ahab as luddite (Quakerism)

[The Great Quail]

Terrance writes,

>It's quite important that these men are Quakers who kill Leviathan. They
>are Quakers with a Vengeance. Melville, like Pynchon, does not stress
>this fact just because it is historical.

I think it's interesting, but I don't place as much a value on it as 
you do. It's a well-known irony that the Nantucket "Society of 
Friends" were some of the most successful Leviathan butchers in the 
area. They were also generally clannish and Xenophobic, like many 
island folks. With the exception of Ahab (and to a lesser extent, 
Flask) I wouldn't ascribe "Vengeance" to their actions. They made 
quite a living in the whale fishery, and their communal fortunes rode 
high on the hump.

>What are we to make of Ahab's
>black mass rituals and his gnostic sermons?

The man was nearly possessed, blasphemous, anti-Christian. The fact 
he may be a "fallen Quaker" is intriguing, but I don't think it has 
any deeper meaning that the background it provides him as an already 
religiously-inclined man. (Though a controversial one -- after all, 
it is intimated that he has always been a dark and stormy fellow, and 
has even lived with the "cannibals.") Melville was writing in the 
Shakespearean/Miltonian mode. Now, if Pynchon would have penned "Moby 
Dick," I think these religious interrelationships might be more 
acutely drawn and used for satirical purposes.

>Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other
>Nantucketers, was a   Quaker, the island having been originally
>settled by that sect;

If I may be a bit pedantic -- Not so. Quakerism was imported to 
Nantucket; adopted by an Island matriarch.

>They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a
>Vengeance.
>
>And what of Avarice?

Another heavy word to apply to a community making a profitable 
living. Of course, many Quakers became quite wealthy, but even given 
that they tended towards conservatism and simplicity.

>How now in the contemplative evening of his
>days,   the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the
>reminiscence, I do not  know; but it did not seem to concern him much,
>and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible
>conclusion
>that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite
>another. This  world pays dividends.
>
>A bit of Calvinism in your Quakerism? How does one reconcile or
>rationalize the contradictions? The hypocrisies? One doesn't look at a
>coin or at a share to find God, one looks in the heart of each and every
>man. That is, if one is a Quaker. That's what Dixon, for all his
>unorthodoxy, does.

I agree. But I really can't place too much blame on Bildad or Peleg 
or any other whale-hunting Quaker. That the Christian religion and 
practical living are often at odds is the way of things, and that 
99.9% of most people hold contradictory or compartmentalized 
philosophies is natural. In the case of a Quaker such as Bildad, it's 
only the outward extremes that I find noteworthy (Plain folk vs. 
successful merchant and butcher), not the hypocrisy itself, which is 
found in most any Christian man or woman.

Respectfully,

--Quail