Lit_and_Art

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Quinebaug Valley Community College *

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Arts Humanities

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Oct 30, 2023

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Whales and Whaling in Literature and Art TASK 1: READ FOUR CHAPTERS FROM MOBY DICK Herman Melville's Moby Dick is the most famous book ever written about whales and whaling. It is a novel, i.e., a work of fiction, a made-up story. Melville went whaling on the Acushnet of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in 1841, but instead of writing a whaling memoir, Melville chose to write about whaling through the lens of fiction. He deserted from the Acushnet at the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific in 1842. When he returned to the U.S. several years later, he published his first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life , in 1846 about a whaling deserter in the Marquesas. This was his most acclaimed and best-selling literary work in his lifetime. He went on to publish other quasi-autobiographical novels about his years in the Pacific, Omoo (about Tahiti) and White Jacket (about the U.S. naval vessel that brought him from Hawai`i back to the U.S.). Moby Dick , published in 1851, failed to appeal to critics and consumers. Literary critics in the 1920s initiated the enthusiasm for it that has lasted to the present. Many fans represent it as the Great American Novel. Its narrator, Ishmael, is a greenhand on the Pequod , whose captain, Captain Ahab, is obsessed with hunting down and killing a great white whale called Moby Dick (based on a real albino whale known as Mocha Dick), which had reduced Ahab to one leg during a prior voyage. Spoiler alert: when Ahab and Moby Dick finally do battle at the end of the novel, Moby Dick carries off Ahab into the deep with a noose around his neck and rams the Pequod , sinking it. Ishmael is the sole survivor. The original 1851 publication appears to be unavailable in Google Books so we will use this later edition, which I downloaded from Google Books and have posted on HuskyCT. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, the Whale (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902). Literary critics have analyzed Moby Dick backwards and forwards and inside out. We will read and discuss some of the most-analyzed chapters, listed below. I've listed a few other famous chapters as optional readings. Literature specialists find all kinds of profundities in Moby Dick , everything from musings on the nature of good and evil, critiques of capitalism, racism and anti- racism, and openness to an alternative sexuality. Questions to think about: (1) What themes do you see playing out in these chapters? What did Melville think? (2) Is this about whaling or is it about these other themes? Why set this novel in a whaling story? (3) As historians, we should ask to what extent Melville's portrayal of whaling is accurate or inaccurate. Did he use his firsthand experience or was his representation of whaling more imaginative than authentic? (4) How might we use this fictional treatment as a historical document? What might it tell us about the power and meaning of whaling in American popular culture, then and later on: Why was the novel a commercial failure in the 1850s? And why did it become popular and a cult classic in the 20 th century? Assigned Chapters III: "The Spouter-Inn," pp. 10-22 . Narrator Ishmael is about to embark on his first whaling 1

voyage and meets Queequeg, a Polynesian from a fictional Pacific Island and one of the boatsteerer/harpooners on the Pequod ’s voyage. XXVII: "Knights and Squires," pp. 100-104 . This chapter describes some of the mates and boatsteerers/harpooners using an analogy to medieval jousting. LXV: "The Whale as a Dish," pp. 260-262 . Is devouring nature natural? CXXXV: "The Chase - Third Day," pp. 481-491. Ahab's death & sinking of Pequod OPTIONAL (these chapters are among those most frequently analyzed by literary scholars): XLII: "The Whiteness of the Whale," pp. 162-169 . Themes: supremacy of whiteness, is whiteness good or bad? LXIV: "Stubb's Supper," pp. 253-260. Precedes and is related to the assigned chapter "The Whale Is a Dish" -- features a stereotypical black cook, who speaks in dialect, a common nineteenth-century literary device in depictions of racial others LXXXIX: "Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish," pp. 342-345 . Deals with the logic and law of possession TASK 2: Assess the public's interest in Russell & Purrington's Whaling Panorama (1849) Panoramas were a nineteenth-century form of theatrical entertainment. One of the great surviving relics of the whaling era is the panorama painted and exhibited by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington, which today resides in the New Bedford Whaling Museum's collections. Unfortunately, we do not have the original narration accompanying the huge scroll-like painting as it moved left to right on the stage. The museum has prepared a 35-minute film that follows the fictional voyage's course so we can see it almost like a person in the audience would have. There is a modern-day narrator to this film. His narration is useful because it identifies what you are looking at on the screen. However, you do not need to pay attention to its other information since you want to focus on what you can get out of the panorama yourself and not simply take the narrator’s unsourced and random anecdotes as meaningful or useful in your research process. The panorama progresses from New Bedford to the Azores to Cape Verde to Rio de Janeiro to Cape Horn to Juan Fernandez Island to Pitcairn Island to the Marquesas (often called Washington Islands in the nineteenth century) to Huahine near Tahiti in the Society Islands to Hawai`i to the Northwest Coast of North America to the Fiji Islands. The remainder of the voyage’s painted scenes hasn't survived. New Bedford Whaling Museum, "The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage 'Round the World,'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h61hFOKTwMI Do your own scrutiny and analysis of the images of the panorama, then read the newspaper advertisements and reviews from 1849 when it was on exhibit in Boston (below), and assess what aspects of whaling were of interest to a general audience and why. These newspaper articles are among the 14 articles that came up when I searched for "whaling panorama" in the Early American Newspapers database. The 14 th article was Caleb F. Purrington's obituary in the Boston Evening Journal , June 1, 1876: he was "a fancy painter of good ability, and was one of the artists who painted the panorama of a whaling voyage many times exhibited around the country." We can conclude from this that many remembered the whaling panorama years later. 2

"Whaling Panorama," Boston Courier , January 18, 1849. "New and Interesting Panorama," Boston Evening Transcript , January 30, 1849. 3

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"The Whaling Panorama," Boston Evening Transcript , February 9, 1849 William Sturgis, "The Whaling Panorama," Boston Evening Transcript , February 10, 1849. 4