Why Teach Moby Dick?

By Suzy Akin, Director of Communications and English 11 teacher: Learning their eleventh graders would read Moby Dick this year, some parents asked, “You’re not going to read the whole thing, are you?”

Moby Dick had long been a standard text in the Hackley English program, but until Chris Arnold decided to include it in English 11 this year, it had drifted from the curriculum, surfacing now and then, as it did in Walter Johnson’s seminar a few years ago. Chris chose Moby Dick for a number of reasons. “I thought Hackley students could handle it, and I believe in appropriate challenges. It's far too seldom these days that high school students get a chance to grapple with work as long and complex as Moby Dick.” Beyond that, he reports, the reasons are almost too many to count. “I wanted students to have a chance to grapple with Melville's dauntingly elegant prose and wrestle with the complex epistemological questions raised by the text. I wanted them to think about what it means for a writer to set out to write a great ‘American’ novel and to then evaluate whether or not Melville was successful (to consider, for that matter, whether writing such a novel is even really possible in the first place). I wanted them to consider whether pushing off into the wildest place on Earth really can lead to enlightenment. I wanted them to ponder why Melville would seek to lionize the common folk who put to sea in whalers and romanticize their brutal, dangerous lives. I wanted them to encounter Melville's incredible, perplexing cast of characters: to seek to understand Ishmael's existential wonder and despair, to plumb the depths of Ahab's consuming rage, to laugh with Stubb, to smirk at Flask, to judge Starbuck. I wanted them to puzzle through a text whose narrator can passionately defend the humanity of the cannibal Queequeg in one chapter and then cheerfully dismiss the humanity of Asian Fedallah in the next. I wanted them to consider the very act of storytelling itself. In short, I wanted them to read a book that would force them to think long and hard about the fundamental questions great American literature forces its readers to ask.” Finally, he confesses, “I suppose I should have started with the most important reason: I love this book, and I believe that teachers should, when appropriate, share their passions with their students.”

That passion is not just an English teacher thing. Marie Brooks ’10 read the novel with Walter Johnson’s seminar four years ago and her thoughts neatly parallel Chris Arnold’s. “I think that one of the best things about having worked your way through Moby Dick is that it you'll probably never be intimidated by a big book again. It gives you a great sense of accomplishment (which we celebrated with a white whale cake) and confidence. It's also a wonderful example of great writing, using complex themes and subtle allusions throughout a massive work of many parts to turn it into a coherent and memorable whole. It's also continually referenced in the American literature that succeeded it, and having read it will give you a better understanding of those works and the tradition from which they come.” She continues, “My favorite thing about studying it in class, as opposed to reading it on my own, was discovering that very often, interpretations that seemed obvious to me were not shared by other people, which made me reexamine my conclusions about the book and recognize that one of the things that made it worth reading was the fact that it had many more layers than I would have been able to uncover on my own after one or two readings. I certainly don't think I've gotten everything out of it yet (or ever will), but studying it with Mr. Johnson certainly helped me gain a deeper appreciation for its complexity.”

For Chris Arnold, the text presented useful opportunities in support of the course goals. “Moby Dick touches on many important American themes such as the frontier. Similarly, it provides a great way to talk about literary movements such as romanticism (which it both employs and questions) and modernism (which its unconventional narrative structure anticipates in fascinating ways). It also provides a way to look at how different American writers respond to each other. There are sections of Moby Dick where Ishmael is clearly responding to the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In others, his similes echo the work of Homer and Milton.”Further, he notes, “As a writing teacher, there is much to be gained from the texts. The richness of Melville's prose provides an elegant model and the opportunity to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of elaborate ornamentation in writing. Close reading skills can be honed on dense, rewarding passages. Paper topics can range from creative responses to focused comps to long, complex essays.”

Ask English Department Chair Richard Robinson about the relevance of Moby Dick, and you experience his infectious passion for this text. For Doc Rob, Moby Dick is all about relevance. “For one thing,” he explains, “Melville exploits both the fundamentally American industry of whaling and the then popular metaphor of the ‘ship of state’ to depict on the Pequod a nation that in its diversity anticipates what America will become. While the crew embodies diversity across socio-economic class, religion, national origin, and race, the rigors of whaling create enough of a meritocracy that talented crewmembers rise above where they could on land.” At the same time, the book explores power: “Should authority and leadership arise from Romantic infatuation with epic figures like Ahab who lead with charisma, or should they arise from meritocratic and democratic preference for those like Starbuck and Queequeg, who lead with wisdom, respect, and compassion?”

Still, for Doc Rob the novel is not a political treatise. Moby Dick seeks to work out the relationship between man and nature, contrasting the industrialism that exploits nature with the Romanticism that seeks to live responsibly: “Melville challenges us to consider if we have dominion over nature or if we must be its stewards.” Moby Dick grapples with the need for meaning in a world in which religion no longer offers all answers to all people. Doc Rob notes that, “Ishmael proposes whaling—taking on a challenge bigger than oneself and striving to rise above it—as a way to hoist himself out of depression and a sense of his own purposelessness. Significantly, in the process he rediscovers the importance of reconnecting with other human beings in what he calls ‘the joint-stock company’ of humankind. Melville tells us to throw ourselves into challenges and into communion with others.” Doc Rob goes on, ticking off world-shaping challenges ranging from the limits of vengeance to questions of sexual orientation to the nature of knowledge itself; Melville reminds us that we can’t know everything, and to believe otherwise is supreme arrogance.

Doc Rob adds that the book’s form takes the reader beyond the topics and content outlined above. In Moby Dick, students encounter literary form that leaps from narrative to comedy to satire to drama, pausing now and then in philosophical rumination. It does not follow a tidy pattern, and thus prepares students for the onslaught of modern and contemporary fiction; significantly, it demands a different kind of reading by challenging students to think outside of the way they are used to thinking about things. The novel starts asking questions that play a big part in the 12th grade curriculum: how do we come to terms with how we understand the world? How do our unacknowledged biases shape what we see and do? What through these questions do we learn about being human?

We spent more than eight weeks on this book, and it would be fair to say we didn’t all love every minute of it. For example, Melville goes on for pages and pages detailing the various types of whales. Do we really need to know this? To focus on the merit of all those details themselves would, however, be missing the point. There won’t be a quiz on varieties of whales. Instead, we should ask, why does Ishmael feel compelled to offer all this? In cataloging all these types of whales Ishmael explores what defines a whale, and man’s role in naming and defining what qualifies as a whale, as if somehow, by categorizing and naming them, man gains some sort of mastery and control. Yet Ishmael’s catalog is not deadly serious – he makes jokes and even makes up “facts,” thereby calling into question how well catalogs of information ever provide knowledge. At the same time, when you consider the years Ishmael spent gathering all this knowledge before sitting down to write in order to grapple with what happened to the Pequod and crew, does the effort to gain mastery somehow serve as an act of atonement? It reminds us that our pursuit of understanding is never finite, never complete. It’s always a journey.

A long journey is different than a quick trip. We lived with these characters and with Ishmael’s diversions and tangents for two months. Each chapter added pieces and perspectives to our understanding. Think about it -- Melville could have taken us from the docks in Nantucket to the final days of the whale chase, and cut out pages and pages of side stories and meanderings. It would have been an adventure story. However, we would then miss the layering of perspectives we gain. On the journey, we learn about malevolence, ambition, ego, bravery, friendship. We meditate on the existence of truth. We gather up an understanding that “truth” is rarely captured in a snapshot, that it’s a mosaic of perspectives that don’t always add up neatly.

Pedagogically, this is an important journey for our 11th graders. It forces them to be patient, to spend time with something. It pushes them to move away from single minded judgments and binary equations. This book is anything but tidy and it frustrates the attempt to make it so. It invites students to negotiate gray areas of meaning. Ishmael tells us to “subtlize” our minds – to begin to seek understanding as the combination of many threads, some of which seem contradictory. The journey challenges us to understand the very process of building understanding ourselves, as readers and writers. When we talk at Hackley about “learning from the varying perspectives and backgrounds of our community and the world,” isn’t this just the kind of skill we need?

It is, admittedly, hard work. Doc Rob observes, “We respect athletes who succeed and feel cheated when we learn an athlete used performance enhancing drugs. We respect the coach who guides and nurtures athletes to a great victory. In athletics, there is nothing worth doing that doesn’t require great effort. It’s the same for students.” Exertion in the “mental realm,” he notes, gives you a great sense of satisfaction. “You conquer this book, and you feel more able. You feel strong. Your mind can do this!”

Hackley 11th graders are up to this challenge. Part of what Doc Rob values most about teaching at Hackley is the opportunity to prepare students “to exploit their college experience, not just get by. To take control of the experience and thereby become who they want to be for the rest of their lives.”

Looking back over this journey, I believe it had tremendous value. Yes, we read the whole thing. And then we celebrated. This winter, students made Moby Dick cup cakes and the entire 11th grade gathered to smash Whale Pinatas in the Lindsay Room.

One student may have come out with thoughts on the dangers of industrialization to the environment. Another may appreciate Queequeg’s generosity and bravery. Another may know that a single minded pursuit that admits no change in perspective is doomed. Our students commiserated, laughed, and even (maybe a little bit) cried. They appreciated the journey, even if we’re all glad it’s over. And now, on the other side, they approach new texts with a new open-mindedness, a willingness to swim. And they will go forward knowing they have achieved something large: they will always be able to say “I’ve read Moby Dick.”

*With a grateful nod to Nathaniel Philbrick’s excellent little book, Why Read Moby Dick.