“Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name must be elaborated to its denouement.”
-Edgar Allan Poe “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
How can we defend Melville against the implications of Poe’s remark?
Poe’s remark can be construed as an attack on Melville’s style of writing because it advocates that the plot must be written in a linear and teleological way. Poe further substantiates his claim by saying, “It is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points tend to the development of the intention[1].” He speaks about the importance of effect and argues that “When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect[2]” and when analysing his own poem The Raven he explains how he “provides the effect of the denouement[3].” The implication then, is that Poe is criticising any writer who deviates from this approach because in order for a text to be “worth the name” it must have a single, unambiguous “effect” that the author provides for the reader. The only way this can be achieved is for the plot to be“elaborated to its denouement” and include solely what is relevant to this. Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick exemplifies the direct opposite approach; the more the reader desires the denouement, the more it becomes as elusive as the whale itself, you think you have caught sight of it and then at the last moment it disappears again. To look at American literature in a wider context, Moby Dick revolutionised writing in many ways, the immediate one being the physical scale of his ambition. Poe wrote short “tales“, Melville’s friend Hawthorne wrote novels, but Moby Dick is an epic. This essay seeks to defend Melville’s style of writing by examining how the form of his epic must produce an unlimited number of meanings and effects and why this is so important to him. It will look at how he deliberately avoids elaborating the plot towards the denouement and how his experiments with form, digression, use of different protagonists and symbolism are so important to this process.
It is not the case that an epic by nature cannot be elaborated to is denouement, but were Moby Dick to have been an epic solely in the sense of the length of the plot, it would perhaps have been better received but had far less of an effect on posterity. One reason that is was not so popular was that Melville used the space afforded by the epic form to undertake a courageous “language experiment that struck many of its first readers as overwrought and bewildering[4].” Melville’s experiments with language and form are apparent from the outset, with the novel digressing before it has even begun with the inclusion of an etymology and extracts section. Why does Melville want the reader to have such a clear idea of what “The Whale” means, why not as Poe would, let the story tell us instead? One answer is that these precursors elucidate the immensity of the task Melville has set himself, he is not just writing a story but inserting his work into a tradition both physical and literary that spans the history of mankind. After finishing Moby Dick one feels it can be nothing but the final authority on whaling, yet Melville is happy to be both this and little more than a series of footnotes[5] in a subject that cannot be captured by a single individual, just as Ahab mistakenly thinks he can capture Moby Dick with a crew or single-handedly. This precedent is set in the etymology; for as long as there has been language there has been a word for the concept of the “whale” in every culture, yet just as no single mode of expression can fully capture it, neither can one single form, as Tyrus Hillway writes in his article Melville’s Art: One Aspect:
“Finally in Moby-Dick we see the miraculous blending of Melville’s actual experience, his reading, and the leaven of his metaphorical philosophizing; nearly a quarter of the book, it may be noted consists in descriptive materials based upon Beale and other authorities on the natural history of the whale[6].”
This statement aptly highlights the direct relation between modes of expression and his experiments with form. It implies that Melville has cannibalised much of his material from other sources, and the novel can be seen as a wholly cannibalistic work that consumes other forms such as sermons, songs, soliloquies and most voraciously encyclopaedic writings such as those by Beale. In doing this, he is not heeding what Poe warns against, which is including details unnecessary to the plot, and risks losing both the narrative tension and the reader’s interests. For Melville though digression does not deviate from the plot but strengthens its symbolism and gives it more meanings. There are two specific chapters that exemplify this idea, the first is “the whiteness of the whale”, which begins “What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.” (204) This is his prompt to then say everything there is possible about how language is used to define the concept of whiteness to express that the whale simultaneously embodies all of these definitions and yet no single one them. What is implied is the direct opposite, that the whiteness of the whale is so incomprehensible as to render all definitions meaningless. The second chapter is “the doubloon” in which after describing the coin in detail members of the crew in order of seniority try to read the meaning of their existence from looking at it. Ahab sees only himself, confirming his monomania, Starbuck sees God and the holy ghost guiding him to his duty, but it is Pip the cabin boy’s interpretation,” I look, you look, we look, ye look, they look,” (475) that Melville wants to stay in the reader’s mind[7]. The constant shift of viewpoint is so important to Melville as it once again mirrors the overall structure of the book; just as all forms of expression are limited in describing the whiteness of the whale or discovering the meaning of the doubloon, so all points of view are limited in expressing the full truth of the story.
This is reflected in the use of a trinity of protagonists in Moby Dick and the reader goes through three stages of realisation as the book progresses. At first it is Ishmael who appears to be the protagonist, then Ahab, but finally we know that it is the whale itself who is the chief protagonist and this is why the title of the book is “the whale.” Unlike Poe, Melville does not want to just tell the reader that this is the case, he leads them there circuitously, as John Parke writes in his essay Seven Moby Dicks, “The whale was there before Ahab, and outlived him, so we had best find out about him[8].” The importance of this finding out process for Melville is that the “effect” as Poe would put it, of this realisation, is magnified to the scale that a whale demands. This is also important in understanding Melville’s argument with Emerson and Thoreau, he believes that nature is not always a force for positive change, it is “neutral and unpurposeful in terms of human values[9]” and “does not concern itself with man’s destiny, the malevolence or benevolence he attribute to is obviously a mere projection of his own hate or love[10].” Moby Dick does not ask Ahab to pursue him, Ahab concerns himself with nature, not vice-versa and he projects his own hate onto the whale, for him it is the absolute embodiment of evil and he believes it his fate to kill it or die doing so. Unlike Emerson or Thoreau, Melville does not believe nature can save people, if they are already filled with hate then nature will reflect that hate and it will “prove malevolent, or prove to seem so and accommodate him in his own undoing – either physically or inwardly through upheaval in his own nature or both[11].” As Ishmael writes at the very start of the novel, “how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition” (7)
This sentence is ominously prescient and inserts the image of a doomed voyage in the reader’s mind before they have even begun. Given the importance of the voyage itself, it could be considered that there is even a fourth protagonist, the Pequod, which is described as “a cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies.” (78) Cannibalism has already appeared in this exploration of Moby Dick, with regards to the form of the novel, there is also a cannibal character called Queequeg and now it is used to describe the ship. It is though the question of enemies that is more politically symbolic. Who are the Pequod’s enemies, beyond the literal sense of whales and perhaps rival ships? If the ship is an allegory for American society, “When in the 1840’s the citizen of the United States pictures his nation’s development and situation, he imagined the republic as a ship, its history a voyage[12],” then America has external enemies too, but much more importantly to Melville it has enemies within, and this concept has almost unlimited manifestations within the novel. The enemy within the ship is the threat of a crisis or mutiny which is perpetually beneath the surface and is given allegorical significance with the digression into a short story about a mutinous crew. This reflects the political crisis that occurred during the months of Moby Dick’s composition:
“The crisis of 1850 marked the dramatic culmination of a complex series of political developments that had arrested national attention for nearly a decade. Melville himself had been deeply involved in the debate over the vexing questions of the 1840’s[13].”
The vexing questions referred to are that of slavery, which Melville was very concerned with as Ishmael asks at the start of the novel, “Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.” (6) The word slavery resonates on many levels, the crew are first slaves to their economic needs, then to Ahab’s command, and then finally to the whale itself. The question of slavery is the enemy within America, how can it be a democratic, egalitarian place whilst such a notion as slavery exists? The Pequod also mirrors this contradiction, it is at times a harmonious place where the captain passes a flagon amongst his crew, but it is also highly hierarchical with Ahab the “supreme lord and dictator.” (133) Melville constantly blurs the distinction between equality and inequality within the ship’s crew, sending it round and round in circles. At the start they are all equal in being outcasts from society and all part of a collective whole in their commercial venture. However they are unequal in that each is measured by his experience and usefulness and given a percentage of the profits according to this. They then become equal again because the pursuit of profit is entirely abandoned beneath Ahab’s single minded pursuit of Moby Dick. This realisation for the crew shows them that Ahab is the ship’s worst enemy within, a greater enemy than Moby Dick himself and the first mate Starbuck knows this when he says “But if wake thee not to death, old man, who can tell what unsounded deeps Starbuck’s body this day week may sink, with all the crew! ” (559) It is the enemy within Ahab that drives the novel to its close, and the ship to its catastrophic end. As the Peqoud is symbolic of America’s politics, Melville is anticipating her own catastrophic journey towards the Civil War which occurred only ten years after the publication of the novel. In order for it to be a vehicle for the political symbolism that Melville believes must be explored, the ship cannot complete its mission and catch Moby Dick, instead it must undertake a long journey to inevitable disaster allowing Melville to explore the unravelling tensions within the ship and within Ahab himself.
In conclusion, the reader who allows themselves to appreciate Melville’s digressive mode and not, like Poe have the denouement in constant view, will be rewarded with an innumerable number of meanings and effects, that strengthens their symbolic understanding of the plot. Even for those who are very sceptical of Melville’s style of writing, it is difficult not to admire what he has attempted to do and this unsigned review from Britannia 1851 supports this view:
“The plot is meagre beyond comparison, as the whole of the incident might very conveniently have been comprised in half of one of these three interminable volumes. Nevertheless, in his descriptions of character, in his analysis of the motives of actions, and in the novelty of the details of the whaling expedition, the author has not only a considerable knowledge of the human heart, combined with a thorough acquaintance with the subject he is handling, but a rare versatility of talent.[14]”
Perhaps the best riposte to Poe is a quote from Milton R Stern who himself is quoting another critic, “R.W.B. Lewis opined that “Melville understood the nature of the plot, plot in general, better than anyone else in his generation[15].” Whether this is true, is not for this essay to say, but it makes the point that a plot written in the style that Melville exemplifies is neither vague nor chaotic as he has often been accused of. It is intricately crafted to circumnavigate the theme to the very limits of his knowledge, which for some readers deviates from their enjoyment of the book, but for others surprises them with how much “beauty” as Poe might put it can be discovered in a book about whaling. As another unsigned review from John Bull in 1851 remarks, “Who would have looked for philosophy in whales, or poetry in blubber?[16]”
[1] The Philosophy of Composition, Edgar Allan Poe, 1846.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] From Andrew Delbanco’s introduction to Moby Dick, Penguin Classics, London, 2003, all further references will be to this edition
[5] According to R.E. Watters in his essay The Meanings of the White Whale, “Melville himself, through Ishmael “declares that his whole book is a draught-nay, but the draught of a draught” ” R.E. Watters, The Meanings of the White Whale from Discussion of Moby Dick Edited with an Introduction by Milton R. Stern, The University of Conneticut, D.C Heath and Company, Boston, 1960, p.77
[6] Tyrus Hillway, Melville’s Art: One Aspect Modern Language Notes, vol 62, no.7, The John Hopkin’s University Press, Nov 1947 pp 477-480 JSTOR archive, p.477-480 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2909436
[7] I have paraphrased from R.E. Watter’s essay The Meanings of the White Whale: “As William Ellery Sedgwick has pointed out in Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind, what pip is saying, in effect, is that although the object (the coin) remains the same, and the process or verb (“look”) remains the same, yet the one change in the subject of the verb makes the whole meaning different.” Whale, “Melville himself, through Ishmael “declares that his whole book is a draught-nay, but the draught of a draught” ” R.E. Watters, The Meanings of the White Whale from Discussion of Moby Dick Edited with an Introduction by Milton R. Stern, The University of Conneticut, D.C Heath and Company, Boston, 1960, p.78
[8] John Parke, Seven Moby Dicks from Discussion of Moby Dick Edited with an Introduction by Milton R. Stern, The University of Conneticut, D.C Heath and Company, Boston, 1960, p.68
[9] Ibid.
[10]Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Alan Heimert, Moby Dick and American Political Symbolism, American Quarterly, Vol.15, No.4 1963, The John Hopkin’s University Press, JSTOR Archive pp. 498-534, p.499 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710971
[13] Heimert Opus Cit. p.498
[14] From an Unsigned Review, Britannia, 8 November 1851, 714-15 from Melville The Critical Heritage, edited by Watson G Branch, The Critical Heritage Series, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1985.
[15] Milton R.Stern Some Techniques of Melville’s Perception Discussion of Moby Dick Edited with an Introduction by Milton R. Stern, The University of Conneticut, D.C Heath and Company, Boston, 1960, p.77
[16] Unsigned Review, John Bull, 25 October, 1851, 687 from Melville The Critical Heritage, edited by Watson G Branch, The Critical Heritage Series, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1985.
London to Norway 
Great and also Melville wrote superbly plotted short stories
And brilliant denouement poems