The Phrenological Journal & Haunted Typebox Blog

“All visible objects, man, are but pasteboard masks,” say Ahab to Starbuck. And I think of Don Quixote’s pasteboard equivocations, his assault upon Master Pedro’s puppets. Just as the sea was bringing peace to dreamy Ishmael, the madness of Ahab errupts. It’s appropriate to bring up Quixote, but it’s Faustus who may be most convivial with the Pequod’s Captain, shouting down as he does the divine. And it’s not just in content but in form that Marlowe comes to light. Melville, not content to just reference, ney articulate, the bible and the reference work, turns the narrative to a play with stage directions, asides, and soliloqies. Yes, the play’s the thing.

As Ishmael takes to the sea, the style of narrative changes. On land a somewhat ecstatic, idiosyncratic narrator, at sea a man of ceremony, classification, strategy, ologies. He takes to the sea to escape a kind of death. On the Pequod he is outside of himself, even omniscient. Here too he brings us his text-within-text, his cetology (whose own form ‘quarto’ and ‘folio’ are noted just as the whales inside).

Ishmael notes the order of the Pequod, describes its society and stratifications at length. Just as the ship has unspoken orders, the ship brings order to our Ishmael.