PARTISAN REVIEW
455
white whale struck, I had gone downstairs to take a piss," etc.) that
makes Ishmael's "escape" a "hideous intolerable allegory."
The offhanded way in which Melville accounts for Ishmael's
survival is the source of a real, however slight, anxiety; and this
anxiety carries the overtones of guilt, of moral cowardice. The
account is so abstract, so allegorical ("And I only am escaped
alone to tell thee - Job"), so slight (as to be phony) that one
iUspects Ishmael of not telling all that really went down. How much
of his "soul" did his survival cost him? Did he really survive or did
he just cop out?
To begin with, there is no apparent moral justification in the
book for Ishmael's survival. One cannot believe that it was his
"liberal" attitude towards the nigger-savage Queequeg that saved
him -
can he? I mean, Melville was heavier than that, wasn't he?!
At any rate, a man who is so favored by God - or whoever was
in charge - such as Ishmael was, must first of all question the Why
of his survival, or at least talk to somebody about it.
Psychologically, Ishmael must have felt like the one survivor
in an automobile accident in which everyone else is killed; such an
incident must bear so heavily upon the survivor as to make him
wonder
if
it had not been better that he died too. But Ishmael
tries to hide this psychological impact of the experience, or maybe
he is not aware of it. Part of the anxiety one feels in rereading his
opening monologue is due to the fact that Ishmael's reaction to the
incident is mythic rather than psychological. The psychological guilt
Ishmael will not admit to: he will not accept the responsibilities of
his feelings as a single person, but only as a mythic figure. "Call
me Ishmael" sounds more like a proposition, a myth, than it does
a statement, a name; "Call me Ishmael" means call me anybody,
for I am no one specific, I am all mankind.
But understand
this:
Ishmael is not all mankind; he is not, for
example, Ahab. His suffering is not Ahab's suffering, anymore than
the white liberal's suffering is the Black Man's. Ishmael's suffering
results from his unwillingness (or inability) actually to become a
part of Ahab's quest, from his unwillingness to take a part in the
physical work: he would rather remain an "intellectual observer."
And even when he watches other people dying (that's what "intel–
lectuql observers" do)
I
Ishmael
will
not admit to his own personql
