On Amy Kaplan's Analysis of Town-Ho

Amy Kaplan's analysis of "The Town Ho's Story" (Ch. 54) as a transnational story was extremely poignant, in my opinion, since it illustrates beautifully her point of a national vs. transnational story. The chapter seems to engage precisely with questions about the origins of a story, the art of storytelling and the very ability of a story to cross boundaries of nation, race, language, etc.

Kaplan explicitly says that her interest lies in "the source of the tale and the context of its

telling" (44) which seem to be the most contrived elements in this chapter. The chapter begins with the description of a short gam of the Pequod and the Town-Ho where the story is told to Tashtego, who later mumbles most of it in his sleep, having no choice but to retell the rest to the other seamen. But the story is revealed to the reader from the perspective of Ishmael telling it to "a circle of ...Spanish friends" (202) and is described as taking place "'some two years prior to my first learning the events...'" (203)

Confused? (I'm confused) But wait! there is still more. In the end of the chapter the Spanish Dons from Lima ask Ishmael to swear on the Bible as a testament for the truthfulness of the tale and after doing so he mentions that "'I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney'"  (218). In the main narrative of Moby Dick no such meeting is alluded to (the only one who is privy to the story during the gam is Tashtego), so the meeting with Radney, if indeed took place must have followed the events told in the whole book, making the time of the telling of the story in Lima doubly obscured. To conclude, the story is carried through time, space and race until all the various elements of its origin (the mystical revelation-like mumbling of Tashtego in his sleep, the conspiratorial element of withholding the story from Ahab and the first mates) become embedded in the tale itself. When the story is presented in the narrative of the novel it is confusing to nearly impossible to pinpoint its origin but nevertheless it ends with a statement of about its truth value: "'So help Heaven and on my honour the story I have told ye, gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true'" (218). This most veritas-oriented part of Ishmael's re-telling is also, like the origin and context, obscure.     

Kaplan concludes the analysis of the Town-Ho chapter by claiming that "Knowledge that circulates promiscuously among races and across continents can be performed in highly nationalist and racialized structures that reinforce the imagined truth of national character" (45). So, yes, the telling of a story about a ship whose crew is mostly Polynesian by an American narrator to an audience of Spanish Dons does maintain national differences and strengthens them by detailing racial and national contrasts. On the other hand, it is only fair to mention that in this particular case the act of telling, the mediation between the source and the output of the tale and complex temporal structure do the trick of going against fixed national identities and creating "a transnational approach to literature" (52). And this transnational approach is done by severing the story from terms of place, time, origin and even unraveling its narrative structure and turning it to an enclosed unit, similar to a currency (A doubloon, if you like).