Inscrutable Malice: Theodicy, Eschatology, and the Biblical Sources of "Moby-Dick"

Preface

preface In this study I seek to examine Moby-Dick in the context of the author’s dramatization of the problem of evil, a subject of recurrent interest in western culture and Judeo-christian tradition. framing Melville’s fictional exploration of this vexed question was his immersion in the bible, especially the text of the old testament from which he drew prototypes for the characters of ahab, Ishmael, and the white whale. I argue that the book of Job serves as the basis for the novel’s representation of the question of theodicy—the attempt to reconcile the justice or goodness of god with the existence of evil—while daniel, revelation, and other apocalyptic passages of the old and new testaments provide a basis for the novel’s pervasive use of eschatology, the divinely ordained “last things” in the life of the individual,community,and cosmos.I demonstrate that the figure of Job was a key source for the creation of ahab, while the book of Job’s portrait of the mythical chaos monster leviathan served as the formative model for Moby dick. repeated allusions to apocalyptic passages of the bible similarly act as recurrent paradigms for both dramatic action and thematic development in Ishmael’s narrative. Just as the bible, with its composite compositional history, is ultimately inconsistent in tracing the causes of suffering and evil in human life, so Melville in Moby-Dick depicts a comparable range of philosophical and psychological responses to the problem of evil that are ultimately rooted in biblical tradition. In chapter 1, I briefly review the history of criticism of Moby-Dick before examining the biblical sources for the issues of theodicy and eschatology that will guide the present study. as texts with foundational authority and multiple manifestations in western tradition, the books of Job, daniel, and revelation—along with other related prophetic, historical, poetic, and apocalyptic texts—provide a wealth of thematic, structural, and linguistic prototypes for Melville’s whaling novel. In this chapter, I accordingly trace the complex mythological roots of the dominant biblical paradigms in the novel. Thus, we find the prototype for ahab’s pursuit of the white whale in the hebrew god’s conquest of the marine chaos monster leviathan, an event  Preface borrowed from earlier Mesopotamian and canaanite myth. Moreover, the novel’s eschatological structures rely on other biblical traditions depicting endtime events, especially those found in the book of revelation, in which the demonic agents of primordial evil are overthrown and god’s heavenly kingdom established on earth. I then review the old testament historical models for Ishmael and ahab, which will demonstrate Melville’s strategic adaptation of these two well-known outcasts from hebrew covenantal tradition. chapter 2 begins with a brief overview of the antebellum american religious scene and Melville’s religious upbringing as they impinge on the novel, notably the influence of the dominant evangelical culture with its pervasive ideology of reform and the role of the small sects of Quakers and shakers. I then track Ishmael’s seriocomic initiation into the whaling profession, which draws extensively on the metaphors of pilgrimage found in the writings of st. paul and John bunyan, the underlying theological presences in this early section of the novel. Ishmael’s initiation is typified by his richly comic, mock-apocalyptic encounter with the polynesian cannibal Queequeg, whose friendship leads to redemptive acts of conversion and covenant in the narrative. In father Mapple’s sermon on Jonah and the enigmatic encounter with the sailor elijah, moreover, Ishmael’s initiation includes a prophetic foreshadowing of some of the key moral and eschatological issues that will concern him throughout his voyage on the Pequod. These issues provide a backdrop to the black humor that recurs throughout Ishmael’s unsettling experience of new bedford and nantucket, which ends with his allegorical evocation of the heroic sailor bulkington, whose presence at the helm of the Pequod provides a classical model for the pursuit of moral and philosophical truth amid the sublime biblical terrors of whaling. In chapter 3, I examine ahab’s symbolic identity as a Job figure bringing an indictment against divine justice in his quest for Moby dick, a modern exemplar of the biblical leviathan evoked at the end of god’s speech from the whirlwind in the book of Job. ahab’s impassioned remarks in “The Quarter-deck” on the malignity of the white whale are thus shown to be a synthesis of various features of the outspoken complaints of Job...