I finished Moby Dick recently and it wasn’t quite what I was expected. From popular culture I was expecting an action-packed story about Captain Ahab’s hunt for the white whale coupled with some deep ruminations on human nature. While there is definitely suspenseful moments and fair share of human nature commentary, at least half the book is almost like a textbook: a deep dive on whales and the whaling industry. This serves some literary purpose for sure, but finishing the book left me wondering WHY this has stood the test of time?
I read the intro and got my answer: The book hasn’t stood the test of time. By that I mean it wasn’t a big hit in its day; it wasn’t until the early/mid 1900s or so (almost a century after is was published) that it started becoming a bigger part of the canon that we know of today. Furthermore, and a better, deeper answer, is that the book is about more than just the excitement of chasing an almost mythic beast. Captain Ahab’s monomaniacal focus on Moby Dick is not used to show the danger of taking an idea or obsession to an extreme, but to illustrate a more tragic and mysterious elements of the human condition: that we can continue with our obsessions even when we know we are headed for trouble. In other words, it’s not that a monomaniacal focus can blind us to the danger, rather we become defenseless to stop ourselves even though we know full well what the danger is.
Ahab is contrasted with Ishmael, the narrator and sole survivor of the doomed voyage. Ishmael goes with the flow, as it were. His decision to join the crew of the Pequod is not based on a calculation, but a feeling he has that it’s time for him to go back to sea. He doesn’t research which ship to go on, but goes to the docks and finds one. It’s not to say that doesn’t think about his actions, but he employs more of a form of pretty good planning: not trying to focus so much on one goal and a linear path to achieve it, but a general goal with just enough planning to make a good amount of forward progress.
Going with the flow, I happened to pick up a book just at the tail end of reading Moby Dick that’s about finding purpose or focus in one’s life; finding one’s “Life work.” (“Let Your Life Speak”, by Parker Palmer). I’m still in the middle of it, but one of the key ideas is that life’s purpose will not come about from trying to sit and plan it out based on set of criteria like your strengths, interests and goals. Rather, you’re much more likely to find “the way” by reflecting on past decisions and understanding what is NOT “the way.” In other words, you need to sort of allow life to happen somewhat in order to see whether you are going on the right or wrong or path. You can’t force a path towards something that makes sense on paper if it’s not authentic to who you really are. Rather, you need to discover the path by gradually recognizing what has been inside you all along. You can get this point by reflecting your past and see what “way closes” behind you.
Tying some of these threads together: it took time for Moby Dick to emerge as the iconic American Tale that we know of today. Was it because we needed more time as a people understand the depth of meaning in the book? That it wasn’t until we spent many years trying to control our destiny only to rebuffed again and again that we could intuitively grasp the deeper meaning that this was not simply about catching a whale, but the hard truth that everyone and everything has a limit? But what is the energy, the inertia, that keeps someone chasing a target they know will only end up in their destruction? That is a discussion for another post.
Intergalactic Dance 