ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK (Melville 212-213).
Even though the sperm whale is seen as a monster, whalers experienced a sense of
awe at its tremendous size and grace. “But in that great Sperm Whale, this high and
mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing
on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly
than in beholding any other object in living nature” (Melville 389). And, “He plays on
the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad
palms of his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous
concussion resounds for miles” (Melville 419). Also, “A gentle joyousness – a mighty
mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter
swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leer-
ing eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling
straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did
surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam” (Melville 586). Further-
more, “Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like heaps of
fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface
creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale” (Melville 607).
And this seems to sum up the impact of Melville’s writing where he combines terror
and awe, along with a comparison to natural wonders. “The appalling beauty of the
vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a
living opal in the blue morning sea” (Melville 302). And also, “And thus, through the
serene tranquilities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were sus-
pended by exceeding rapture, Moby-Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the
full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his
jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant his whole
marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia’s Natural Bridge, and warningly
waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and
went out of sight” (Melville 587). And, “...white, glistening teeth, floating up from the
undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby-Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast,
shadowed bulk still blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned
beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb...” (Melville 588). As well, “Rising
with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his
entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam...in
some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance” (Melville 596).
Also, the female whales are recognized: “But far beneath this wondrous world upon
the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side.
For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the
whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers”
(Melville 429). And, “Say you strike a forty-barrel-bull – poor devil! all his comrades
quit him. But strike a member of the harem school, and her companions swim around
her with every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as
themselves to fall a prey” (Melville 437). Philbrick noted, “The sperm whales’ net-
work of female-based family units resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community
the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket” (Philbrick 71).
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