Starbuck’s Train and Melville’s Trolley: “The Musket” as Thought Problem in Moby-Dick

So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have “broken his digester.”

—Moby-Dick, Ch. 10 (“A Bosom Friend”)

In “The Musket,” the 123^rd chapter of Moby-Dick, the ship’s chief mate, Starbuck, described by Ishmael as “uncommonly conscientious for a seaman,” faces a powerful moral dilemma (102). The Pequod has just managed to survive a typhoon, Starbuck and Stubb have raised new sails, and the ship is once again under control and approaching her proper course. Following a standing order, Starbuck descends to Ahab’s state room to inform him of the situation. As he approaches the door, the rack of muskets catches his eye: there is the same musket Ahab himself had threatened Starbuck with earlier in the voyage, loaded, waiting. What occurs next is one of the text’s most significant scenes, as notable in its import as any of Ahab’s harangues or Ishmael’s soliloquies. Starbuck picks up the musket, levels it at Ahab through the thin cabin door, and works through the possibility of shooting the captain to save everyone else on the ship. After a few tense moments, where he “seemed wrestling with an angel,” Starbuck relents, replaces the musket, and the narrative moves forward (388).

This is a compelling moment, one of practical, real moral quandary in a book filled with philosophical flourish and transcendental enthusiasm. It is, as John Bryant says of physical hugs in Moby-Dick, “not at all what one might think is central to a book that is so famously metaphysical, one that ventures beyond materiality” (ix). Yet it is a central scene, no matter how deeply buried or overshadowed by “the lyrical transcendence of Ishmael and the tragic frustration of Ahab” (x). Starbuck is faced with a very real, very human moral dilemma: to allow Ahab “to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him,” becoming “the wilful [sic] murderer of thirty men and more,” or to shoot Ahab through the door of his cabin and save the crew but become a murderer himself (Melville 387). Despite the many lives at stake, Starbuck finds he cannot kill his captain. Is this failure to stop Ahab and his reckless, self-destructive pursuit of revenge on Moby Dick what Ishmael refers to when, in his introductory remarks about Starbuck in “Knights and Squires,” he speaks of brave men who “yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man,” “the complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude,” and “the fall of valor in the soul” (103)?

If so, our narrator may be judging the first mate too harshly, especially given the inquiries of the branch of modern applied philosophy known as trolleyology, so named after its most famous thought experiment, the “trolley problem.” Since its introduction in 1967 by British philosopher Philippa Foot, the trolley problem has often been used to test human moral and ethical nature. While there are many variations on the basic premise, each trolley problem essentially poses a question of the moral correctness of actions that positively benefit multiple people while harming one or a few. Under what circumstances are such actions deemed morally justifiable? When is it permissible to violate the rights, wellbeing, or happiness of some to assure those of many? The results of these thought experiments are often surprising, revealing a subject’s moral intuitions (whether a given action “feels right”) as well as what are frequently conflicts with more formally stated moral or ethical doctrines. This type of conflict is what Starbuck himself experiences in the aforementioned scene, as he is tempted to act in a way that seems counter to every openly stated belief about violence and ship’s governance he holds. In effect, Melville has cleverly placed his character in a trolley problem, in terms strikingly similar to those Foot would use in her own formulation.

Further, Melville’s trolley...