Open AccessOn Democracy of Digression: Chapter 30 of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
Author(s) -
Michael Kimmage
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2199-7268
pISSN - 1433-5239
DOI - 10.18422/69-02
Subject(s) - destiny (iss module) , digression , power (physics) , democracy , authoritarianism , philosophy , art , literature , manifest destiny , art history , law , engineering , political science , physics , quantum mechanics , politics , aerospace engineering
This essay focuses on chapter 30 of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, one of the novel’s shortest chapters. It contrasts bigness, destiny and Captain Ahab’s authoritarian abuse of power with smallness, free will, and digression, the democratic virtues portrayed in Moby-Dick mostly through their absence but also, in chapter 30, by their presence in the form of a pipe that Captain Ahab smokes on deck and is then compelled to toss overboard so that The Pequod might complete is star-crossed and disastrously foreshadowed voyage.