( Reproduced with permission of the author - Rajiv Handa )
Even with my limited sensitivity, I am mostly taken by the first line of an Author. When I was redoing Herman Melville's, "Moby Dick", the third time, I realised that the opening statement "Call me Ishmael", as the author starts introducing his cast and in this case his narrator Ishmael, it was this line which has kept bringing me to this story all over again over the past 40 years.
Though initially, Moby Dick was panned and was called a literary failure, it was when authors like DH Lawrence, William Faulkner and EM Forster lent their name in support, that the book acquired a cult status on both sides of the Pond. So much so that Moby Dick represents the American Renaissance, by 1891 when Melville passed away, the opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael" had become the greatest opening sentence in English literature. Recently while watching "Jubilee" on Amazon Prime, the opening sentence, "I am Srikant Roy", reminded me of that famous line from Moby Dick.
Ishmael travels from Manhattan to New Bedford, Massachusetts to sign up for a whaling voyage. Staying at an overcrowded inn, he needs to share the bed with a polynesian harpooner named QueeQueg. As Ishamel recalls later, "better to share the bed with a cannibal harpooner, than a drunk christian at night". The next morning Ishamel and QueeQueg join as crew for the Whaling Ship Pequod. The Captain of the ship is the legendary whaler Ahab, and his mates Starbuck, from Nantucket, Stubb from Cape Cod and Flask from Martha's Vineyard. The three mates have the harpooners QueeQueg, Tashtego and Daggoo.
Hand of God
It was customary for all the whaler's to attend the sermon of Father Mapple before they departed on the voyage. Melville cleverly brings in the sermon of Jonah and why every sailor needed God on his side while proceeding on a sea voyage. The detailed and realistic description of whale hunting, extracting whale oil, life aboard a whaling ship, amidst a diverse crew from different classes of life, spheres of good and evil, and the existence of God are carefully intertwined. Literary influences include Shakespeare, Carlyle and The Bible. The narrative prose uses songs, catalogues and Shakespearean stage directions, asides and soliloquies.
Ahab
The Pequod owner Peleg describes Captain Ahab as an, "grand, ungodly, god-like man who nevertheless has his humanities''. Elijah, another waterfront character prophesies a similar end to the Pequod, as to the Essex in 1820. For what Ahab is about to do is not serve existence like Jonah, but as a character out to avenge against a huge, albino, white whale, that has proven notoriously hard to catch. At his first appearance on the Deck, Ahab announces that he is out for revenge against the white whale which had previously outsmarted him and taken his leg below the knee in a previous encounter. As a constant reminder Ahab uses a prosthesis for his knee bone shaped out of the Whale Jaw. To buy out the allegiance of his sea mates, Ahab announces one Gold coin or a doubloon as a reward for the person who first spots the white whale.
The crew is socially, intellectually and morally split and the author uses this divide to narrate the social differences, the class differences and the very outlook on life.
Ishmael
While Stubs, the first mate, is dead against Ahab's vengeance, Ishmael feels that, "Quench of vengeance" as his own. Till one night, Stubs visits Ahab in his quarters under the deck and suggests that the Captain should sleep, pointing towards the bed sheets lying in his quarters. And Ahab responds, "I don't sleep. I die". Ponting to the bed sheets, he says, "they are there to wrap him up when he is gone". Stubs is amazed, how can a man hold vengeance against the largest mammal on Earth, who in its own right is only doing what is right for him-to hunt for food and devour the enemies.
But as Ishmael narrates, " the Captain is seeking that one last hurrah, a final last achievement that would define his life. One moment to cherish, one moment that encapsulates the pinnacle of his life".
A Whale of A Moment
NowI have read and seen the Bridge on The River Kwai. In that Sir David Lean opus, I can recall the British POW who was asked to build a bridge over the Kwai River by the marauding Japanese Imperial Army. When asked by the Japanese Camp commander, the British Colonel replies, "there comes a moment when one needs to look back at his life and reflect if it was all worth it". This Bridge was that pinnacle that defined his life. For Ahab, killing Moby Dick was that Whale of a moment.
Epilogue
In the 1956 movie of the same name that starred my favorite actor, Gregory Peck (Moby Dick, Guns of Navarone, Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's), Peck portraying the handicapped Ahab searches the Oceans from Martha's Vineyard down to the Cape Horn, in the wake meeting 9 Gams (meeting of the captains of whaling ships on high seas), searching and searching for that White Whale and ultimately finding it in the Sea of Japan. In the end Moby Dick pulls Ahab into the Sea, the Pequod perishes. In the epilogue, which was not a part of the initial editions of Moby Dick, people questioned the role of the narrator. But in other editions where the Epilogue appears, Ishmael is the only survivor of Pequod who is lifted from the Sea by another whaling boat, to live and narrate this story.
Whenever I read Melville I am reminded of the incomplete business of my life, the fallacies I have lived through and superciliousness that has defined my existence. I wonder how many of us can boast of that Whale of a moment in our lives.