The Queequeg Quommentary Quontinues

When reading this week’s assignments for Melville’s novel, I couldn’t help but continue noticing the further development of discussion of the social and cultural circumstances of many of the characters.

Although there is an abundance of social criticism in Moby-Dick as pertains to the treatment of people from other cultures, Melville forced us to look at a piece of racial commentary with a shocking bit of imagery that I found particularly provocative. This is the scene in Chapter 72, The Monkey-Rope, where Queequeg is suspended into the water from a rope. Ishmael narrates the account of Queequeg removing blubber from the dead whale while tied to a leash, explaining that it is reminiscent of organ-grinders “holding a dancing-ape by a long cord” (255). Although this is staged as an important task of the whaling industry and is likely to be a credible representation of the occupation, I cannot help but notice that it is Queequeg who has been delegated for this work.

The task creates racially-flavored imagery in that based upon the organ-grinding symbolism at work here, the “savage” is the character who is on the subordinate end of the rope, and the white man is the one holding the rope. Although Queequeg is a free sailor, this representation of him as a trained ape suggests a criticism of the fact that there is problematic treatment toward people of different ethnicities.

This is becomes more complex and problematic when looking back on the closing statement that Queequeg makes in chapter 66, The Shark Massacre: “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket God… de god what made shark must be one dam Ingin.” Considering that Queequeg himself is often referred to as “savage,” it is peculiar that he would ostracize another already marginalized people. The footnote to this page comments that he has learned this behavior and is “echoing an extreme white attitude” (243). With these examples, I am reaching a deeper understanding of what is happening here, and I realize that the same criticism of the mistreatment of the “other” may have been going on for nearly as long as the mistreatment itself. The hypocrisy that Melville deliberately instills in Queequeg echoes Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest, in which Caliban claims of white men, “you taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how to curse!” (I.ii.366-67). The While Queequeg is by no means the demoniacal character that Caliban is, his socially exclusive behavior is a Eurocentric learned behavior. These observations, coupled with classroom discussion, have made me more aware that this account of a whaling expedition actually delves deep into social and racial commentary.