May 29, 2019 - Chapter Three (pp. 9-15)
This chapter begins in the Spouter Inn, where Ishmael meets the pub owner Jonah and rubs elbows with other whalers. The selection for today ends before Ishmael meets Queequeg, of whom more later. The key aspect of this chapter is the introduction, with Ishmael's viewing of the painting on the wall in the opening pages of the chapter, of the theme of radical subjectivity.\
Repeatedly over the course of the novel, we are reminded that personal perception informs much of how we understand the world and that no two people see the same thing exactly alike. Melville describes it (in part) thus: "Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time."
In the end, it turns out it is a portrait of a whale, but this itself tells us something about other parts of the novel, in which the whale's whiteness, its pursuit, and the whale itself all become figures of radical subjectivity.
Repeatedly over the course of the novel, we are reminded that personal perception informs much of how we understand the world and that no two people see the same thing exactly alike. Melville describes it (in part) thus: "Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time."
In the end, it turns out it is a portrait of a whale, but this itself tells us something about other parts of the novel, in which the whale's whiteness, its pursuit, and the whale itself all become figures of radical subjectivity.
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