Tashtego in the Head of the Whale

In chapter 78, Ishmael describes the process of emptying the contents of the whale’s head. During the process, Tashtego falls into the head, which plunges into the ocean and is saved by Queequeg.

In this brilliant scene, Melville seems to comment upon the ethnological discourse of antebellum America, discussed in Samuel Otter’s book. Otter presents Morton’s method of examination which involved the penetration of the skull in order to determine racial and personality characteristics. The search for knowledge becomes forceful, not an attempt to reach the truth, but a form of validation of social hierarchy.

In the scene mentioned, Tashtego literally dives into the skull of the whale, almost perishing in the process. The object of observation, the Indian, appears in the role of the observer, and probes the skull of the “other”, in this case, the whale in search of a material substance. Racial knowledge is not pure curiosity, but materialistic and profitable. The scene enhances the act of violence that this form of scientific research withholds, irrelevant to who stands in each position. The observer’s reach is always limited, since the whole essence of a living creature cannot be reduced into one organ, just as the spirit of the whale or of the Indian cannot be determined only through the physical characteristics of the skull. Melville here is rejecting the ethnological research of his time, which will not yield the Truth he aspires for. Otter claims that the violent penetration of the skull can be fatal to the observer as well as to the subject.

Tashtego’s rebirth at the end of the chapter is in my opinion the literal and conceptual escape from the narrow minded form of thinking to a more liberal social research. The key to understanding the other is to interact in an emotional way with a subjective soul, rather than with a motionless object.