Negotiating Identity: The Frontier in Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville :: Moby Dick Essays

Written during a period of American history characterized by great expansionism, Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick may be read as a criticism upon both the rapidly changing geographical frontiers of America, and the accompanying shift of social, political, sacred and cultural boundaries. The Pequods world is governed by laws other than those of the American mainland. Figuratively fit(p) at the frontier of the New World, the ship evokes the mythic American open up with the independent spirit, aggression and courage to wrench a nation from the wilderness. Melville lays by a version of the frontier myth that sees redefinition of content identity in terms of man confronting his other, reaffirming the self, and - through and through Ishmaels survival and narration - returning to finish having influenced what he is not.. Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest for the white hulk symbolize in its most extreme form, an American desire to establishment the wild unknown and to promote national ascendancy through the confrontation. This write up will examine the seductive except limited conditions under which claims to define American-ness are able to be make in Moby-Dick, through interrogating the mien in which the crews desires are subsumed into Ahabs private vendetta. The notion of the frontier as a place of infinite possibility, where office staff relations are renegotiated, even as are geographical limits, goes some way towards explaining why, despite Ahabs disregard for his mens room well-being, they agree to follow him down his tragic path. Both the license that Ahabs sic gives him to compel them into action, and his ability to tap the crews own belief in the power of the mythical American capacity for self-reinvention, indicate the potential for unbridled violence in the search for the self. Crucially, this highlights the discrepancy in the midst of Americas claims of its own democracy, liberty and equality, and its national enthusiasm for imperialist conqu est and its tolerance of slavery. The pervasiveness of the mythological connection between American self-invention and aggression, is underlined by Slotkin in his claim that the first colonists saw in America an opportunity to regenerate their fortunes, their spirits, and the power of their church and nation but the means to that regeneration ultimately became the means of violence, and the myth of regeneration through violence became the structuring metaphor of the American experience. (Slotkin, 5)Renowned for the risk it involved, and for the physical demands it made on the sailors, whaling invites many comparisons with both the pioneers intrepid conquest of the western wilderness, and the blemish of soldiers into war.