The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Moby-Dick and American Slave Narrative Author(s): Michael C. Berthold Reviewed work(s): Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 135-148 Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25090518 . Accessed: 16/12/2012 15:51
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Michael

C. Berthold and Moby-Dick Slave Narrative

aint a slave?"

American
cry of "Who

first (6) in Moby-Dick's the textual and expresses chapter playfully plaintively, Ishmael's for Melville; but the "Tell me of enslavement human centrality the question, Ishmael's direct that" that immediately follows as brethren to the readers he constructs address slaves, may be an even more of inevitable for Melville crucial figuring captives and captivities This essay dialogically always being engaged. own dialogical will Ishmael's the with engagement explore and of American slave narratives, tropes particularly strategies I in "The Town-Ho's Story" and the "Epilogue." Generally, to respond to Henry wish Louis Gates's notice of the lack of of relationships between slave narratives and and consider how Romanticism 50-51) (Figures, in what Hortense be embedded has Moby-Dick might Spillers as "a potential described of discursive slavery's configuration some Americanists?who field" (31). Although will be cited in on Moby-Dick's this essay?have of slavery, speculated politics little if any notice has been taken of the novel's affinities with the genre of the slave narrative, to and this argument intends how the intertextual at work establish relations here are both formalistic and thematic. a and during the Civil War, Before the whale itself was for and its In eradication. symbol popular slavery prophesied a Thousand Miles for example, William Running for Freedom, uses to condemn the whale Craft various who clergymen to the Slave Bill and supported Fugitive signify slavery's larger threat to America's integrity: discussion American
These "Jonah" reverend for pour gentlemen to carry God's a terrible message cannonade against upon Nineveh,

refusing

and
their

they utterly

tell us about the whale in which he was entombed; while the existence of the whales which overlook trouble
republican waters, and know not that they themselves are

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The Massachusetts the "Jonahs" who in an unrighteous

Review

threaten to sink the ship of state, by steering direction. (324)1

has also documented several of Butterfield instances Stephen this iconography. Bedford Black New churches regularly An article in the associated antislavery. whaling images with Abolitionist proclaimed: We found the Leviathan in the sea of popularity weltering ... We have fixed the monster the and harpoon, begins to blow the line, and we shall and bellow. We are now pulling upon soon, we trust, come to lancing. (Butterfield, 59) Lincoln, in the Emancipation Proclamation, spoke similarly:

we are like whalers who have been on a long chase. We have at last got the harpoon but we must now look into the monster, how we steer, or with one flop of his tail he will send us all into eternity. 291) (Butterfield, Within via Michael itself, Michael argues Moby-Dick Rogin rescue the emancipation of the foretells Ishmael's Gilmore, a a of in is literal dense slaves (Rogin, fact, 140).2 Ishmael, captive and is forced in Armada" "The Grand whales of chapter ring us in; to "watch in the living wall that hemmed for a breach us in order to shut us up" (387). the wall that had only admitted as Butterfield has pointed out, Moby-Dick's Although, more to than that of tends be symbolically freighted language a recall its narrative the slave narratives rhythms (36-37), or a movement of the slave narrative: fundamental rhythm of freedom and palpable abstract speculations swing between to that freedom. Wells when William For example, challenges himself he comforts Brown north with his mother, is escaping until the narrative was not published 1860, the Crafts although for about their escape from 1849 on. See also Wright spoke publicly rather than that "Moby Dick is indeed a 'Job's whale the argument (194). Jonah's'"
2David

to the attitude of the fiery rhetoric that it "would seem to owe much in the 1840s famously univer New York radical Mike Walsh, who that both Northern wage salized the notion of slavery by emphasizing chattel slaves were equally exploited" slaves and Southern (156).

S. Reynolds

also

notes

of

Ishmael's

"Who

aint

slave"

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Moby-Dick
with "the

and American

Slave Narrative

body my bountiful suddenly "when stop," a

one day be free, and call my that I should thought as to muse own" he But continues the about (206).3 a sentence "Free of his is Home," possibilities a dash, and the jarring phrase fractured by a comma, came up on horseback, us to three men and ordered an to his whole phrase which brings paragraph abrupt

halt (206). Textually, Brown the disruption he felt reproduces at that moment, and by the end of the chapter, he has been to captivity. to this disruption returned is the Analogous movement of "The Mat-Maker" of Moby-Dick. chapter his "Loom of Time" Ishmael finds some Through metaphor, solace imagining "free will still free to ply her shuttle between are interrupted threads" his meditations given " (215). But " by a a of 'There she his first for whale ensues, blows,' cry lowering from my hand" and, he says, "the ball of free will dropped (215). on freedom are abandoned Abstractions for the lust of the hunt, and Ishmael learns quickly that he must his own life "resign" "into the hands of him who the boat" steered (227). Ishmael, of course, has a freedom of movement and a luxury of are a to that unavailable William Wells Brown. speculation But there are, at the very least, textual precedents and parallels for Moby-Dick's
slave narratives.

bi-planing

of

free will

and

restriction

in the

Such connections between Melville and black culture are even more pronounced in "The Town-Ho's Story," an interpolated in Moby-Dick narrative that in many ways coincides captivity with slave narratives. Karcher has aptly noted that in Carolyn "The Town-Ho's "Lakeman and desperado Steelkilt, Story," from Buffalo," is a frontier analogue for the African slave, and that his conflict with Radney, the ship's mate, is "a paradigm of master-slave conflict" and the mutiny in which it culminates "a paradigm of slave insurrection" But it is also (57, 58).4 to that the textual of Melville's very important emphasize shape

in 1847. 3Originally published 4Karcher demonstrates her study that Melville throughout about slavery by analogy" out affinities "generalized (2). In pointing between Steelkilt and Christ, when Steelkilt is particularly in the forecastle by his fellow mutineers, Karcher also "betrayed" suggests how "The Town-Ho's Story" fuses Biblical narrative with
frontier and slave narratives.

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The

Massachusetts

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to that of the slave narrative. story is analogous in "The Town-Ho's Melville's initial concern Story" has to essence do with of the narrative. the actual dissemination The of the story, "the secret part of the tragedy" as Ishmael calls it, "never reached the ears of Captain Ahab" (242) or the captain to the under of the Town-Ho himself. the Rather, story belongs seaman the of three of "confederate" class, "private property" the ship who "communicated it to the Indian Tashtego with of secrecy" notion Romish that (242). The injunctions narrativized constitutes echoes, "private experience property" in The internal declaration verbatim, James Pennington's to know who who want Blacksmith (to the slavehunters Fugitive owns him and where he is from) that "the facts in this case are and Melville, my private (22).5 In both Pennington property" as Andrews The the "declarative of Blacksmith, says Fugitive as act of defining one's inalienable truth autobiographical own turns to chattel one's advantage possession" logic private own reception notion is complicated (164). This by Ishmael's of the Town-Ho's he hears much of when Tashtego story, which "he talks in his sleep; "when he was wakened," says Ishmael, the rest" (243). That Tashtego could not well withhold issues to the attests both of sleep perhaps the story out of the depths to need of the story and to an irresistible intrinsic fascination coerces or in from him. it Ishmael Ishmael, pass it on, perhaps the story's transmitter when he relates it to a circle turn, becomes On the one hand, he is the vehicle of Spanish dons in Lima. a is made public, narrative which by which by private captivity to cross class and race lines. But in that the narrative is made in that he overhears for him, the story was not in fact intended his own role as recorder and and appropriates it from Tashtego, to and his own relationship editor is itself called into question, is not unlike, Town-Ho's say, that of William Story" to Frederick narrative. Garrison's Douglass's Lloyd It is also worth that at the end of "The Town-Ho's noting swears on his "honor" that the story is no fiction: Story" Ishmael "I know is uncharacteristic it to be true" (259). Such an avowal "The to another parallel "The Town between of Ishmael and points which Ho's begin with typically Story" and slave narratives, to their authenticity; for exam of and testimonies declarations 5Originally published in 1849.

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Moby-Dick

and American

Slave

Narrative

states at the outset of his narrative, Northup pie, as Solomon a statement to of facts" candid and truthful is, "My object give own his narrative further authenticates Ishmael by (227). to have actually like the slave Steelkilt; spoken with claiming to his narrative's truth himself in his zeal to commit narrator, American of the historical he proclaims irrefutability captivity. in "The Town-Ho's and conflict of character The staging Like the male slave narratives. that of male Story" also parallels one of is world Steelkilt's obedience, work, slave's, essentially "cor Steelkilt's for example, and humiliation. Radney, exploits to him the clean state" up by commanding exasperated poreally of one of the ship's pigs (246), demasculating "offensive matters" to him a task properly Steelkilt only designated by assigning in his like Douglass, for example, the ship's boys. But Steelkilt, a rugged that spurns individualism incarnates autobiography, and both with such tyranny and equates dishonor, floggings men their nemeses that in isolated battles engage royal with acts of liberation. as ritualized his describes function Douglass as "the turning the "nigger-breaker," of Mr. Covey, thrashing in my career as a slave" (298); Steelkilt nearly kills Radney point starts to strike him with a hammer and then leads after the mate
a mutiny.

to a "self as Karcher has pointed out, gives way mutiny, in of which Steelkilt and his band form rebellion" defeating to in "until be locked the forecastle agree amnesty" guaranteed for in part is not entirely toothless, (58). But Steelkilt's passivity to "sing out for refusal labor strike?a it serves as a calculated or a turn" of chal whales" do "hand's work?that (251) (254) of the and the both the authority lenges captain personal of the mission ship. capitalist own personal vendetta Steelkilt's moreover, against Radney, in the story of Moby Dick is fulfilled by the timely intervention crew (temporarily and pursued who, sighted by the Town-Ho The in his jaws and plunges their strike), seizes Radney forsaking to the ocean in fact, seems to be a floor with him. The whale, ever kind of swimming of tyrants watchful like panopticon a we see in the last of Radney, Radney; particularly chilling to remove himself is the mate's from the "wildly image, seeking

eye of Moby Dick" (257).Moby Dick grants Steelkilt a script of

revenge once again he had, and without has its counterpart being in slave

perfect revenge?"complete the avenger" (255)?that

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The

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In The Fugitive literature. the second Blacksmith, especially own wishes that his from chapter, Pennington escape repeatedly he "See," slavery had been morally apostro unambiguous: "how human bloodhounds chase, catch, phizes, gratuitously and tempt" the runaway slave "to shed blood and lie; how when he would do good, evil is thrust upon him" (30). For Steelkilt, this desire for a purity of release, an escape from tyranny without recourse to violence or deceit, is actualized by the appearance as of Moby seems to restore to the whale Dick; tyrant-killer, Steelkilt his natural and Ishmael autonomy. integrity Perhaps himself needs to believe that Moby Dick sides with the good and own the free; one defense his is to captor against potential with him. In this the identify story sympathetically regard as captivity wish-fulfillment. functions to whatever "The Town-Ho's be Still, degree Story" might read as an allegory of oppressor, events and its victim, savior, are finally in the quotidian. resituated The slave's freedom is secured from and literal the arrival hardly by escape bondage has to contend the economic with racism of north?Douglass New Bedford, Brent Linda "could not feel safe in New York" and reaches a point where she will not regard "Northern soil" as "free soil" even after Moby Dick's (496, 505); similarly, to fear "legal elimination of Radney, Steelkilt continues retribution" (258) from his captain. By the end of "The Town son of liberty Ho's Story," any sense of Moby Dick as a violent is replaced widow's dreams of "the awful white by Radney's a whale that destroyed and Steelkilt's freedom becomes him," matter of indeterminacy and disappearance: "Where Steelkilt now none know" is, gentlemen, (258). most with slave literature, Moby-Dick's alignment interesting occurs scene of in the book's Melville's however, epilogue. what Gates Ishmael, coffin, up by Queequeg's caps buoyed as the "ur-trope of the Anglo-African identifies tradition" book. This trope 131), the trope of the talking (Monkey, in of the Albert narrative Ukawsaw 1770 originates James an African Gronniosaw, price sold into slavery who eventually in England. the slave finds freedom Aboard and Christianity master observes his Dutch from and Gronniosaw ship, reading book the Bible and the with wishes apparently conversing the talk to him as well. But when Gronniosaw would opens

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Moby-Dick
book and puts will not speak

and American

Slave Narrative

to find that it his ear to it, he is disappointed to him he is black). For (because, he speculates, a silent the Bible "constituted Gates, Gronniosaw, argues man a in which the found black text, however, text, primary no echo of his own voice" it is 136). Subsequently, (Monkey, of his self in the text of Western this "desire for recognition his own of a creation letters" 137) that motivates (Monkey, Later black writers (Marrant, Cugoano, Jea) Equiano, book Gronniosaw's his trope, questioning refigure talking of voice and presence with blackness and absence. conflation In Melville's coffin stands as the talking epilogue, Queequeg's as the Gronniosaw book and Ishmael coffin is figure. The own text and co-extensive with his sacred He Queequeg's body. carves its lid, says Ishmael, with "all manner of grotesque figures and drawings" that are copies of the tattoos on his own body, tattoos that "had been the work of a departed and seer prophet out of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic had written marks, on his body a complete and the earth, and theory of the heavens a mystical act truth" (480). This treatise on the art of attaining narrative. an corrects and amplifies of narrative by Queequeg inscription is also an author of sorts. His where Queequeg earlier moment aboard the Pequod involves the making of a collabora signing on text tive with this document, Peleg; Captain Peleg mis as "Quohog," beneath which represents Queequeg "appelative" a copy of one of the tattoos on his makes his mark, Queequeg arm (89). This a white of between authori splitting Queequeg tarian's primary of him (and animalizing) misrepresentation at and his own subordinated the himself into attempt writing of Western letters is amended when registers Queequeg designs as a solo work to reproduce his coffin; him that allows his entire body, rather than one tattoo from his arm, the coffin for is a means of reclaiming the wholeness that the Queequeg official discourse of a Peleg denies him. A prince in his homeland like Gronniosaw, Queequeg abjures need to see himself Gronniosaw's in and speak himself through the white man's sacred text. This is in part adum resistance in the negro brated in New church Bedford where Ishmael a black preacher a book witnesses in a pulpit" "beating (10); as the Bible, the book is not even identified and the preacher, a "black Angel seems less to take his text from it than of Doom,"

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The to chastise

Massachusetts

Review

to it. The very act of reading is also and do violence an at moment text in the when, early by Queequeg parodied in the Spouter Inn, he takes up a large book and the pages with deliberate it on his lap began counting placing . . . a moment, at every fiftieth page regularity; stopping utterance to a long and around him, giving looking vacantly of astonishment. drawn gurgling whistle (49) Sundering Queequeg of pages?to and revelation, and meaning, reading reading a the book?merely quantifiable binding objectifies it. Denuding the text, he takes his own carnivalize of Mel from it. One of the most memorable aspects pleasure un in is fact this of ville's consistent, Queequeg portrayal is evasion of the literacy that, claims Gates, apologetic, playful over the peoples of color culture's "Western trope of dominance it had The

'discovered'" 165). (Monkey, clear, is "more trope of the talking book, Gates makes Book" the trope of the un-Talking 165). Like (Monkey, properly in the Ishmael baffled and compelled Gronniosaw, by the Bible, of Queequeg that he avers is the coffin-text embraces epilogue a "riddle to unfold" the for Gronniosaw, the Bible (480). Like It withholds its secrets coffin is at once silent and redemptive. it neither reflects nor from Ishmael while literally saving him; as Peter it. before white the presence Admittedly, acknowledges can read his tattoos, Bellis has pointed out, not even Queequeg are something other than "a set of empty but his hieroglyphics one of but be here The hermeneutics, may (63). problem signs" not of belief; the coffin's may be incomprehen hieroglyphics but, sible, but they are not valueless. They may be a "riddle," as a are it is "wondrous work" adds Ishmael, Ahab, well; they not Ishmael, who regards them as "devilish tantalization" (481). of the alien is a more privileged of course, Ishmael, interpreter and voice He does not conflate than Gronniosaw. face, as to his silence coffin's the and attribute Gronniosaw does, of master to not the have he does whiteness; cunning alphabet remark is Melville's to himself. articulate epilogue Queequeg for its reversal of the trope of the talking book able nonetheless on some of a white narrator dependent and its bold presentation text. does Not black but only meaningful uninterpretable Ishmael could not overcome help his it, but initial prejudice to feel I began against suspicious Queequeg?"I of this 'dark

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Moby-Dick

and American

Slave

Narrative

comes himself to take on (15)?he harpooner" complexioned' attributes of non-whiteness by the book's "Epilogue." Allegori re is in fact quite plainly in the "Epilogue," Ishmael cally, a it is from "whiteness" "black bubble" deemed by "blackness;" from the coffin that saves Ishmael that bursts and releases of the vortex" into the "creamy pool" (573). "closing sinking In these regards Ishmael offers something of of an elaboration or recent argument Toni Morrison's that, explicitly implicitly, some "dark, abiding" "in compelling informs and presence texture of the American literature" and that ways inescapable of this persona the fabrication self-reflexive provides powerful, on the white American That Ishmael self (5,46,17). meditations the demise of The Pequod survives rather than Queequeg (what would his version of life with Ahab that suggest say?) might in the novel is for the white Melville's instinctive pity figure most like himself; that by the "Epilogue" but to the degree to incorporate Ishmael is made that fabricated dark persona, at least rearranges Melville the "hierarchic difference" embla zoned in "racial difference."6 stan As the reconstituted slave "reader," Ishmael confounds 6Morrison makes only two specific comments (but very helpful) on Melville in Playing in the Dark: "Consider the ways that in other American Africanism writers Melville, (Mark Twain, serves as a vehicle for regulating love and the imagi Hawthorne) nation as defenses against the psychic costs of guilt and despair" (51 formations?the the white whale, 52) and "Melville uses allegorical of male couples, the crew, the black-white racially mixed pairings
questing, questioning trable whiteness?to white investigate does, the but male and to evade the captain analyze who confronts hierarchic impene difference.

Poe

deploys
de

allegorical
sac,

mechanisms

in Pym
and

not

to confront

and

explore, the cul

as Melville

estrangement,

in racial difference" (68-69); I quote from the latter. Somewhat more I am not sure that critics of Moby-Dick have paid sufficient generally, to what happens to Ishmael after the Pequod attention goes down. Do Queequeg's lessons in reciprocity have any felt meaning for to live a nomadic Ishmael? He continues life (narrating "The Town Ho's Story" in Lima, drinking the crew of the Samuel flip with skeleton in a bower in the Arsacides), Enderby, surveying a whale's but that life has the ring of anti-climax, of recurrence without comments Brodtkorb's in Ishmael's are White World intimacy. Ishmael's "survival is prior to all ethics; the existentially helpful: sufficient reason for his survival is that what transcends death in time is art" (138); "Ishmael is a mental traveler who accepts with minimal illusions and defenses his human condition in that world of

simultaneously that non-sequitur

register is entailed

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The Massachusetts

Review

dard American of slavery and freedom binarisms ("Nothing," Morrison in fact claims, freedom?if it did not in "highlighted fact create it?like of Ishmael's slavery" (37)). The very passivity in that posit escape, romanticized escape repudiates captivities as "moral obligation" Primo Levi's phrase, thus (57). Melville as the with of the whaleman quarrels prevailing mythologies incarnation of In American freedom and self-reliance. seamanly text N. "Mocha Dick" that Melville 1839 J. Reynolds's (an a stalwart knew for example, probably (Parker, 636-37))7, mate conquers to reap fame for himself Nantucket the leviathan at the end of "Mocha Dick" and his homeland. Says Reynolds of the "intrepidity, and fortitude" of the whaleman: skill, are not the growth of forced exertion; These characteristics they are incompatible are the natural it. They with result of the of a spirit of fearless independence, ardor of a free people; free institutions. by (590) generated to some degree to in Moby-Dick Melville adhere may Early in the novel's formulations, Reynolds's especially apostrophe to the "Nantucketer" own who "owns" the sea as "Emperors own and ploughs it "as his (64). special plantation" empires" of Ishmael, of such metaphors however, By the final position New England evocative of the mastery, curiously slave-holding to Melville's of Reynolds's south, give way dismantling about "free people" and "fearless assumptions independence;" in fact with the novel relentless stage managers, variety?"the freewill" the Fates" Ishmael's "unbiased that mock (7), the fish" that are embryonic "fast fish" "loose 89), the (chapter to cast the of heaven and earth" "wildest winds that conspire the slavish shore" soul "on the treacherous (107)?doubts in of Reynolds's and, freedom, realizability philosophical of freedom down the binarism and slavery, Melville breaking near normative status. Even Ahab, the book's grants captivity lord and dictator" ostensible (122), can be understood "supreme as an epitome of Nietzschean slave morality, the reactive figure

to which, experience seems end, humanity (179-80). 7"Mocha Dick" was of The Knickerbocker,

like the lone figure floating on a coffin at the abandoned" (148). See also Egan and Cowan originally published New York Monthly in the May Magazine. 1839 edition

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Moby-Dick whose ressentiment

and American in

Slave

Narrative

the face of a hostile external world fictions that say "No to what is 'out compensatory generates what is not the self (Nietzsche, is 'different,'" side,' what 36).8 in Moby-Dick, seldom in final parable discussed One criticism conflates of the novel, and textualization, captivity, to "The Whiteness In a footnote whiteness. of the Whale" ever saw, an the first Ishmael describes he albatross chapter, and "glorious (190) of "unspotted thing" "inexpressible" vast and the ships on whiteness, (190). Like archangel wings" in purest the Chesapeake, "robed that Frederick white," for deliverance the beseeches stands for albatross (293), Douglass a transcendent that liberates Ishmael from the "exiled freedom he sails and from the "warping waters" of traditions memories The and of towns" is the bird, however, (190). ship's captive, taken "with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea" (190). The frees it, but its flight is contingent captain on its being made into a "postman," "a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place" (190). Like to tell its news, the albatross its "tally," Ishmael, escapes alone like Ishmael's with its deliverance. But the story, connected status of the albatross's text is problematic. It bears the captain's for man" data, not its own, and its tally, "meant (190), reaches own instead the other white fowl of Heaven. Ishmael's of his text is similarly he cannot proprietorship ambiguous: determine its reception; there is no guarantee if anyone, whom, the text will reach. Whiteness, thus (and its associations with muteness and misdelivery), underlines essential anxieties finally of authorship for Ishmael and anticipates Melville's "dead letter" metaphor in "Bartleby" in the of the (particularly image as postman) albatross and the writerly of Pierre imprisonment next novel. in Melville's can be regarded as a palimpsest of American Moby-Dick and the captivity generally, writing quoting embellishing on the other hand, Nietzschean 8Ishmael, epitomizes "gay on Ahab's There mistrust." is a variety of critical opinion "servi as "an who tude." See especially Matthiessen, regards Ahab of his author's most profound embodiment response to the problem in extremis" of the free individual will (447) and Zoellner, who the fundamental destruction argues that "Ahad willed of his will, . . . himself permanently the possibility of further beyond placing choice or retraction" (100).

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tradition that begins with Mary Rowlandson's 1682 narrative own and includes the slave narratives in Melville's published more as lifetime.9 But, of the Ameri reconstruction exactingly, can literary canon proceeds, to consider I think it is necessary can resemble and revise texts such as Moby-Dick how "majority" texts such as the slave narratives in the interests of "minority" about the contingency of the challenging presumptions on more the of and matrices minority majority drawing graceful to for the nation's stories. One way yet enmeshed disparate conflate Ishmael and the male of the slave narrator/hero to the narrative be to think of them both as belonging might a of the But curious larger literary family picaro. synchronicity also exists between theorizes Houston American culture: Even
desire,

Ishmael Baker,

and later black singers whose blues, become the "robust matrix" of Afro

as

they

speak

of paralyzing
rhythms

absence
suggest

and
change,

ineradicable
movement,

their

instrumental

Like and unending unlimited action, continuance, possibility. itself, blues are always nomadically signification wandering
. . . they are ever on the move, ceaselessly summing novel

experience. It is of Ishmael course

(7, 8)10 to what the blues. a white boy like degree But his own vocalization

questionable is capable of singing

9Breitwieser Ishmael's . . . each "vision item of

suggests of the experience

that circulation

Rowlandson of wholly pure

comes anomaly singular and

to and

anticipate mutation the

being

without

redemption Rowlandson
Moby-Dick's

context" of a stable and credible (79). explanatory in fact also uses the same line from Job that introduces
"Epilogue." Frontier captivity narratives, too, still

for lifetime. Samuel Drake, in Melville's enjoyed great popularity issued reprints of Puritan and Colonial captivity narratives example, to appear into the 1860s. The single most in the 1820s that continued Church's 1716 story narrative was his edition of Benjamin popular of his 1676 pursuit of the Indian Annawon (Slotkin, 444). Melville he when with this text in Moby-Dick indicates his familiarity with Butler's pursuit of the confuses Church's pursuit of Annawon Indian Brant in 1778 after the siege of Fort Stanwix (Rogin, 438).
See also 10See Fussell, also Hedin who on catalogues slave the profusion narratives and the of western metaphors

in Moby-Dick.
picaro.

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Moby-Dick

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Slave Narrative
wandering, by perfected Moby-Dick

nomadic and unending of "unlimited possibility," a and ethos and "novel suggest experience" style some at of its in least the bluesman, inflections, and, toward this robust matrix. yearns

WORKS CITED
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