1. Introduction

At first glance, the comparison proposed by this paper might appear counter-intuitive at best, idiosyncratic and misleading at worst: there would seem to be an insurmountable number of differences and contrasts between the 17^th century, French scientist, mathematician, and theologian, devoutly Catholic, who set as his goal to write the ultimate defense of Christianity, and who lived the least years of his life as a sickly hermit, and the 19^th century, American novelist, raised Calvinist, married to a Unitarian, who came up with his own brand of skeptical, agonistic theism, who penned perhaps the greatest and most strangely satisfying story of human beings challenging the Deity in the proudest, most outrageous, and most virile way imaginable, and who lived his life sailing all over the world, while fathering four children. But obviously, I must now say what general similarities led me to begin to compare the works of these two men, before I get to the specifics that constitute the purpose of this paper. It would be hard to find two men more characterized by melancholy, a quality of which Melville himself says, "All noble things are touched with that."⁽²⁾ And in one of the many breathtaking paragraphs scattered throughout his ponderous novel, as he is building to his comparison with the soaring mountain eagle, which, "even in his lowest swoop . . . is still higher than other birds," Melville mentions Pascal as one of those "sick men," whom one must read and understand if one is to "break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon,"⁽³⁾ that is, if one is to conquer human mortality and limitation by confronting and defying them. But most importantly, what struck me as most similar between the two is that both men's ruminations on God are profoundly anthropocentric and experiential. Pascal pointedly disparages the possibility or the utility of proving the existence of God, and instead focuses on proving what kind of human nature we possess that makes a certain kind of God necessary, if we are to be saved: "That is why I will not try to prove here by reasons from nature either the existence of God, or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that sort. . . because such knowledge, without Jesus Christ, is useless and sterile."⁽⁴⁾ Likewise, although Moby-Dick constantly tantalizes us with divine images applied to both the sea and to Moby-Dick, it always anchors those images in a sea of human subjectivity and brings them back to the characters' reactions and interpretations of them, as shown most vividly by the juxtaposition of the characters' reactions to "The Doubloon": "And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way."⁽⁵⁾ Nothing means just one thing, but neither is anything finally or merely subjective: instead, every object, person, and event in the novel is imbued with layers upon layers of meanings that different humans intuit in different ways and at different times, showing their own essence and purpose more than that of the object they analyze. So the book is not ultimately about the White Whale or God, so much as it is about why men would want to hunt the White Whale, or why they all have some unique complaint with the Deity: ". . . so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?"⁽⁶⁾ Indeed, we do not, for as Melville has created his microcosm of "Isolatoes" on board the Pequod, his "Anarchasis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth," there was no human reaction imaginable for them, other than to lay on and pursue that maddest and most human of goals, to "lay the world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever came back."⁽⁷⁾ And although Ahab's philosophy should not be taken as identical to Melville's own, it is one that he granted "a full and proper hearing,"⁽⁸⁾ and with which he is (and wishes us to be) sympathetic. Ahab's obsession is extreme, but it is utterly typical of the human condition, and that is why it can become the quest of everyone on board the Pequod, all of the "mongrel renegades, castaways, and cannibals,"⁽⁹⁾ every Christian, pagan, atheist, pantheist, black, white, drunk, madman, blasphemer, buffoon, innocent, or virtuous dreamer among them.

So from the general similarities of melancholy, morbidity, and anthropocentrism, we will proceed in this paper to consider more specific points of similarity in Pascal and Melville's idea of how humans encounter God. Two main points will be considered: human nature as it is depicted in Pascal and Melville, and their use of Scripture, as they show which Scriptural passages and characters best illustrate the human nature they have described. As will be shown, both writers owe much of their thought and their similarity to one another to the Biblical Wisdom tradition, which each modulates and elaborates in his own unique way.

2. Human Nature in Pascal and Melville

It may be well to start out with Pascal's most succinct and categorical statement on human nature: "How empty, yet full of filth is the heart of man!"⁽¹⁰⁾ But what is really interesting is what leads Pascal to this sobering and dismal conclusion. Unlike many others (Dostoevsky comes to mind), Pascal does not arrive at this idea of human depravity by accumulating examples of moral failings or atrocities. Indeed, when he does mention immoral actions, his objection to them is more often wonder at the stupidity of such actions than outrage at their immorality: "When it is a question of deciding whether one should go to war and kill so many people, or condemn so many Spaniards to death, it is one person who decides, and he is even an interested party: it should be an impartial third party."⁽¹¹⁾ Pascal is here very much in accord with the Biblical Wisdom tradition that sees evil and folly as synonymous.⁽¹²⁾ Pascal shows this vividly in his repeated mention of "Cleopatra's nose," the beautiful shape of which senselessly caused thousands of deaths.⁽¹³⁾ And although, as we will see later, Pascal elaborates on the physical and mental shortcomings that go along with this human wretchedness, they do not seem to be his primary evidence for it. Rather, what he points to repeatedly is an emotional or psychological problem at the center of every human being: the inability to be happy.

For Pascal, our inability to be happy is shown most clearly (and ironically) in our constant attempts to make ourselves happy, for if we were capable of true happiness, all of this activity would be unnecessary, and would even lessen our happiness:

If our condition were truly happy, we would not need to divert ourselves from

thinking about it. . . . If humanity were happy, then they would be more so, the less

they were diverted, like the saints and God. Yes: but isn't someone happy who is

gladdened by diversion? No: because it comes from elsewhere, from outside, and

therefore one is made dependent, and is always liable to be troubled by a thousand

accidents, and such disturbances are inevitable.⁽¹⁴⁾

Incapable of true happiness, we therefore settle for distraction from our unhappiness. But besides its dependence on outside influences, which make it a fragile and vulnerable kind of happiness, a further problem with distraction is that it must inevitably end. Eventually we will win whatever game or sport we are playing, or get a great job or promotion or book contract, or have sex with the person whom we have been pursuing, or capture the animal we have been hunting, and then we will realize that what we thought we wanted doesn't make us happy at all: "We do not long for an easy, peaceful state that would allow us to think about our unhappy condition . . . but rather for the turmoil that keeps us from thinking about it and diverts us. This is the reason we like the chase better than the capture."⁽¹⁵⁾ But more frightening even than this would be the possibility that our distractions would succeed in distracting us forever:

The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, but it is also the

greatest of our miseries. It is the main thing that keeps us from contemplating

ourselves, and it imperceptibly makes us lose ourselves. Without it we would

be bored, and boredom would push us to look for a more secure way of escape.

But diversion amuses us and imperceptibly takes us to our death.⁽¹⁶⁾

The fact that we constantly distract ourselves proves to Pascal our wretchedness, our inability to be happy. But we might be so successful at distracting ourselves that we remain unhappy (but distracted) forever: "Since our true good has been lost, everything appears equally good to us, even our own destruction, even though it is simultaneously so contrary to God, to reason, and to nature. . . . Thus we never live, but only hope to live; and since we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so."⁽¹⁷⁾ Pascal here envisages an oblivion of losing ourselves in our distractions, which we should not think of as limited to such obviously self-destructive activities as drugs or gambling. What makes them more dangerous and insidious is that they might be the most admired or "normal" parts of our lives: it is our careers, relationships, and goals that threaten us the most, for they may make us so busy at becoming something that we forget to be anything at all, until it is too late.

So Pascal believes that humans are irredeemable wretches, incapable of goodness or happiness. Actually, it is not so simple as that at all. For just as our unhappiness is ironically shown by our constantly trying to make ourselves happy, so too a certain kind of nobility and greatness are shown precisely in our wretchedness:

All of these miseries prove humanity's greatness. They are the miseries of a

great lord, the miseries of a dispossessed king. . . . Humanity's greatness is so

obvious that it can even be deduced from their misery. What is nature in

animals, we label as misery in humans, because we recognize that, although human

nature today is like that of the animals, it is because humans have fallen from a better

nature which was once their own. . . . To summarize: if humanity had never been

corrupted, they would innocently and with assurance enjoy both truth and happiness;

but if humanity had always been only corrupt, they would have no idea either of truth

or of blessedness.⁽¹⁸⁾

For Pascal, human wretchedness and greatness are inextricably related: they immediately and unambiguously imply one another. We would not be wretched if we did not have some concept of a higher purpose and meaning for our lives, a concept of which our present life falls miserably short. On the other hand, we would not be great if we were not wretched, for then our present life would satisfy us and it would never occur to us to call it imperfect, unhappy, or fallen: "Thus it is miserable to know that one is miserable, but it is great to know that one is miserable."⁽¹⁹⁾ Without consciousness of our wretchedness, we would accept and enjoy our mortal lives for what they are, just as (as far as we can tell) animals do. Instead, we constantly hope and strive for things we cannot achieve on our own, and fail to accomplish the things we should: only humans are capable of being less than they ought, precisely because they long to be more than they are.

If any literary character summons up the image of humanity's greatness as that of the wretchedness of a "dispossessed king," it surely would be Melville's Ahab, who is "a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great Lord of Leviathans,"⁽²⁰⁾ while at the same time he is "a poor pegging lubber,"⁽²¹⁾ a "mutilated,"⁽²²⁾ crippled, "helpless, sad . . . insane old man."⁽²³⁾ Ahab himself diagnoses his condition:

Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as a Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this

blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness

which will not do away with ledgers. I would be as free as air; and I'm down

in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I would have given bid for bid with

the wealthiest Praetorian at the auction of the Roman empire (which was the

world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I'll

get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious

vertebra.⁽²⁴⁾

Ahab encapsulates here all that it is to be human: mortal, yet with a tantalizing concept of immortality; yearning to be free, yet utterly bound (an image much elaborated in Chapter 89, "Fast Fish and Loose Fish," and generalized there to include the whole human species); knowing what physical, mental, and spiritual glory are, and yet painfully aware of his lack of them. And exactly as Pascal focused on how humans pursue happiness, but are unable to hold on to it, we see Ahab's final expression before his fatal confrontation with Moby Dick:

But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment,

the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last

stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel - forbidding - now

threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob

over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in

her heart to save and bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear

into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.⁽²⁵⁾

As Peleg had exclaimed earlier, "Ahab has his humanities!"⁽²⁶⁾ and one human tear is worth more than all the deadly, powerful, soulless waters of the Earth. Here is a creature who is truly and completely superior to the physical world that destroys him.

The number of classical, Biblical, and renaissance archetypes Ahab's character simultaneously recollects is staggering, and they further reveal his dual nature and the dual nature of humanity that he epitomizes: Prometheus, Narcissus,⁽²⁷⁾ Osiris,⁽²⁸⁾ Satan, Adam, Cain,⁽²⁹⁾ the evil Israelite king Ahab, Jonah, Job, Faust, Don Quixote,⁽³⁰⁾ King Lear, Edmund.⁽³¹⁾ All of these characters share the image of overstepping some boundary, reaching for something more than they ought, of disobeying a "natural" or God-given command, and suffering for it. But what makes Ahab the clearest illustration of Pascal's anthropology is the timing and causality of his condition: for most of the other literary antecedents, their dispossession, their fall from grace, happens following and as a result of their over-reaching hubris and defiance of boundaries. But Ahab begins the novel as "branded,"⁽³²⁾ "dismasted,"⁽³³⁾ "dismembered,"⁽³⁴⁾ "stricken, blasted,"⁽³⁵⁾ "mutilated,"⁽³⁶⁾ an "ungodly, god-like man,"⁽³⁷⁾ presented with a universe that he cannot understand or accept: it is therefore not a question of how he got that way, but how he will react to his condition. He is therefore more like Job and Edmund than the others, though he is a great deal more appealing than either of these two. If we admire Job for his courage, then his submission in the end seems a little disappointing, at least when considered dramatically or aesthetically, if not morally or theologically. (On the other hand, if we admire him for his patience and piety, then what's the point of the rather lengthy and repetitious middle of the book?) And while we certainly sympathize with the unfairness of the world's treatment of Edmund, his murderous treachery against the people who have done their best to minimize the harm to him seems ungrateful and spiteful, not heroic. Job and Edmund are ultimately "unnatural" - one heavenly so, the other diabolically so. But Ahab is utterly "natural" and human in his situation and his reaction: he lashes out at precisely the being who harmed him, the White Whale/God, and he never relents. He is as appealing and dogged in his outward directed quest as Lear is in his inner one, but while we sympathize with Lear because we all make similarly foolish mistakes and reap the terrible rewards of our actions, we admire Ahab because we are all trapped in a world that we didn't make, don't understand, and can't accept, but he actually takes up a harpoon and hobbles off to do something about it, as mad and futile as that may be: "[Ahab] realizes that the Whale cannot be destroyed, that chaos and evil can never be eliminated. [But] despite this realization, Ahab continues his struggle. Value and truth cannot be achieved in any absolute sense, but in his pursuit of them, man finds salvation."⁽³⁸⁾ We are different from him only in our lesser consciousness of life and our more craven reaction to it: most of us are content to sip "the tepid tears of orphans,"⁽³⁹⁾ or ignore "all the horrors of the half known life,"⁽⁴⁰⁾ while Ahab has drunk deeply of "all nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin, voluntary, and confiding breast," making him "one in a whole nation's census - a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies."⁽⁴¹⁾ The captain of the Pequod clearly is wretched in his greatness, and great precisely because he is wretched.

Besides being applied to Ahab, Melville also generalizes the image of a "dispossessed king" to apply to all of humanity:

But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down

from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand -

however grand and wonderful, now quit it; - and take your way, ye nobler,

sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic

towers of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in

bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So

with a broken throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he

patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye

down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A family

likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grim sire

only will the old State-secret come.⁽⁴²⁾

Ahab is just the extreme, heroic, and much more insightful version of all of us: through him we now realize that we are a race of broken, conquered people, and this realization makes us even more wretched, because we now have some memory and longing for our homeland.⁽⁴³⁾

But just as wretchedness is most clearly seen by both Pascal and Melville among the great, Melville finds human greatness most clearly displayed among the humble:

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and

murderers there may be; men may have mean and meager faces; but man, in the ideal,

is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand a glowing creature. . . . this august dignity

I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has

no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives

a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God;

Himself! . . . thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of

humanity over all my kind! . . . Thou who, in all Thy mighty earthly marchings, ever

cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!⁽⁴⁴⁾

This is probably the closest the book will come to conventional piety or optimism, and it comes as Ishmael is contemplating human equality and humility. Ahab has only focused on the unfairness of his life, and his reaction is blinding and self-destructive anger, an attitude typified in his mad statement that "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me,"⁽⁴⁵⁾ and one that cuts him off from other people, whom he now only regards as "wheels"⁽⁴⁶⁾ or "tools."⁽⁴⁷⁾ But Ishmael focuses on the common lot of all humanity, as painful and meager as this might be, and it fills him with a feeling of compassionate pride in his race, so that "over any ignominious blemish in [a man] all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes."⁽⁴⁸⁾ This pride in humanity, despite their seeming undeservingness, is shown also in his description of the carpenter. Right after writing that "mankind in mass . . . seem[s] a mob of unnecessary duplicates," Ishmael immediately and categorically asserts that the carpenter "was no duplicate."⁽⁴⁹⁾ While Ahab fits everyone interchangeably into his quest and treats them in a way that ignores their humanity, Ishmael is completely aware of everyone's uniqueness as well as their participation in a common human nature, and analyzing both of these qualities in everyone on board the Pequod is his quest, regarding everyone with "Stoic endurance, New Testament and democratic equality in suffering and slavery, fellow-feeling and mutual help," thereby opening him up to "the emollient effect of shared suffering, of mankind full of sweet things of love and gratitude."⁽⁵⁰⁾

Pascal explains why he thinks that humans are wretched and great, and how their greatness shows their wretchedness, just as their wretchedness shows their greatness. Both he and Melville show this as the greatness of a lost state that tantalizes and plagues us with its memory, and will not leave us in the relative peace of distractions that would allow us some enjoyment of our wretchedness: "Ahab's effort, then, is to reclaim something that man knows he has lost."⁽⁵¹⁾ This concept of human nature is repeatedly shown in Melville's novel, with Ahab's consciousness of his wretchedness, and the generalization of this realization to all humanity; Ahab's superiority to the physical world, even though it can (and does) easily destroy him; and in Ishmael's discovery of the human dignity placed by God equally in all, but especially noticed in the most humble.

3. Pascal and Melville's Use of Scripture

Pascal uses Scripture constantly, and for many different purposes. It is a frequent part of his attacks on Judaism and Islam,⁽⁵²⁾ and it is a large part of his discussion of the problematic nature of miracles, which serve both to save and condemn.⁽⁵³⁾ But what we are interested in here is an examination of which Scriptural passages and characters Pascal focuses on to illustrate and elaborate his idea of the dual nature of human beings as both great and wretched.

Pascal significantly pairs the two greatest figures of the Biblical Wisdom tradition - Job and Solomon - to illustrate the dichotomy he sees at the center of human nature: "Solomon and Job have known and spoken best about human misery: one was the happiest person, the other the unhappiest; one knew by experience the vanity of pleasures, and the other the reality of pain."⁽⁵⁴⁾ These two men typify for Pascal the extremes of human experience - extreme and lasting pleasure and pain - and they show how at either extreme, one comes to the same conclusion about human nature: it is wretched because of its greatness, it is great because of its wretchedness.

Although he only mentions "misery" or "wretchedness" directly, it is clear from his other comments related to these two figures that he thinks they show us both sides of human nature. Here Pascal has directly mentioned Solomon's realization of the vanity or emptiness of pleasure, but elsewhere he comments on the futility of great knowledge, the other quality for which David's son was known. Knowledge is vain because we only pursue it for our own pride, not to help or educate others, but only to belittle them: "Curiosity is only vanity. Usually one only wants to know something in order to talk about it."⁽⁵⁵⁾ It is usually vain in its object as well, pursuing knowledge of creatures rather than Creator, but this is a misguided object that Solomon was able to overcome: "David [and] Solomon never said, 'There is no vacuum, therefore there is a God.' They must have been cleverer than the cleverest of those who came after them, for all of those use such proofs."⁽⁵⁶⁾ Solomon realized the wretched inadequacy of human knowledge, but this is also proof of human greatness: imperfect knowledge makes one unhappy only because one retains some idea of what perfect knowledge would be. Ignorance is not bliss: "Ecclesiastes shows that humanity without God is in total ignorance and inevitable unhappiness. For one is unhappy who wills, but cannot do. Now one wants to be happy and assured of some truth, but one can neither know, nor can one stop wanting to know."⁽⁵⁷⁾ But Pascal believes that finally even this ignorance can be useful:

Knowledge has two extremes which meet. The first is the pure, natural ignorance

in which all people are born. The other extreme is reached by great souls who,

having run through everything that humans can know, find that they know

nothing, and they return to that same ignorance from which they departed; but it

is a wise ignorance which knows itself.⁽⁵⁸⁾

This is no longer vain curiosity or knowledge that seeks to dominate others or believes that it can know everything, but a "wise ignorance," a humbled and self-reflective knowledge that knows and accepts the truths that it cannot change. It cannot finally fix the human mind, but it can take a large step in diagnosing its illness.

Likewise, in considering Job's condition, we also see how Pascal would think of him as illustrating human greatness as well as wretchedness. Twice Pascal uses the image of a reed to describe the physical frailty of humans and the enormous and fatal advantage that the physical universe has over us:

Through space, the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through

thought I grasp it. . . . Humanity is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but a thinking

reed. It is not necessary for the whole universe to mobilize in order to crush us: a

mist, a drop of water is enough to kill us. But even if the universe were to crush us,

humanity would still be more noble than their killer, because we know that we are

dying, and the advantage the universe has over us. The universe knows none of this.⁽⁵⁹⁾

Job was crushed by the universe, but he achieves his nobility by knowing he is being crushed, and by questioning and challenging this situation. Suffering in itself is not meaningful, but the consciousness of suffering can be, and it is where humans find their greatness, in the very teeth of physical wretchedness: "Humanity's greatness comes from knowing we are miserable. A tree does not know it is miserable. . . . One cannot be miserable without consciousness: a ruined house is not miserable. Only a human being can be miserable."⁽⁶⁰⁾ Job's physical suffering results in an intellectual enlightenment that is very similar to what Solomon achieved, for it results in the same kind of realization of human weakness and limitation: in the end, Job knows that he cannot know why he is suffering. As with Solomon, this results in humility, but also in hope: "For I know that my Redeemer lives."⁽⁶¹⁾ Solomon and Job together show for Pascal how from totally different experiences, humans can come to the same conclusions about human greatness and wretchedness. They can realize that physical pain and pleasure are irrelevant in and of themselves, and often outside of our control; meanwhile, the mind is usually (but not always) under our control, but it is incapable of understanding the questions of meaning and purpose in which we are so desperately interested. The human mind gives us superiority over the physical world, and it gives us a glimpse of something higher, but it cannot take us to that higher realm. Again, its function is only to diagnose our illness, as crucial a role as that might be, but not to cure it.

Pascal finds the cure in the Pauline pairing of Adam and Christ: "Adam the figure of the one that was to come."⁽⁶²⁾ Pascal will even present it as the totality of all Christian belief: "All of faith consists in Jesus Christ and Adam."⁽⁶³⁾ But what is interesting is that while we can intellectually accept this solution, we cannot understand it:

It is, however, an astonishing thing that the mystery furthest from our understanding,

that of the transmission of sin, is that thing without which we can have no

knowledge of ourselves. . . . We can conceive neither Adam's state of glory, nor

the nature of his sin, nor the manner of its transmission to us. These are things

which happened in a state of nature completely different from our own, and which

go beyond our present capacities. Knowing all this is useless to our escape; all that

it is important for us to know is that we are miserable, corrupt, separated from God,

but redeemed by Jesus Christ.⁽⁶⁴⁾

Pascal uses the Scriptural pairs Job/Solomon and Adam/Christ in a way similar to how he uses the contrast between our knowledge of our own nature, on the one hand, and our knowledge of and longing for God, on the other. Pascal believes we can understand and describe our own nature, which will then point us to a knowledge of God and a longing to be with God which we will never fully understand or realize in this life. Likewise, we can understand Job and Solomon all too well, for their experiences and reflections on their experiences are all too familiar to us as humans; and their pain and inadequacy point us to the other pair of Adam and Christ as the cause and solution of this human condition, but in a way that cannot be fully understood or appreciated by us in this life. For Pascal, the human mind cannot object to Adam's sin or Christ's redemption as illogical or nonsensical, but it also cannot explain or understand these concepts. It is enough for him if it can reason inductively from particular experiences of human wretchedness and greatness - such as Job and Solomon - to the general "rule" that would explain those experiences as the result of Adam's sin, and would hope for a resolution of those experiences with Christ's redemption.

Like everything else in his masterpiece, Melville's use of Scripture in Moby-Dick is blatant and overwhelming, at the same time as it is elusive: "Melville was a great biblical unscriptural writer. Anything may be, indeed the rule of the reader's road is to expect it, inverted, pulled inside out, torn down, and reconstructed into its mirror opposite. In Melville's hands anything may happen to the biblical - almost certainly will."⁽⁶⁵⁾ This is perhaps best illustrated by the continuing debate over the most explicit use of Scripture in the novel, Father Mapple's sermon: does Melville present it only in order to use it as "a sarcastic and sneering burlesque of Christian doctrine,"⁽⁶⁶⁾ or is Melville in fact expressing the "essence" of his work "through the lips of Father Mapple,"⁽⁶⁷⁾ and if he is, is his teaching Christian, or utterly "pagan"?⁽⁶⁸⁾ But while the most explicit and ambiguous instance of his use of scripture is Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah, Melville's use of the Biblical Wisdom literature - especially the book of Job and to a lesser degree that of Ecclesiastes - more clearly coincides with his own anthropological and theological reflections.

Melville evokes the Book of Job in the critical chapter that bears the same name as the entire novel: "Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world."⁽⁶⁹⁾ He signals thereby that we are to think of Moby Dick as the Leviathan from the Book of Job. He is anything but "a dumb brute,"⁽⁷⁰⁾ as Starbuck's sincere but inadequate piety labels him. He is the evil that God allows (or perhaps even creates), and Moby Dick/Leviathan's existence implicates God in all the evil and suffering of the world.⁽⁷¹⁾ Everything that Ahab says about Moby Dick is accurate, if incomplete: "I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him."⁽⁷²⁾ Job could finally accept the existence of awesome, unexplainable evil and pain in the world, but Ahab cannot. Nor can he destroy it, but in the end even this goal is abandoned. At the height of his power, Ahab gives his own theology its clearest expression: "I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. . . . I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me."⁽⁷³⁾ Ahab cannot worship God, nor does he expect an answer from God, nor does he think he can destroy either God or God's "agent" - evil: he simply defies God to do anything to him other than kill him, a prospect that offers no fear to him. Closer to Job's acceptance is the position of Queequeg, who by no means overlooks or approves of the brutality of God's world, but also does not question or defy it, but simply describes it in his matter-of-fact way: "Queequeg no care what god made him shark. . . wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god what made shark must be one dam Injin."⁽⁷⁴⁾ This admission of divine malice and inscrutability never keeps Queequeg from devoutly and innocently worshiping his own little god Yojo, nor does it keep him from calmly listening to the preaching of the "Nantucket god" at the Whaleman's Chapel, nor does it keep him from being a permanent member of "the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world."⁽⁷⁵⁾ In fact, it never troubles him in the least, for he is always "entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity."⁽⁷⁶⁾ He is "always serene in a furious world," possessed of a "wisdom. . . that saves the innocence of Ishmael."⁽⁷⁷⁾ Again, this is neither naivete nor pious rationalization of God's silent brutality, but a calm and vitalizing acceptance and wonder at it.

Job is evoked again at the very end of the novel, as Ishmael refers to himself with the same verses that the four messengers give after they each report their respective disasters: "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."⁽⁷⁸⁾ The encounter with God in the Book of Job very nearly destroys Job, physically and spiritually, but he can finally confront the voice in the whirlwind with "wise ignorance" and withdraw his demand for a divine accounting and responsibility. This does not, I think, deny the legitimacy of such a request (again, the middle of the book seems a colossal waste of time if this is the message), but only brackets it as a question whose necessity and inevitability we must accept, but whose unanswerability we also must accept if we are to remain either faithful or sane: like Queequeg's tattoos, which supposedly reveal the meaning of the universe, such a question captivates everyone, but remains forever undecipherable, a "tantalization of the gods."⁽⁷⁹⁾ But the encounter with the White Whale/God is fatal to the captain and crew of the Pequod, for they continue to demand an answer up to their final breath, up to the final, spiteful swing of Tashtego's hammer that smashes and pins the taunting sea hawk to the mast and so "sink[s] to hell. . . dragg[ing] a living part of heaven along with her."⁽⁸⁰⁾ Significantly, Ahab's final confrontation is not with a whirlwind descending from above, but with the diabolical inversion of it, as the Pequod and all aboard are dragged down by a silent, "sullen" whirlpool,⁽⁸¹⁾ a "closing vortex"⁽⁸²⁾ that silences their protest forever. In a way, Melville outdoes the author of Job in his depiction of the outrageousness of faith: not only must one accept a God who cannot offer an account of himself and his violent, cruel creation, one must accept a God who remains utterly silent, and who jealously guards his silence by destroying those who dare to question him. Strangely, though, Melville does offer us one character who can survive the encounter the way Job did, for Ishmael is preserved to learn something from the terrible voyage of the Pequod: even in Melville's theology, suffering need not result in suicidal defiance, but in calm acceptance.

Finally, let us consider Melville's evaluation of Ecclesiastes. As he stands at the tiller, Ishmael gazes too long at the flames that consume the slaughtered whale on board the Pequod, and he almost capsizes the ship by turning it into the wind. But this brush with death leads Ishmael to ruminate on all things mortal and empty:

The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is

Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity."

ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of un-christian Solomon's wisdom yet.

. . . But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of

understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the congregation of the

dead." [Prov 21:16] Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden

thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe

that is madness.⁽⁸³⁾

Exactly as in Pascal's evocation of Solomon, Ishmael realizes that humans cannot find the solution to their mortality and wretchedness by ignoring them, but only by facing them squarely, honestly, dangerously. The danger is that this confrontation with human wretchedness will lead to madness and death, as it has with Ahab.⁽⁸⁴⁾ But with Ishmael, he is able to incorporate all the "vanity" and "woe" of God's world into a life that finds meaning and fulfillment in both the most joyous and the most painful of experiences: "And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces."⁽⁸⁵⁾ Ahab clearly has an eagle in his soul, but he has plunged forever into the gorge, or perhaps, Icarus-like, has soared too high and destroyed himself. Ishmael has the wisdom to accept the "woe" of life without anger or judgment, and he can serenely sit with Solomon, just as at the end of the novel he "float[s] on a soft and dirge-like main,"⁽⁸⁶⁾ the murderous ocean harmlessly surrounding him and buoying him up.

Without forcing Melville into orthodoxy with Pascal, even the Adam/Christ typology is not wholly absent from Moby-Dick in the figure of Queequeg. Clearly he is the antithesis to the industrialized, white characters and their rationalizing madness that is typified in Ahab: "Opposite to Queequeg, [Ahab] is a gigantic symbol of the sickness of the self, the disease of the egoist-absolutist of Christendom. If immortal health shines in the dying Queequeg, then mortal illness festers in Ahab."⁽⁸⁷⁾ Queequeg possesses a "simple honest heart,"⁽⁸⁸⁾ and bears within himself the remnants of an innocent and more vital physical and spiritual state, from which the other characters have fallen much farther than he:⁽⁸⁹⁾ he is more like Adam, more like God's original creation, than anyone else on board the ship, which is itself a microcosm of the world. And without forcing Queequeg into the role of a Christ figure, it is clear that he is Christ-like in many ways: "It is Queequeg, the nonwhite, non-Christian South Sea islander, who embodies Jesus' message of love when he offers to die for Ishmael if need be and divides his 'thirty dollars in silver' with him, reversing Judas' betrayal."⁽⁹⁰⁾ Throughout the book, his presence is redemptive to the receptive acolyte Ishmael (who refers to himself as Queequeg's "attendant or page,"⁽⁹¹⁾ as well as his "wife"⁽⁹²⁾), starting with their first encounter: "I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it."⁽⁹³⁾ Queequeg's redemption of Ishmael continues to the end of the book, as his coffin saves the narrator: "Here in the broad water-courses, the illimitable solitudes traversed by Ahab, where God's predatory sharks and menacing hawks could have ripped this lone survivor in pieces, it is the sustaining influence of Queequeg that protects Ishmael. . . . Now in his loneliest hour Ishmael is redeemed again with the peace of that same Queequeg."⁽⁹⁴⁾ And as Adam and Christ remain forever incomprehensible for Pascal, so does Queequeg remain for Ishmael, who can only gaze at him in "awe,"⁽⁹⁵⁾ just as he gazes in amazement at the stupefied predators of God's deep at the end of the book, held at bay by some vital force still emanating from Queequeg's "immortality-preserver."⁽⁹⁶⁾ Ishmael has learned quite vividly the lessons of Job and Ecclesiastes, and he can only gratefully accept, but not comprehend, the redemption that the Christ-like Queequeg has brought to him.

3. Conclusion: Wisdom in the Encounter with God for Pascal and Melville

We have shown how the anthropology and the use of Scripture to illustrate human nature are similar in Pensées and in Moby-Dick. When the simultaneously wretched and great humans in these works finally encounter God, is this encounter also similar? Allowing for the rather enormous differences in genre and style, I think it is. For Pascal, what constitutes a true, complete, and beneficial encounter with God? "It is the heart that perceives God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by reason."⁽⁹⁷⁾ So the heart is the only organ that can truly perceive and relate to God, and Pascal says that people who understand through the heart are "wise," and see "with the eyes of the heart."⁽⁹⁸⁾ It is also the heart that determines the object(s) of love, and these decisions are neither reasonable nor unreasonable, they are simply of a different order or kind:

The heart has its reasons, that reason cannot comprehend: one knows this from

thousands of examples. I say that the heart naturally loves the universal being and

itself, as it has accustomed itself to do so; but it can choose to harden itself against

either one of these. You have rejected one and kept the other: is it according to

reason that you love yourself?⁽⁹⁹⁾

Self-love is therefore not unreasonable (or reasonable), but it is unwise, for it can render one incapable of loving God or other people, and it turns one instead inward to the self, which is only partially and very provisionally worthy of love. Wisdom, on the other hand, would turn one from self-love and open one up to the proper set of valuations: "All bodies together with all minds and all their products are not worth the least impulse of charity, which is of an infinitely higher order."⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ So, having used reason to understand certain realities of human nature, Pascal believes that one should then use a different faculty of the heart to will oneself to love God and others rather than oneself. "Know thyself" is the function of reason, and is the foundation for the more important command, "Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself,"⁽¹⁰¹⁾ which is an act of the heart, and the beginning and goal of all wisdom.

For the final word on Ishmael's experience of wisdom and God, I think we should look elsewhere than his physical redemption at the end of the book, since, after all, his life is not very much redeemed if he has only been physically saved from the marine variety of sharks to return to the terrestrial world of the bipedal variety.⁽¹⁰²⁾ Ishmael shows his mental and spiritual redemption much earlier, as the whole boat gazes down through the water at the deepest, most life-giving secrets of God's creation:

Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond.

. . . And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights,

did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful

concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the

tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute

calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down

and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.⁽¹⁰³⁾

Significantly, neither the monomaniac Ahab (though even he receives a similar revelation in Chapter 132, "The Symphony"), nor the unconcerned Stubb, nor the shallow Flask are privy to this revelation, but only the pious Starbuck, the virtuous Queequeg, and the curious and open Ishmael. Approached with the defiance of Ahab's egoism, God's world is a silencing and annihilating vortex that drags one into its center, which is oblivion, nothingness; approached with Ishmael's innocent receptivity and the simple wisdom of his friend/redeemer Queequeg, the "unwaning woe" of life becomes the storm that forever revolves around one, but can never harm or change a secret, impervious center of "eternal joy."⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ Ishmael has overcome the land/sea dichotomy that drove him to sea on the first page of the novel, for he is now and forevermore both in an "enchanted pool," and "deep inland." Furthermore, he has also overcome and inverted the potential self-centeredness of all knowledge that he mentioned in the first chapter, the tendency to see only the self reflected everywhere, for he no longer sees "that same image [of himself]. . . in all rivers and oceans,"⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ but he now sees the ocean within himself. And for one of the few times in the novel, removed from the influence of Ahab's madness and the industrialized brutality of the whaling industry, the ocean (within or without) is not a cannibalistic hell, but an aquatic version of heaven that overwhelms these men with a vision of both maternal and sexual love that can never be forgotten, no matter what atrocities they go on to witness or perpetrate. The "wisdom that is woe" has been neither forgotten nor ignored, but it has become a wisdom that allows Ishmael finally to be redeemed by and reconciled to God and God's creation: ". . . he has seen that, although the whale and the creation must remain unsolved to the last, the creation is plenteous, that it contains those radiant moments, abundant with spirit, which are redemptive. . . . this response issues in the deepest kind of reconciliation with the terms of experience."⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Here finally is the happiness, the anchoring centeredness and rest that Pascal knew all people desperately longed for, but could never achieve through self-centered and self-destructive activity, but only through the wisdom of acceptance, humility, and love.

Notes

1. It should be said at the beginning, as I have said on many other occasions, that the ideas in this paper come directly from my experience teaching in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame (where the students graciously tolerated my first time teaching Moby-Dick, and all my simplistic and repetitive interpretations), and in the Core Humanities Program at Villanova University. It never would have occurred to me to compare these two thinkers if I had not assigned them in my class on Modern Thought, and if I had not been blessed by such insightful and perceptive students, from whom I have learned much more than they from me. Special thanks also go to Dan Morehead, Tom Bertonneau, Dave Schindler, Jr., and Rick Bolles, for their comments on the essay.

2. Melville, Moby-Dick (ed. H. Hayford and H. Parker; New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1967) Chapter 16, "The Ship," p. 68. All page references are to this edition.

3. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 96, "The Try-Works," p. 355.

4. Pascal, Pensées (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961) #556 (#449), my translation. All quotations from Pascal are my translation. The numbers refer to the pensée number in the Brunschvicg edition, and the numbers in parentheses refer to the numbers in the English translation of A. J. Krailsheimer (New York, et. al.: Penguin, 1966).

5. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 99, "The Doubloon," p. 358.

6. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale," p. 170.

7. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 27, "Knights and Squires," p. 108.

8. P. H. Reardon, "Captain Ahab's Rebellion," Touchstone 8 (1995) 15-18, quotation from p. 15, where he continues, "Melville is not really convinced that the old sea captain is altogether wrong."

9. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 41, "Moby Dick," p. 162.

10. Pascal, Pensées, #143 (#139).

11. Pascal, Pensées, #296 (#59).

12. See J. L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981) 80-91.

13. Pascal, Pensées, #162 (#413), #163 (#46), #163b (#197).

14. Pascal, Pensées, #165b (#70), #170 (#132).

15. Pascal, Pensées, #139 (#136).

16. Pascal, Pensées, #171 (#414).

17. Pascal, Pensées, #425 (#148), #172 (#47).

18. Pascal, Pensées, #398 (#116), #409 (#117), #434 (#131).

19. Pascal, Pensées, #397 (#114).

20. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 30, "The Pipe," p. 114.

21. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 36, "The Quarter-deck," p. 143.

22. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 41, "Moby Dick," p. 160.

23. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 52, "The Albatross," p. 203.

24. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 108, "Ahab and the Carpenter," p. 392.

25. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 132, "The Symphony," p. 443.

26. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 16, "The Ship," p. 77.

27. The identification of J. F. Gardner, "Ishmael on Watch," Parabola 2 (1977) 30-39, and T. Woodson, "Ahab's Greatness: Prometheus as Narcissus," in Critical Essays on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (eds. B. Higgins and H. Parker; New York: G. K. Hall, 1992) 440-55.

28. The primary identification of H. B. Franklin, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963) 72-98.

29. One of the points made by J. Stampfer, "Reply to 'The Modern Job'," Judaism 13 (1964) 361-63.

30. W. H. Auden, "Ahab," in The Enchafèd Flood; or, the Romantic Iconography of the Sea (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1950) 133-40; reprinted in Ahab (ed. H. Bloom; New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) 15-19.

31. See the excellent collection of essays, Ahab (ed. H. Bloom; New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991). On the parallels with Edmund, see J. Markels, Melville and the Politics of Identity: From King Lear to Moby Dick (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

32. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 28, "Ahab," p. 110.

33. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 28, "Ahab," p. 110; also Chapter 36, "The Quarter-deck," p. 143.

34. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 37, "Sunset," p. 147.

35. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 16, "The Ship," p. 77.

36. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 41, "Moby Dick," p. 160.

37. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 16, "The Ship," p. 76.

38. J. Bernstein, "Herman Melville's Concept of Ultimate Reality and Meaning in Moby-Dick," 5 (1982) 104-17: 116.

39. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 2, "The Carpet-Bag," p. 19.

40. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 58, "Brit," p. 236.

41. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 16, "The Ship," p. 71.

42. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 41, "Moby Dick," p. 161.

43. Cf. B. Cowan, "Reading Ahab," in Ahab (ed. H. Bloom; New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1991) 116-23: 120, "This something, roughly phrased, consists of the realization that man in his present state not only is alienated from his original kingly image but has even forgotten this alienation. The reason for both alienation and forgetting is the too great suffering attendant on the dethronement of original man."

44. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 26, "Knights and Squires," pp. 104-05; cf. the analysis of the passage in W. Hamilton, Melville and the Gods (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) 12-13.

45. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," p. 144.

46. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 37, "Sunset," p. 147.

47. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 46, "Surmises," p. 183.

48. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 26, "Knights and Squires," p. 104.

49. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 107, "The Carpenter," p. 387.

50. H. Hayford, "'Loomings': Yarns and Figures in the Fabric," in Critical Essay on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (eds. B. Higgins and H. Parker; New York: G. K. Hall, 1992) 456-69: 464. On this theme, see also N. K. Hill, "Following Ahab to Doom or 'Goberning de Shark': Moby Dick as Democratic Reflection," Cross Currents 40 (1990) 256-64; and Markels, Melville and the Politics of Identity, esp. 86-104, for the Hobbesian and Lockean influences on the contrast between Ahab and Ishmael.

51. A. Kazin, "Ishmael and Ahab," Atlantic Monthly 198, no. 5 (Nov. 1956) 83, reprinted in Ahab (ed. H. Bloom; New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1991) 28-30.

52. E.g. Pascal, Pensées, #446 (#278), #592 (#204), #730 (#324), #774 (#221). See also D. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief: Catechesis and Conversion in the Pensées (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994) 177-242.

53. E.g. Pascal, Pensées, #564 (#835), #808 (#846), #839 (#854), #843 (#840). Cf. R. J. Nelson, Pascal: Adversary and Advocate (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1981) 186: "In Pascal's theology, miracles do not convince and they are far from converting. As Pascal will maintain in his projected Apology for the Christian Religion, miracles may even confound belief" (emphasis in original). This position opposes the more simplistic view that Pascal considers miracles as unambiguous "proof": e.g. D. Adamson, Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist and Thinker about God (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995) 78-81, 183-85.

54. Pascal, Pensées, #174 (#403).

55. Pascal, Pensées, #152 (#77).

56. Pascal, Pensées, #243 (#463).

57. Pascal, Pensées, #389 (#75). The relevance to Solomon is greater since Pascal probably accepted the attribution of Ecclesiastes to him: see the discussion of authorship by R. N. Whybray, Ecclesiastes (New Century Bible Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans / London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1989) 3-14.

58. Pascal, Pensées, #327 (#83).

59. Pascal, Pensées, #348 (#113), #347 (#200).

60. Pascal, Pensées, #397 (#114), #399 (#437).

61. Pascal, Pensées, #741 (#811), quoting Job 19:25.

62. Pascal, Pensées, #656 (#590), quoting Rom 5:14.

63. Pascal, Pensées, #523 (#226).

64. Pascal, Pensées, #434 (#131), #560 (#431).

65. Edwin Cady, "'As Through a Glass Eye, Darkly': The Bible in the Nineteenth-Century American Novel," in The Bible and American Arts and Letters (ed. G. Gunn; Philadelphia: Fortress Press / Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983) 33-55: 38.

66. L. Thompson, Melville's Quarrel with God (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952) 163.

67. D. B. Lockerbie, "The Greatest Sermon in Fiction," Christianity Today 8 (Nov. 8, 1963) 9-12: 12.

68. The opinion of J. A. Holstein, "Melville's Inversion of Jonah in Moby-Dick," Iliff Review 42 (1985) 13-20.

69. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 41, "Moby Dick," p. 162.

70. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 36, "The Quarter-deck," p. 144.

71. Cf. Reardon, "Captain Ahab's Rebellion," 17: "So God is as responsible for evil as for good. In this line of reasoning, damnation is not a divine afterthought. God himself must be held to account for the metaphysical injustice of man's plight. Of this, Captain Ahab entertains no doubts."

72. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 36, "The Quarter-deck," p. 144.

73. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 119, "The Candles," p. 416, 417.

74. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 66, "The Shark Massacre," p. 257.

75. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 18, "His Mark," p. 83.

76. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 10, "A Bosom Friend," p. 52.

77. J. Baird, Ishmael (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956) 247.

78. Melville, Moby-Dick, "Epilogue," p. 470, quoting Job 1:14-19.

79. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 110, "Queequeg in His Coffin," p. 399.

80. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 135, "The Chase - Third Day," p. 469.

81. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 135, "The Chase - Third Day," p. 469.

82. Melville, Moby-Dick, "Epilogue," p. 470. On the image of the vortex in Moby-Dick, see Baird, Ishmael, 266-73; R. Zoellner, "Ahab's Entropism and Ishmael's Cyclicism," in Ahab (ed. H. Bloom; New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) 104-15, esp. 112-14.

83. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 96, "The Try-Works," p. 355.

84. See the similar analyses of Hamilton, Melville and the Gods, 14-15; M. M. Sealts, Jr., "Melville and the Platonic Tradition," in Critical Essays on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (eds. B. Higgins and H. Parker; New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1992) 355-76, esp. 370-71; but cf. the contrary opinion of Thompson, Melville's Quarrel with God, 222-27, who sees Melville embracing Ahab's madness, not counseling against it.

85. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 96, "The Try-Works," p. 355; cf. the analysis of D. S. Arnold, "'But the Draught of a Draught': Reading the Wonder of Ishmael's Telling," Semeia 31 (1985) 171-93: 190, "Ishmael is never completely overwhelmed by the wonders of the terrible reality he confronts. Melville does not submit to nihilism, for the self survives the voyage to tell of the ambiguities of the quest for certainty."

86. Melville, Moby-Dick, "Epilogue," p. 470.

87. Baird, Ishmael, 251.

88. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 10, "A Bosom Friend," p. 52.

89. This is true, even if Queequeg is "only" a "well-governed shark," as per R. Zoellner, "Queequeg: The Well-Governed Shark," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby-Dick: A Collection of Critical Essays (ed. M. T. Gilmore; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977) 87-93, for he does not participate in the hypocrisy and subtle viciousness of the white characters, his "sharkishness" is frank, acknowledged, and always under control.

90. M. L. Taylor, "Ishmael's (m)Other: Gender, Jesus, and God in Melville's Moby-Dick," Journal of Religion 72 (1992) 325-50: 333.

91. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 47, "The Mat-Maker," p. 185.

92. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 10, "A Bosom Friend," p. 54.

93. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 10, "A Bosom Friend," p. 53.

94. Baird, Ishmael, 246-47.

95. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 110, "Queequeg in His Coffin," p. 395.

96. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 127, "The Deck," p. 433.

97. Pascal, Pensées, #278 (#424).

98. Pascal, Pensées, #793 (#308).

99. Pascal, Pensées, #277 (#423).

100. Pascal, Pensées, #793 (#308).

101. Matt 22:37-39; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27; Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18.

102. Though Melville most frequently contrasts the land and sea, on the image of sharks he sees both realms as full of them: Moby-Dick, Chapter 64, "Stubb's Supper," p. 249, and Chapter 65, "The Whale as a Dish," pp. 255-56. He performs the same undoing of the land/sea dichotomy with Chapter 89, "Fast Fish and Loose Fish."

103. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 87, "The Grand Armada," p. 326.

104. Cf. the similar conclusion of Zoellner, "Ahab's Entropism and Ishmael's Cyclicism," 113-14: "The Grand Armada is a partial, essentially cetological resolution for Ishmael's hypo concerning the void. . . . The 'Epilogue' is the ultimate statement of the redemptive cyclicism of Moby-Dick, and the final repudiation of Ahab's entropism."

105. Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 1, "Loomings," p. 14; cf. R. A. Sherrill, "The Career of Ishmael's Self-Transcendence," in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (ed. H. Bloom; New York, New Haven, and Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986) 73-95: 76, "When all meaning appears to be relative, when the possibility of objective knowledge seems lost, it is not surprising that knowledge, for Ishmael, comes to be understood as self-projection onto what is essentially indeterminate ground. His gazing into the water reflects only his self-image: he can become Narcissus."

106. Sherrill, "Ishmael's Self-Transcendence," 94-95.