Castaway

The article I chose for this week is titled “Remapping Jonah’s Voyage: Melville’s Moby Dick and Kitto’s Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature” by Ilana Pardes. In it, Pardes argues that in Moby Dick, Melville “establishes a dialogue with biblical scholarship [that] sheds light both on his special fascination with contemporary exegetical discourses and on his ongoing attempt to redefine the Bible’s cultural role in antebellum America” (136). Therefore, Pardes says, all the characters in Moby Dick are Jonah in one way or another, but especially Pip, the little slave boy, who becomes a prophet through his anger after seeking “deliverance in vain” (151).

To provide some background information, the Book of Jonah is a didactic story that concerns a disobedient prophet who attempts to run away from his divine duties, is cast overboard by his shipmates, is swallowed by a fish only to be vomited up three days later, and sent on his way to Nineveh, a city on the brink of destruction at the hands of God. To his surprise, Nineveh listens to his prophecy of doom and repents immediately. Seeing their repentance, God spares them. This infuriates Jonah, who believes anyone as wicked as these people should be destroyed.

In this story, Jonah stands for a narrow and vindictive reality in which the Jews, as God’s chosen people, are intolerant of other nations and limit the mercy of God to their own. It is abhorrent to his way of thinking that Nineveh should escape his wrath. In this way, Pip parallels Jonah because he too, jaded by the actions of wicked men (slave owners), wants justice for himself and his people but gets none. But whereas Jonah fails to understand that the prophecy he delivers is a parable of mercy, showing that God’s threatened punishments are but the expression of a merciful will which instructs all men to seek forgiveness, Pip’s prophecy is negative and pessimistic. In Moby Dick, according to Pardes, “the God with whom they quarrel is anything but benevolent and merciful” (150). Pip, like Jonah, is cast to the sea by his shipmates because he is not as valuable to them as a whale, for in antebellum America, whale products were more valuable than slaves. When he is rescued several hours later, there is a marked change. Pardes states: “For Melville, a black Jonah is the ultimate victim of God’s harsh hand, much as he is the ultimate scapegoat for his shipmates. He is a Jonah whose sufferings are so acute that he never recovers after being cast into the surging sea” (151). Later, she says, “Pips affinity with the biblical prophet is evident not only in his being cast away, but also in the prophetic powers he acquires after witnessing and speaking God’s indifferent foot in the deep” (151). As the quest for the White Whale continues, he has visions of the ship being lost to the depths, which from this perspective ultimately signifies that the “deification of whites in America at the expense of the blacks will lead the ship of state to the brink” (151).

Like Jonah, Pip rages about the injustice of it all. How can he be a prophet for a God who almost arbitrarily saves some people and condemns others? Furthermore, how can he be a servant to a God who would allow such an atrocity as slavery occur, who would allow the wicked to prosper and the messengers of God look like disposable commodities? “Living with such paradoxes makes the life of the prophet one of unending torment,” Pardes argues (152). Pip, like Jonah, feels used in God’s game, and is so plunged into despair that colors the rest of their narratives. If disobedience has no meaning, then obedience must also have no meaning.