Moby Dick

Introduction

The American writer Herman Melville, in 1851, published a novel named Moby Dick. The plot of the book can be summarized very briefly as the journey of the whaler Pequod, controlled by Captain Ahab in search of sperm whales and whales, and especially the gigantic white whale that provides the name to the story. Nevertheless, in Moby scenes of whaling combined with manifestations from logical, spiritual, theoretical and imaginative character of Ishmael, the shadow of the author creating the trip at the same time an epic and an allegory epic.

Outline

Upon entering the inn, Ishmael is enthralled by a huge, ambiguous oil painting. Finally, he chooses that the subject is a ship stuck in a storm as a soaring whale is about to impale itself on the craft's three mastheads. After, supper, finding no private beds available, Ishmael chooses to sleep on a bench, but that proves to be much too uncomfortable. Upon the urging of Mr. Coffin, the proprietor, Ishmael agrees to share a bed with a harpooner who is out attempting to sell an embalmed human head that the man obtained in the South Seas. Concerned but very weary, Ishmael retires (www.online-literature.com). As he is nodding off, he startled by the return of Queequeg, the harpooner who seems to Ishmael to be a monstrous cannibal. Queequeg also surprised to find someone in his bed. Fearing for his life, Ishmael desperately hollers for the landlord's help (Spans, 1851).

We are all aware of the fact that Ishmael, for the most part, is the narrator of Moby-Dick. In accordance with the panoptic theory, much less we seem to be aware that he is also the most prominent reader and critic of the novel. Throughout the book, there are numerous scenes in which Ishmael the narrator demonstratively takes on these audience roles. For instance, in quite a number of memorable situations he deals with books and written documents of all sorts which trigger responses from him as a reader, a researcher, and a critical reviewer. In several other episodes of the novel, he plays the role of the viewer and outspoken critic of nonverbal presentations of art such as paintings, illustrations, and drawings (Spanos, 1851).

Melville criticism has dealt extensively with Ishmael the narrator and the related problem of perspective and point-of-view in Moby -Dick. However, little attention has so far been paid to Ishmael as an audience figure and to the related problem of reader response as it worked into the novel.' In a way, this has something to do with the restrictions certain schools of criticism have placed on the subjects of their research. Thus, the bulk of reader-response criticism predominantly deals with the problems either of actual readers or of such tacitly assumed or openly addressed figures as the “implied,” the “fictive,” the “abstract,” the “ideal,” the “intended,” and/or the “imagined” reader in their respective roles for the constitution and mediation of literary texts.

The Ishmael of Moby-Dick, I would like to argue, presented in the role of such a personified panoptic ...