Katherine M. Williams

Musings: A Sense of Place in Moby-Dick

Mary Hunter Austin, a scholar of American Literature, wrote: “American literature is not only about the country but of the country, ‘flower of its stalk in root, in the way that Huckleberry Finn is of the great river, taking its movement and rhythm, its structure and intention, or lack of it, from the scene.”' In the same way, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's epic whaling novel, takes its movement, rhythm and structure from that voyage. This project seeks to evaluate Melville's use of place in two chapters of the book: “The Mast-Head” and “Cetology.” Through ecocriticism, this essay evaluates the ways that setting and place can inform our readings in order to show that there are moments in the book where Ishmael advocates an anti-whaling perspective. Leo Marx, a literary theorist, summarizes Ishmael's complex environmental beliefs:

Melville in effect puts his blessing upon the Ishmaelian view of life: a complex pastoralism in which the ideal is inseparably yoked to its opposite. It is a doctrine that arises at the “vital centre” of experience. At the same time Melville acknowledges the political ineffectuality of this symbol-makers truth.

This paper will illustrate several examples of this complex pastoralism.