Ishmael's The Spouter-Inn

Over the course of the novel Ishmael describes in full detail the places and things he notices which creates a beautiful imagery that, while some might say is tedious to read, it really helps the reader integrate into the story. One of these descriptive moments happens when Ishmael enters The Spouter-Inn and explicitly recounts every room of the inn and how it is decorated:

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil-painting… A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity

about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. […] The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. […] Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way… you enter the public room. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. (Melville 12-14)

Such descriptive paragraphs create a cinematic appeal to the story and aid the visual understanding of readers. The addition of picturesque elements, like the whale’s jaw bar or the wall of harpoons and clubs, make the space unique and almost out of this word, helping the setting from looking monotonous or ordinary and providing an iconic centerpiece that marks each room as a staple to this novel over generations. It is incredible how the Melville managed to not only immerse the reader in a fictional space, but also provide room for he or she to move, explore and further analyze.
This descriptive narrative is also beautifully displayed in the chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” developing it into an enjoyable one to read and an inviting one to analyze. All throughout the chapter Ishmael presents some social statements interlocked with traditional concepts to help express his attraction towards the hunt of the White Whale. He describes instances where the color white enhances beauty and power, when suddenly he states “this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe…” (Melville 189). He makes a social criticism by ironically justifying how the white man reigns over those who are different to him instantly making them his inferiors. After stating the “goodness” of white he mentions how this hue also amplifies the horrors of the world like the polar bear or shark, in which the “ghastly whiteness… imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome and terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect” (189), or the phantoms and ghost in superstition. Ishmael ends his argument by asking:
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?

Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all color; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color atheism from which we shrink? […] And of all of these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? (195)

The ending paragraph of this chapter perfectly builds up the drive inside the reader to continue this journey by Ishmael’s choice of words, comparison, and imagery until he leaves it up to the reader to decide if they are also driven to the whale hunt. It is a beautiful description that gathers everything the whale is to the protagonist but also establishes the whale as a metaphor for the reader.

So what does the whale or Moby Dick represent? The author leaves that choice for the reader to interpret and find purpose

in;
What is the tragic meaning of Moby Dick? Had Melville been a philosopher instead of an artist, he might have written down and developed a series of propositions about human experience in something like the following order. Evil and good are the necessary poles of experience. One is not to be had without the other. They fall to man, not by chance, but by inevitable law, which is revealed through character. In this essential all men have a common fate: no one enjoys
without suffering; and no one suffers without enjoying.

In another respect all men are different: each lives on his own plane of intensity. But it is the nature of every man to suffer and enjoy in equal degrees of intensity. The justice of the universe would be upset if some men rejoiced little and suffered much, or if others had great joys and little sorrows. But this failure of cosmic justice is not possible, for a man feels according to his capacity, and not according to circumstance,

and his capacity is the same for joy as it is for sorrow. Man broods upon the tantalizing nature of his life, for he thinks that were it not for one chance cause of sorrow, his would be a serene and exultant existence. In the end he comes to see that his sorrow is the secret of the power and poignancy of his joy.

          Melville was an artist in tragedy, not a philosopher. He gives us not propositions but the actions on which propositions are based, not the law but the hero whose fate is a revelation of the law. (Myers

23)

The whale represents whatever it is that the reader desires and is willing to blindly put faith in, as well as the metaphysical elements each human has to encounter in order to continue their pursuit. It also encourages the reader to pursue their desire even though it might not be a fully developed plan. One should embrace the unknown path, for it will eventually lead to something that will have a personal meaning and become a wider revelation to the individual. The unknown at the beginning pf that journey is part of the natural chaos of the world that one must be aware of and accept. The whale, Moby Dick, serves as an object of meditation to discover the place the individual takes in the world, yet it still remains in essence a regular whale and should not be considered an physical embodiment of one’s feelings:
The meaning goes far beyond abstract comprehension; it must come through the senses, the feelings, and the imagination, not merely through the understanding. For this reason, Moby Dick is primarily a tragic interpretation of an action, not a philosophical essay, not a dance of symbolic phantoms. Ahab is a man and not a force, the sea is the sea and not a symbol, and the whale is a whale and not an arbitrary sign of evil" (19).

Melville, through his protagonist Ishamel, explores uncommon points of views from that of a man of the 1800s. One of these was how, even though Ishmael was scared on his first encounter with Queequeg, the protagonist was rapidly able to look pass the savage stereotype and see that:
…here is a man some twenty thousand miles from home…thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. (Melville 50)

From this moment Ishmael befriends Queequeg as his equal and respects all his tradition and beliefs. This respect is once again demonstrated when Ishmael joins Queequeg in worshiping Yojo, the sacred idol figure and thinks:
But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth- pagans and all included- can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship? - to do the will of God? that is worship. And what is the will of God? - to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me- that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. (52)

It is delightful to see this reasoning from Ishmael, and consequently Melville, who bring forth the idea of mutual respect. Some might say this is a very modern way of thinking but in the present world this respect, featured here in the way Ishmael joins Queequeg in what for him is pagan worship, still needs to be emphasized and remembered. Melville’s opinion in his novel exemplified in the previous quote and seen again when Queequeg seems to say “It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians" (62), might be one of the reasons modern readers are still attracted to this novel since both then and now people still deal with lack of mutual respect and look for ways to change.