Dismissing the "Other"

Pudd’nhead Wilson has left me with many things to think about, but for the purpose of this blog entry, I’d like to focus on the idea of “dismissing the other.” Since the book is titled after him, let’s just start with Pudd’nhead Wilson himself. When David Wilson moved to Dawson’s Landing, he saw it fit to tell a joke about this annoying dog that had been bothering him: “I wish I owned half of that dog…Because I would kill my half.” The townspeople did not understand his joke. Confused, they began to speculate. Did he mean he would keep one half of the dog alive? Why would he want half a dog? Which half would he keep alive? Instead of asking him for clarification, they assumed he was some kind of idiot. If they cannot understand what he means, then the problem is with him, not with them.

David was an other, or outsider. He is different. With the Us vs Them mentality, if you are not one of us, you must be one of them. Since we are good, that must mean you are bad. So David was labelled Pudd’nhead because they considered him to be a fool. The lawyer side of his business flopped hard, even though he was actually quite good at his job. At the end of the novel when he solved the crime, the people realized that maybe he was no longer such a Pudd’nhead. But that was two decades later. Two decades of not giving this poor guy a chance because he failed to assimilate upon first contact.

Roxy is also outright dismissed. Although her skin is quite white, she is considered black, and therefore a slave, because she is 1/16 black. Because she’s a slave, she is not entitled to an education, and thus is assumed to be ignorant or childish. 

In reality, she is one of the smartest characters in the novel. She knows that if she is sold in town, her child will eventually be sold down the river, so she devises a Prince and the Pauper scheme to ensure that her son not have to face that harsh life. (The fake “Chambers” was never sold down the river. While her prediction was wrong in that regard, she was justified in feeling that way as the real Chambers was eventually sold down the river upon the scheme being revealed). Later, she comes up with a blackmailing plan to get her ruined son to do anything kind for her.

After "Tom" sells her down river, she is abused for a while, then pulls off an impressive escape. She headed back up to Dawson's Landing and disguised herself as a man, knowing that nobody will recognize her that way. She then uses blackmail again as a way to get what she wanted out of "Tom".

I guess I'm so drawn to this idea because I've been the "other" who has been dismissed many times before in my life. One of the worst things, to me, is to be dismissed without letting me get the chance to prove myself. It's so easy to dismiss those you don't understand, but it's so much more worth it to take the time to understand these people.

Battery Died

My2007 MacBook's battery has died, and I apparently forgot to pack a power cord, so I'm attempting to rewrite my entry on my iPhone. It was about my visit to the MASC.

Upon hearing we would be going to the MASC, I didn't really know what to think. I hadn't been there before, and have never really looked at too many old books outside of a museum.

When Tuesday had rolled around, I was not too happy with my situation: my head was pounding with pain from a migraine that developed between my break between English 302 and 368. When I get migraines, I become very irritable. My vision blurs, i become dizzy, my head hurts, and it's all made worse by the light, reading, and noise (both volume and high frequencies). Needless to say, the MASC was not a good place for me to be at that time.

I never know when to quit, though, so I dug through my bag and found some Excedrin Migraine. Was it still good? I don't know. I didn't want to have to read the bottle. The pills did the trick, but they took a half hour or so to work. Boo! So I had to read an old book with a throbbing head. That was t so much fun, but I was able to gather some interesting details. The book was a dime book, yet was still mostly in one piece, thanks to its rusted staples

As we move on, my headache began to fade, and my ability to enjoy the place increased. The temperature/ humidity controlled archive library blew me away. As did the Virgina Wolfe library. I had no idea we had that. I also had no idea Dolph Lundgren went to WSU.

My phone is now dying, so I'll finish this up quickly. The room with the moveable shelves was amazing. I felt like I was touring Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. This feeling continued when he showed us the giant scanner. I would make excuses to scan things if I had that expensive piece of technology.

Sorry if auto-correct ruined any of my words. I'll have a better entry next week.

Moby Dick In Media

I am a regular reader of a website called AV Club. It’s a subsidiary of The Onion that factually reports on pop culture news in a comedic fashion. Anyways, in the past couple of days, two new Moby-Dick projects have popped up in the news.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/moby-dick-in-space-movie-in-spacedevelopment-in-sp,86172/

The first of which is a new Moby-Dick In Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace movie. Sound familiar? That’s because, as Cecilia showed in class, Futurama already did this (albeit as a 22 minute episode of television and not a 90+ minute movie).

That episode of Futurama (entitled “Mobius-Dick”) was a really great episode (which is rare for the current era of the show). I think fleshed out, a space Moby-Dick could be very entertaining. As Star Trek and various other Sci-Fi shows and movies have shown us, outer space and the ocean are very similar. They both consist of vast amounts of nothingness. If your space ship or ship ship bust, you could be stranded, or worse, be pulled into the void. There’s also the aspect of exploring the unknown. Space is the final frontier! (The band Iron Maiden, however, would argue that death is in fact the final frontier.)

So this movie has a lot of potential. Will I see it or will it ever go beyond the development stage? Who knows? If it’s done right, it could be great. If it’s done poorly, literature types may riot.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/in-a-twist-m-night-shyamalan-has-his-own-moby-dick,86237/

The second project is an M. Night Shyamalan (Shimalamadingdong, as he likes to be called) television series. This one I’m not so optimistic about. First of all, it’s M. Night Shyamalan. Everything he does is so pretentious and so reliant on gimmicky twists. This could work with a more mystery oriented novel, or even a novel full of secrets like Behind a Mask, but it doesn’t play well with Moby-Dick. It’s a “dense symbolist tome” full of whale descriptions. Unless they take lots of creative license, the series will be very unbalanced. One week will explore the possible sexual relationship of Queequeg and Ishmael, whereas the next, it’ll be like a 19^th century version of an episode of a whale-centric Nova episode.

The only positive I can think of is that this might give them the opportunity to explore Ishmael a bit more. We know nothing about the guy. We don’t even know if Ishmael is his real name. It would be nice to see an Ishmael who isn’t just a guy who is there. (Though based on the last chapter, it certainly seems like he was but a guy who happened to be there and live to tell about it.)

Call Me Exhausted

Reading Moby-Dick feels like it has been a real adventure. Unlike after Blithedale Romance or Behind a Mask, I feel like I accomplished a great feat. A big part of that is probably its status as being one of the greatest American novels ever written. It’s referenced in all sorts of things I love (Futurma, Starbucks coffee, The Simpsons, etc.), so I had some knowledge of the story before reading it, but I didn’t understand the subtleties. I knew the line, “Call me Ishmael,” but I didn’t fully grasp the significance.

Now that I’ve read it, I can actually analyze the characters. I can talk about why Ahab was so interested in getting a white whale? (His losing of a limb at the hands jaws of this whale caused him to develop a case of the revenge monomania.) I can inquire as to what the nature of the relationship was between Ishmael and Queequeg, and further inquire as to whether or not it parallels with the relationship between Hawthorne and Melville. (Queequeg and Ishmael were totally lovers, even if homosexuality wasn’t yet an identifier.)

             In a way, I have slain the leviathan that is Moby Dick. No, I didn’t kill a whale, but I read through the densely packed 135 chapters of the novel. Some of it was very interesting. I found the parts showing Ahab’s descent to madness to be especially entertaining. Some of it, however, was a pain to get through. Take the whales being compared to folios chapter. Ugh! I actually fell asleep reading that one. No kidding. I woke up with my face in the book. Sure, one could blame it on the pinot noir I was drinking at the time, but I also fell asleep during the measuring of the whale skeleton chapter while drinking coffee.

            That’s not to say that book was overall boring. I’m glad I read Moby-Dick. It has given me many great ideas with my own writing. (As a creative writing major, I could always use more ideas!) For example, the way Melville plays with point of view. I have always chosen one narrator (usually an omniscient one), and stuck with him/her. After having read Moby-Dick, I’m interested in playing around with the narrator. Maybe I’ll have a story where the narrator hides in the background for a while. Maybe he’ll be a person who at times tells it from an aged POV looking back, whereas at other times he’ll be telling it from the perspective of his young self, experiencing it all.

            Moby-Dick was a challenge to read, but I feel as though I’ll be a better writer now that I’ve read it. 

I Want Your Skull! I Need Your Skull!

“I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.” These words are declared by Ishmael on the top of page 222. Not only does it allude to the fact that he's ready to commit mutiny at the drop of a hat, but also that he is a cannibal. Cannibals eat their own kind, so if he's a cannibal, who is he eating?

I think this refers to the whales. On page 275, he says, “you will be struck by [the whale's skull's] resemblance to the human skull.” Underneath all of their skin and fat, and underneath all of our scalp lies a similar bone structure.

The bones in the whale's fin also resemble that of a hand. They must surface for air just like any other mammal. They sing and communicate like people.

It's also no coincidence that the book contains numerous biblical references. In Christianity, Jesus is a living, human God. In Moby-Dick, the whale serves as a sort of eternal judge; it dishes out punishment for those who are judged to be bad.

So in a way, Moby Dick is an anthropomorphic god and they are out to kill and possibly eat the cursed whale.

*sigh* Another History Post

Savage. This is a word frequently used by Ishmael towards Queequeg in Moby-Dick, and as horrible as it is, the implications aren’t the same as if they were used in today’s world. Racism was certainly a problem in the early 19^th century, but its basis was different. Today, we think of racism as judging people by the color of their skin. In the time of Moby-Dick, however, racism had more to do with geography.

Queequeg is seen as being a savage because of his origins as a Pacific Islander. The same was thought of Hawaiians, Filipino, and other such people from that region. Other tribe-based societies like that of the American Indians and some tribes in Africa were also given these types of labels. Contrasting to that, people from many Arab and Middle Eastern cultures were considered to be barbarians. They were a step up from savages, but weren’t equal to white Christians.

Europeans (and those who had European ancestry) considered themselves to be at the top of the social pyramid. This idea likely an extension from the thoughts of the ancient Greeks. That society was very focused on trying to obtain perfection—which to them meant being a very masculine white male. (Sorry ladies.) They maintained that with effort women could become men. However, once perfection was achieved, it couldn't go away. Nature preferred perfection, so a man could never devolve into a woman. (Many who would be considered men by today's standards would be considered too feminine to be men back then, though.)

That said, it wasn't whiteness that defined Europeans: it was Christianity. We see numerous references to identification by religion with Ishmael. He often identifies as a Christian and labels Queequeg as a Pagan. The use of the word pagan here is interesting: pagan isn't a word that nature worshipers and other such pantheists chose for themselves; it was given to them by Christians and was adapted from a word used by the Romans to indicate an “incompetent soldier.” (Etymonline)

So if resentments were based on culture, why did it change to skin color? One reason would be justifications. The American Civil War brought the issue of slavery front and center with abolitionists pointing out the hypocrisy in stating that all men were created equal when some men owned other men as property. The justification from those who were pro-slavery, of course, was that men with dark skin weren't people. They even had some scientists who went out and made the case that people of color and white people were separate species.

If you would like to learn more on this subject, there's a great video out there called Race: The Power of Illusion. It goes way more in-depth on this and also covers the Indian Removal Act carried out by Andrew Jackson in 1830.

The Love Boat

As many in our class have noticed, there seems to be some fondness between Ishmael and Queequeg in Melville’s Moby-Dick; a fondness that goes beyond that of friends. Sure, one can look at it say that it’s an example of brotherly love, but that doesn’t really fit with how Ishmael described their cuddling. “Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.” He also refers to Queequeg’s tomahawk as being like a baby, cuddling with them in bed. This conjures up images of a nuclear family. It’s like their the married husband and wife, with the tomahawk playing the role of the child. “We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we[.]” This last line appears in a chapter entitled “Nightgown”, which is a feminine nightwear outfit. By today’s standards, we at least question whether or not these men are gay, but human sexuality hadn’t yet used sexuality as an identity.

When Moby-Dick was published in 1851, sexuality was seen as more of behaviour; something that you do. This all changed in 1886 when German scientist Richard von Krafft-Ebing decided to research sexuality from a biological standpoint (Rosario). In his work Psychopathia Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing hilighted four sexual “disorders”: decreased, increased, precocious or senile, and perverted sexual drive. Homosexuality (or psychosexual inversion, as it was called then) was considered to be “contrary sexual feeling” and was a perversion; a perversion that was caused by degenerative hereditary and moral insanity. This degeneration was a result of unhealthy behaviours and/or environments damaging the people’s genes.

With all this in mind, would the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg be seen as being well within the norm? Not exactly. Based on the words used by Ishmael, I think it still would have been seen as being a little odd for the time. Ishmael is taking on the gender roles of a woman when it comes to sharing a bed. He’s being submissive. In addition to the physical aspects, they carry on other couple roles. They carry out idle chit-chat for hours while cuddling. They end up sharing a smoke. Does this make them a gay couple? Not necessarily. All it means is that their relationship is outside that of the norm.

Works Cited

Rosario, Vernon A. "Science and Sexual Identity: An Essay Review." Journal of the History of Medicine 57 (2002): 79-85.