ahab as luddite

[jbor]

on 2/2/02 4:23 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> So from where does Ahab derive the power to
> control the men? Same question for Blicero/Weissmann? How does Melville,
> like Pynchon, fuse the Fox and the Lion? Language is one answer. Both
> Blicero (with his corrupted Rilke) and Ahab have the rhetorical skills
> of Milton's Satan.

I think that the men, and in Blicero's case, the men and woman, are not so
much "controlled" as have chosen to follow, and that this is an important
element in both _MD_ and _GR_. I don't think that you can sustain the
argument that either Ishmael or Enzian, for example, is coerced or tricked
into loyalty, because that loyalty does persist both as vestige and
remembrance, and neither man ever has their personal liberty curtailed by
their chosen master. Both had made a deliberate decision that the prospect
offered by Ahab or Blicero was more attractive than their current lot.
Certainly they are swept up momentarily in the visionary's "enthusiasm", but
within the text they also narrate Ahab's and Blicero's quests from a vantage
of hindsight, and while they no longer envisage their respective former
"Captains" as gods, it is the man's faults - his *humanity* - rather than
some malevolent evil which they now recognise and accept.

I also think that in respect to the narrative cast of _M&D_ the parallels
with _Don Quixote_ are far more prominent than with _Moby Dick_. For a
start, Wicks's status as narrator, both in terms of reliability and aspect,
and his lack of prominence in the actual narrative he relates, do not equate
at all to Ishmael. Too often in the novel what is related are episodes which
Wicks did not witness, could not have known, and which neither Mason nor
Dixon would have confided to *him*, and this is quite different to the way
Ishmael relates *his* story in _Moby Dick_. As well, the pairing of the
knight of the rueful countenance and his comic offsider in Cervantes' novel,
and the way that more often than not it is the offsider rather than the
knight who has his finger on the pulse and is the one who actually keeps the
venture going, speaks a lot more to the way Pynchon has articulated the
exploits of Mason and Dixon. I also think there are more particular
resonances, such as the "captive's tale", the "Ghastly Fop" etc.

best