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CECIL M. BROWN
guilt, but will quickly pass it off to "mankind," and this is a measure
of his moral character.
It was Albert Camus, and types like that, who perpetuated the
philosophy of "existentialism," of which Ishmael is an example, and
which is nothing more than an escape hatch for white-cracker–
intellectuals ("yes, yes, I know we are slaughtering stupid-ass Arabs,
but, but all mankind must suffer, not just me ..."). And it is in this
sense that Ishmael is the grandfather to modern existential heros
(i.e., cultural heros, or rather, cultural outs for weak-mouth white
intellectuals.) Ishmael is not, as the novel tries to imply, at all related
to Job. Ishmael has none of the awareness of his predicament,
none of the corporeality, none of the warmth, the profundity, hones–
ty and beauty of Job, and I don't know why Melville tried to im–
ply that he has, except maybe to throw us off track.
There is, as I have hinted, something in Ishmael that relates
him to such modern heroes as Jean-Baptiste Clamence, in Camus'
The Fall,
that cold-blooded motherfucker whose moral cowardice
is an example of the worst in white intellectuals. In fact, Ishmael's
confession - and that's what the book is - has some of that urbane
garrulity, which is only a coverup for lurking guilt, of Clamence's
confession; and just as Ishmael is constantly going back to sea, back
to the scene of the crime, so Clamence keeps revisiting in his mind
the scene in which he refuses to risk his life to save some drowning
girl:
"0 Young woman, throw yourself into the water again so
that I maya second time have the chance of saving both of us."
Like the fisher king in
The Waste Land
Ishmael's death
is
indeed the "Death by water." The black depths will not have
him,
and so, like a ghost, he is compelled, to "take to the watery part of
the world" in search, once again, of a proper funeral. The water
that Ishmael takes to is not the fountain of life, but one "more
oblivious than death." There is much which Ishmael would rather
forget. When Ishmael sees the mere sign of death, his moral
cowardice and guilt forces him back to the water, where he may
forget: "Whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet. . .. I
account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my
substitute for pistol and ball." Water, the river of forgetfulness,
is
his substitute for suicide.
Melville, I do not believe, intended for Ishmael to be a character,
