{"id":27650,"date":"2021-11-23T05:05:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=27650"},"modified":"2021-11-27T06:40:51","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T06:40:51","slug":"the-lessons-moby-dick-has-for-a-warming-world-of-rising-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-lessons-moby-dick-has-for-a-warming-world-of-rising-waters\/","title":{"rendered":"The lessons \u2018Moby-Dick\u2019 has for a warming world of rising waters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aaron Sachs<\/a>, Cornell University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an environmental historian<\/a> and scholar of the 19th century<\/a>, I spend a lot of time thinking about how the past can help us confront our current crises \u2013 especially climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s a lot of help to be found in the 1800s, from the appreciation of wildness<\/a> in Henry David Thoreau\u2019s famous \u201cWalden,\u201d to the rise of ecology, the science of interdependence. \u201cWe may all be netted together,\u201d Charles Darwin scribbled in his notebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my nomination for the most helpful climate manual ever written might be a surprise: \u201cMoby-Dick<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herman Melville\u2019s epic novel about life aboard a wayward whaling ship, published 170 years ago this month, does not have a reputation for being particularly pragmatic, unless you\u2019re looking for tips on swabbing the decks or hunting creatures of the deep. And no, I\u2019m not suggesting that we go back to burning sperm oil<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d especially relevant right now is that it offers a spur to solidarity<\/a> and perseverance. Those are qualities societies may need to stock up on as we face the overwhelming threat of climate change. The novel has no straightforward moral, but it does remind readers that we can at least buoy each other up, even as the water swirls around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Existentialists at sea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Climate change touches on time scales and planetary systems that humans aren\u2019t wired to fathom<\/a>. But at the same time, it can be seen as just another challenge we\u2019ve brought upon ourselves through societal failings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it\u2019s more helpful, then, to think about climate change not as a brand-new \u201cexistential threat,\u201d but as the kind of age-old crisis that is tailor-made for existentialism \u2013 a philosophy<\/a>, as the scholar Walter Kaufmann put it, that is all about \u201cdread, despair, death, and dauntlessness.\u201d The basic idea is to recognize how treacherous and unknowable your path is, and then to continue on anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMoby-Dick\u201d is clearly an existentialist text, though it was published almost a century before the term was coined. One of the founders of modern existentialism, Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus<\/a>, explicitly acknowledged Melville<\/a> as an intellectual forebear. And two of the main characters in \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d are near-perfect existentialists: the narrator, Ishmael, and his friend, Queequeg, a harpooner from the fictional isle of Kokovoko.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the beginning of his tale, Ishmael makes clear his obsession with the horror of the human condition. He\u2019s bitterly depressed, angry, even suicidal: \u201cit is a damp, drizzly November in my soul,\u201d he says on page one, and he finds himself \u201cpausing before coffin warehouses.\u201d He hates the way modern New Yorkers seem to spend their days \u201ctied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.\u201d All he can think to do is go to sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it\u2019s not long before he has a near-death experience on the open water. He and a few crewmates get chucked out of their small boat in the midst of a squall after failing to nab the whale they were after. Queequeg signals with their one faint lantern, \u201chopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately after they\u2019re saved, Ishmael interviews the most experienced of the crew and, confirming that this sort of thing happens all the time, goes below decks to \u201cmake a rough draft of my will,\u201d with Queequeg as his witness. The \u201cwhole universe\u201d seems like \u201ca vast practical joke\u201d at his expense, but he finds himself able to smile at the absurdity: \u201cNow then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Whaling was rife with danger for whales and whalers alike. From ‘Incidents of a Whaling Voyage,’ by Francis Allyn Olmsted.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

No man an island<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Again and again, \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d forces readers to confront despair. But that doesn\u2019t make it a grim read, or a paralyzing one \u2013 in part because Melville himself is such an engaging companion, and much of the book imparts a powerful sense of fellowship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literary critic Geoffrey Sanborn<\/a> writes that<\/a> Melville meant for \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d \u201cto make your mind a more interesting and enjoyable place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the effort,\u201d Sanborn he writes, \u201c\u2026 to feel, in the deepest recesses of your consciousness, at least temporarily unalone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Ishmael stops by the Whaleman\u2019s Chapel before his fateful journey, \u201ceach silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable.\u201d But once aboard his ship, he finds all the crew members suddenly \u201cwelded into oneness,\u201d thanks to their shared sense of purpose and their awareness of the dangers ahead. And he sees the same kind of unity in \u201cextensive herds\u201d of sperm whales, as though \u201cnumerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the sense of interconnectedness human nations need today. When I picked up \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d earlier this month, I almost immediately thought of the climate change negotiations in Glasgow \u2013 and Queequeg\u2019s small island home. I could easily imagine the harpooner as an eloquent representative of a nation in danger of being swallowed up by rising waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians,\u201d Ishmael imagines Queequeg saying at one point in the novel. \u201cWe cannibals must help these Christians.\u201d That\u2019s a startling line, emphasizing Melville\u2019s suggestion that Queequeg, whom many characters dismiss as a \u201cheathen,\u201d is actually the most ethical character in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in Glasgow, it seems, wealthy nations\u2019 recognition of the need for mutual aid fell short<\/a>. Though their disproportionate greenhouse gas emissions<\/a> are largely to blame for poorer countries\u2019 disproportionate suffering, their funding for developing nations to weather the storm is far below what\u2019s needed \u2013 and eventually, that may come back to bite everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queequeg\u2019s interdependent relationship with Ishmael is at the very center of \u201cMoby-Dick.\u201d Their fates are interwoven; Queequeg is Ishmael\u2019s \u201cinseparable twin brother.\u201d In one scene, the harpooner dangles over the water, attached by a cord to Ishmael, so that \u201cshould poor Queequeg sink to rise no more,\u201d our narrator would go tumbling into the sea as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the novel, all the whalemen except Ishmael sink to rise no more. The narrator is saved by a coffin Queequeg had carved for himself, then given to the First Mate to replace a lost lifebuoy. Much about \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d will always remain murky, but this symbolism is clear: To ponder death and prepare for the worst are age-old survival strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queequeg\u2019s culture led him to confront the hardest realities of life. As Ishmael notes admiringly, the harpooner had \u201cno civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits,\u201d no tendency toward denial. He had thoroughly enjoyed carving his coffin, and when he lay down in it to check the fit, while suffering from a life-threatening fever, he had shown a perfectly \u201ccomposed countenance.\u201d \u201cIt will do,\u201d he murmured; \u201cit is easy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queequeg\u2019s existentialist determination in the face of dread, his willingness to sacrifice, his caring forethought, made all the difference. And maybe that could be an inspiration. The key to addressing climate change won\u2019t be some abstract injunction to save the planet; it will be about acknowledging interdependence and commonality and accepting responsibility. It will be about returning Queequeg\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Sachs<\/a>, Professor of History and American Studies, Cornell University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aaron Sachs, Cornell University As an environmental historian and scholar of the 19th century, I spend a lot of time thinking about how the past can help us confront our current crises \u2013 especially climate change. And there\u2019s a lot of help to be found in the 1800s, from the appreciation of wildness in Henry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[6738,4565,139,2603,10882,10883,1740,8158],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27650"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27715,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27650\/revisions\/27715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}