Straddling the Will of a Bipolar God
Straddling the Will of a Bipolar God In his novel, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville uses one man's journey on a whaling vessel to symbolize the epic of the experience of the individual. In this epic, there is a double task for each of us, first to discover our own meaning, and finally to put that meaning against the backdrop of a universe that may not regard it one way or the other. Is there an elemental truth, justice, or fate, or do these only exist in the minds of mortals?
Subjectivity
An important concept in the novel is the idea of subjectivity. The world, and one's own role within it, would not be a complicated matter, or worth the multitude of pages Melville spends on the issue, if there were a simple, objective, and correct way to gauge this. The thing that complicates is the fact that there are so many individuals, and each has his/her own interpretation of the truth. To illustrate this point, Melville employs the use of two inkblot style tests. The first test is administered to Ishmael alone, although many have undertaken the exercise at other times. The inkblot is the smoke-soiled painting over the fireplace at the Spouter Inn, which Ishmael describes as a 澱oggy, soggy, squitchy picture(Melville, 26), that 吐roze you to it...to find out what that marvelous painting meant(Melville, 26). Why should the painting mean anything? Isn't it just a picture? The thing that Melville is raising here, is the human inclination to read meaning into everything. Clearly, the artist did not paint this picture for Ishmael, or obscure it with smoke to fascinate him, or encode arcane truths into it. On the contrary, the subject is bestowing this role upon the object, and it is the subject's attention that makes it of any value whatsoever. Melville tests the crew of the Pequod in a similar fashion, and their psych examination is the doubloon nailed to the mast, promised to the slayer of Moby-Dick. One would think that the fixed images and etchings of the coin
Subjectivity
An important concept in the novel is the idea of subjectivity. The world, and one's own role within it, would not be a complicated matter, or worth the multitude of pages Melville spends on the issue, if there were a simple, objective, and correct way to gauge this. The thing that complicates is the fact that there are so many individuals, and each has his/her own interpretation of the truth. To illustrate this point, Melville employs the use of two inkblot style tests. The first test is administered to Ishmael alone, although many have undertaken the exercise at other times. The inkblot is the smoke-soiled painting over the fireplace at the Spouter Inn, which Ishmael describes as a 澱oggy, soggy, squitchy picture(Melville, 26), that 吐roze you to it...to find out what that marvelous painting meant(Melville, 26). Why should the painting mean anything? Isn't it just a picture? The thing that Melville is raising here, is the human inclination to read meaning into everything. Clearly, the artist did not paint this picture for Ishmael, or obscure it with smoke to fascinate him, or encode arcane truths into it. On the contrary, the subject is bestowing this role upon the object, and it is the subject's attention that makes it of any value whatsoever. Melville tests the crew of the Pequod in a similar fashion, and their psych examination is the doubloon nailed to the mast, promised to the slayer of Moby-Dick. One would think that the fixed images and etchings of the coin