed harpooner who heals the burned-out schoolmaster's splintered heart and delivers him from hopeless misanthropy. Ishmael's redemption by this dark-complexioned pagan overturns the racist ethnology that passed for hard science in antebellum America. Moreover, the Pequod's three harpooners - Queequeg, the South Sea island prince; Daggoo, the regal African; and Tashtego, the Wampanoag warrior - are nobler and wiser than Captain Ahab and his three white mates. There's no white supremacy aboard the Pequod.
At a recent public hearing for the "Moby-Dick" bill at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, retired Bristol Community College professor Jules Ryckebusch said that William Bradford's "Of Plimouth Plantation" had been designated as the state's official book in 1897. (However, according to state records, that resolution was never formally voted on.)
In any case, Bradford's history, written between 1620 and 1647, portrayed Massachusetts as a "desolate and howling wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts" when the Pilgrims discovered it. The colonists did not consider the indigenous peoples of this continent human, and they very nearly exterminated them. It's far better to have a state book that neither perpetuates racist, imperialistic attitudes nor declares war on nature.
"Moby-Dick" has a way of telling every new generation the story it needs to hear. Like Ishmael at the helm, so mesmerized by the flaming oil of the try-works that he almost sinks the ship, Americans need to change direction. We need to become citizens of the world and faithful stewards of the environment. We must rediscover the wisdom of indigenous peoples and emulate their reverence for the creatures of land, sea, and air; otherwise, the beauty of the natural world will be lost before our descendants can discover it. Like Ishmael, we must learn to feel affection for people who are different and humility before the vast universe of which we are an infinitesimal part. Otherwise, life on this planet will no longer be sustainable.
Last week, the committee considering the bill gave it a favorable report. Now it's up to the Legislature to agree that Melville's epic tribute is a worthy choice to be our state's official book.
Laurie Robertson-Lorant is the author of "Melville: A Biography" and "The Man Who Lived among the Cannibals: Poems in the Voice of Herman Melville." She currently teaches at UMass-Dartmouth.
