Ironies of Freedom: A Reading of Melville?s Moby Dick

Abstract

Ironies of Freedom: A Reading of Melville’s Moby Dick explores the complex interplay between authority, freedom, and madness in Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Pierre. The study focuses on the peculiar absence of mutiny aboard the Pequod, a striking deviation from Melville's other narratives. This peculiarity is examined through the lens of Ahab's dominion and the crew's voluntary compliance with his vengeful quest, despite the evident madness of his mission. Ahab's hunt symbolizes a broader metaphysical and spiritual crusade, driven by a deeply personal yet universally resonant anguish. The crew's unanimous acceptance of Ahab's cause exposes their metaphysical, ideological, psychological, and existential alignment with him. This alignment is not born of coercion or deceit but emerges from a shared orphanhood and a collective yearning for meaning and redemption, reflective of the broader 19th-century socio-cultural context. The dissertation posits that this shared orphanhood and its associated pathologies are central to understanding the motivations and actions of the Pequod's crew. These men, emblematic of their era's ideological beliefs and existential crises, find a perverse refuge in Ahab's monomaniacal quest, which offers an asylum for their madness by providing a semblance of purpose and unity. The narrative of Moby Dick thus serves as a prophetic critique of the times, highlighting the inevitability of such collective delusions and the inherent ironies in the pursuit of freedom. In Pierre, Melville further explores these themes, presenting a prequel to Moby Dick that delves into the internal catastrophe that precedes and precipitates external madness culminating in the hunt. Pierre's character, like Ahab, embodies the tortured soul grappling with profound existential discontent, leading to a descent into madness from which the only possible escape is the hunt for Moby Dick. Ironies of Freedom integrates close textual analysis with historical and philosophical contextualization, drawing connections between Melville's narrative strategies and the broader intellectual currents of his time. It argues that Melville's works not only reflect but also critique the ideological constructs of their era, particularly the romantic ideals of individualism and the myth of the self-made man. Ironies of Freedom identifies and maps out the successive stages that Ahab, Ishmael, and the crew pass through—from the "great American desert" to the vengeful fantasy of the hunt—and the psychological and historico-philosophical causes and conditions of that passage. Further, it demonstrates that Moby Dick has a double structure: at one level, it narrates the Pequod’s monomaniacal hunt, while at the other, it narrates Ishmael’s escape and return. At this first level, Moby Dick declares a prophecy for the 19th century, i.e., a series of monomaniacal but well-intended fantasies of vengeance, while at the second, it is a Gospel of the return. Further, it submits that Moby Dick can be both this prophecy and this Gospel because it also contains a third element, a treatise explaining why Melville prophesizes the hunt, the entire causal structure from the despair on land to the lunacy of the hunt, and how Ishmael ultimately manages to escape and return. Focused on identifying and reconstructing the philosophy embedded in Moby Dick and Pierre, Ironies of Freedom reveals the underlying principles and critiques within Melville’s narratives and offers a significant contribution to outlining Melville’s philosophical thought. Ultimately, it contends that Moby Dick and Pierre reveal the paradoxes inherent in the human pursuit of freedom.