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Sojung Kim

Ms. Walker

Block 5

22 December 2015

The Art of Pitchpoling: Finding Dynamic Equilibrium in the Search for Moby Dick

As Mulan so eloquently sings while teaching eager children to become warriors, Earth,

sky? Day, Night! Sound and Silence, Dark and Light. One alone is not enough, you need both

together. Winter, Summer, Moon and Sun Lesson number one (McNeely). Indeed, the first

and most foundational idea in our world is this idea of opposites and the balance necessarily

struck between them. Life and death. Morality and immorality. Male and female. Black and

white. Fair and foul (and foul is fair?). Although generally we tend to think of these

contradictory elements as completely separate and immiscible, they actually entirely interweave,

neither element found far from the other. As great literature tends to reflect universal truths about

our world and the human condition, the idea of balance repeatedly stars in myriad works. In

Moby Dick, Herman Melville uses the juxtaposition of opposites to show how opposing

phenomena perform a delicate dance to maintain an overall balance in life, managing to meander

along middle ground instead of straying to either extreme.

Throughout Moby Dick, Melville juxtaposes opposites in his descriptions of nature and

weather, building the natural foundations onto which he proceeds to emphasize necessitated

balance in other aspects of life and humanity. In The Candles, the Pequod glides smoothly

along calm Japanese seas when Melville forebodingly explains, Warmest climes but nurse the

cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most
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effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas

the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon (Melville 576). Warm weather and

bright sun, associated with happiness, peacefulness, and calm, hide the cruellest, darkest, most

violent dangers; the death-harboring, killer tiger of Bengal similarly resides in beautiful, spiced,

verdant foliage. In peaceful, serene Japanese seas, there exists the deadliest, direst of all storms,

the Typhoon, which nearly destroys the Pequod, lighting all three masts on fire like spermaceti

candles. Hence, Melville shows as you enjoy the benefits and happinesses of one extreme, the

balancing force increases in harmfulness proportionally in order to maintain a right, middle way.

Ishmael corroborates this while meditating on the blessed calms of the Japanese cruising

ground in The Gilder: the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof:

calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm (Melville 565). With each calm, a violent

storm must balance out the tranquility; with each storm, a calm will follow to balance again.

Ishmael continues on to compare the flowing peacefulness of the land and the sea, explaining,

These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a certain filial, confident,

land-like feeling toward the sea struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but

through the tall grass of a rolling prairie (Melville 564). The sea and land have been compared

and contrasted throughout the book as opposites (for example, land is safe, sea is dangerous), yet

here they overlap to become one and the same. Melville prompts the reader to consider whether

these seemingly opposite elements contradict each other at all. Like wagons struggling across the

rolling prairie, the boat struggles across and through high rolling waves; both land and sea form

neither kind nor unfriendly stages on which human dramas play out. Although the marriage of
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opposites in nature may not seem important, they act as metaphors for the balance between life

and death, adding resonance to the theme of balance.

The running undercurrent emphasizing the theme of eternal balance in nature and life

repeats with Ishmael's beloved whales, and through the repeated contrasts of opposites, Melville

dives deeper into the dynamics between seemingly contradictory elements and reveals no person,

profession, or animal can be defined or described through one singular descriptor. Melville

prompts the reader to question their notions of wrong, right, moral, and immoral as it becomes

increasingly difficult to definitively label aspects of the story as ethical or evil. This ambiguity

becomes apparent when considering the thrashing, chaotic circles of whales in The Grand

Armada, and the enchanted calm in the center of the ring, where the whalers observe a

completely separate wondrous world (Melville 449-450). While at the circumference of

commotion the whalers and whales engage in brutal, tumultuous battles, the serene lake at the

center, inhabited by tame cows and calves, exudes peace (Melville 449). Far from the monstrous,

malicious whales hunted earlier in the book, these whales, either innocent or inexperienced,

come snuffling round to the whalers, even touching them (Melville 450). In comparing

whales to household dogs, pets humans hold dear to our hearts, Melville makes these whales

endearing, lovable, and innocent. Thus, we come across another difficulty in defining whales as

good or evil. Does a defining mold into which all whales fit exist? Moby Dick, the vicious,

maleficent monster who ate Ahabs leg, seems almost a different species when juxtaposed with

these tame calves. Even within one species, one animal, we find contradictions and balancing

elements preventing the animal from becoming too extreme (generalized as only intensely

violent or passive).
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In a broader sense, the juxtaposition of life and death emphasizes this idea that nothing

can be definitely defined as purely one thing or another. Surrounded by death and violence, we

witness the creation of life and the birth of a newborn. When a lance cuts a nursing whale, the

mothers pouring milk and blood rivalling discolor the sea (Melville 451). Life and death are no

longer separable, neatly divided and defined as neither moral or immoral. Instead, these

seemingly mutually exclusive characteristics swirl together, symbolized by milk and blood in the

sea, and become part of a larger, ambiguous whole. Even more so than just being intermixed,

while death ends life, Melville argues death also begets life. When Ishmael amazedly analyzes

the whale skeleton in the Arsacides he theorizes, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver;

himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but

himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful

Life, and begat him with curly-headed glories (Melville 519). The skeleton, symbolic of death,

forms the foundation upon which new life begins and grows, and, because Melville loves to spell

things out for the reader, Ishmael even tells us life envelops death while death allows for the

growth of new life.

This balance extends beyond nature, the character of animals, and even life and death to

include human actions and motivations, which, because of the simultaneous interweaving of

opposite ideas, become hard to define. As the Pequod pursues a herd of whales through the

Straits of Sunda, Malay pirates pursue it. Both parties have a clear motivation: the Pequod seeks

to kill whales, the pirates want to plunder the Pequod. As chaser becomes chased and hunter

becomes hunted, Melville explains there exists nothing completely absolute or at the apex of the

pyramid. No matter what your goal may be, there always exists someone or something thinking
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of you in the same way as you think of your prey, leading to this cyclical nature of being.

When pursuing something, you become both pursuer and pursued, never simply one or the other.

During their flight through the Straits, Ahab nervously considers, through that same gate he was

now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end (Melville 446). While hunting, the Pequod

becomes the prey of another; thus, the reader loses the ability to define the Pequod. Do we cheer

for the hunter, inadvertently supporting both the killing of the whales and of the Pequod? Or do

we hope for the hunted, wanting both the whales and the whalers to survive? In this ambiguity,

we also lose the ability to label hunter and hunted as evil and innocent respectively. The Pequod,

hunting whales and being hunted, cannot be both morally righteous and unethical. Just as it

becomes harder to describe the position of the Pequod, Melville shows us a different side to the

whalers as well. Queequeg and Starbuck, experienced whalers who have no qualms about

inflicting agonizing pain and death, show surprising tenderness towards these whales. Melville

writes, Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their backs with his lance

(Melville 450). Melville makes this moral ambiguity and complexity of character apparent as he

shows us the idea of balance extends to the human character; though Queequeg and Starbuck act

with ferocity and cruel precision when killing whales, their characters balance because of this

softer side revealed when they act with tenderness towards these creatures. The balance of

opposites makes categorization of morality and righteousness difficult, especially when

considering the human character, which, because of this balance, sticks to a fairly moral middle

ground instead of straying too far to either extreme.

However, it initially seems Ahab breaks this universal pattern of balance. His

monomaniacal obsession with murdering Moby Dick seems all but balanced and moderated, but
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towards the end of the work Melville reveals Ahab too, no matter how insane and obsessed,

contains a mixture of balancing internal opposites. In The Symphony, we see Ahabs intense

drive crack for the first time as he drops a solitary tear into the ocean. Speaking to Starbuck, he

mourns:

When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been oh

weariness! heaviness!... the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and smoking

brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly

chased his prey-- more a demon than a man?-- aye, aye! what a forty years

fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary,

and palsy the arms at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better

is Ahab now? (Melville 620-621)

Throughout the majority of Moby Dick, Ahab has been steel-hearted. Ruthlessly, maniacally

chasing this one goal of killing Moby Dick, he makes it shockingly clear he will give up

anything and everything to achieve his goal. The seemingly unapparent internal balance to this

extremism finally appears in this passage when Ahab questions his life choices. He finally begins

to realize his sad, desolate life was caused by this empty, furious fight for revenge which, he

admits, is foolish and pointless. Throughout the work Ahab, as he himself explains, has

furiously, foamingly chased his prey, becoming , more a demon than a man (Melville 621).

Foaming, something associated with rabid animals, serves to paint Ahab as truly animalistic and

crazed, behaving in nearly demonically obsessed ways rather than like a normal human. At this

point, he realizes he has neither gotten wealth nor bettered himself because of this wearying

chase. Level-headedness, repentance, and rationality, in the end, balance insanity, even in Ahab.
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More generally, facts and opinions balance in the human mind as well. In The Gilder, Ishmael

ponders the similarity between the rolling prairie and the swirling sea and claims you could

easily imagine playing children rollicking in the grass of the sea; to expand, Melville writes, all

this mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate,

and form one seamless whole (Melville 564-565). Facts and beliefs seem polar opposites; one is

provable, true, unwavering, while the other is fickle, born of human desire. In this mystic

mood, imagining the prairie-sea and observing the actual body of water (fancy and fact

respectively) meld together to simply form Ishmaels emotional and mental state. Just as nobody

would be complete or sane without having some combination of both facts and fancies in their

head, these opposite elements come together, interpenetrate, and form one functioning mind

and soul one seamless whole. Opposites exist, whether insanity and rationality or reality and

imagination, to balance the human mind.

Though on the surface Moby Dick may seem like a simple story of adventure, revenge,

and whales, a deeper, more profound undercurrent emphasizes the idea that nature and life exist

in a state of perpetual balance of opposites. Melville juxtaposes seemingly contradictory

elements, life and death, beauty and ugliness, serenity and violence, in order to show seemingly

opposite ideas and aspects of life are actually inseparably unified and act in a dynamic

equilibrium to maintain harmony. You can never have one extreme without having the other to

balance it out. This balance, this interconnectedness and unification of all opposites to prevent

the world and humanity from straying too far to one extreme, explains why, after all the

adventures of the Pequod, The great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years

ago. Life and nature will always return to the balance, regardless of momentary death,
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destruction, vengefulness, and hatred. What importance does the passion of one man hold in the

grand scheme of things? An intense bout of violence and death barely tips the scale meant to be

forever balanced more or less at equilibrium, and in the end, the world and life will continue on

as they have for millennia, perfectly balanced and unchanging as we all live out our dramas on a

tiny, insignificant stage.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003. Print.

McNeely, Joel, composer. Lesson Number One. Mulan 2. Dir. Darrell Rooney. 2005. Film.

Note: I am most proud of the topic I tried to discuss in this paper; I feel it is definitely more

challenging than the topic I chose to write about in my LiA paper, which made it more difficult

to phrase ideas and choose acceptable words. This ties into the element of the paper that Id like

feedback on. There were a lot of places in the paper where I seriously struggled with wording

(conciseness, word choice, flow, etc.), and Id like to develop the aesthetic of my writing more.