Response to Dimock, Chapter Four, Burning the Victim

In chapter four, Burning the Victim, Dimock asserts that the whale encompasses two models, a model of transcendent freedom and a defensive model. Both of which are interconnected and seems to me that the model of freedom is empowered by the defensive model. The defensive model, in the physical sense, has “thick walls” and “interior spaciousness” that enable the whale to defend itself against different climates, areas, humans, etc. This defensive model enables the model of transcendent freedom, again, in the physical way, which “defies its environment” enabling the whale to “stay cool at the equator and worm among ice” (Dimock, 113).

I liked that in addition to the physical reasoning, Dimock also connects the defensive model of the whale to the world of literature and more specifically to that of the reader. According to Dimock, this defense model is set in motion against the reader because the reader, never actually seeing the whale, does not have the ability to comprehend it or to even read it: “it cannot be read, because it refers to nothing other than itself” (Dimock, 113) This reminded me of the passage from the chapter of the whiteness of the whale, where the whiteness is “visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors” (Melville, 165). The same inability to comprehend the whale is the same inability to contain the whiteness of the whale; it’s all and nothing at the same time. Going back to Dimock though, to support his assertion, Dimock provides a number of examples, but what’s interesting is that the examples that he provides are actual quotes from the narration of the novel itself rather than his own explanations. So it seems to me that Dimock is saying that Melville maybe already had the whale’s defiance of the reader in his mind when he wrote the novel….