The Shadow in Moby Dick
John Halverson, American Quarterly 15.3 (Fall 1963): 436-446
Psychological penetration and archetypal power are plainly manifest in Moby-Dick. Melville, as an observer of mankind, often seems a forerunner of depth psychology. Often his probings into personality are in the imagery of a descent to a hidden inner being. One may think, for example, of the passage in White-Jacket: "It is no pleasing task, nor a thankful one, to dive into the souls of some men; but there are occasions when, to bring up the mud from the bottom, reveals to us on what soundings we are, on what course we adjoin." Or, again, that remarkable "Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand" in Chapter XLI of Moby-Dick. The presentation and analysis of Captain Ahab's madness might, barring the great poetry, have come from a Freud or a Jung or a Binswanger. It is Jung, of course, who has provided the only thorough investigation and formulization of psychological archetypes, and it is reasonable, therefore, to turn to analytical psychology to see what aid can be found there for the elucidation of Melville's masterpiece. It is particularly the archetype of the "shadow" which seems strikingly applicable and vital to this novel.
Jung did not discover the shadow side of man. Among countless earlier instances, let Plato's black horse of the Phaedrus parable suffice as an example; nearly all religious and philosophical men, including Melville, have known of it. It is that darker half of the human soul, its lower, primitive, instinctual, sensual half. It is mysterious, inarticulate, capricious demonic, even diabolical. All depth psychologists agree on this major part of the psyche, that it does not belong to ordinary consciousness, that it is essentially maternal. Jung was, however, the first to articulate the shadow figure as a concept and to explain its psychological function. It is, above all, a phenomenon of the preconscious mind, embodying those repressions of natural behavior which Freud acutely and gloomily demonstrated as the neurotic basis of civilization, and therefore, at least initially, sinister. In dreams and in the "forgotten language" of fairy tales and myths, the shadow side of the psyche may be constellated, embodied, into a single figure; in dreams it is a dark figure of the same sex as the dreamer. For obvious reasons, it is an alter ego, a "dark brother." It may also be projected in waking life onto other persons. Indeed an entire group may project its collective shadow onto another group, a possibility that Laurens van der Post has explored in The Dark Eye in Africa to help explain white prejudice there, particularly in his native South Africa. Nor is such a notion foreign to Melville, who has his Spanish Sailor say to the black giant Daggoo: "Aye, harpooner, thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind--devilish dark at that."
Rather less pessimistic than his teacher, Jung believed mankind to be salvable. The way out of the Freudian dilemma is the process of "individuation," a way based on self-knowledge, acceptance of the shadow, and the raising into consciousness of whatever in the unconscious can be raised. Jung's way is a psychological elaboration of many a timeless precept from "Know thyself" to "The kingdom of God is within you." It assumes a conatus of the self toward integration. The development of the individual into wholeness requires as its first step the recognition and assimilation of the shadow, including, of course, the withdrawal of its projections. The next major step is the acceptance of the contrasexual element of the psyche, the "anima" for men--and for male-dominated civilization in general. This female component Jung designates broadly as Eros in opposition to the ego as Logos. It comprises those qualities of character which are traditionally associated with women: kindness, tenderness, mercy, the "pitee" that "renneth soone in gentil herte." It is the capacity to accept others and love them, a motherly quality and a non-rational one. One of Melville's contemporaries, Dickens, too often illustrates the ease with which the traditional association of such qualities with women becomes sentimentality. But another, a closer neighbor, reveals a truer understanding of the phenomenon; Thoreau, with the characteristic acumen of his genius, gives a precise account of the matter while writing of Chaucer: "A simple pathos and feminine gentleness ... are peculiar to him. We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in woman, though not the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to be found at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man." Jung holds, as any rational humanist does, that the ideal personality maintains the feminine and masculine components in complementary balance. Justice should be tempered with mercy--and mercy should be tempered with justice.
The process of individuation reaches beyond the individual in its effects, for it raises and strengthens the sense of common humanity, the sense of human brotherhood. "If men can be educated to see the shadow-side of their nature clearly, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more self-knowledge can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures." (Jung, Coll[ected] Works [New York, 1953-], VII, 25)
The "meeting with the shadow," then, is crucial to the development of the self. As a preconscious phenomenon, the shadow figure is conceived by the analytical psychologists as an intermediary between the conscious mind (the ego) and the deep unconscious. The conscious ego may be symbolized by whatever is aerial or high, mountain peaks and particularly birds; the deep unconscious by whatever is deep and dark and formless, caves, for instance, but particularly the sea. The shadow is the "guardian of the threshold" who can lead the way to selfhood, symbolized by the mandala: the circle, the wheel with the vital center. To the ego the shadow may appear at first as frightening or evil, since it represents what the ego has repressed. But with its acceptance, the shadow reveals itself as the helpful friend, helping bring up to consciousness those elements of the unconscious, especially Eros, necessary to the wholeness and health of the self. Unassimilated, the shadow figure becomes evil, a constellation of all that is demonic in the dark side of the psyche, which in itself is ethically neutral.
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Seen in the light of Jung's theory of the shadow, some rather perplexing events and personal relationships in Moby-Dick become clear and significant, for they embody archetypal figures and dynamics. The two principal characters, Ishmael and Ahab, both setting out on journeys of the soul, encounter their "shadows" and are saved and damned by the results of these encounters. Their journey is on the sea of the unconscious, "the ungraspable phantom of life," "the mystic ocean," which for the "sunken-eyed young Platonist" is "the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it." For Ishmael, the ocean is "the dark side of this earth," but "in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God." He recognizes the necessity, the value, of confronting the unconscious.
It is a spiritual sickness that impels Ishmael to the sea: "a damp, drizzly November in my soul," as he says. On the ocean in pursuit of the leviathan whale, he hopes for a cure. Thus it is a spiritual journey he embarks on, and his first important encounter is with Queequeg. Though treated comically in retrospect, Ishmael's first meeting with Queequeg in the Spouter Inn is, at the time, an alarming and frightening event. In the middle of the night he is confronted by a purplish, yellow apparition covered with "blackish looking squares" of tattooing, a growling cannibal flourishing a tomahawk. No wonder he sings out, "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!" But Peter Coffin assures him of Queequeg's harmlessness, and Ishmael takes a second look and realizes that "For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal." There quickly develops between them a profound rapport and friendship described in terms of marriage (language that causes some readers some uneasiness): "Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving pair." It is Queequeg's primitiveness that attracts Ishmael; he recognizes the validity of the primitive, which civilization represses: "There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me." Almost at once Ishmael feels the beneficent influence of this "marriage": "No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it."
Where is an objective correlative for these strong emotions and extravagant language? Less than a day's acquaintance with an unprepossessing and nearly incoherent savage does not seem an adequate basis for Ishmael's feeling of redemption. Yet we do not doubt him; his words convince. We do not doubt, because the experience is archetypal.
Queequeg is twice dramatically presented as a rescuer; both times he dives into the sea to save a drowning man. In the first rescue (Chapter XIII), the "bumpkin" seems to be lost; Ishmael can see Queequeg, "the grand and glorious fellow," but "no one to be saved." But Queequeg dives down and disappears into the sea and rises again with the "lifeless form." This act confirms all of Ishmael's feelings for his friend: "From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive." The second rescue is the famous obstetric delivery of Tashtego from the sinking whale's head (Chapter LXXVIII), where once again Queequeg must dive deep into the sea to perform his heroic task. Even after his "last long dive," it is Queequeg's coffin that saves Ishmael. In all these things we can see the function of the helpful shadow.
The symbolic relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is represented most vividly in Chapter LXXII. Queequeg, "cutting in" the dead whale, is on the surface of the sea, kicking sharks away with his bare feet. Ishmael is up above him on deck and attached to him by a "monkey-rope."
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
The dark twin brother, between Ishmael and the unconscious sea, attached to him by an indissoluble bond--this Queequeg is Ishmael's shadow.
By his acceptance and assimilation of his shadow, Ishmael discovers Eros, expressed as the sense of brotherhood and love. "I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes." Moving within himself closer to the human collectivity, he changes radically from the man who feels the urge to go about "methodically knocking people's hats off" to the celebrant of brotherly love who squeezes his neighbors' hands along with the spermaceti:
Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
And the celebrant of man and democracy:
But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
And the celebrant of the "First Congregational Church":
I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; ... in that we all join hands.
The "process of individuation," says Jung, "does not lead to isolation, but to an intenser and more universal collective solidarity."
For Ahab, as for Ishmael, the ocean is the "dark Hindoo half of nature" and an infidel queen as well; he begins his spiritual journey on the unconscious sea with a profound sickness of soul. Whereas Ishmael's sickness is a vague, indefinite gloominess and dissatisfaction, Ahab's is sharply defined demonic possession. He is ego ridden, all Logos and no Eros. That his conscious ego is disproportionately swollen is clearly seen when he interprets the "equatorial coin": "There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here,--three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self." Correspondingly, he hates the unconscious and is maddened by it. "That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate." Whatever is not accessible to consciousness he violently rejects. The sea and the white whale are for him inarticulate evil. His own terrible eloquence demands Logos where there is only "speechless, placeless power"; the sea remains silent, the whale has "not one syllable." Projecting his own unconscious self onto the whale, he would assault and destroy it--and therewith destroy himself. The projection is elaborately explicit in the book: Ahab "at last came to identify with him [Moby-Dick] not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The white whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them ... all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick." Thus for Ahab the whiteness of the whale is like an empty canvas which he fills with the "subtle demonisms" from his own unconscious. Ahab's ego domination--in exact opposition to Ishmael's experience--breeds an arrogant solitude rejecting all sense of human brotherhood. "Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness," he cries, "which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books:" There is Ahab, and there is the rest of the world: "Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors!" Such a man must be, as Aristotle said, either a beast or a god, and Ahab is something of both, superhuman and subhuman at once. A consequence of his egocentricity is that he has no sense of responsibility. He is ready to destroy not only himself but all with him; it is not his doing--the "whole act's immutably decreed," Ahab is "the Fates' lieutenant."