Hello, and welcome to this episode of superhero Ethics. In the movie Star
Trek First Contact, there's a moment where Captain Jean Luc Picard has gotten so
focused, so obsessed with defeating the borg and not caring about what it does
to anyone around him, that one of the other characters calls him out by
calling him Ahab and saying I don't know the exact words, but basically alluding
to, you know, you've got to get that whale. I have never
read Moby Dick. A lot of people have never read Moby Dick, but
most of us probably got that illusion because it's one of the most popular and
well known literary allusions in American literature. Captain Ahab as the representative of the
obsessed person who has to focus on his goal, has to capture his white
whale, no matter what the consequences. Well, during this time of the
strike, were moving a field from a lot of movies and TV, and
a good friend of mine Ak, who I met through a podcast we did
together for Queer Ascendency on Disability in Star Wars, mentioned that they're a huge
Mobe Dick fan, and I thought, you know what, this is the
time to talk about Moby Dick. So it'll be me an Aka right after
this commercial break that I really hope is not from any of the Struck companies.
Welcome back. This is Matthew host Aka. I'm so glad to have
you on here, your first time guests. So why don't you introduce yourself
a little bit and talk about yourself and kind of the stuff you do that's
relevant to fandom and your particular interest and yeah, let's just start with you
and your interesting fan background. Yeah. Absolutely. My name is Aka or
Ilda. I am a big time nerd and philosophy major who recently graduated college.
I am somewhat of a content creator. I make a little bit of
content on TikTok as well as on Instagram, mostly surrounding the fantasy genre D
and D. Lots of D and D content, a decent amount of Star
Wars content, and a lot of disability content. I have Taylor's Danlow syndrome.
I'm a wheelchair user, and I love talking about disability in places people
don't often look for it. So I wrote my thesis on Moby Dick.
When we were kind of talking about ideas for this episode and themes and stuff
and we were talking about disable characters. My discord name, which is a
hab came up, and I think they have is a great character whose disabilities,
often overlooked or trivialized, is non relevant part of his certain narrative.
So yeah, I'm hear to talking about that. Yeah, it's funny.
So I'm going to confess first of all, that I had not read Moby
Dick before you and I started talking about this. There was exactly one version
of American literature you could take on my high school where you didn't have to
read Moby Dick, and I took it. And then when you and I
started talking about this, I thought, let's see if I can read the
book in like the four days before we record. So instead, like I
said, I decided, let me go back and have a high school experience
of Moby Dick. So I just read the cliff notes, which they apparently
are called spark notes. Never heard of them before, but they did chapter
by chapter analysis, So I'm going to have some knowledge. But I think
in some ways actually it's good because I want to be a representative for probably
a lot of our fans who either haven't read the book or maybe read it
in high school some time ago, or maybe just bys their way through high
school without having read it. Absolutely, I'm glad you've mentioned the disability because
I want to start there, because I will say again the thing that i've
the things that I knew about the book going in were it was very much
about whaling, and it was about New England whaling, specifically in the early
part, earlier in mid nineteenth century. That like a lot of other books
at that time, I'm looking at you, Victor Hugo and lay miss lay
Miserabla, that it was a book that has had a plot, but also
the author slash narrator would often say, oh, and now that we caught
one of these whales, let me give you three chapters of philosophical meanderings on
the nature of existence through the eyes of this particular experience we've just had.
And I knew that, as I said, it was about this obsessive character
who had to and would putting the rest of his crew in great danger.
Spoilers, as I learned, everyone dies except for well, the whale doesn't
die, and our narrator doesn't die, but everybody else does. One of
the things that struck me was I am a person who had He's not only
disabled, I'm an amputee. I have lost I have lost my leg.
I've spent a lot of time talking to people about my thoughts on disability representation
in media, and particularly prosthetic use in media. No one has ever said
to me, have you ever thought about reading Moby Dick because one of the
main characters has a prosthetic leg. I know, it's absolutely crazy, and
I think the so Moby Dick, like as a canonical work, is literally
everywhere, and it's you know, Starbucks. The brand is named after a
character in Moby Dick, and it's it's everywhere in our in our culture as
American. UM. I was gonna say, not only is the brand,
but I hadn't realized this until I read the spark notes. The character's Starbuck
is a like a person on the ship who was constantly questioning the captain,
which is exactly what the character in UM Battlestar Galactica is both the old new
version. So anyway, that was another cool thing. Yeah, No,
you're absolutely right. And the book has been analyzed. It's a dozen times
and we're one hundreds of times, and it's been called everything from you know,
a revolutionary work in queer theory, to you know, environmental studies,
to like conceptions about realism and racism, and people have done all this really
deep dive for talking about various allegorical and elements of the book. And I
do think that genuinely, Ahab's disability is pretty overlooked, despite the fact that
he is not only an ampute, but he also has some very visible besides
the amputation, scarring and like physical deformities that I think are mentioned briefly in
the book in terms of his aspect. But he is a character who is
entirely defined by his disability, not just disabled, which is I think even
rarer to see in media, because a lot of times disabled characters are oh,
this character is disabled and how does that affect their life? But Ahab
and the entire process of him becoming obsessed with the whale, the entire driving
point of the plot of the book, and a lot of the kind of
moral elements in the book is that a have loss is like and when where
he lost, specifically the last time he attempted to catch and kill Moby Dick
and Mobe back yep yep, sobe he's a whaler born and raised, you
know, been on whale his whole life. It's like, you know,
in the last sixty years he sent maybe four years on shore. He was
hunting a whale. This whale takes his leg, and uh, he says,
Okay, I need revenge. And it's not really about revenge. It's
about struggling with his disability and struggling with what it means to like lose a
body part in that way. And he really like turns it into a metaphysical
and existential question, which is my entire world is gone as a disabled person,
Like I'm not an ampute, but I did pretty abruptly, over the
course of you know, a couple of months to a year in like late
high school, early college, lose my legs or the use of them almost
like, you know, pretty largely. Like I he's a wheelchair every day
and I used to be like an athlete, and it is a world changing
event to become disabled. And I think that that's the thing about Ah that
at least to me, makes him such a compelling character now in terms of
fability. Yeah, I really had the same experience. I mean, I
also relate to him because I have wrestled with not obsessiveness the way in terms
of like it's thought in terms of obsessive compulsive disorder, which I think is
a term is applied far too broadly. It's a very specific condition, but
in terms of that single minded focus of a goal where you start to lose
sight of the consequences, and something I've definitely wrestled with much more in my
younger years. I hopefully I've mostly defeated it now. But also, yeah,
when I, like you, I lost my leg very suddenly. I
was hit by a train and woke up the next morning and was told that
my leg had been amputated. I didn't even have a moment of like,
you know, choosing or like being told. I just woke up and my
leg was gone. And today, you know, prosthetic technology is pretty darn
good today, and I would say it's advanced even quite you know, in
the twenty years since I've had my prosthetic leg, it's advanced quite a lot.
It was real bad at the time that this was going on, and
in a moment of both like you know, we'll get at the whole idea
we'll later talk about. Like the animal rights part of thinking about think a
very important part absolutely, But putting that aside of what I'm about to say,
I have to say, there's something kind of badass to me about the
fact that he loses his leg because of a whale and then has a prosthetic
leg made from whale, Like that is just the ultimate, Like fum,
he's such a metal character through and through and like people don't think about literary
classics is being that way. But yeah, absolutely so why do you think
it is that this side of the character? And I'm gonna have you on
at a later point to talk about disability and digitally the media, so I
don't want to go too deep on this particular topic, but I think it's
a good place to start. Why do you think it is that his disability
is so often never mentioned, or if it is not, it might be
just that, you know, you think of him as like one of the
pirate or you know, whaling people who's got a peg leg, because that's
now kind of a trope, but it's never really thought of as part of
his character. I think there's probably a couple of things. I think.
For one, um, it's not it's not mentioned a ton in the book.
It's mentioned pretty intensely in like his introduction, um, like, there's
a there's a chapter that's just titled Ahab and when he's introduced, it's mentioned
very prominently. It's mentioned later in the book when he loses his peg leg
that is made of wellbone and have to have a replace. It's mentioned when
he meets an other whaling captain who lost his arm to Mobe Dick and they
kind of like have a little bit about their prosthetics. So that's one part.
And it's a very dense, very sick book with a lot going on,
so it's you need to overlook any individual piece. I also think at
the time it was written, you know, whaling accidents were common and voting
accidents were common, and it was not disability culture was not the same for
particularly very masculine sort of jobs, where it was like very valeriant and kind
of like romanticized in a lot of ways, but also just incredibly brutal and
low class in a lot of ways. And so you know, yeah,
you're on a whale boat and you lose your arm, you lose your legs,
you lose a couple of fingers, you lose some toes, you lose
your hearing, Like, oh well, people die, like in the grand
scheme of things, that's just kind of how it was and so and you
know, in like eighteen fifty book was written like how good was your medical
care? How like where people really thinking about it in the same way,
And the answer is no. But also I think it gets brushed off because
people like to me as a disabled person reading the chapter where it's explained like
ay have used to be like he was in he was a mean captain,
but he was like competent and chane and flirt and like he was a good
whaler, like he was a captain already, and then he loosed his leg
and then he goes mad in the like three months journey that it takes the
boat to get back to shore because him, him and his amplicated leg,
which is you know, amplication in that like on a whale shift, your
carpenter was your medic. So it's a brutal process, the painful process.
You're not like who knows we're going to live. He like laid in the
hammock and went crazy. And this project gets described and people are like,
oh, okay, like you know, something happened. He went nuts.
He wants revenge, but like unless he's experienced like trauma or disability. The
meaning of that is easy to kind of Oh yeah, it's a checkbox for
a plot point that you don't think about it as like immediate and proximal and
the connection between those things being like very clear. I also just think that
there's a lot of like when Ahab later starts ranching and raving about this whale,
he does so in a pre philosophical way that I think is easy to
overlook, and like when I read this in high school, I did not
at all catch any of it, Like it all flew over my head,
and I didn't, like I really thought it had just wanted revenge on the
whale. And if you look a little deeper into the book, it's actually
that Ahab thinks the whale is like the personification of all evil and everything outside
of his control, and if he kills the whale, he will He's like
fighting God to regain control over his own personhood and life, which is like
way different than wanting revenge for being wronged and also way closer to the struggle
of like disability and feeling like you've lost yourself and control of your life and
control of your surrounding, or that there's some cruel, benevolent being, like
what did I need to deserve this? Like those are way more like immediately
recognizable to a disabled person. Very much, so very much. And there's
a couple of things I want to say there. One is that it is
very clear to me, and the research kind of pays this out. Melville
spent a lot of time researching this book. You know, a lot of
people will be like, oh, I've heard of whalers once or twice.
I think I must know what's going on. No, he researched it.
He learned all about whaling. He learned about whales and the science of it
and the processes of it. And in the course of doing it, he
talked to a lot of sailors, including people who had lost their limbs.
And I think it's very intentional. Therefore, the caveat that I want to
add that I think is important to mention, especially the way you were talking
about it, especially because as you brought up he goes, you know,
mentally quite unstable, as do a number of other characters. I think,
and again I haven't read the book, but there were some trigger parts,
particularly about the mental things that happened to him and other characters that I did
like read those chapters. I think this is a fantastic representation of physical disability.
As someone who also has a number of mental disabilities, I think it's
a pretty poor representation of that was to be pretty clear. And I don't
say that as like, oh, that's the reason not to read the book.
I say this is a book written in eighteen forty where the understanding of
mental illness was completely alien. So when we talk about that, I think,
I just think that's worth mentioning because we're focusing on this book is like
a good work of disability. Well, I think good, Yeah, I
was gonna say I'm not even. I'm not even or that I would say
it's a good or a great representation of physical disability, because Ahab, at
the end of the day is still vilified and demonized in a lot of way
that you know, the white ivory leg is playing into, especially when the
theme of the book is that the white whale, it's whiteness itself is like
a it's like a market evil, and that's extended to Ahab. Bias is
prosthetic and like all of those things are really not good and there's a lot
that they although doing in terms of mental health that's like also not ideal.
I think, well, okay, the mental health and maybe Dike also gets
overlooked because the opening lines of the book, I don't know if you looked
at them, but Ishmael gets on like decides to go whaling because you suicidal,
and so like the kind of mental health themes of the book are not
like they start from a really weird place, which is treating mental health in
a completely foreign way to the way that we treat mental health today. And
there's a lot because you know, makes me tilt my head, it makes
me narratively question things. But on the other hand, I feel like there
are elements of the mental health aspects and characters that I see that are not
necessarily good a representation in terms of where they sit narratively in the story.
But if you take them in isolation, are also peculiarly accurate representations in certain
instances, and like they were taken out of the narrative and just looked at
independently, would maybe be fine. And their problem is the whole they're playing
in the narrative or the way that they're overlooks. So quickly, and so
it's like something that I've struggled. I mean, I've read this book of
bajillion times. Like I said, I wrote my thesis on it. And
so they are like, particularly with Ahab and particularly with smart Book, and
the ynamics between the two of them and A have like very actively struggling against
the you know what what Melville calls is like mottomaniac quest for the whale.
Like people call Ahab mad or they call him insane, and I really,
like I call mad just in terms of using the literary kind of title.
But I really don't. I really don't know if Ahab is an Ahab as
a character other characters who certainly have probably things going on that are more actually
akin to mental disability or mental illness, but I don't. I often have
gone back and forth on like is Ahab actually like that? Like what?
And I'm not I'm not a doctor, but yeah, Like I don't,
like we call I have mad, but I think it's an exaggeration. And
I think that every step of the way in the book we see that Ahab
does have like a a very like traditionally classically like quote unquote well functioning like
mind and he's making really well thought out decisions, and it's not actually like
whatever it had is struggling with is existential, not so much in a way
that's like, yeah, you could say he has depression, you could say
he has whatever else going on, but it's so much broader than that,
which is something that I, as a person who struggle with a lot of
mental disabilities, like, fine, um, yeah, I'm to be clear.
For one thing, I'm mostly thinking of Pip in terms of the way.
But but I think, like you're right, I think Melville, I
think, does have some accurate understandings of the way having your world fundamentally upset
and the way it happens, both in the like the physical manifestation of it
is losing his leg, but also it's the idea of you know, humans
hunt whales, hum hunt whales in this case, because part of the idea
is that Moby Dick like poise with them and like goes after the boat like
the whale them, and so yeah, I kind of my point is more
just I think this is in part because he probably had access to a lot
of people who had physical disabilities at this point in time. Yeah, you
wouldn't go and talk to someone who had mental disabilities because either they never never
knew they had, or they may sanitarium. Right, And so I think
words like crazy and mad are thrown around a lot, and I would say,
I think you're right. I think I think there's something fundamentally lazy about
saying, oh, this character is crazy and therefore we don't have to ascribe
any rationality to them, because in truth, most people who have mental disabilities
of some kind, from the you know, very functional to the like unable
to really connect with others because they're experiencing reality fundamentally different than everybody else.
There is a rationality to it. It just often starts from very different first
causes or you know, whatever it is. Or again, they're dealing with
the reality fundamally different than our own or whatever it is. And so yeah,
I think, yeah, I think with both Ahab and Pip, they
experience things that are so different from whatever what they have always thought they should
experience that their mental functioning starts to go in directions that the rest of us
think are fundamentally not okay with. In some cases good reason. But yeah,
to just call it mad as though that means like, oh, he
might come out with you know, a teapot on his head tomorrow is not
accurate. I'm wondering, like because because I have thoughts about the like like
the portrayal of Ahab, and I spent more time with the character of Ahab.
But I'm wondering when, like when you're talking about the portrayal of Pip,
what things kind of stood out for you, because I want to try
and like it stick in that kind of rown. Well, let me give
my understanding of a thirty second version of Pip again for those who don't know,
Ahab is the captain. Ishmael is our narrator, and he's a fascinating
character in his own Pip is a young black boy. The treatment of race
is very interesting in these books, and we'll get more into that. But
I think there's supposed to be some indicate he has a Southern accent. I
think it's supposed to be some indication that he's an escaped slave or a freed
slave, or maybe he's the child of freed slaves. Certainly this, you
know, all this is happening in the boats are all launching from New England,
which was at that point really a hotbat of abolitionisms. There were a
lot of escaped slaves there. But he's a young boy who is like he's
supposed to be like eleven or twelve, and he's kind of he's the cabin
boy on the ship, but he's definitely looked down on by everybody, both
because of his age and because he's black. And he has real trouble following
orders empire because he's eleven. And yeah, as they get into the portion
of the book where they're actually hunting whales, you learned an awful lot about
how that process works and that you know, this is long before harpoon guns.
This is when you had to like you had the main whaling boat and
then basically kind of rowboats would go out with someone would throw a harpoon and
then there'd be line attached and the other person would have to like help.
And he's in one of those boats and he screws something up and so they
have to let go of the whale because he screws up because he's terrified when
the whale comes to get him, and in the course of that he's thrown
overboard and he's rescued by one of the mates who are through the only white
people on the ship well left. They talk about that in a bit,
and the person who rescues him, Stubs, is kind of angry with him
and says, look, if you do that again, I'm going to leave
you behind. I'm not going to make I'm not going to rescue you.
That situation comes up again, he again panics eleven year old boy, and
he panicked and screws things up for the other whalers and they just leave him
behind. They leave him in the water too while they go and try to
finish off the whale, and he is rescued later. And as I understand
it, basically like something in his mind cracks because of that, because he
just has in his mind he has died, and it's the experience of almost
drowning was also the experience of being left behind by the people. And then
as Ahab becomes more and more kind of off kilter, him and Pitt become
closer and closer, and he often kind of talks about Pip being the one
who understands him, so that that's kind of my understanding again from the spark
notes, Yeah, but I did read a couple of Spiller chapters too.
How how much do you think that fits who doesn't fit with well, I
think that's basically perfectly accurate. And I think both Pip and Ahab like are
described as crazy or described as in sane or described as mad, and I
think those words are used. And so yeah, pit pit falls overboard,
and I think the phrase and I could be wrong, I'd have to go
look, but the phrase uses like his body survived, but his soul was
drowned, Like he's waiting in the water for hours, which is like impressive.
Like it's a very long time that he gets left behind because they're they're
hunting whales and you have you have to follow the whales, like the whales
are running like and so it's a very long time before he gets picked up.
And when he gets picked up, it's not just that Ahab is closer
to him or or like feels like he understands them. It's that Ahab thinks
that Pitt is now like some sort of like that there's some real be cleaning
that Pitts has access to that other people can't reach. And there's a lot
that kind of goes into all of that, and and the words badness,
the words insanity, the word crazy are thrown, but really, what is
portrayed is that both of them have been through extremely traumatic experiences and bond in
a silence over the kind of like camaraderie of that traumatic experience, and it
has relation with like like relationship with Pip is. I mean, it's uncomfortable
by nature of Pips being an eleven year old boy and a Have being like
a six year old man like, but like a Have almost elevates like this
really traumatic experience that like obviously does mess Pip up mentions like it like eleven
year old being in that situation. Regardless, they're going to have some serious
like trauma coming out of that, but like elevates Pip kind of to the
status on the ship that he didn't have before. And so it's almost like
a weird like like a baptism for Pip that he like is now a part
of the crew and a part of these men and he's been through it and
he knows what it is and he sees the true nature of the world,
and a habs like aw, look at this and yeah. In terms of
the mental health kind of dynamics going on there, Noneville is very clear kind
of at every step of the way that like whatever is going on with Ahab,
he's not lost any of his intellect, and like he says that very
clearly, Like he says very clearly that like Ahab, you know, quote
unquote goes mad, but he means it's none of his intellect, which is
like part of the horrifying part is that he's smart enough to know like exactly
what he needs to be doing. He's in touch enough with the world that
he's like making these decisions. And Pip, you know, Pip is eleven,
So Pip doesn't have that intellect in the same way. And so a
Hab kind of like touchs him as pure or like I don't know somehow,
like I don't I'm honestly thinking about this now and like I'm making connections and
things. But like a have the tess with the white whale and admissional ultimate
is long right about how the blankness of the whale is what so horrifying about
him but also so cool because it's like it's the thing without color. It's
so like ultimiliar with Taoism. It's like the undercarved block. It's like the
ultimate unknown blankly, and Pip kind of like becomes that for Ahab, but
in a positive sense. Like personified in a person in an ally. I
mean, as I said, we're going to talk more about how race is
portrayed in this Yeah, But I do think in that regard, the fact
that Pip is black and has described as fairly dark skinned is very important because
he is also that that if if Moby Dick is the epitome of evil through
his whiteness, then in the blackness and I we'll talk more about the racial
stuff and to be sure, but I think that's definitely a part of it.
Two good things though. I just wanted to add from what you were
just saying. First of all, if part of your wondering how Pips survived
in the water for some time, it may be because you made the same
assumption I did, which is that this is whaling in the North Atlantic,
you know, because that's what we tend to think of, is that,
and there certainly was a lot of whale done there. That's not true.
This book takes place the start, it starts and ends in Nantucket, but
most of the book takes place in the South Seas, like they go the
stay around the bottom of Africa, and the most of the book and what's
now like Java and Indonesia and stuff, so that what would be werem enough
frame resurvived the whole time. That blew my mind the idea that people wereing
all dif from England to there, especially because if we learned, they're just
doing this for oil, like they're leaving the carcasses almost entirely left behind.
The Other thing, though, is I think it is where we kind of
wrap up the mental stuff and the physical and kind of move on some other
things where I think it's worth mentioning. In kind of an odd foreshadow in
my life before I lost my leg, I was working in a disability rights
law firm and one of our client groups was often people who were mentally you
know, had mental issues and we're seen by others as mentally ill. This
was in the early to late nineteen nineties, and often there would be lawsuits
brought by their family or others of like they have to be medicated, they
have to force them to be normal, and we were trying to really push
back against that. And one of the definitions that we used that is now
I think fairly commonly used is that the only point at which mental issues becomes
something that I don't say that you know, obviously we want to help everybody
to have the mental health that they want to have. That the only point
at which mental illness becomes a significant problem where intervention might be needed, even
if they're not wanting it, and even then it's very dicey, is when
they're actually posing a harm to others. And that I think that's one of
the things that I think that's I think a way that we can talk of
at Ahab becoming a villain here is that for him. It like I think
if if if at the end of the book he was like, I'm going
to go off on my whaling boat and on my little dinghy and go to
hunt will be dick and you all go safe, it's a fundamentally different book.
It's that like Picard was doing in First Contact. I think that's such
a brilliant analogy for it. He's putting everyone else in danger and as it
turns out, leads everyone else to their death despite us people great, no,
and yeah, I was gonna say, and And the thing is that
he was like very optively and very clearly warned by both people who are on
his ship and people from other ships who encountered as well. Yeah, and
I think that's the I think that's where you can start to say, like,
that's when you know, when when your mental focus on something, when
your trauma is causing you to do harm to others or to lead others into
harm, then yeah, I think it's it's it's really worth like looking at
that as a problem. And I'll say because of that, like you said,
I think some of the some of the feelings that Ahab goes through are
things that most people I don't say most, but that many people who have
been disabled, especially many people have had it, as you said, a
traumatic way, and certainly for me, as a fellow ampute I really related
to the thing is I don't go to the places they have goes. And
it is one reason why I think it is so significant that we get introduced
to another character who has also an amputee, because you know, I think
one of the things that offends a problem is when a piece of fiction can
kind of be like, oh, yeah, if you have mental trauma,
you're going to turn into a serial killer, You're going to turn into a
super villain or something like that. And having another character who has had their
understanding of their self, of their body, of their place in the world
so fundamentally changed because they lost a limb from Moby Dick. I'm very pointed
they doesn't have the experience to me that made it feel so much better,
because it's Melville clearly saying I'm not saying that everybody who loses a limb is
going to go in this direction, but that if you lose that, it
is losing a limb that caused was a big part of at least causing him.
I think Ahab in particular, to go in this direction, it makes
you a particular story instead of a general one. Yep. And I think
that you know, we don't see the other um. The character that you're
referring to is named Captain Boomer, and he's the captain of the ship that
the pe quad runs into right towards kind of the end of the book.
And it really, like I mean, so we see mental illness in several
other characters who are all not causing harm to others in the way that A
habits and managing your mental illness and in more responsible ways, although not necessarily
all responsible ways. But we see a pretty broad day versity, like again
starting with Israel in chapter one. But Captain Boomer is like this. He's
described as jill bill and happy and he's really just glad to have a scase
within place. And he kind of cracks a joke about his arm and Ahab's
legs and he's not I'm sorry, my cat is like running around causing chaos.
But he uh yeah, he really poses like a really solid dichotomy,
and he's one of the kind of last line that's like he really warrants a
have. He's like, hey, going after this whale, like you and
I both lost a limb, Like you both know, like going after this
whale. Like if you keep assets, it's madness. And I think,
I don't know. There's something I think that is that I appreciate in that,
which is that like the just like regardless of trauma, regardless of mental
disability, regardless of physical disability, like you're responsible for your actions. And
obviously there are people who are experiencing the world in a variety of ways,
but as as a person again a bunch of different disabilities, including mental disabilities
in trauma and all that stuff, like really being reminded that like a habit
is a tragic character because he has suffered and because he's been through all of
this, but like he is choices and obviously not all, not all disabled
people and not all people with mental disabilities are habits capacities to make those choices
like that is a privilege. But he is making choices, and we are
reminded that he is making choices, and not that his passage being chosen for
him by his disability, which I think is very nice. Definitely, And
I would say one last thing about that, and I want to move on.
I remember when I lost my leg. I work with physical therapists.
I also worked with occupational therapists who really tried to help me figure out,
Okay, your body is different. What are some tips and tricks and things?
And I figured out some of my own since then. And there's it's
a throwaway thing in the book, but one of the things that Ahab realized.
You know, a ship is moving all the time, and even today,
you know, I don't have an ankle, so it's very hard to
make the adjustments that allow me to stay in a place, and with a
peg leg it would be far, far worse. I can't actually say a
friend made me a peg leg for a pirate costume, so I have actually
walked on a peg leg too, I know how hard they are. And
so what a have does is he drills a hole in the deck near where
the captain should stand so that he can keep his leg balanced in whole.
So beautiful moment. Yeah, I agree. Okay, So next, let's
talk about I think one another of the really big issues that again I think
sometimes gets alluded to a little bit but not talked about very often, which
is the way race and religion and those differences are talked about in the book.
Because my understanding is it is being written by a white man in New
England in the eighteen forties who has a lot of the prejudices and things like
that. But as I said, New England at that point was a very
abolitionist society. There was a lot of it, you know, for the
time attempts to move towards better racial awareness. It seems like the book is
really trying to take a step in that direction too. Talk to us somewhat
about how race is treated in the book. Yeah, I will start by
saying that there are definitely some insensitive racial moments. There is a lot of
insensitive racial language, and that, you know, something that needs to be
acknowledged and considered and condemned. That being said, I think there I have
read more literature about race and MOBI dick kind I have about disability in Mobi
Dick. I think just because of um the popularity of it in the more
recent years. And there are some really cool things going on with like race
and colonialism and religion in Mobi Dick that are what hey ahead of their time.
Um. And it really starts when a sorry, when Ishmael, our
main character meets his companions, who is his companions of the entire book who
there's also like a lot of like queer stuff going on there. Um creek
Leg and cleek Leg is uh you know, um, I believe he's a
Polynesian islander, but he's indigenous. He was like a prince he like got
thrown out of whatever kind of group he was in or with or like his
his indigenous land. And the story there is really zig but he's a whaler
now and Ishmael meets him because they have to share a bed in an inn,
which is like really funny as it's groth in general. But and they
become best friends. An Ishmael who is like you know, born and raised
Christian, but doesn't seem to particularly have any strong feelings about religion one where
another from the get go says like, it's better to share a bed with
like a sober cannibal than it is to share a bed with a drunk Christian.
And because quikleg is established, is like he's selling heads, like shrunken
human heads on when they the night they meet. And so Ishmael's cason quik
Weg is like, well, a good person's a good person, like you
know, he says they're a bad Yeah, so Isnael. Kind Of his
take is that there are bad Christians, there are bad white people. There
are like misbehaved people all over the place, and so when you find good
people, like treat good people to people. And now obviously there's like issues
with color blindness and all of that stuff going on. But the other thing
is that on whale boats and at sea, and this is true kind of
before, you know, before the eighteen fifties, but there was always a
little bit of a wiggle room out at sea in terms of a lot of
things that were considered culturally normative. And obviously there were boats and ships and
entire shipping practices that were incredibly problematic in a ba jillion different ways, but
whaling culture was very much we need to kill whales, and killing whales is
the absolutely near impossible feat, like and to go out for four years and
kill as many whales as you can is incredibly difficult. And you don't get
the privilege of caring if the person next to you is, you know,
from the same background as you, the same race as to you, the
same religion as you. And Melville does a good job of also not going
like complete color blindness or completely radar is very clear or about the racial dynamics
on the ship, which is the three mates are white and the three harpooneers
are people of color. But there's some really interesting things that Ishmael Slash Melville
takes real time to explain that I think, like really make clear Melville's intentions
about race and religion and colonialism. And this is a kind of a weird
fact that a lot of people don't know, but original copies of Mobe Day
were actually rejected by publishers who are being too anti to colonialists, too anti
missionary issues, republic or whatever. And so one of the things that I
think is one of my favorite, like moments in the book that really clued
me into something intentional going on with race A s the whiteness of is Ishmael
takes time to specifically tell us that the harpooneers um used to be the primary
person you went to on a ship, like the mates were secondary to harponiers
on whaling ships for a really long time, because the harpooniers are the ones
throwing the harpoons in the whale ships, in the small boats, and they're
making the kill shops, and they are the most important persons in the like
in the Final Hunting Whale, and and Israel was like, yeah, so
you know, we have these first mates and in recent times being recent being
like the eighteen fifties, like in builds, which I don't exactly know how
long before it was, but the harpooniers held higher rank, were respected more
clearly than the than the mate. And it's only recently that we've started like
acknowledging the hierarchy of even the captain over the head harponiers. And that being
said, in the heat of the moment in the chase of the whale,
your first mates are in charge right up and kill you are on top of
the whale, at which point it is the harpaniers, because they are the
ones with the expertise, they are the ones with the skill, They are
the ones who know how to do this in this game longer, they know
this like they know it better. They're more a dept. And the harpooneers.
The three harpen yers on the boat are quick Lag, Tashtego, and
Degou. And I so Quiklag is I believe Polynesian islander. Tashtego is African.
I think no, that's Degu okay, because Dagu Dagu, I believe
was formerly a slave, right formally a slave. And I think Tashtego is
also indigenous to Americas that I do not remember the phone there. And so
all three of them, um honestly, are very prominently featured in the book,
and there's a lot of instances where Ishmael very specifically compares them to their
first mate counterparts, because every individual small whaling boat when they go out in
the rowboat, is one harpooneer, one mate, And every time he does,
he's making them like a mockery of the mates and their right and competence
and their clumsiness and their arrogance and like how it's so funny to watch Stubb
order around Dago, who's like this this very tall, very muscular, very
like strong and competent black man, who, like Ishmael describes, is very
beautiful, and like Stubb is the short, like literally stubby, like fat
white man who like is like describes it's just straight mean and not very pleasant
to be around. And you know, over and over and over again,
Ishmael emphasizes that, like this dynamic is just like odd and backwards, and
mates are are like there, but are they really necessary? And they're the
ones causing a lot of problems and like being like they are the difficult ones
on this otherwise relatively harmonious ships. And at the end of the day,
Tashego is the one who when the ship is thinking, like is the last
person kind of standing like like flying a flag. Yeah, and yeah,
there's like there's a lot to unpack in terms of those three characters alone that
we can, I guess just start there. I mean, one of the
first things I noticed, and I think from what I understood this is subtler
than some of the specific race stuff, but I think it's definitely there.
Part of the sort of anti colonial of the message is the book. It
winds up therefore being about that these indigenous people are hunting the whales that are
in they are like native areas, you know, so and and like again,
not to say that all the South Seas are the same. It's a
bunch of different countries and different you know, kingdoms and individual groups. But
still it's it's their part of the world. But in order to do that,
they have to travel all the way around the world to get to America
and then under an American ruled boat, go back to their own home waters
to hunt the animals that live in those home waters, to then go all
the way back to the Americas to sell the thing that they got there and
then maybe get it and they'll get a cut of it, with the white
people getting a higher cut. And so that all alone, I think are
very striking, you know, bit about the way white you know, colonialism
stucks out their resources from an area. Yeah, but also go ahead,
go ahead and fish. Yeah. But then also I was really struck by
the so much of the way Ishmael and Quikway get to know each other.
It's Ishmael gets to be the audience amazm Our character of He does see him
as a savage, see him as a cannibal, you know, because those
are the myths that that have been taught to him, and that through through
the course of the book that has changed pretty fundamentally. And I think a
very good example of a similar kind of story is offer any who's one who's
read Hawk Finn. The dynamic between Hawk and Jim is very similar. Like
in both books, both Mark Twain and Herman Melville are trying to write anti
racism books, their creatures of their times. They both use a lot of
racist language that today we would find very problematic. But it's a very similar
kind of story. And in a moment that I found that was both both
touching but also I think showed the limits of Melville's cultural knowledge, which again
is understandable. He describes Ishmael combing across quick Way during a time of religious
ceremony for him for him, and there are elements of it that feel very
Islamic and which does make some sense. Indonesia some other parts of the South
Seas were Islamic countries going back to the you know times early after Muhammad himself.
Someone ten centuries or more but also he's worshiping an idol, but also
the time is called something that sounds a lot like what we they would hear
as Ramadan, and it I didn't I don't know to what extent Melville thought
that the people of the South Seas had practiced religions or they maybe it'd had
some contact with Muslims, and so some of that had bled in because idol
worship is very very very very very much not Islamic, or if that was
him sort of trying to say, here are things that foreign religions would have
because he didn't understand Islam. But either way, it is still a very
beautiful moment of Ishmael coming because I think religion and race are very tied into
each other, and Ishmael coming to understand like, no, this is a
ritual that is important to him and even wanting to kind of, you know,
observe it. And I so in that like kind of scene, sweet
Legg is praying to a little like idol who's called Yojo or yo Yo.
I've heard it pronounced a variety of ways, but I don't know if it's
an actual figure or not, Like I haven't done enough research into that at
all, but yeah, Ishmael seems him praying, and you know, originally
is like maybe I'll try and disturb him, and then just left him be.
And it's worried about him because he's sitting in a in a kind of
a side position for many, many hours. And Ishmael expresses like that he's
worried, but then he's like, yes, it's a peculiar would be like
we do wed, thank too. And then Queeklag is like, well I
prayed and basically like I was told you were the ones who needs to pick
what boat we are about to get on, And so Ishmael goes and to
look at the boat to pick one, and Israel then encounters a character named
Elijah, who, like the prophet Elijah, who like kind of proscides to
Ishmael about which boat he should pick. And so it's a really interesting like
both of these two characters of these two different religious backgrounds are still are receiving
some sort of like divine or or religious intervention or whatever that's like pushing them
in the same direction and with each other. And then later in the book,
Ishmael like both brings Cueakwag to church with him, but also like praise
with cueekwag, and there's a lot of religion mixing that happens on the boat.
Yeah, And I think it's all very intentional. And I think,
um, here was an area. I mean, as a someone who's really
studied Christian history, I know that the time this is taking place New England
in the eighteen fifties are the book is probably in eighteen fifty one. This
is during one of the I think it's called the Second Great Awakening with it
was incredible religiosity, you know, and it was anti slavery a lot of
the especially in New England, but it was also very strict on like who
is going to heaven, who is going to Hell? And and things like
that, and a great deal of religious uh you knows, similar into parts
of this country today, but to an extent that was not seen in most
parts of American history. And I think one of the themes at least that
I really got out of. And again tell me if I'm wrong, you
have one more direct experience in the book than I do, But is that
one of the ideas is like okay, nice even lines that separate religions and
that let people go to religion on Sunday morning for an hour or two and
have these experiences. That all works in New England in the nice safe area,
but that when you were in this sort of primordial battle with nature in
the midst of the ocean, and there's typhoons and there's uh, you know,
storms, and there's electricity in the air, and there's a primordial force
of evil, as one of them sees it, at least in the force
of this whale. Religion is now kind of any portant a storm, and
it's kind of like all these different things can have meaning because we are just
tiny and insignificant at the hands of God or the gods or whatever it is.
And yeah, just the last thing on that you mentioned Elijah being a
very religious name, Ishmael is a very religious name, ya. Yeah.
And and they hab and specifically Ishmael is the son of Abraham who is cast
out for those who don't remember our you know, never paid attention because he
doesn't need to if you don't don't care about it. But in the book
of Genesis, when when he has Abraham has a has a child with his
slave, with his wife's slave, really and it's non consensual, and all
we can talk about that Ishmael is born, but then later he's given a
true son because he makes this covenant with God, and so Ishmael has cast
aside and I think so him representing the figure because they did it a while
ago. Ishramael was suicidal and he kind of goes on this ship because the
ship is kind of a it's basically a boat of the damned. It's where
everyone kind of thinks they're already dead to some expense. Yep, yeah,
and I think you know the like early on, Ishmael talks about and just
in terms of work and capitalism, he talked like the universal sumps pass all
around, which like everybody's basically screwed in one way or another. Everybody's going
to have their problems, and everybody's going to get basically the beating. And
then later in the book there's a chapter titled fast Fish and Loose Fish,
which has really really clear like anti colonial, anti imperialism through lines, but
also pretty strong like unifying narrative also about like religion and culture, which is
that man. Okay, So when you're whiling, there were specific tags Pacific
carpoons used to mark whales, which was basically we are in pursuit of this
whale do not capture, and that was called a fast fish, and a
lusus was an unmarked whale, so a whale that was like up for grabs.
And he talks about kind of this process of marking, in this process
of claiming property that is like unclaimable or like like how can you claim it
if you haven't yet caught it? And then you know, and what if
the whale shakes the harpoon like that happens, And then he basically says,
well, aren't we all just loose fish and fast fish too? Like are
we not all just like property waiting to be claimed? Like and and it's
really clear about like yeah, in in all of this, there's no like
all of us are going to get got by somebody. And the question is
to what degree? And and Dracus, who is a philosopher, Herbert Dracus
does a did a really long lecture on Ruby Deck and he called Ishmael not
a polytheist, but a poly religionist, and so saying, like part of
one of the main themes of the book ismail exploring not just dabbling in like
multiple gods, but genuinely dabbling in multiple religions and like full religious sets of
practices and finding out what that means for him. And you know, there
are there's a lot of philosophy to unpack in him doing that. But I
think it did do quite a bit to say, you know, regardless of
religion, regardless of race, regardless of background, these snap judgments that we're
making about people are really not good and realistically like the snap judgments you're making
about these people who have been conquered, these people who have been claimed,
these people who have been you who are fast fish like your next like you
know, yeah, yeah. And I think there's a couple of points there.
One to kind of religious thing. You know, my own branch of
Christianity shares a lot in common and shares a lot of historical roots with what
would eventually become you Terianism and Universalism, which were two different schools that then
kind of merged together. And Universalism is very much a product of New England
philosophy and it comes much later, but a lot of the early Universalists look
to Melville as one of their kind of inspirations and that this book is one
of the ideas of what eventually becomes Universalism. The other thing is I think
all that idea of like that we're all kind of property in some way and
all this stuff very intentionally. He's writing this in a book in which there
are characters who are functioning as free characters and people on this boat who would
be regarded as property by half of the country that Melville is writing this book
in. And I think that again, it's a you know, it's when
we say it's a comment on slavery, we don't mean like this is someone
looking back and saying slavery was wrong. He's writing this in eighteen fifty,
when the eighteen fifty Compromises is happening, and the tension that is building to
the Civil War is very much there. Um. I think this has written
a couple of years after Uncle Tom's Cabin, but it is seem very kind
of similar as like another book that has read that is written in part to
make people angry that slavery exists. Yeah, And I think the other thing
is that Melville in a lot of really subtle ways, and there are perks
and drawbacks to this, Like there are a lot of different strategies when we
talk about liberatory politics and modes of like conveying messages about various things and reaching
audiences, and Mobe Dick was not particularly popular when it was published. But
like, I think Melville in a lot of his subtler strategy and a lot
of his strategy that is to say, right, because Queklegg cannot read um,
and so you know he doesn't he doesn't. You know, there's a
there's a world in which he could say, oh, look at this like
quote unquote savage who can read, who is so intellectualized to blah blah blah
blah blah. But instead of writing that character, which might you know,
people didn't didn't have access to education in the same way in that day and
time, especially not if you were a person of color, and especially not
if you, like, were not wealthy. He writes a character who cannot
read and then exposes very clearly like the virtue in his position, regardless of
the presence or the lack of presence of traditionally like white values through like through
these subversive any ways. Like when Ishmael and Queakwag go into a church and
I'm listening to a sermon, Queakwag remarks that everybody is looking around at all
these plaques on the walls that have the names of dead sailors who die at
sea. Because you can't give them tombstones, you give them a plaque in
the church. And he says everyone's like distracted by these plaques except for Quekweg
because quek Weg can't read. So Quekwlag is just intently focused on like the
actual content of the sermon and and the service, and like remarks that like
there's a there's a value in that, and like, hey, like look
at this really, like it's not it's not about the skills acquired so much
as like the content of people's genuine existence. And that's like a strategy that
I think is I don't know, I think really powerful in a lot of
ways, because he's not saying we need to turn all of these people who
are not like us into us, which I think is a thing that,
at least in terms of disability and disability rights activism, is often like a
rabbit whole people down turned down to, which is like, oh, we
need to make you know, disabled people more like able people by providing them
with like biotic bionic bodies so they can walk. And it's like you could
also just make them successible and so instead of you know, trying Ishmael trying
to be like, oh, look at how much like white people. These
these non white people are Ishmael looking at them and saying, oh, look
at this other culture and look at the values of it in places I would
not have expected, which I think is really cool and does have judgments and
he does have you know, racist comments or assumption and you know, there
are ingrained things that Melville misses as well. But yeah, there's so much
more we can talk about, and I want to make sure this doesn't go
too long. And so there's a two last topics I'm going to touch on,
and one I think we can do fairly briefly, but I want to
hear you talk about it a bit, because you've mentioned already talk about queerness
in this and I think it is very important anytime we talk about h you
know, homosexual homoroticism, themes in works that are not from today, you
know, whether we're talking about something from the nineteenth century or you know,
going back to the Bible or anything in between or before, to remember that
the understandings that we have of set, truality and gender are both scientifically,
philosophically erotically everything fundamentally different from today, So we're not trying to read that
back in. But given all that which I'm true, you know even better
than I do, talk to us about queerness and queer understandings of this book.
Yeah, I think there are definitely a lot of queer readings of this
book. It's that in a lot of ways, I I have like complicated
relationships with queer reading of this book because a lot of the queer readings come
out of Ishmael and quick kluged relationships and kind of their tenderness with one another
and their closeness and their relationship their friendship. And then the other pair that
it's often talked about regularly is Starbuck is the first mate and Ahab the captain.
And you know, people read these characters are square, and there's a
lot of really positive readings of these characters is queer. And there are also
I think a lot of positive readings of these characters as platonic friends that are
demonstrating positive masculinity and platonic ways. And I think both of those readings are
valuable. And so I did you give a bit of context here that there
are things that they go through that they talk about as marriage ceremonies between Quick
Gray and that. That one is used in the book, But as you
said, it's a clearly the book is talking about what happens among men when
they're cotally separated from the world of women. Yeah, I don't. I
don't think there's anything explicitly sexual in the book, but it's not that kind
of level, so yeah, can yeah, there's nothing. Yeah, there's
nothing explicitly sexual in the book. The from the very first night that quek
Leg and Ishmael meet, you know, they're like Ishmael way suffle in the
morning, it's like, oh, he was cuddling me as though I was
his wife. Like they're basically spooning. Um. And then they like have
a couple of nights when they're sharing this bed in and they're very close,
and then they share like hammocks later and like Sarah like it's in the modern
age. It's really hard to read that and be like, huh, like
what's going on there? Um. And the same as through some of the
closeness that Starbuck and Ahab show, like Ahab in the very end when he
knows he's going on to chase this whale for the third day in a row
after injuring himself and losing his prosthetic and injuring it as people like, tells
Starbucks to stay behind because he loves and cared about Starbucks. And again it's
like hard to to not read that in a way that is, you know,
questioning whether there's a romantic sort of element there. And Belville never does
anything incredibly explicit, however, I think which are real. It should also
be said publishing a book in very Christian New England eighteen would not be if
there's any explicit content, it's not happening, So it doesn't mean right right.
But I think the thing that speaks strongest towards looking at the book it
through a queer lens or with a queer Pavogogian theory behind it, is this
particular chapter called the Squeeze of the hand Um, and I won't like it.
Well, okay, so when you when you're hunting sperm whales, you're
hunting them for what it's called spermi setti, And they used to think it
was the whale sperm, and it's not. It's it's echolocation matter in the
head, and so it helps them echolocate, and it's called spermisetti, and
it's just like or this gives me white fluid that they scoop out, and
then they boil it with a bunch of other whale oil that they boil out
of the fat, and then they have to sit around and basically meet it
and knee the lumps out of this. And so there's this chapter called the
Squeeze of the Hand where Ishmael sits down and it's squeezing sperm because it's abbreviated
to being home firm, and has this sort of the odd description of squeezing
sperm alongside other men, and how if all men could just squeeze each other's
hands and squeeze sperm into each other's hands, the world's problems would be solved.
And then the immediate next chapter is and castrating the whale and turning the
whale's castration skin into a cassic. So it's like it's like this whether the
homoerotic allegory immediately followed by an image of castration, which is just it's too
like, there's no way that that is a coincidence given the thought intention of
Melville's writing, Like he asked to have been saying something about not necessarily like
a homosexuality or gayness, but like queerness, like what it meant to be
beyond the normal limits of sexuality where there are no women. You're on a
boat for four years minimum with a bunch of dudes, and what are you
going to do? And then you know, without getting into a bunch of
details or depths, being like, well, there's shame that comes along with
it. And like the immediate follow up to saying this blatantly is the image
of calturation and so like and he and that image and that story and that
allegory is like violent and not like he talks about the creation of the cassock,
which is like this garment that's made from like a whale um, you
know, but you say penis, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's
made from a whale penis. But and it's like one of the sign of
honor. And so that's also strange because it's it's yeah, it's like this
he's very intentionally and it's hard to figure exactly what he's saying, but he's
that coupled with the relationships between men that we see in the book, it's
hard to not think that he's saying these things are not necessarily negative, And
yeah, I think so if there's nothing else, it seems that you can
say that the characters go to a place where the normal rules of that they're
being firm. Lines between religion, between race, between class all are getting
thrown out the window. And part of that is out of necessity, but
part of it makes you question how normal and why do we think that those
rules should be. And I think gender and sexuality are also things there.
But writing at a time when again it's not to say that like he's to
put our concept of homosexuality onto that doesn't make any sense. But certainly then
they're asking the questions that continue to be asked much later. Yeah, I
want to coverage it one last thing quickly, and then I'm going to ask
you more about the kind of the white whale idea and how it's become a
metaphor. That's gonna be in our Patreon section. But you know, Paul
Happy is my normal co host or frequent guests as he would prefer to,
or frequent guests they would prefer to be referred to. They're vegan and they're
off. You know, I would have loved to have them on this podcast.
I don't think there was any way they could have gotten through this description
what they have not to that I want to ask us for them, But
they have gotten me to think about animal rights much more so. This is
a book in a culture where sperm whales are seen simply as creatures that we
can kill, even though we're being incredibly wasteful of them. We're just taking
the oil from them. That is fully accepted. And it's not an animal
rights book by any means, But at least from the description I got,
it did seem like Ishmael is so taken by the beauty and the wonder and
the intelligence of these animals, and he does come out somewhat questioning, like
does this really make sense for us to be slaughtering these beasts just for one
small part of them and then throwing them away. Yeah. I there's actually
full readings of Moby Dick that are entirely committed to the book being a work
of environmental justice and animal rights activism. And I don't know if I would
go that far, but the descriptions of whaling are brutal, beyond the point
of necessity and beyond the point of uh sentimental or Yeah, like the it's
not meant to be sensational life like it's it's very clearly described as a horror
um like capital ah horror uh. And it was like whaling as a process.
And there are places in the world where it happens still commercially, and
there are places in the world where happens for subsistence, which is different.
But whaling in the United States, like the whaling industry was never about subsistence,
and it was it was about the oil and the oil alone. Yeah,
and they Ishmael is like horrified and disgusted and says that pretty clearly,
and then spends a long time talking about how like these are intelligent creatures.
He he ductaposes them with the sharks, which he called non intelligent. He
pla n me get the shark with a shovel like hand. I don't know
how like he doesn't care as much, which is not like not necessarily the
best take if you're talking about animal, right, but right, He's very
clear that like, no, these whales are smart, and these whales are
carrying, and these whales have family structure, and moby Dick fights back,
like Moby Dick flits back because he knows we're coming to kill him. And
and that's something very important, is that where the Ahab sees it as moby
Dick has broken the natural order, moby Dick should be the hunted and I'm
the hunter. Himo recognizes, like there's nothing evil about fighting back against the
people who are trying to kill you. Yeah, And I think that,
yeah, And I think it's interesting because Ahab thinks that moby Dick is a
personification of all that is wrong in the natural order. Starbucks thinks that moby
Dick is a quote dumbs route who like, you can't be mad at at
a tree for falling, you can't be mad at a whale for being a
whale. And Ishmael thinks, like, you can't be mad at a whale
for fighting back when you're going to kill it. And I think that's pretty
clear. And the other thing is that, like it's not just once that
we see Ishmael talk about kind of the brutality of hunting whales. It's over
and over and we see them hunt the whales, so we see them clean
the whales. And cleaning whales was like a you know, a horrible process.
You have to basically haul the whale to your main ship and then like
half lifted out of the water and then skin it and and like because it
was about the oil, but to get maximum oil, you want to take
basically as much as lover off as you can and boil it. And then
and he talks really specifically for a long time about kind of like the hellish
horror that was the try pops, which are the pots you would burn the
whale oil in, as we call it devilish, and then talks about the
the atrocity that is Stub the third mate, eating a whale steak by lamp
light that is whale oil, Like yeah, like how dare you eat this
animal flesh with the like under the light that it has provided to you?
And he then extends it to like like we don't eat geese with with goostone
utensils, but like maybe we do, like we write with their feathers,
and he goes on this very contemplate is like, you know, why do
I find this particular instance of Stub eating the whale steak on in the whale
light her turbine when I don't find it that way in other instances, And
like maybe I should, and maybe these are things we need to be thinking
about. And yeah, I think that's such an important theme because part of
what it's about is, you know, people who have very rigid views of
the world. When those are questioned, some just rejected, some crack like
Ahab and Pip. And then I think Ishmael's presented as kind of the ideal
that because what clearly the Ishmael who was writing this book is much more educated
than the Ishmael who was on the boat. And I think the idea is
supposed to be that Ishmael was so moved by this that he was then like,
let me learn more about all this. Yeah, two last kind of
contextual things I want to add and then give you the last chance to respond
and then we'll wrap up except for our patron. Section One is that the
Christianity of this time was very very anti nature. It was very much about,
like you know, the reading of you know, Genesis, of that
there was this primordial, crazy, wild nature and that God tamed it,
and that God brought forth creation by defeating Leviathan, a whale creature by the
way, very significant, and that's mentioned in some of the sermons, and
that you know, this anti that man is tasked by God to tame nature,
and that part of that is to make the animals all submit. Part
of that is that you know, indigenous peoples, both in the Americas themselves
but also in the South Seas are seen as like two, you know,
wild and nature bound, and they need taught to wear clothes and to worship
Christ and to drink whiskey like civilized people. Giving alcohol to indigenous people worked
out so well, although very intentional in some in many cases, to be
sure. So that's one part of the context. And then the other thing
is and I think this is something that they comment on very specifically. Whaling
was very romanticized in the literature and the art of the time, and Ishmael
goes on these long rants about long treasty is about how no artist has ever
really fully captured what a whale really looks like, and that the so the
whales, and it feels at first like a why is he doing this until
you kind of put it all together and realize he's trying to say, all
of you who are romanticizing this are wrong. You don't understand whales, you
don't understand what really happens on a whaling boat. Your romantic myths of this
are all wrong, yea, yeah. And I think that there's a chapter
that kind of summarizes those notions very well and is like one of my favorite
chapters of the book. It's very early on. It's called the Lee Shore.
A character it's like one of the first character deaths appears in that chapter
and it's very short. And the gist is that Ishmaels gives this whaling or
this like staler piece of stage advice basically, and is like a lot of
people think that in a storm you want to turn towards land for safety.
You want the same calm land. But if you turn towards the Lee shore,
which lee where it is like downland, and in a storm you'll be
dashed against the rocks like you will, you will not be able to control
your boat as you go to shore. You will die. And so the
best thing to do in the storm is to turn actually into the storm and
like weather it. And so he says it is better to be you know,
it is better to die in the howling infinite than to be ingloriously dashed
upon the lee. And I think that you know that sentiment is the is
the really the strongest through line of the book all and all because they have
is running from confronting his disability and his existential crisis, and Ishmael is running
from you know, depression and suicidal thoughts and right, and they're all running
towards what seems like comfort, what seems like the shore, which is ironic
because it happens to be a will boat. But rather than like turning into
the storms, they're facing and weathering them. And I think that's true of
the religious kind of elements at the time, the sentiments of colonialism and like,
instead of fixing their own problems at home, people were running to where
seems like safety, where see like fun, working like new and it was
the cause of a lot of problems and a lot of death. Definitely,
definitely well, thank you so much for being a part of this. You've
been. I'm so glad that this gave me an inspiration to find well read
the spark notes. I should read the full book sometime, but to learn
much more about the book and its world, and you've been such a font
of great information and insight. I'm definitely gonna have you back on more podcasts.
But for those who do want to find find you more, where can
they find you? I know you said you do some contact creation. I
love your tiktoks especially. Yeah, um, TikTok is great. My user
name is ak Maiden and there's like an underscore in between, and then I
do art on Instagram. My Instagram is Iron Kingdom and Adventures with an underscore
between each word nice. And we'll have a link to that. In the
show notes, of course, you can find all the ways to make contact
with us. I know I've been bad about feedback. We're gonna do a
feedback episode soon. Uh and then at starting going forward, when should I
include feedback in every episode? I have a kind of a backlog of episode,
so I promised that, But then it's gonna be a little while.
But I promise you we're gonna get to them, and then I'm gonna be
much more on top of having feedback regularly, I'm trying to try for at
least every second episode or every third episode at the bare minimum. And of
course, but on our part, on our website, the Ethical Panta dot
com, you can find all the ways to contact us email, Twitter,
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you know, I'll be honest, I had a lot of Ahsoko was something
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Thank you all so much for listening. We have spoken