Negotiating Identity: The Frontier in Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville :: Moby Dick Essays

Written during a period of American history characterized by great expansionism, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick may be read as a reflection upon both the rapidly changing geographical frontiers of America, and the accompanying shift of social, political, religious and cultural boundaries. The Pequod's world is governed by laws other than those of the American mainland. Figuratively situated at the frontier of the New World, the ship evokes the mythic American pioneer with the independent spirit, aggression and courage to wrench a nation from the wilderness. Melville lays out a version of the frontier myth that sees redefinition of national identity in terms of man confronting his other, reaffirming the self, and - through Ishmael's survival and narration - returning to civilization having defined what he is not.. Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest for the white whale symbolize in its most extreme form, an American desire to face the wild unknown and to promote national ascendancy thro ugh the confrontation. This paper will examine the seductive but limited conditions under which claims to define American-ness are able to be made in Moby-Dick, through interrogating the way in which the crew's desires are subsumed into Ahab's private vendetta. The notion of the frontier as a place of infinite possibility, where power relations are renegotiated, even as are geographical limits, goes some way towards explaining why, despite Ahab's disregard for his men's well-being, they agree to follow him down his tragic path. Both the license that Ahab's position gives him to compel them into action, and his ability to tap the crew's own belief in the power of the mythical American capacity for self-reinvention, indicate the potential for unbridled violence in the search for the self. Crucially, this highlights the discrepancy between America's claims of its own democracy, liberty and equality, and its national enthusiasm for imperialist conquest and its tolerance of slavery. The pervasiveness of the mythological connection between American self-invention and aggression, is underlined by Slotkin in his claim that the first colonists saw in America an opportunity to regenerate their fortunes, their spirits, and the power of their church and nation; but the means to that regeneration ultimately became the means of violence, and the myth of regeneration through violence became the structuring metaphor of the American experience. (Slotkin, 5) Renowned for the risk it involved, and for the physical demands it made on the sailors, whaling invites many comparisons with both the pioneer's intrepid conquest of the western wilderness, and the march of soldiers into war.