Transformation and Mixture in Moby-Dick :: Moby Dick Melville

Classroom discussions of Moby-Dick often result in a heightened consciousness of Melvilles depictions of dichotomy in nature for example, the contrasting sky and sea respectively represent heaven and hell and the foul-smelling whale in Chapter 92 produces a fragrant and valuable substance called ambergris. But see Melvilles Moby-Dick only as an exercise in duality limits the sphere of this complex novel. Melvilles contemporary, Marg aret Fuller, also seems aware of the confining notion of duality and states in Woman in the Nineteenth CenturyMale and pistillate represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are continuously passing into one another. Fluid hardens into solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no tout ensemble masculine man, no purely feminine womanNature provides exceptions to any rule (Fuller 293-4).Fuller explains that duality is a limiting and artificial concept, especially when used to describe nature. Transformation and mixture are concepts that more accurately characterize both nature and the writings of Fuller and Melville. Multiple perspectives are ideal for these authors, as is evident in Melvilles multifaceted Ishmael. At the end of the novel only Ishmael survives because he is able to fancy life and nature in an all-encompassing fashion.Melville is preoccupied with puts in this novel, exploring the union that this object has to nature -- an object that is made from nature (wood) and holds another crack up of nature (a body) after a natural progression has taken beat (death). Melville seems fascinated by this odd and frequent custom of humankind of sepulture bodies inside a wooden box. Even seamen who remain unattached to land, such(prenominal) as Queequeg, desire such a burial at sea. This coffin motif begins within the first few lines of Chapter 1, Loomings, when Ishmael thinks of funeralsWhenever I pay off myself growing grim about the mouth whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul wh enever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral procession I meet (Melville 3).This teaching in the beginning of the novel introduces the reader to the coffin imagery that Melville uses end-to-end Moby-Dick and serves as the metaphor for transformative mixture throughout this paper.In Chapter 110, Queequeg in his Coffin, Chapter 126, The Life-Buoy, and the Epilogue, Melville explores many another(prenominal) different and interesting representations of Queequegs coffin. Queequegs coffin cannot be be only in terms of duality it is not simply scantily a coffin and a life-buoy.