ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
in this country, say we have gone from hunting whales to appreciating the wonder-
ment of whales through the act of whale watching.
Works Cited
Braga de Morais IO, Danilewicz D, Zerbini AN, Edmundson W, Hart IB, Bortolotto GA. 2017. From the
southern right whale hunting decline to the humpback whaling expansion: a review of whale catch rec-
ords in the tropical western South Atlantic Ocean. Mammal Review. 47(1):11-23.
Lawrence, D. H. “Whales Weep Not”. The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. De Sola
Pinto & F. W. Roberts. NY: Penguin, 1971.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. 1851. Random House, New York.
Mowat, Farley. 2012. A Whale for the Killing. Douglas McIntyre Publishers Inc. Vancouver, Canada.
Philbrick, N. 2000. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Viking Press, New
York.
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Comment on Nolan
Ian S. Maloney
In her essay, “From Leviathan to Saint,” Dr. Kathleen Nolan explores shifting atti-
tudes towards whales from the 19 th to 20 th centuries with particular attention paid to
two texts: Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851) and Farley Mowat’s book A
Whale for the Killing (1972). On the surface, some of this shift is just changes in hu-
man behavior and consumption. We no longer rely on whale oil for lamp lighting or
ambergris for perfume. Petroleum and electricity have ended reliance on whale oil for
fuel (and hopefully wind and solar power will eventually replace them). We’ve also
learned some of the consequences to our predatory behavior and that species become
extinct after over-hunting and human carelessness with animal habitats. But, embed-
ded in Nolan’s essay is a deeper concern with consistent human cruelty and mob men-
tality, seen in both texts. Her essay notes the shift to reverence and watching we have
for these marine mammals, and yet what is most striking is the allusion to the dark
underbelly of group violence connecting these whale stories across centuries.
Moby-Dick’s Ishmael fascinates us as a chronicler, an artist, a naturalist, and a philos-
opher of the whale ship. He accepts the “savage” Pacific Islander Queequeg as best
friend and confidant and takes the worst ship’s pay (in whaleman’s terms the last lay)
for the adventure and honor of the voyage. He thus foreshadows the notion that the
last will become first. His worldly vision encompasses so much around him and
swells with transcendental acceptance of the divine flowing through the seas and uni-
verse. He knows that he makes a sorry lookout for whales because of his persistent
pondering of immortality over Descartian vortices. Nolan notes that the idea of the
Whale fascinates the narrator; as Ishmael states, this “portentous and mysterious mon-
ster roused all my curiosity” (Melville 48). But Ishmael seems often to be consumed
by the deity in the creature, its “god-like dignity,” and then simultaneously stunned by
the sublime in the whale, its “appalling beauty of the vast milky mass.” Ishmael ap-
peals to the reader because of the reverence and awe he has for his subject. Unlike the
Essex story where Melville drew his inspiration, you don’t see Ishmael give into what
Nathaniel Philbrick describes as the “repetitious nature of the work” which desensi-
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