Lessons in mortality in Moby-Dick, or, The Whale
an essay by Troy Ernest Hill
Ishmael survives the dangerous metaphorical truth-seeking journey in Moby-Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville (1819-1891) with a new-found wisdom gleaned from his experiences throughout the novel, particularly with regard to his relationship with Queequeg. Scholars have argued that Moby-Dick is not simply a satire of Transcendentalism but both a criticism and endorsement of certain aspects of its ideals, such as self-reliance (Cowan), and that the novel advocates by Ishmael’s example the development of one’s own independently derived philosophy, inspired rather than dictated by Transcendentalism (Romero). This paper focuses on how this independent approach—that neither entirely submits to or rejects the past, a particular religion, Transcendentalism, or science and reason—informs Ishmael’s changed attitude toward death demonstrated in the epilogue. Ishmael’s evolved wisdom is elucidated by comparing and contrasting other key characters’ perspectives on and response to mortality and trauma.
Ahab epitomizes the single-minded, solitary self-reliant Transcendental ideal. He calls himself lord of the ship, “’There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod’” (517; ch. 109), and describes his life of solitude, “’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’” (590; ch. 132). This glorification of solitariness is a core concept of Transcendentalism and evident in Nature, a fundamental Transcendental text: “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society” (Emerson). Melville makes an extreme example of these principles in Ahab, including the character’s view of his own mortality, which is fittingly singular and self-aggrandized. When the Parsee presents the ominous prophecy of what must come to pass before the captain’s death, Ahab, rather than reading it as a warning, interprets the riddle to be a promise of his own immortality. Exhibiting hubris, he believes with defiance (note the mocking laughter) that, unlike every other human being, he can triumph over death itself, “’I am immortal then, on land and on sea,’ cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;--‘Immortal on land and on sea’” (542; ch. 117). Just as Macbeth interprets the witches’ prophecies as guaranteeing his life and kingdom, Ahab foolishly convinces himself of his own invincibility.The dangers of Ahab’s singular pursuit of conquering the unknowable, as dramatized through his hunt of the White Whale, are warned of in the beginning of the novel:
In the chapter that precedes the final three-day chase of Moby Dick, Ahab is depicted in a similar position at Narcissus, leaning over the side of the ship and watching how “his own shadow sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity” (590; ch. 132). When Starbuck approaches him, having seen the single teardrop Ahab sheds into the ocean, Ahab bemoans with remorse his life of solitude, yet believes there is no altering his own course. He recognizes that some “cruel, remorseless emperor commands” him. Ahab does not exercise the free will necessary to avoid what he sees as his fate or to alter the forces that are driving him, despite the fact that he can recognize the danger. Throughout the novel, he is shown to posses a Calvinist, unmoving view of fate:And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. 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. (5; ch. 1).
Just before the final chase, Ahab again speaks of the futile cycle of life controlled by fate: “’We are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike’” (592; ch. 132).“Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid out with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!” (183; ch. 37)
This swirling imagery appears again in the epilogue when Ishmael is caught in a literal vortex but manages to escape this symbol of fate by an act of chance—the subsiding of the vortex into a “creamy pool” and the emergence of the coffin life-buoy just as he reaches the “button-like black bubble at the axis” (625; epilogue). It is a combination of chance and free will that results in Ishmael being tossed from Ahab’s boat and not returning to it with the other two oarsmen. He is left “afloat and swimming.” Presumably he could have swum back to the boat but instead swims just far enough away from the scene of conflict ultimately to avoid being sucked under by the vortex created by the sinking ship. Of course Ishmael could not foresee Moby Dick ramming the ship, so his survival is due to a combination of free will, fate, and chance. Earlier in the novel, Ishmael establishes a keen metaphor for the interplay of fate, free will, and chance as related to mat-making:
Ishmael accepts that circumstances are beyond his control but also sees that a person’s choices affect one’s life and the lives of others. In the epilogue, Ishmael must rely on the chance appearance of the Rachel for his rescue, the captain of which is still searching for his son and other lost sailors, fulfilling a duty that Ahab refused. Queequeg’s coffin acting as life buoy for Ishmael and the Rachel’s captain choosing to stop his own search to help Ishmael both symbolize cooperation between fellow men, in contrast to the pure self-reliance of Ahab; chance, in terms of the appearance of the life buoy and the Rachel in the right place at the right time; and free will, as the Rachel’s captain has made deliberate choice to continue a fairly hopeless hunt (days after the loss of his son’s boat) and to delay his hunt by helping Ishmael. Perhaps just as Queequeg decides to postpone his own death due to an unfinished task, Ishmael’s desire to live on to tell the story of the Pequod is another thread of free will woven into his survival. Unlike Ahab, Ishmael accepts the interplay of fate, free will, and chance with regard to his mortality.… chance, free will, and necessity … all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course … free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance … by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events. (234; ch. 47)
Ahab’s view of life and death as static and tiresome is demonstrated in “The Gilder” chapter. Despite the calm weather, the sunny sky, and the overall sense of a “seamless whole” (535, ch. 114) inspired by the seascape, Ahab can only very briefly find joy. He quickly laments that calm cannot last because it is always overtaken by storms and describes his view of life as a relentlessly wearing futile cycle:
For Ahab, experience and maturity end only in unresolved questions, and the unanswerable is a source of misery. Human beings are like orphans who can only know their lost fathers by dying themselves. All is futile and unknowable—an endless cycle without progress. Ahab desires a fixed, absolute philosophical answer, if only to own, control, or kill it, and is pained by the sense that his endless wanderings and searches will never land him at any point of resolution.“There is no steady retracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:--through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” (535; ch. 114)
The use of the word “orphan” in Ahab’s speech connects to the last line of the epilogue: “It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan” (625). Unlike Ahab who despairs at the unknowable and ungraspable, Ishmael is able to accept that the universe and ultimate truth are unattainable. Though the line literally refers to the captain’s son and the other lost adolescent of the Rachel, the epic’s ending calls for a broader reading. Melville chooses not to refer to the captain but to the ship, suggesting the members of the crew as communal rescuer rather than an individual as hero. The inclusion of the word “another” and the use of the plural “children,” in contrast to Ahab’s isolation, suggests a brotherhood in which all men are orphans in need of rescuing.
Bulkington is also an archetype of the self-reliant man, though presented in a more positive light. In the principal Bulkington chapter, “The Lee Shore,” Ishmael celebrates and eulogizes this character who is driven unalterably to the danger of the sea, which represents the search for philosophical meaning, i.e., “that mortally intolerable truth” (116; ch. 23). While he may represent a more admirable side of self-reliance in contrast to Ahab, his unalterable need to ship is just as single-minded as Ahab’s vengeful mission to find and kill Moby Dick. Ishmael celebrates Bulkington’s independent nature, “better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!” (117; ch. 23). Yet the chapter is full of death-related language: “… deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.” Because no details of his death are given, the reader can reasonably assume that he perishes with the sinking of the Pequod. While Ishmael lauds the man’s adventurous spirit and dedication to facing the infinite no matter the danger, he also points to the inevitable fatal end of such single-mindedness. He asks, “Terrors of the terrible! Is all this agony so vain?” It would seem the answer is yes. The one-page chapter is said to be Bulkington’s only memorial, and it is full of hostile and violent language: “vindictive bows … malicious waves … tempestuous term.” Bulkington moves away from “all that is kind to our mortalities … only to find her bitterest foe” (116; ch. 23). For the self-reliant man, death is approached combatively, as “the other”—a separate entity in opposition to oneself.
Ishmael learns a different approach to mortality from Queequeg and describes the islander’s possession of a certain wisdom while on death’s threshold:
Queequeg embraces and fully prepares for his death when it seems imminent, though on his own terms. He rejects the sea-custom of being buried in a hammock and designs his own death ritual—the coffin canoe—that combines the pagan customs of his native island with a Nantucket tradition he observed and that relates to the life of whaling he has chosen for himself. He has placed in his coffin his harpoon, boat paddles, biscuits, water, a scoop of earth, a piece of sail cloth for a pillow, and his idol, Yojo. He embraces the aspects of his past that are meaningful to him and tokens of the life he has chosen, which is drastically different from the world he grew up in. He does not spurn the past or allow himself to be defined by it. He desires material comfort (food, water, and pillow) as well as religious symbolism. In this way, Queequeg is an example of the independent thought that Ishmael comes to represent; he does not adhere to one religion or philosophy, but creates his own with aspects of various traditions he deems significant. This approach is in contrast to the Transcendental ideal of rejecting the past altogether as well as the rejection of physical pleasure, represented in Ahab’s discarding of his pipe.… his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. (520; ch. 110)
In the epilogue, Ishmael includes eclectic references to describe his near-death experience, symbolizing his own respect for the past and literature. The epigram comes from the Bible’s Old Testament Book of Job, and Ishmael compares himself to the figure Ixion from Greek mythology. On the other hand, this reference symbolizes a break from the past in that Ixion murders his father-in-law, disrupting tradition, and goes on to try and seduce Zeus’s wife. While Ixion is forever bound to a fiery spinning wheel, Ishmael escapes the wheeling circle created by the sinking of the ship. Ishmael, like Queequeg, can use the past for his own enrichment but is not trapped by it either.
Queequeg, unlike the combative Ahab, accepts and even embraces his mortality. He insists on not only trying out his coffin but also having the lid placed over him. Clearly he accepts death if it is his time to die. He makes “every preparation for death” (523; ch. 110). “’Rarmai’ (it will do; it is easy)” (522; ch. 110), he says of the coffin when it is finished. Perhaps it is partly due to his acceptance and preparation for death that he is able to rally from it. Another reason given for his recovery is that he remembers an unfinished task and therefore “changes his mind about dying.” He affirms that “whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure” (523; ch. 110). Queequeg demonstrates a free will that is almost supernatural—having the ability to choose between life and death, and yet he also possesses a deep acceptance of fate as demonstrated by his preparation and willingness to die. Rather than being in a state of isolated opposition to death, he accepts being a part of a larger universe while maintaining a certain degree of self-determination within that universe.
In contrast to Ahab’s fixedness, there is a fluidity in Queequeg’s view of life and death and in the transition from one to the other:
There is movement and acceptance in this vision of death: the canoe literally moves on the water and without the control of its passenger to steer. Unlike Ahab and Bulkington, Queequeg accepts that he cannot entirely control the journey to death and the afterlife. The imagery of the seas and heavens intermixing also speaks to a view of oneness in the universe and in life and death—a wholeness that is at odds with Ahab’s isolationist view.… for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way … he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages. (521; ch. 110)
When Queequeg recovers from his illness, he turns his coffin into a sea chest to hold his clothes and carves into the lid the tattoos that adorn his body, which are said to be:
These symbols that in some way capture the mysteries of the universe are important enough to Queequeg that he carries them over from his body onto his coffin. Despite not understanding their specific meaning, he accepts them unquestioningly. Unlike Ahab who sees the tattoos and calls them “’devilish tantalization of the gods’” (524; ch. 110), Queequeg does not feel the need to possess or conquer the truth. He accepts the truth, however inscrutable, as part of himself, part of life, and part of death—represented by his transferring the images onto his coffin.the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. (524; ch. 110)
In one of the chapters that places Ishmael in the years following the story of the Pequod, he demonstrates some of the wisdom gleaned from Queequeg’s near-death experience. Ishmael recounts that when visiting his royal friend Tranquo at Tranque, he tours a whale’s skeleton that has been made into a temple. He describes how the ribs are decorated and how vines and other vegetation grow up all around the bones: “Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grin god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories” (490; ch. 102). In Ishmael’s post-Pequod life, he has attained the wisdom to see that life and death are intermingled and interdependent—in essence inseparable.
Ishmael goes on to measure the skeleton of the whale in Tranque with the cool interest of a scientist or archeologist, seeing “no living thing within; naught was there but bones” (490; ch. 102). He describes museums in America and England where one can view whale skeletons for various fees, contrasting the Western approach to death—in this case through the lens of science and commerce—with the primitive religious transformation of the whale skeleton into a chapel that intermingles life and death.
Ishmael tattoos the dimensions of the whale he has measured on his right arm in order to secure such “valuable statistics.” Because he wants to preserve space on his body for a poem he is composing, he leaves out the inch portion of the measurements as they are not fitting for the colossal nature of the whale; the exactitude of science is incapable of capturing the full immensity of the whale. The tattooing begs comparison with Queequeg, the character in the novel most associated with tattoos and whose tattoos are said to represent the mysteries of the universe. Whales also represent the unknowable mysteries of the universe in Moby-Dick. Ishmael tattooing the whale’s skeletal measurements on his body parallels Queequeg and symbolizes Ishmael’s capacity, by the end of the novel, to embrace death and the unknowable as part of his own life. The odd intermixing of scientific measurements and poetry as tattoos also speaks to the mixed-bag philosophy that Ishmael embraces: he is adopting a practice of South Pacific islanders usually associated with spiritual matters but instead of mythic iconography chooses to adorn his body with statistics—representing science and reason—that are the measurements of a whale skeleton—representing the unknowable mysteries of the universe, unresolvable philosophical questions, as well as mortality—alongside poetry, representing art and literature.
Ishmael, though clearly fascinated by scientific cataloguing throughout the novel, refers to the limitations of a scientific approach to understanding in the next chapter, in which he points out, “How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untraveled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton” (494-495; ch. 103). The only way to comprehend the whale is to witness him alive, though at the risk of one’s own life: “Only in the heart of the quickest perils; only within the eddyings of his angry flukes” (495; ch. 103). In order to truly be alive and bear witness to life at its most majestic and powerful, one risks losing his own life. Part of the paradox that Ishmael learns is that true living puts one at the threshold of death, and Queequeg certainly sets that example in his fearless heroic acts that Ishmael witnesses throughout the novel.
Melville invites comparison between Ishmael and Pip’s responses to facing the infinite sea alone. Chapter 93, “The Castaway,” which details Pip’s isolation at sea, ends with Ishmael explaining that he will eventually tell of similar abandonment. The experience of being alone in the vast expanse of the sea is a metaphor for facing the ultimate truth of an indifferent God and universe and can also be read as a metaphor for death. Ishmael says with regard to Pip’s trauma, “The awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God!” (453; ch. 93). Pip must face alone “the wondrous depths … the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities … and God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom” (453-454, ch. 93). As a consequence, Pip gains celestial insight but is no longer able to function in the practical world. The crew sees him as mad, though he becomes the voice of deeper truths. For Pip, these two poles, ultimate truth and practical reality, are irreconcilable. Melville takes this idea further in his novel Pierre, or The Ambiguities, in which “Heaven’s own Truth” is described as being out of sync with “man’s truth” (211-212; Bk. XIV, ch.iii).
Ishmael’s promise to describe “what like abandonment befell myself” (454; ch. 93) is fulfilled in Moby-Dick’s epilogue in which Ishmael describes spending “almost one whole day and night” at sea after flying from Ahab’s boat as Pip flew from Stubb’s. Unlike Pip, however, Ishmael does not go mad by having to face stark isolation. Ishmael is able to survive being left alone at sea because he has learned that one must incorporate deep philosophical experiences into practical reality rather than be lost in them. In “The Try-Works” chapter, we see Ishmael almost capsize the ship from being lost in philosophical reverie. He learns from this experience that one must face the “dark side of this earth,” but not “look too long in the face of the fire” (464-465; ch. 96). He describes the type of person who can face deep philosophical truths and incorporate them into daily life rather than being paralyzed or ruined by them: “There is a wisdom that is woe, but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces” (465; ch. 96).
In “The Mast-head” chapter, Ishmael describes the lure of the meditative state induced by the sea while being on watch, but also points out the impracticality of those disposed to philosophical thought in the role of whale watching. In the end of the chapter, he goes further to point to the physical danger of being lost in deep thought while on duty up in the precarious position of the masthead. Yet returning to the individual self—the ego—after being at one with the sea and all “time and space” is described as a “horror.” There is the literal risk of falling and dying, but also the disturbing sense of having to return to individuated reality after having an “enchanted” transcendent experience. Ishmael demonstrates the capacity to embrace philosophical reverie—of even facing the abyss of meaning that is the ultimate destination of philosophical pursuit—and the importance of the ability to return to everyday practicality in order to function in the world and not put oneself and others in physical danger.
The loss of self through unification with the natural world is a kind of transcendence described throughout the novel and speaks to seeing the individual as part of a greater whole. Ishmael understands that is it the survival of the group that matters more than the survival of the individual: “Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality” (503-504; ch. 105). While the idea of nature as a means of transcendence is a Transcendental concept embraced and challenged in the novel, Ishmael goes further to understand the idea of the individual being at one with the larger natural universe—a core principle in Eastern thought and Buddhism, in which Melville was interested (Pritchard 37). While Melville scoffs at Goethe’s “live in the all” idea in an 1851 letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he goes on to say that there is validity to the concept though the mistake lies in universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion:
Melville demonstrates through Ishmael the ability to be at one with his natural surroundings and to experience transcendence in nature but not at the expense of losing the ability to hold onto the coffin life-buoy as a means of practical survival. Ishmael is able to appreciate this aspect of Transcendentalism and Eastern philosophy while incorporating them into the specifics of his own situation in a practical way that enhances his experience rather than putting him in physical danger or the danger of being played by “the mischief with the truth.” In the epilogue, Ishmael describes his castaway state beatifically, suggesting that he is in a tranquil state, at one with the world, life, and the possibility of death. Rather than being panicked about the potential to be lost and alone for an undetermined amount of time in the infinite expanse of the sea and the threat of the elements, starvation, and drowning, he is at peace with the world, nature, his own life and mortality, and seemingly even the loss of the crew, including his dear friend Queequeg. The calm waters described speak to the wisdom he has achieved—a capacity to accept and embrace what is around him. The sharks have become docile, reflecting Ishmael’s serene state. This state of acceptance and peace is in stark contrast to the Ishmael who we see at the beginning of the novel, depressed and suicidal presumably because of his safe but pitiable mundane urban existence.This “all” feeling, though, there is some truth in it. You must often have felt it, lying on the grass on a warm summer’s day. Your legs seem to send out shoots into the earth. Your hair feels like leaves upon your head. This is the all feeling. But what plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion. (42; Tales, Poems, and Other Writings)
Transformed from that state in the beginning of the novel when he is tempted by death as an escape from an unpleasant reality, Ishmael embraces Queequeg’s coffin to survive, symbolizing not only cooperation but also his embrace of death in a life-affirming way. He no longer views death as a void but part of the swirling life all around him, even if it is “dirge-like” (625; epilogue). He can see death in the light of the sun for what it is, rather than the horror he saw in the “artificial fire” as described in “The Try-works” chapter. He speaks from his post-Pequod wisdom in chapter 7 while looking and commenting on the marble tablets memorializing sailor’s deaths. He points out that the living are hypocritical in their terror of the dead though they claim to believe in a blissful heavenly afterlife and suggests a kind of hope in the dark embrace of death: “But faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope” (42; ch. 7). He goes on to remark on his own mortality, given that he is embarking on a whaling voyage and could easily suffer the same fate as those named on the plaques in the church. He describes the Platonic idea of the body being but the casement for the eternal soul and that therefore one needs not fear death: “Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance” (42; ch. 7). Then he seems to take the idea to the point of parody: “In fact, take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me” (42; ch. 7). Of course, Ishmael later pokes fun at the “young Platonists” who have “left their opera glasses at home” in The Mast-head chapter (172; ch. 35). Again, he both embraces and satirizes Plato and Platonists, not accepting a particular philosophy singularly or in its entirely but parses out particular aspects that work for him while leaving the rest behind.
Ishmael’s attitude toward his mortality at the end of the novel has clearly evolved from the “drizzly November in [his] soul” (3; ch. 1) he wants to escape in the opening. Though Ishmael may be a bearer of bad news, like Job’s messenger in the epigraph to the epilogue, he is able to bear witness from a place of peaceful wisdom, at one with his surroundings, grounded in the literature of the past but not bound by it, independent in thought, philosophical in spirit, and cooperative in practice; willing to risk death by living fully, capable of facing his own mortality and the infinite unknowable universe, and yet still able to appreciate the sensual pleasures of life. Embracing the coffin that bears symbols of the ungraspable meaning of the universe, life and death are like the ocean and sky on a “steel-blue” day as depicted in the chapter “The Symphony:” indistinguishable at the horizon.
Bibliography
Editions of quoted literary texts
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. American Transcendentalism Web, 8 Nov. 2016, http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/nature.html.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, or The Whale. New York, Penguin, 1988.
Melville, Herman. Pierre, or The Ambiguities. New York, Penguin, 1996.
Melville, Herman. Tales, Poems, and Other Writings. Edited by John Bryant, Modern
Library Edition. New York, Random House, 2001.
Scholarly references
Cowan SA. “In Praise of Self-Reliance: The Role of Bulkington in Moby-Dick.”
American Literature, vol. 38, no. 4, 1967, pp. 547-556.
Pritchard, Greg. “Moby-Dick and the Philosopher of Pessimism.” Australian Journal
of American Studies. vol. 22, no. 1, 2003, pp. 34-48.
Romero, Ramón Espejo. “Negotiating Transcendentalism, Escaping ‘Paradise’:
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1-13.