Moby Dick; My Humble Interpretation
When I first read Moby Dick I’ve already seen the movies that were made about it. I thought I knew what the book was about.
I was wrong.
Moby Dick is a great classic American novel about a whale hunter. Yet it hinted at some ideas that are not easily rendered and many times can be best communicated with metaphors.
On the surface we have the story of Ahab as narrated by Ishmael. Ahab was the captain of the wailing shipped it was driven mad after the white whale bit his leg off. A classic example of obsession. Yet if we look deeper the book has very little to do with monomania and everything to do with understanding one’s true nature and purpose in life - and doing it to the exclusion of all that isn’t you on purpose.
The whale itself, is among other things, the constant opposition that we face in order to achieve the fullness of our being. The struggle never ends. It cannot be defeated in this earthly existence. It is entropy which we struggle against and only in dying do we conquered death.
“,,,and that the great monster is indomitable you will yet have reason to know.”
Ahab wasn’t so crazy as most people would have us think. His monomania was simply the focus upon a purity of purpose. It is like when you throw a punch; you think of nothing of the punch, if you think at all (Zen and the Art of face punching). But even this insert a greater reality, that all that exists is the manifestation of God‘s will. Not in a vague Christian sense which can contain no real meaning. But in the sense of what it actually is.
“Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it high or God that lifts this arm?”
And there is within this the inescapable truth that we ourselves must strive toward the purity of purpose. We cannot know anything unless we immerse ourselves in it. But doing so will always change us forever. I am not the same man I was 20 years ago; I am trying to face truths about life, music, etc. but I couldn’t even imagine back then and dared not contemplate at the time. So it is with all things we do in this earthly life.
The old jazz musicians pursued their own white whales at the risk of everything, and they paid dearly for it.
“So there is no earthly way to know what the white whale really looks like. And the only way in which you can derive an even tolerable idea of his living contour is by going whaling yourself; but by doing so you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore it seems to me that you best not be too fastidious in your curiosity concerning this Leviathan.”
These greater Jihads, these inner struggles, are the only thing that truly makes us noble creatures; for without them we are less than primates.
“From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the pacific contains such wealth as that one drop.”
If you look at the chapter “The Symphony,” which precedes the Pequod finding the whale, you will realize that it was in that chapter that Ahab won his inner battle. Ultimate Truth finally came to him. It was the supreme moment of realization in the same way that Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita faced his own moment when he stood on the battlefield and fell to the ground because of the truths that Krishna had revealed to him. The greatest warrior in the world was defeated by a truth larger than his heart could contain. It was too much for him to bear, and he could only bear it when he went through that transition. His own soul had to evolve, and that evolution was not slow and easy, it was a cataclysmic apotheosis. It is the same thing when Jesus told his disciples that he had many things to tell them, but they could not bear them yet. The last three chapters and epilogue of Moby Dick were the inevitable result of excepting the truth, and the flow taking him through to the next phase.
Ishmael! It is very strange that the narrator should have that name. Ishmael was one of Abraham‘s sons. The book of Genesis made it clear that prophecy and a mighty nation was promised to him. The biblical Ahab was a king who was killed and eaten by dogs. Perhaps this was a trial by fire from which he emerged transformed. Perhaps this was a trial from which he emerged transformed. The old self dies, and a new self is born through a painful experience. The eagle protests against its growing pains. And all of this is driven by the soul’s desire for union with divinity, which is an act of love. The erotic is the same primordial essence a spiritual ecstasy vibrating at a lower frequency. All of this, ironically, the base part of our being’s struggles.
“He knows himself and all that’s in him, who knows adversity. To scale great heights, we must come out of the lower most depths. The way to heaven is through hell. We need fiery baptisms in the fierce flames of our own bosoms. We must feel our hearts heart - hissing in us. And ere its fire is revealed it must burn its way out of us though it consume us and itself.”
There are kinds and kinds of deaths. I refer you to the Sufi idea of death before dying and Fana (annihilation into Allah). Consider this passage from chapter 23, The Lee Shore:
“Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
“But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God- so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing- straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!”
Have you noticed that people often think struggle and suffering are the same thing? Did they think the pain and misery are two words describing the same experience? My dear readers! Meet the little whale hidden within linguistic constructs that bites off our legs again and again!
Ahab’s place in the flow was to meet the whale and conquer it. To face that whale was the only right choice he could make.
This brings me to another unorthodox interpretation of Moby Dick. There is a great deal of Islamic mysticism/Sufi imagery in the book. The very first sentence, "Call me Ishmael," hints at the Biblical/Quranic son of Abraham who was a direct ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad. Chapter 17 is called The Ramadan (I know, however, that the one who was fasting was the pagan Queequeg). I interpret chapter 23, The Lee Shore (which I spoke of earlier), as a description of the Sufi concept of Fana.
"Call me Ishmael": The name Ishmael is deeply significant, as it evokes the Biblical and Quranic figure considered a patriarch in Judaism and Islam. In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is regarded as a direct ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad, and his story symbolizes themes of exile, survival, and divine providence. By naming his narrator Ishmael, Melville may be invoking associations with Islam.
In Chapter 17, "The Ramadan" the pagan character Queequeg observed a fasting ritual. Ishmael found it sufficiently reminiscent of Ramadan that he called it such. This introduces more Islamic imagery into the novel. This chapter highlights themes of devotion, discipline, and the universality of spiritual practices. Melville’s inclusion of such imagery resonates with Islamic/Sufi ideas of transcending superficial differences to reach a deeper, universal truth.
Other elements in Moby Dick could be interpreted through a Sufi lens. For instance, the White Whale can be seen as a symbol of the divine or the ineffable, much like the Sufi concept of al-Haqq (the Ultimate Reality). Ahab’s obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick mirrors the Sufi seeker’s quest for union with the divine, albeit in a form easily interpreted (or misinterpreted) as distorted and self-destructive. Similarly, the novel’s emphasis on the sea as a vast, mysterious, and transformative space resonates with Sufi spiritual journey of self-discovery and seeking nearness to Allah.
Believing that Moby Dick is only about killing the whale in a mad act of revenge is a mistake people have been making for a century and a half. The obvious is in front of everyone, but most people only see the surface. It’s no wonder Moby Dick was unknown for decades and Melville died in obscurity. To this day few people understand the book’s real message.