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

Written during a period of the Statesn history characterized by huge expansionism, Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick may be read as a reflection upon twain the rapidly changing geographical frontiers of America, and the accompanying shift of social, political, religious and cultural boundaries. The Pequods 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 nonparasitic spirit, aggression and courage to wrench a nation from the nonsensicalerness. Melville lays out a version of the frontier myth that sees redefinition of national identity in call of man confronting his other, reaffirming the self, and - through Ishmaels survival and narration - returning to civilization having delineate what he is not.. Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest for the white whale present in its most extreme form, an American desire to face the wild unknown and to promote national ascendancy through the confrontation. This paper lead examine the seductive but limited conditions under which claims to define American-ness be able to be made in Moby-Dick, through interrogating the way in which the crews desires be subsumed into Ahabs private vendetta. The notion of the frontier as a signal of infinite possibility, where power relations are renegotiated, even as are geographical limits, goes some way towards explaining why, despite Ahabs disregard for his mens well-being, they moderate to follow him down his tragic path. Both the license that Ahabs position gives him to induce them into action, and his ability to tap the crews own belief in the power of the unreal American capacity for self-reinvention, indicate the potential for unbridled rage in the search for the self. Crucially, this highlights the discrepancy between Americas claims of its own democracy, liberty and equality, and its national excitement 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 kernel 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 pioneers intrepid conquest of the western wilderness, and the march of soldiers into war.