Prairie

[fin john]

All,

    This chapter, "The Prairie," has a name which has always mystified me, since the word is not used in the chapter. The chapter is definitely not about actual prairies. In my experience one writer seems to have an insight into Melville's metaphor. The following quotes are from The Great Prairie: Fact and Literary Imagination (1989) by Robert Thacker published by the University of New Mexico.

 

    "Herman Melville, in Moby-Dick, was the only writer of this period who used the prairie with anything like the depth and power of [James Fenimore] Cooper. In his review of Parkman's The Oregon Trail, he points up western images he found particularly appealing and discusses them at some length; one of these was the prairie as ocean."

 

   "Edwin Fussell has said that in Moby-Dick 'there are more references to the American West than to Polynesia (or England; or the ancient world; or the Near East; or the history of philosophy; or anything else); and all these references appear to head in one direction, as if arranging themselves along the lines of force in a pre-existing magnetic field. There are almost more allusions to the West than to whaling; and the whales themselves, we quickly learn, are as often as not buffaloes.'"

 

  "Melville's first direct reference to the prairie occurs in "Loomings," when Ishmael, while discussing the meditative effects of bodies of water, and having just described the role of a stream in the painting of a 'romantic landscape,' admonishes his reader to 'Go visit the prairie in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies . . .'"

 

   "Another instance in which the prairie helps to define a particularly dramatic scene is to be found in 'The First Lowering,' in which Ishmael, for the first time, mans a boat in pursuit of a whale. The boat is swamped although the crew remain in it: "The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these jaws of death!'"

 

  "Additionally, Melville devotes two chapters to a specific consideration of prairie phenomena. 'The Whiteness of the Whale,' the chapter in which Ishmael probes those considerations of which 'the Albino whale was the symbol,' is a long meditation on the nature of whiteness, its quality of attracting as it repels. After citing numerous preeminent examples of whiteness, among them that of the albatross, Ishmael invokes 'the White Steed of the Prairies, . . .'"

 

   "Thus just as Melville uses the prairie analogies to describe magnificent beauty so he uses prairie references to define the 'demonism of the world.'"

 

   "Melville's greatest emphasis on the featureless of the prairie landscape is to be found in the chapter entitled 'The Prairie,' in which his earlier implicit comparison between the landscape and Moby Dick constitutes his method and concern throughout. The prairie is referred to only in the chapter title, so that Ishmael's discussion of the appearance of a Sperm whale's brow is an extended metaphor. It begins with Ishmael's explanation that he is 'but ill qualified for a pioneer,' and he then goes on to explain the features of the whale's brow in the way in which travelers and explorers attempted to come to terms with the prairie. Just as they were struck by the lack of landmarks and required a promontory, so he notes the absence of a nose; just as they argued from the known and familiar, so he argues from human physiognomy. . . . As for the question of why Melville chose to keep his analogy of the prairie and Moby Dick implicit, perhaps the best answer is to be found in his sense of the similarities between these two majestic natural phenomena: in both equally he found 'dumb' blankness, full of meaning'---besides, both prairie and Sperm whale were unknown quantities that had no familiar counterparts."

 

   John Gretchko