DUPLICATE IMAGERY IN "MOBY-DICK"

Author(s): Mary Ellen

Source: Modern Fiction Studies , Autumn 1962, Vol. 8, No. 3, HERMAN MELVILLE:
special number (Autumn 1962), pp. 252-264
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26277259

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 DUPLICATE IMAGERY IN MOBY-DICK

Sister Mary Ellen, I.H.M.

Most critics would agree that Herman Melville's symbolic vis

established him among the immortals of American literature
the Melville scholars who have paid tribute to his master
symbol in particular and imagery in general are F. O. Matthi
William Ellery Sedgwick,2 Howard Vincent,3 Nathalia Wright
ald Mason,5 and Newton Arvin.6 Most perceptive in his ev
of the whole range of imagery in Moby-Dick is Newton A
is evident through his pertinent remarks that Arvin real
potency of many minor images often passed over by critics
enthusiasm with the major ones. Despite his keen critical per
however, Arvin's evaluation is still too comprehensive to b
show the function of the many minor symbols supporting ma
He does admit that both major and minor symbols are "at th
time wonderfully various and powerfully interrelated."* I
interrelation of duplicate images used to establish the heroic c
of Ahab and the mythic character of Moby Dick that I h
demonstrate through a careful examination of the text.

Although almost every critic who approaches Moby-Dick

ample space to the study of Ahab, few have specifically consid
whale as an original and major artistic creation in the novel.
respect, Sedgwick's interpretation of the novel is especially p
ing: "Ahab is the hero, but the White Whale is the centr
acter."8 For him Moby Dick is the antagonist and Ahab, the p
ist, although Sedgwick believes the sea is "the most powerful
ville's symbols."9 Too often a critic concludes that the cetolog

1F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (New York, 1941), pp. 288-291.

•William EUery Sedgwick, Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind (Cambrid
pp. 96-107.
'Howard Vincent, The Trying-out of Moby-Dick (Cambridge, 1949), passim.
4 Nathalia Wright, Melville's Use of the Bible (Durham, 1949), pp. 21-SS.
■Ronald Mason, The Spirit Above the Dust (London, 1951), pp. 124-1S7.
• Newton Arvin, Herman Melville (New York, 1950), pp. 152-193.
* Arvin, p. 154.
8 Sedgwick, p. 97.
» Sedgwick, p. 98.

252

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ter exists primarily to give the novel "intenser literalness than it other
wise had."10 Although the factual chapters concerning whales may
serve this purpose, I cannot agree with these critics. Through these
apparently expository chapters, Melville was creating an immortal
antagonist, and, although he did adhere closely to facts, his metaphors
in his philosophic commentary added a symbolic dimension that no
whale before or since has ever enjoyed. Through the dramatic scenes
and the narrative of Ishmael, Melville was simultaneously creating his
protagonist, Ahab. For each significant metaphorical cubit he added
to the gigantic stature of the White Whale, either as Moby Dick or as
Sperm Whale, he added a similar if not identical one to the heroic
stature of Ahab. In his recent work The Long Encounter, Merlin
Bowen recognizes "the accumulated force of the image and the meta
phor" in the creation of Ahab's stature.11
The highest earthly role, kingship, was not lofty enough for Mel
ville's whale; Moby Dick must be a god. Ishmael reveals that whale
men declare "Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for
immortality is but ubiquity in time)."12 After first sighting Moby
Dick, Ishmael describes him as surpassing Jove "he so divinely swam"
(p. 539). Ahab, too, as Peleg first introduces him to Ishmael, is "a
grand, ungodly, godlike man" (p. 79). In the memorable scene with
the carpenter, Ahab soliloquizes: "Here I am, proud as Greek god"
(p. 468). After hearing the Parsee's deceiving prophecies, he cries,
"I am immortal then, on land and on sea" (p. 491).
But divinity needs the support of a terrestrial image, a monarch, and
so Moby Dick is also "a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown
has been put together for him . . (p. 332). Later in the novel
Ishmael discloses that at one time the whale was "king of creation";
not only the sea, but the whole world was his (p. 454). Melville
crowns Ahab king, also, in the memorable chapter "The Pipe." The
second metaphor in this instance is identical with Moby Dick's
title: "For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great
lord of Leviathans was Ahab" (p. 126). In one of Ahab's most dra
matic soliloquies, he asks, "Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear?
this Iron Crown of Lombardy" (p. 165). But the metaphors of god
and king would be merely ornamental unless Moby Dick and Ahab
be characterized by their divinity and royalty.

Concerning his portrayal of Ahab, Melville had recognized the

10 Arvin, p. 168.
u Merlin Bowen, The Long Encounter (Chicago, 1960), p. 145.
"Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or The Whale, ed. Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P.
Vincent (New York, 1952), p. 179. Hereafter all references to the novel will be included
within the article.

253

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challenge the captain of a whaling vessel posed for him. Through
Ishmael he expresses his problem:

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and
shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal
that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore,
all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what
shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for
in the deep, and featured in the unbodied airl (p. 144)

The word "outward" is significant here, for Melville creates his tragic
hero from within. Although outwardly he may seem just a Nantucket
whaling captain, inwardly he is the absolute autocrat who lives apart
from his crew. In Vincent's opinion, "Ahab's tragedy arises from his
isolation, from his aloneness."13 To this quality of exclusiveness and
isolation Melville constantly refers.

The three mates seldom entered the cabin of the Pequod, except at
meal time, and Ishmael observes that they lost little thereby, for "in
the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible"
(p. 150). "Both before and after the sailing of the Pequod, he had
hidden himself away with . . . Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness . .
(p. 461). In one of the most pathetic speeches made by Melville's
hero, he confides to Starbuck: "When I think of this life I have led;
the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled town of
a Captain's exclusiveness, . . . oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast
slavery of solitary command!" (p. 534). After the first day of the
chase Ahab admits the agony of his isolation: "Ahab stands alone
among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his
neighbors!" (p. 545). Moby Dick and the older members of his
species, the Sperm Whale, are also solitary and non-social. In the
chapter "The Chart" Ishmael designates Moby Dick as "one solitary
creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet" (p. 196) and as "one
solitary whale" (p. 199). The solitary jet of the spirit spout is a
prefigurement of Moby Dick. At one time Ishmael comments, "it is
not customary for such venerable Leviathans to be at all social"
(p. 349). In the presentation of the social habits of the Sperm Whale,
his factual account offers a striking resemblance to the character of
Ahab:

The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes
himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost uni
versally, a lone whale—as a solitary Leviathan is called—proves an ancient one.
Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but

u Vincent, The Trying-out, p. 116.

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Nature herself; and he takes her to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best
of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets, (p. 392)

Besides the quality of exclusiveness, the roles of god and king are
further enhanced by mystery when Melville blends his images from
archeology: the pyramid, the sphynx, and hieroglyphics. Nathalia
Wright is one of the few critics who recognize Melville's interest in
the antique, especially the archeological discoveries in Egypt, Baby
lonia, and Assyria. The mystery encircling Moby Dick is intensified
by his "high, pyramidical white hump" (p. 180) and "his pyra
midical silence" (p. 345). The markings on the outer surface of the
whale "are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers
on the walls of the pyramids hieroglyphics. . . . the mystic-marked
whale remains undecipherable" (p. 305). Ahab questions the inscru
tability of the whale in his dramatic soliloquy while viewing the
Sperm Whale's head, which "seemed a Sphynx's in the desert" (p.
309). After a consideration of the "pyramid" metaphor used for
Moby Dick, the account of Stubb's strange dream in Chapter 31 takes
on more prophatic meaning. "Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, a
blazing fool, kept kicking at it" (p. 127), Stubb tells Flask. The
"pyramid" image occurs twice again in his account, but the con
cluding words of advice from the merman are: . . for you can't
help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid?" (p. 128).
Whatever else Melville tries to convey through Stubb's dream, the
impenetrable quality of Ahab's character seems suggested. Any at
tempt to understand him is as futile as the second mate's stubbing
his toes on "that cursed pyramid." Even when Melville does not
explicitly use the Egyptian metaphors, he does continue to portray
pyramidical silence in his dramatic presentation of Ahab and his
expository development of Moby Dick.

Both are characterized by "an enchanted silence." In Ahab's medi

tation on the head of the Sperm Whale, he cries out with both
admiration and frustration: "O head! thou hast seen enough to split
the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is
thine!" (p. 310). Several times throughout the novel the Sperm
Whale's silence is recalled, for he has "scarcely anything of a tongue"
(p. 334) and, moreover, "the whale has no voice" (p. 369). He is a
"vast dumb brute of the sea," whose fear is "chained up and en
chanted in him" (p. 352). When Ahab is introduced in the novel,
Captain Peleg calls him a "grand, ungodly, godlike man" who "doesn't
speak much" (p. 79). He is the "wordless Ahab" (p. 233), who before
and after the sailing of the Pequod, "sought speechless refuge, as it
were, among the marble senate of the dead" (p. 461). So pervading
DUPLICATE IMAGERY IN "MOBY-DICK" 255

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are his silence and seclusion that "the isolated subterraneousness of
the cabin made a certain humming silence to reign there . . (p. 506).
Just as the whale's fear is "enchanted in him," so Ahab chooses to
maintain "an enchanted silence" (p. 509). Most skillfully does Mel
ville support his imagery of divinity, royalty, and antique mystery,
with the characteristics of a solitary and taciturn existence. One
means of expressing the effect of these qualities of Moby Dick and
Ahab on others is the image of the magnet.

This metaphor is especially forceful in expressing the influence

Ahab exerted over Starbuck. Ahab "knew, for example, that however
magnetic his ascendancy in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that
ascendancy did not cover the complete spiritual man . . (p. 210).
In the very next sentence Melville uses the magnet image for Moby
Dick: "Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced will were Ahab's,
so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain . . (p. 210).
The meaning of "his magnet" is clearly supported by Ahab's speech
on the alluring quality of the White Whale, "that accursed thing":
"He's all magnet!" (p. 439). In the chapter "The Needle" Melville's
"magnet" image subtly expresses the effect of the corposant episode
on Ahab's domination of the crew. Whether the loadstone virtue
were annihilated in violent storms "so that the before magnetic steel
was of no more use . . ." or only damaged, "the needle never again, of
itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the
binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate reaches all the others
that may be in the ship" (p. 509). It does not seem too presumptive
to consider the "magnetic steel" as a symbol for Ahab in the light of
the earlier uses of the image. The "magnet" image includes not only
Ahab but all the crew, for they have been magnetized by Ahab,
who was first magnetized by Moby Dick, his magnet. They are "all
the others" whom "the same fate reaches." This interpretation can
be further supported by Ishmael's remark involving the same meta
phor two paragraphs later: "But as ever before, the pagan harpoon
eers remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was
only with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from
inflexible Ahab's" (p. 510). Melville's use of the magnet for Moby
Dick, Ahab, and the crew is revealing in its implications. Just as in
the process of magnetization there is a change effected in the internal
structure of the component parts of the metal, so in the process of
magnetization by Moby Dick, there is an internal change effected
in the souls of Ahab and his crew.

Although the spout of the White Whale is frequently mentioned, it

is not his most outstanding characteristic, nor is it "so much his
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uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm
whales, but ... a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a
high, pyramidical white hump" (p. 180). In all Melville criticism
interpreting the meaning of the White Whale as a general or par
ticular symbol, no attention has been paid to the two prominent
images Melville created for his whale. Vincent records that the great
White Whale of the Pacific was established in sea tradition by 1834,
and that Melville was deeply impressed by the story of the Essex,
which was stove in by the battering ram or head of a Sperm Whale.
Although the whiteness of Moby Dick may have been suggested by
the albino whale, Mocha Dick, the "wrinkled forehead" and "pyra
midical hump" were deliberately created by Melville for Moby Dick.
So memorable an appearance had Moby Dick that "the peculiar
snow-white brow" and "his snow-white hump, could not but be unmis
takable" (p. 199).
When Moby Dick was first sighted by Ahab, "he raised a gull-like
cry in the air, 'There she blows!—there she blowsl A hump like a
snow hill! It is Moby Dick!' " (p. 538). Ishmael's descriptions also
include the "high sparkling hump" (p. 538) and the "dazzling
hump" (p. 539). The first instance of any relationship between Ahab
and the whale's hump is metaphorically expressed in the well-known
passage describing what the White Whale meant to Ahab: "He piled
upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and
hate felt by his whole race from Adam down . . ." (p. 181). Most
ironic then is Ahab's confession to Starbuck near the end of the voy
age: "But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel
deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise" (p. 535). In Stubb's
dream, the "badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back"
(p. 127) seems to represent Ahab, for in the preceding chapter Ahab
has just called attention to his "torn iron-grey locks" (p. 126). Stubb
even calls him "Mr. Humpback." Some idea of the appropriate sig
nificance of the hump for Moby Dick and for Ahab is suggested in
Ishmael's final statement about the whale's spinal cord: "This august
hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the larger vertebrae, and is,
therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould of it. From its rela
tive situation then, I should call this high hump the organ of firm
ness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale" (p. 348). Throughout
the novel Ahab's indomitable will is impressed upon the reader,
especially in Ishmael's account of his first appearance on the quarter
deck: "There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate,
unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedica
tion of that glance" (pp. 121-122).
DUPLICATE IMAGERY IN "MOBY-DICK" 257

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 It should be noted that no critic has considered either the frequency
or the significance of the usage of the most often recurring duplicate
image for Ahab and the whale, the "brow" or "forehead" image.
Besides the entire chapters "The Battering Ram" and "The Praire,"
which are expository chapters on the Sperm Whale's forehead, Mel
ville uses this image twenty-four times in speaking of Ahab, fifteen
times in referring to Moby Dick, and twenty-five times in general
description. Although there may be ambiguities in the meaning of
the "brow" image for Melville, there can be no doubt after examin
ing the text that he was intensely preoccupied with its suggestive
power. To be sure, imagery can flow from a writer's subconscious
during actual composition, but it is difficult to believe that this image
could have been used as frequently as it is, especially in relation to
the two chief figures in the novel, without conscious design on the
part of the artist.

Since Nathalia Wright made such a thorough study of the use

Melville made of the Bible, it is somewhat surprising that so im
portant an image, which appears twenty-five different times in the
Bible, should have been overlooked. Lloyd Jeffrey based his "Con
cordance to the Biblical Allusions in Moby Dick"*4 on Miss Wright's
work and, therefore, he also overlooked the rich Biblical allusions
the "brow" image offers. According to its use in the Bible, the fore
head is sacred, for on it the priest of the Old Law wore his sign of
consecration: "Holy to the Lord,"is and persons in the Apocalypse,
"the seal of God" or "the name of Christ and his Father."16 In one
instance, the name on the forehead is a mystery.17 Symbolically, a
hard forehead belies a stubborn and obstinate heart,1» and this type
of forehead is "as brass," the very kind Ahab orders for his "complete
man after a desirable pattern" (p. 466). For anyone who worships
the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead, the
wrath of God and punishment by fire are promised. From this brief
survey of the "forehead" references in the Bible, it is evident that
their similarities to Melville's "brow" image suggest a whole area of
research which should prove most enlightening.

Melville's interest in the "wrinkled brow" is expressed twice in

1849. In writing of Emerson to Evert Duyckinck in March of that
year, he commented: "I could readily see in Emerson, notwithstand

" Lloyd Jeffrey, "Concordance to the Biblical Allusions in Moby Dick," Bulletin of
Bibliography, XXI, 223-229 (May-August, 1956).
* Exodus, 28:36.
"Apocalypse, 7:2, 9:4.
"Apocalypse, 17:5.
"Ezechial, 3:7, Isaias, 48:4.

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ing his merit, a gaping flaw. It was, the insinuation, that had he lived
in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some
valuable suggestions. These men are all cracked right across the
brow."19 Aleema, the old priest in Mardi, written in the same year,
wears "upon his broad brow, deep-graven in wrinkles," "characters
still more mysterious, which no Champollion nor gypsy could have
deciphered."20

In Moby-Dick Melville's first reference to Ahab's forehead appears

in his portrayal of Starbuck, who could not "withstand those more
terrific, because more spiritual terrors which sometimes menace you
from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man" (p. 113).
After retreating from Ahab, Stubb mutters to himself, "Maybe he did
kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his
brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone" (p. 125). This is
the only allusion to the whiteness of Ahab's forehead. The image is
often associated with storms as when "with tornado brow" . . . "Ahab
leaped after his prey" (p. 222), or when he became more cheerful
"whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow" (p. 310). After
Starbuck warns Ahab, "Beware thyself, old man," the captain "with
an iron brow . . . paced to and fro in the little cabin; but presently
the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed" (p. 471). In the dramatic
scene with the carpenter Ahab laments the condition of his brow:
". . . aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for though thou see'st it here in
my flesh, it has worked down into the bone of my skull—that is all
wrinklesl" (p. 483). To Starbuck again, he admits the futility of his
life and "the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and smoking
brow" (p. 534), with which he hunted .the whale. In one of Ishmael's
final portraits of the tragic hero, Melville demonstrates fully his de
scriptive power and the brow of Ahab is again spotlighted: "Tied
up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm
and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes
of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn;
lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead
of heaven" (p. 533).

Quite fittingly, Ahab is the first to mention Moby Dick's forehead,

when he challenges the crew with "a white-headed whale with a
wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw" (p. 159). The "snow-white
wrinkled forehead" (p. 180) or "the milky-white head and hump, all

"Willard Thorp, Herman Melville: Representative Selections (New York, 1938),

p. 372.
30 Herman Melville, Mardi, quoted by Howard Vincent and Luther Mansfield (eds.) in
notes to Moby-Dick (New York, 1952), p. 775.

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crow's feet and wrinkles" (p. 435) is Ishmael's manner of referring to
the White Whale before the Pequod actually encounters him. When
the ship finally approached him, Ahab "saw the vast, involved wrinkles
of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it . . . went the glis
tening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead . . (p. 539).
Throughout Ishmael's account of the three-day chase, Moby Dick's
forehead is the focal point of the conflict. On the first day, "Moby
Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly
transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated
forehead lengthwise beneath the boat" (p. 541). After he tossed Ahab
"flatfaced" into the sea, Moby Dick lay "vertically thrusting his
oblong white head up and down in the billows; ... so that when
his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet out of
the water—the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves, daz
zlingly broke against it" (p. 542). On the second day Ahab decided
to "take the whale head-and-head, —that is, pull straight up to his
forehead, —a not uncommon thing" (p. 550). Moby Dick, however,
after dashing Flask's and Stubb's boats together, "dashed his broad
forehead" against the bottom of Ahab's boat "and sent it, turning
over into the air" (p. 551). On the final day of the conflict Ahab on
seeing his prey cries: "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third
time, Moby Dick!" (p. 557). Melville in this symbolically dramatic
speech brings the duplicate images together. While Moby Dick glided
toward the Pequod, "retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were
in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the
solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow,
till men and timbers reeled" (pp. 564-565).
The "wrinkled brow" is the most revealing duplicate image Mel
ville attributes to Ahab and Moby Dick. Its significant importance he
substantiates by devoting two chapters to its analysis. In the chapter
"The Praire" he offers a detailed phrenological analysis of the Sperm
Whale's forehead, which supports the two images of divinity and
royalty discussed above. After claiming that the full front of the
whale's head is sublime, Melville subtly moves into a eulogy on the
significance of all brows, animal and human. "The curled brow of
the bull has the touch of the grand in it," while "the elephant's brow
is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as that great
golden seal affixed by Emperors to their decrees. It signifies—'God:
done this day by my hand' " (p. 344). This type of brow, he grants,
is not too common. He explains that above the eyes "in the fore
head's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending
there to drink . . ." (p. 344). So immensely magnified is the high
and mighty dignity in the Sperm Whale's brow that viewing the full
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front of his head "you feel the Deity and the dread powers more
forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature" (pp.
344-345). It is "one broad firmament of a forehead pleated with
riddles" (p. 345). From this philosophizing we learn that "the
wrinkled brow" is a thoughtful one pleated with unsolved riddles.
The thoughtful brow is grand and majestic and wears the seal of
divinity upon it. In the chapter "The Battering Ram" Melville
stresses the paradoxical destructive power of the same sublime fore
head of the Sperm Whale. The recognition of this "battering ram
power" of the whale's forehead "is a vital point," for anyone who is
not convinced of this truth will "forever remain an infidel" in respect
to one of the most appalling events in all recorded history, the sinking
of the Essex (pp. 334-335). Since the wrinkled forehead is the sign
of the "thinking" man, the aspiring "sea-man," Ahab, and of the
grand and godlike king of the sea, Moby Dick, it is most fitting that
they should ultimately struggle "forehead to forehead" to ascertain
which one shall be supreme.

Whether the development of Moby Dick and Ahab through du

plicate images, all of which could not be considered in this paper,
was a conscious or subconscious accomplishment of Melville cannot
be definitely known. The evidence presented from the text does admit
that such a duplication exists. It is important to consider briefly,
then, what effect such a duplication of images might have on the novel
as a whole particularly in its relations to the major symbols, and
what, therefore, it has to do with the author's philosophic view. The
most encompassing imagery in the novel is the land-sea dichotomy,
on which note Ishmael opens his account of his whaling venture.
The lengthy panegyric on the symbolic allurement of the sea is
climaxed with reference to the story of Narcissus, "who because he
could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain,
plunged into it and was drowned" (p. 3). Melville then adds the
philosophic application: "But that same image, we ourselves see in
all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
life; and this is the key to it all" (p. 3). What at first seems so clear
in this climax fades into ambiguity upon close scrutiny. The idea
of the mirroring quality of water, however, does seem explicit enough.
Two eminent critics have interpreted this climatic passage. Matthies
sen considers the tormenting image of the self as the image of the
ungraspable phantom of life.21 Feidelson's interpretation agrees with
Matthiessen's, but he goes one step further when he states that the
"image is not merely self-reflection, but the embodiment of thought,

* Matthiessen, p. 287.

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the matching phantom in the sea of forms."22 If the matching phan
tom of Ahab's image in the sea be Moby Dick, then the duplicate
imagery in their characterization would intensify and support this
basic concept. The duplicate imagery would also be consistent with
the inherent ambiguity of the author's philosophy, which lauds the
men who dive and yet admits the possibility of self-destruction for
the diver.

Since the duplicate imagery focuses attention on the Ahab-Moby

Dick relationship, we may expect this mirroring dimension to broaden
our understanding of the protagonist, Ahab. Critics may differ in
their specific diagnoses of Ahab's mental state, but all would certainly
agree that his is not a normal one, that he is suffering from some
kind of psychosis whether it be the monomania so often stressed or a
more complex type of derangement. It is most interesting, therefore,
to consider one of the psychological processes defined and discussed
by Carl Jung which concentrates on the relationship between a sub
ject and an object, namely, projection.

Projection is a process of dissimulation wherein a subjective content is estranged

from the subject and, in a sense, incorporated in the object. There are painful,
imcompatible contents of which the subject unburdens himself by projection,
just as there are positive values which for some reason are uncongenial to the
subject. . . . Projection is based upon the archaic identity (q.v.) of subject and
object, but the term is used only when the necessity has already arisen for
resolving identity with the object. This necessity arises when the identity is
disturbing, i.e., when, through the absence of the projected content, the process
of adaptation is materially prejudiced, so that the restoration of the projected
content becomes desirable to the subject.23

When the form of projection is active, it leads to a differentiation

and separation of subject from object and is characteristic of paranoia,
which ends in the total isolation of the subject. The applicability
of projection to the Ahab-Moby Dick relationship seems quite pos
sible since the whale itself is an archetype and Ahab's projected
images do seem to be drawn from his collective unconscious since
they contain "not only all the fine and good things that humanity
has ever thought and felt, but the worst infamies and devilries of
which men have been capable."24 The process of projection seems
rather clearly expressed in the frequently quoted passage in the
chapter "Moby Dick," in which Ishmael discusses what the White

22 Charles Feidelson, Jr., Symbolism and American Literature (Chicago, 1953), p. 29.
» Carl Jung, Psychological Types or the Psychology of Individuation, trans. H. Godwin
Baynes (New York, 1926), p. 582.
"Carl Jung, "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology," The Collected Works of Carl
Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York, 1953), VII, 69.

262 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

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Whale meant to Ahab: "He piled upon the whale's white hump the
sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from
Adam down . . (p. 181). The acceptance of the burden he tried
to project on Moby Dick is voiced by Ahab at the conclusion of
the novel when he admits to Starbuck: "I feel deadly faint, bowed,
and humped as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled
centuries since Paradise" (p. 535). Since the projected image of the
hump dates back to Adam, it does seem to proceed from Ahab's
collective unconscious and to possess the primordial quality typical of
projected images.

Besides considering the meaning of projection, it is also relevant

here to consider the influence which projected images exert upon the
subject. Jung explains that because of their specific energy—"for
they behave like highly charged autonomous centres of power—they
exert a fascinating and possessive influence upon the conscious mind
and can thus produce extensive alterations in the subject."25 This
effect seems applicable to Moby Dick, whose magnetic power Ahab
explicitly admits in the novel. The characteristic effect of the arche
typal image, according to Jung, is that it "seizes hold of the psyche
with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds
of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation),
loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike."26
All these effects are surely observable in Ahab.

The possibility of Moby Dick's relationship to Ahab's inner self

has been suggested by several Melville scholars. Lewis Mumford was
the first to intuit such a correspondence, although he inverted it
when he wrote: "Ahab himself in AE's words becomes the image of
the thing he hates."27 Richard Chase agrees with Mumford, for he
believes that the pursuit of the whale transforms Ahab into the
likeness of what he pursues.28 William Ellery Sedgwick was the first
critic to propose the relationship which the projection theory offers:
"He [Moby Dick] stands for the inscrutable mystery of creation, as
he also stands for what man sees in creation of himself."29 The first
critic to suggest the projection theory as such was the psychologist
Henry A. Murray;30 however, his application of his thesis is trans
ferred to an analysis of the psychological state of Melville, not Ahab.
The projection theory I have offered for its applicability to Ahab

"Jung, "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology," p. 69.

"Jung, "Two Essays on Analytical Psychology," p. 70.
" Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville (New York, 1929), p. 138.
"Richard Chase, Herman Melville: A Critical Study (New York, 1949), p. 101.
■ Sedgwick, p. 112.
•"Henry A. Murray, "In Nomine Diaboli," New England Quarterly, XXIV (December,
1951), 435-452.

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and Moby Dick as subject and object, respectively, and not to Mel
ville. At the time he was writing Moby-Dick, Melville's state of mind
could not have been comparable to that of Ahab, for as artist Mel
ville exercised a definite control over his characterization which could
not have functioned had he shared Ahab's derangement. In view
of the possibility of Ahab's projecting characteristics of himself to
Moby Dick, the duplicate imagery used by Melville takes on a psy
chological significance. It substantiates the psychological relationship
between Ahab and the White Whale and offers some insight into
Ahab's inner struggle. This is, however, definitely not the only sig
nificance of the relationship between the two, for the metaphysical
one looms large in this novel. The attempt of Ahab to adjust himself
to the world of Nature involves the tremendous problem of evil.
Although in the scale of creation Ahab is superior to the whale, in
the scale of physical power he is admittedly inferior. If, however,
Ahab's inner struggle with the self is accepted, the duplicate imagery
demonstrated above is truly functional and another proof of the
artistic superiority of Melville.

264

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