Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (7)

This is the seventh time I’ve read Moby-Dick.

This time I picked up an old paperback version from Everyman Press at Keynote Used Records & Books in South Lake Tahoe, California. I was there on vacation with my family and I remember my daughter asking me why I was going to read it for the seventh time and whether or not she should read it. 

As to my reasons why, I told her about my frustrating experience with Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick?, a slim little tome in which the author, I thought, entirely missed the point. To Philbrick, the reason we keep reading Moby-Dick is because it is a great adventure story, realistically told. He goes out of his way to declare that the White Whale is NOT a symbol for anything else.

As I said in my post on Why Read Moby-Dick?

The White Whale IS a symbol. In fact, it is baffling to me that Philbrick could possibly say that it is not. The fundamental reason we continue to read Moby-Dick is not because it is a good adventure story, realistically told. We read it because it is BOTH an adventure story, realistically told, AND it is a symbolic quest for an understanding of man’s place in the cosmos.

And…

It is the blending of the adventure story with the symbols that makes Moby-Dick worth reading. The whole book, from start to finish, is a master class in this technique -- using the characters and plot to advance not just a story, but an exploration of symbolic and existential meaning. There, in fact, may be no finer example of this in all of literature. THAT is why I keep reading Moby-Dick.

My brush with Philbrick clearly got my hackles up, and it whetted my appetite to again dive into a novel I had said last time I didn’t think I would ever take the time to read again. Perhaps, like Ishmael deciding to go to sea in the opening chapter, Moby-Dick is the tonic I best need to drive off the spleen and regulate the circulation.

And how satisfying was it to find the following excerpts in a section at the very end of my new used copy on the critical reception that Moby-Dick received at its time of publication?

Beneath the whole story, the subtle, imaginative reader may perhaps find a pregnant allegory, intended to illustrate the mystery of human life. Certain it is that the rapid, pointed hints which are often thrown out, with the keenness and velocity of a harpoon, penetrate deep into the heart of things, showing that the genius of the author for moral analysis is scarcely surpassed by his wizard power of description.

And…

But Moby-Dick, admirable as it is as a narrative of maritime adventure, is far more than that; it is, fundamentally, a parable of the mystery of evil and the accidental malice of the universe. The white whale stands for the brute energies of existence, blind, fatal, overpowering, while Ahab is the spirit of man, small and feeble, but purposive, that pits its puniness against this might, and its purpose against the blank senselessness of power.

Take that Philbrick!

As to whether or not my daughter should also read Moby-Dick, I told her, like I tell most people: life is far simpler if you don’t.

The Approach

But if I was going to dive beneath these waves again, I felt I needed a new kind of approach to the text -- something new to look for and think about. Otherwise, I knew I would find myself simply rushing forward to find my favorite excerpts. Thankfully, I found this new approach while reading the comprehensive introduction offered by Professor A. Robert Lee.

…Melville built Moby-Dick at a variety of interwoven and mutually reflective levels. Much as it tells of the gladiatorial combat of man against beast, or of a nineteenth-century American capitalist industry, his story also itself resembles ‘a Job’s whale’ whose inner meanings he took the most considerable pains to mask. To understand the enclosing design, the architecture of his ‘mighty theme,’ requires the reader’s patience and flexibility, no expectation of a single, mastering interpretation.

No single mastering interpretation. According to Lee, Melville reinforces this ‘mighty theme’ by constantly presenting facts and items in the story that are either open to multiple interpretations or which simply defy any kind of interpretation at all. Through this technique, the pre-ordained truth of Moby-Dick is as hidden from the reader as all the pre-ordained truths about whales and whaling are from the humble crew of the Pequod.

This, then, became my primary approach to this seventh reading of Moby-Dick. 

A Sort of Indefinite, Half-Attained, Unimaginable Sublimity

And Lee is right. Once you start looking for them, these “items” with no fixed meaning or interpretation are everywhere.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. -- It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale. -- It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. -- It’s a blasted heath. -- It’s a Hyperborean winter scene. -- It’s the breaking up of the ice-bound stream of time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? Even the great leviathan himself?

This is Chapter 3. Ishmael is looking at the painting above and behind the bar in The Spouter-Inn. And already Melville is giving you these hints to his mighty theme. What is this thing? What does it mean? The questions are not just for the painting, of course, but for the whale. And for the novel.

His Own Inexorable Self

In Chapter 9 Father Mapple preaches The Sermon, choosing as his text the story of Jonah and the whale. And as he concludes the lessons we shipmates are to derive from it, he says:

‘But oh! Shipmates! On the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him -- a far, far upward, and inward delight -- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight, -- top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath -- O Father! -- chiefly known to me by Thy rod -- mortal and immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?’

It is a bit of a muddled mess, but importantly it is an interpretation, a way of looking at the world around you. By my reading it is a bit of a blend, and perhaps a foreshadow of the coming clash between the Christian Starbuck and the Individualistic Ahab. Whether or not your feet are planted firmly on the Keel laid down by God, going forward into the world as your own inexorable self seems like the best way to delight and understanding.

Didn’t the People Laugh?

In Chapter 13, Ishmael struggles with a Wheelbarrow, and Queequeg tells a story.

Shifting the barrow from my hands to his, he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing -- though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow -- Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn’t the people laugh?’

Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of Kokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at Kokovoko, and its commander -- from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain -- this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being said, -- for those people have their grace as well as we -- though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts -- Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself -- being Captain of a ship -- as having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King’s own house -- the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl; -- taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. ‘Now,’ said Queequeg, ‘what you tink now? -- Didn’t our people laugh?’

Melville is playing with meaning and custom here. The same thing -- wheelbarrows or punchbowls -- meaning different things in different contexts. Some frivolous and some serious.

Not Sick and Not Well

Quick one here. In Chapter 16, The Ship, Ishmael finds and is accepted as a member of the Pequod crew, but persists in asking about its infamous Captain.

‘And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It’s all right enough; thou art shipped.’

‘Yes, but I should like to see him.’

‘But I don’t think thou wilt be able to at present. I don’t know exactly what’s the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort of sick, and yet he don’t look so. In fact, he ain’t sick; but no, he isn’t well either.’

Delicious. Ahab is not sick. But he is not well, either. What is he? How are we supposed to know?

The Transition

On this read through Moby-Dick, it became abundantly clear to me that Chapter 24, The Advocate, is where the transition happens. Chapters 1-23 are, more or less, an allegorized story, where the forward momentum is the story, accentuated with allegorical elements. But starting with Chapter 24, as the Pequod ventures out into the open sea, things switch from an allegorized story to a storied allegory, where the forward momentum in the allegory, accentuated with storied elements. In a way, these are dangerous waters, and it is where many readers find themselves lost, as everything one tries to cling to as slick with multiple allegorical meanings. 

The Unreasoning Mask

Glad this one from Chapter 36, The Quarter-Deck, aligns with my theme, since it is one of my favorite passages in the entire novel.

‘All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.’

It is Ahab, talking to Starbuck, after Starbuck has chided him for seeking “vengeance on a dumb brute.” And here we can clearly see Ahab’s interpretation of the white whale as something much more, clearly separating the “unreasoning mask” that Starbuck sees from the “still reasoning thing” that exists behind it. Or does it? Even Ahab expresses some doubt in this passage, admitting that he is seeing through a glass darkly. But either way -- “be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal” -- Ahab will strike, strike out at what, as Father Mapple would say, his inexorable self sees and hates.

A Vacated Thing

Chapter 44, The Chart, follows Ahab down into his cabin after a squall, where he often sleeps the sleep of the tormented.

Often, when forced from his hammock, by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab’s case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the vert creature he creates.

This is a great example of a passage I’ve now clearly read seven times, but never before remarked or even paused to reflect on it. Like a lot of Melville’s prose, it is dense and hard to penetrate, but it seems to be describing Ahab as Ahab has just described the white whale, as a unreasoning mask -- a vacated thing -- behind which is a “living principle or soul” that animates him and drives him ruthlessly in his quest against the white whale. 

Should I choose to read Moby-Dick for an eighth time, this may be an interesting approach to take to that reading. Where is Ahab agent and where is Ahab principal? It calls to mind the scene in The Symphony where Ahab reminisces about his youth and Starbuck sees through the pasteboard mask and is moved to deep emotion. But even on that scene -- is that Ahab agent or is that Ahab principal?

All Interweavingly Working Together

It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still all subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor resolves into his own invisible self.

Chapter 47, The Mat-Maker, is a devilish chapter.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the thread, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as of this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meanwhile, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrats in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance -- aye, chance, free will, and necessity -- no wise incompatible -- all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course -- its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions modified by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at event.

Here are necessity, free will, and chance -- all working independently and in constrained concert with each other -- producing both actual fabric and the ultimate metaphor of existence. Or at least man’s view of it and his place within it.

And, then, the chapter shifts.

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in the air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming.

The shadows of Fate -- with wild cries announcing their coming.

‘There she blows! There! There! There! She blows! She blows!’

‘Where-away?’

‘On the lee-beam, about two miles off! A school of them!’

Instantly all was commotion.

The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of his genus.

‘There go flukes!’ was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales disappeared.

‘Quick, steward!’ cried Ahab. ‘Time! Time!’

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact minute to Ahab.

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter -- this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers -- that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war’s men about to throw themselves on board on enemy’s ship.

And here, the free will of the men advancing forward towards the Fate of their necessity, haunted by the chance movements of the whales unseen and beneath the sea. In this short chapter, Melville first weaves his metaphor of fate, chance, and free will, each working together to create reality, and then he shows the same action in the plot and action of the story.

Devilish.

Any Way You Look At It

In Chapter 55, Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales, Ishmael tries to give an accurate depiction of the whale as he is seen in the sea by whalemen; bemoaning so many of the inaccurate descriptions that populate our minds and documents. He concludes:

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.

The whale itself -- forever undescribed and open to interpretation.

Its Cunning Duplicate in Mind

In Chapter 70, The Sphynx, Ishmael (and Ahab) contemplate on the severed head of the Sperm Whale.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. ‘Speak, thou vast and venerable head,’ muttered Ahab, ‘which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! Thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!’

‘Sail ho!’ cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.

‘Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,’ cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. ‘That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man. -- Where away?’

‘Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to us!’

“Better and better, man. Would now St Paul would come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! How far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! Not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.’

There are so many chapters like this in Moby-Dick. Melville famously dissects the whale in these chapters, looking at every piece and part of the whale -- and each of them, like its black and hooded head, is an allegory for the philosophical mind to cogitate on and interpret as it sees fit. Like the Sphynx, it will never reveal its own secrets.

Read It If You Can

Chapter 79, The Prairie, is another example, this time looking at the broad and featureless “forehead” of the Sperm Whale.

But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed, its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead’s middle, which, in man, is Lavater’s mark of genius.

But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. Is it moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove’s high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.

Read it if you can. It is unreadable, open to any interpretation that you might wish to give it -- or perhaps, in its expansiveness, imperious to interpretation entirely.

But An Empty Cipher

The gold doubloon that Ahab nails to the mast -- a reward to he who should first raise the White Whale -- is perhaps the clearest example of this narrative technique that allows for everything, literally everything, to be open to interpretation.

In Chapter 99, The Doubloon seems to beguile even Ahab, who looks at it in an attempt to decipher its true meaning.

But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.

For, of course, some certain significance lurks in all things -- but what is that significance, and can we ever know it for sure? One by one, Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, each look upon the doubloon and interpret what its markings might mean -- for them if not for the world entire.

On its round border it bore the letters, REPÚBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on a third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point in Libra.

In these figures Ahab sees the representation of his own quest against the White Whale, and the fortitude that one like himself must master if he is to be successful in that objective. But in them Starbuck sees the protection and benevolence of God, and Stubb sees all the things he can buy with the coin, and Flask sees nothing at all.

Which is the true interpretation? Is there one?

Some Invisible Power

And finally, with my approach to this seventh reading in mind, that Melville is purposely presenting character, plot and metaphor as things forever open to interpretation with no single meaning, it is, wonderfully, that iconic passage in Chapter 132, The Symphony, that now increases in its importance and indeliability.

‘What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all this time, lo! That smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!’

What is it, indeed? Melville is not going to tell you. You’ll have to come up with your own interpretation.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Holiday Break: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

Books are always the best holiday gift for me. The only thing I like better than the anticipation of reading a long sought after title is the fondness that comes with remembering the discovery of an unexpected treasure.

As I look back on all the books I've profiled here in 2025, the one I'd most like to revisit is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven, which I blogged about in February.

Here's how that post began: 

The only thing I knew about this book was that I liked the movie that John Huston made out of it in 1948. The movie has a different feel than most of what comes out of Hollywood, then and now: grittier, and a little subversive. Humphrey Bogart plays a delightful Dobbs -- a man who is neither hero nor villain, someone worth rooting for and against, a man who gets both a raw deal and what’s coming to him.

Little did I realize how subversive the movie’s source material actually was. And the mystery surrounding it and the identity of its author -- B. Traven, evidently a pseudonym for an author who managed to remain hidden for his entire career and, seemingly, to this day. 

The book, like the movie, is, at its core, a parable on the moral disintegration that accompanies greed. In its chosen idiom, the moral action of the narrative manifests in three people and their quest for gold in the mountains of the Sierra Madre.

It is, in my opinion, one of those rare books where plot and metaphor become one -- each serving the other in ways that are both recognizable and sublime. More than just greed, its parable on moral disintegration extends to market capitalism itself, and its final judgments indict more the system than the rugged individual.

Howard meditated for a while; then he said: “Come to think of it, you can’t blame him.”

“Meaning what?” Curtin asked, as though he had not heard right.

“Meaning that I think he’s not a real killer and robber, as killers go. It’s rather difficult to explain it to you, with the slugs in you. You see, I think at bottom he’s as honest as you and me. The mistake was that you two were left alone in the depths of the wilderness with almost fifty thousand clean cash between you two. That is a goddamned temptation, believe me, partner. Being day and night on lonely trails without ever meeting a human soul -- that gets on your mind, brother. That eats you up. I know it. Perhaps you felt it, too. Don’t deny it. You may have only forgotten how you felt at certain times. The wilderness, the desolate mountains, cry day and night in your ears: ‘We don’t talk. It will never come out. Do it. Do it right now. At that winding of the trail do it. Here’s the chance of your lifetime. Don’t miss it. You only have to grasp it and it is yours. No one will ever know. No one can ever find out. Take it, it’s yours for the taking. Don’t mind a life, the world is crowded with mugs like him.’ If you ask me, partner, I’d like to know the man on earth who could resist trying it without nearly going mad. If I were still young and I had been alone with you or with him, to tell you the truth, Curty, I might have been tempted too. And I wonder, if you search your mind very carefully, if you won’t find that you had similar ideas on this lonely march. That you didn’t act on them doesn’t mean that you felt no temptation. You may have got hold of yourself just before the most dangerous moment.”

“But he had no scruples, no conscience, I know. I knew it long before.”

“He had as much conscience as we would have had under similar circumstances. Where there is no prosecutor, there is no defendant. Don’t forget that. All we have to do now is to find that cheat and get our money.

Dobbs is not really to blame, for he is not the moral agent in this tragedy. He acts the way the system designed him to act; no more, no less.

As you enjoy your holiday break, I hope you find some time to curl up with a good book. I know I will.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

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I’ve read some Hemingway before, but I don’t remember enjoying Hemingway as much as I enjoyed this one. Everyone talks about Hemingway’s terse prose style, but here it seems to be used to its best effect. Saying very little but saying volumes at the same time.

I turned her so I could see her face when I kissed her and I saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes. I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother officers. I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

This was one of the first signals that I was on to something good here, coming very early in the novel when Frederic Henry first meets Catherine Barkley. They would become important to each other. I knew that, not just because it would be the kind of things that happens in books, but because Hemingway telegraphed it in a way that was clear but at the same time subtle. If I had read this book ten years ago, I don’t think I would have stopped on this paragraph. I would’ve sailed past it.

Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

It’s philosophical. It’s simple, but philosophical at the same time. And it’s powerful. Life, love, war and death -- it’s all powerful stuff, but told simply and with smooth and easy transitions from one scene to the next and pages of nothing but dialogue. Why do I have so much trouble getting from place to place and allowing my characters to talk to each other? Next time I am, maybe I should pull this one down and read a few pages?

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK THREE:

THE UNDERGOD

The rain had just begun to fall when Sir Gildegarde Brisbane II fled from Farchrist Castle after his banishment and humiliation. He was lost, he knew that, and his decision had already been made, but before he went through with his desperate plans, he ran into the City Below the Castle for a final errand. He ran through the streets like a lost soul, tears mixing with the rainwater on his face. When he arrived at the house, he knocked and waited politely, feeling too ashamed and too filthy to go barging in anywhere. Amanda answered the door, and when Brisbane saw her, he almost forgot his plans and fell sobbing at her feet. But he steeled himself and kept his words short. He made only three statements. First, he said what the King had done to him. Second, he warned Amanda to flee the city before anyone caught wind of the scandal. Third, he told her he loved her. Brisbane then turned and fled into the night. It was the last time my mother ever saw my father.

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Brisbane regained consciousness face down on the north bank of the Mystic River. He sputtered some water out of his lungs, pain lancing through his chest, and tried to lift his face out of the river mud. A rough hand pushed his head back down into the wet earth and a croaking voice sounded out in a language he did not recognize. Somebody was perched on top of him, driving a heavy knee into the small of his back and furiously tying his wrists together with some kind of cord. Brisbane was too dazed to do much of anything, just beginning to remember his plunge from the stone hand of Grecolus, into the mountain lake, and over the waterfall. The person on top of him soon had his hands secured behind his back and cruelly dragged him to his feet by pulling up on his fastened arms.

Through the river mud that must have covered his face, Brisbane saw who his captors were and where it was he had been captured. They were orks, six of them, much like the eight he and his friends had killed so far down the river so long ago. They were rough and brutish-looking, all over six feet tall and all clad in mismatched sets of black chain and plate mail. Their pink pig-noses stuck out from their ugly faces like trophies and their small, up-thrusting tusks glistened with saliva. Each had a black shield decorated with a single red eye. Beyond them, Brisbane could see his surroundings and he recognized them. He must have floated unconscious down the river for quite some distance. They stood nearly in front of the cave where Brisbane and his companions had fought the ettins.

The ork holding him from behind pushed Brisbane down to his knees and stood painfully on the backs of his ankles. Brisbane cried out and, as he knelt there immobilized, the other five orks wrestled his chainmail poncho off over his head. He had lost his shield and his helmet somewhere in the river, but he was relieved to see Angelika was still strapped to his side.

His armor removed from him, the cutting of a few leather straps required to get it past his bound hands, one of the orks threw the heavy mesh over his shoulder like a blanket and another one, the largest one, stepped forward and began to undo the buckle that held Angelika to Brisbane’s belt. Brisbane fought to twist away from his captors, but the ork behind him stomped on his feet and lifted his arms to a painful elevation. Before he could do anything about it, the largest ork had taken Angelika from him and held her, still in her scabbard, out in front of himself.

For a moment, Brisbane was sure his brain was going to explode, sending gray shrapnel out of his ears and bursting his eyeballs. The sheer and utter rage he felt at having Angelika taken from him burned through him like fire and, with unknown and superhuman strength, he leapt up, throwing the ork who had been standing on his ankles back into the water, and snapped the cords holding his wrists behind his back like pieces of dry kindling.

His hands were around the throat of the ork who held Angelika in a flash and Brisbane drove him to the ground, choking off his air supply as Angelika fell unnoticed to the earth.

“She’s mine!” Brisbane screamed, his voice discordant to sane ears, as he dug his fingers deep into the ork’s neck until he was certain, with a kind of giddy glee, that the ork’s skin would break and he would be able to tear vein after vein out of his neck, snapping them like guitar strings tuned too tightly.

The other orks were upon him in a moment but combined they could not drag Brisbane off their leader, the ork who had dared to touch Angelika, the unholy beast who had tried to foul that enchanted blade.

Brisbane began to laugh as he watched the ork’s eyes roll back into his head, a sickening, wailing scream that only sounded like a laugh to his own ears. The other five orks were still struggling to pull Brisbane’s hands away from their leader’s throat. They had made little progress and Brisbane began to beat the back of the ork’s head against the hard earth along the river bank.

Suddenly, a great weight came down on the back of Brisbane’s neck and he collapsed onto his victim. He swam in and out of consciousness for a moment and then jerked back to reality when he was rolled over onto his back next to the ork he had attacked. The ork who had been standing on his ankles, the one Brisbane had thrown into the river, stood dripping over him with his short, thick sword raised over his head. Just as Brisbane was sure the ork was going to bring the blade down to finish him, the ork paused, the sword frozen over his head and his eyes wide in amazement. The fight had suddenly gone out of him, and Brisbane could not fathom why he was not being killed.

Sunlight winked at him from something on his chest. In the struggle, the small silver pentacle medallion he wore around his neck had worked its way out from underneath his tunic and now lay sparkling against his chest. This is what had transfixed the ork.

Brisbane did not have the chance to take advantage of the lull. Just as he realized the cause of the ork’s hesitance, the ork dropped his sword to his side and shouted out a single word to his companions. Brisbane did not understand the word, it must have been in the ork’s own twisted tongue, but it sounded like “groo-mack.”

The remaining orks were on him in an instant. They quickly flipped him over and began to retie his hands together at the wrists, this time much more tightly and restricting, and they violently stuffed an awful-tasting gag into his mouth.

Brisbane fought as much as he could, but there was something different now. The spirit that had possessed him had passed out of his body. The ork he had strangled lay unmoving beside him. If Brisbane had killed him, he might have been the last creature Brisbane would ever kill. Before long, Brisbane was tightly tied and gagged, and completely at the mercy of the orks.

Having incapacitated their prisoner again, the orks went over to check on their fallen leader. They crudely tested his vital signs and then stood up and moved away. It was obvious there was nothing to be done. The ork was dead.

The ork who had been standing on Brisbane’s ankles, the one who had recaptured Brisbane, went over to the fallen leader and began to remove any valuables the dead ork had carried. Brisbane watched him, still laying on his stomach beside the running Mystic, as the ork removed the leader’s sword and shield from the ork’s dead grasp. He also took a small sack that had been tied at his waist. He then stood up and nodded to his companions. The four of them came over and picked up the body, each grabbing a limb, and then carried him over to the river and threw him in. The armor-laden corpse sank quickly to the bottom.

The four orks came back to what Brisbane presumed was their new leader. He barked an order at them and they wrestled Brisbane roughly to his feet. They held him up in front of their leader, and he looked Brisbane over dubiously.

Brisbane looked the ork over in turn. He tried not to let his fear show in his eyes or in his posture, but it was not easy. Brisbane was terrified. He had been taken captive by a party of orks and any animosity they might have had for him certainly had not been lessened by his strangling one of their number. Brisbane reflected on that now and had a hard time believing he had actually done it. The memory of his rage was like a dream, quickly fading and soon forgotten. It was just that when the ork had touched Angelika—

The ork. He was still staring Brisbane up and down and Brisbane became acutely aware of his own presence and surroundings. His chest hurt—every time Brisbane took a breath it felt like he was fanning a fire—and his vision was still popping with black spots from the blow he had received on the back of the neck. For the first time since he had regained consciousness, he realized it had stopped raining. The ork facing him was a huge creature, an inch or two shorter than himself, but easily massing just as much. The face of an ork was so different from that of a human Brisbane could only guess at which facial expressions denoted with emotions, but he felt he could be sure that this evil, flesh-eating monster was horrifically mad at him. This knowledge did nothing to assuage his trepidation about the length of his future in the hands of these creatures.

But there was his medallion. It had given the ork pause and had kept him from killing Brisbane. And even now, Brisbane thought he saw, around the eyes, a latent measure of fear in the ork’s face. What did the pentacle symbol mean to these orks? Brisbane did not know. In human society, it was the mark of a wizard, a mystical force-shaper in some eyes, a servant of Damaleous in others. It obviously meant something to these orks as well, and that something, whatever it was, had kept Brisbane alive so far.

The ork said something in his own language and the others gave some short laughs. Brisbane kept his eyes on their new leader and, as he spoke, Brisbane saw his sharp teeth were a mass of twisted and overlapping ivories. A name came unbidden to Brisbane’s mind, Snaggletooth, and in his thoughts, that became how he began to refer to the new leader of the party of orks.

Snaggletooth said something else to the others and then went over to where Angelika lay on the river bank. Brisbane’s muscles tightened against the bonds that held him as the ork picked up his sword and examined the scabbard closely. The scabbard was an ordinary one, but the emerald in the base of Angelika’s pommel told any observer that the blade inside was something special. Snaggletooth returned to stand in front of Brisbane with Angelika in his claw-like hands. Brisbane felt the insane rage begin to build up inside him again, pushing his heart up into his throat.

—No, young Brisbane. They will kill you this time.—

It was Angelika. Her sweet and seductive voice quenched his fire immediately. Brisbane became strangely calm in the grasps of the other orks. He felt like he could melt right through them if he had to.

But Angelika, Brisbane thought, reaching out for his sword’s consciousness. I will not let them touch you. It’s wrong. It’s…it’s…

—Sacrilege. I know, Brisbane. But worry not. Their kind cannot use me. This one will not even be able to draw me from my scabbard.—

Indeed, Brisbane watched as Snaggletooth tugged on the hilt of the sword, trying to free it from the metal scabbard. The ork’s muscles were straining, but Angelika would not come loose.

Angelika! Brisbane’s thoughts were crying. I cannot bear this separation from you. Make him give you back to me. Do something!

—I cannot, Brisbane. I have no control over his kind. But neither do they have control over me. Be patient. I promise, our conquest of evil is not finished. Be strong and be true, and soon we will be rejoined.—

Angelika...

—Brisbane. Vengeance will be ours. They shall be vanquished.—

Angelika, I need you. I…I…

—I know, young Brisbane. I know. Keep me in your thoughts and I will never be far away.—

Snaggletooth snapped at Brisbane in an angry tone of voice. Brisbane shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand the ork’s language. Snaggletooth punched him suddenly in the solar plexus and Brisbane doubled over in pain. The orks holding him forcefully straightened him back up.

I can’t understand you, you stupid pighead bastard!

Snaggletooth barked another order at his subordinates and Brisbane was shoved off in the direction of the ettins’ cave. They started to move towards it, Snaggletooth leading, followed by Brisbane and the four orks, one of whom kept a firm grip on the bonds that held Brisbane’s wrists together. Snaggletooth still held onto the scabbarded Angelika, carrying her in his hand while his own sword was belted at his side. He had given the ex-leader’s sword and shield to his men, but had kept the sack to himself. Brisbane could only assume it contained some gold or something of some other value. All the orks had similar sacks, but the ex-leader’s was by far the fullest.

The procession entered the cave, losing the benefit of sunlight, and were swallowed by consuming darkness. Brisbane was instantly blinded and he unconsciously slowed his pace. He was rewarded with a shove from behind. Evidently, the orks had no trouble seeing in the dark.

Something nagged at Brisbane as they made their way deeper and deeper into the cave. Something was amiss. In a moment he had it. When he had been here last, in the battle with the ettins, Roystnof had lit the cave up with one of his light spells.

ROYSTNOF! The memory of his friend and the rest of his companions came flooding in on him like a deluge. Where were they now? Still at the top of that mountain? Fighting with that strange bird-monster? How much time had passed since he had fallen off that hand? Would his friends ever be able to find him?

Tears welled up in his eyes as he realized he didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. An unwanted feeling came up in his heart, a feeling he would never see any of them again, and as soon as it appeared, the feeling nestled into his heart like a certainty. He could logically argue against it, but it would never do any good. Down deep, he would always know better.

But he had to put it aside for the moment, lest he break down in front of Snaggletooth and his goons, and Brisbane swore to himself he would never let that happen. His eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness of the cave and he could now see they had entered the large chamber where the ettins had been sleeping. He could see their huge forms amidst the boulders that cluttered the floor, tacky with their own blood. The smell of their deaths hung heavy in the air and it made Brisbane sick to his stomach.

What happened to Roystnof’s light spell? The question nagged him like a shrewish wife. There were two possibilities, he knew, one of which he clung to like a life line and the other he tried to ignore like a punished child. His hope lay in the easy answer, that Roystnof had dispelled the magical luminance after they had left the cave and Brisbane had not noticed him do it. It was entirely possible. Brisbane had not been paying much attention and Roystnof was one of the last ones out of the cave. And it was logical, Roystnof would not have wanted to leave any evidence they had been there in case the ettins had any friends around. His fear, on the other hand, was that something had happened to Roystnof. He remembered Dantrius insisting that Roystnof’s magic lantern would cease to function after the wizard’s death. Suppose Roystnof had been killed in the inevitable battle with the bird-monster after Brisbane had taken his plunge? After all, Roystnof hadn’t dispelled his magic light in the basement of the shrine where Brisbane had killed the demon.

The orks brought Brisbane to a halt in the center of the slaughtered ettins. Snaggletooth came up to Brisbane, close enough so Brisbane could see his features in the dark cave. The ork surveyed the carnage around them and then returned his gaze to Brisbane.

Does he think I did this? Brisbane thought. Brisbane had done most of it, but that didn’t mean Snaggletooth had to know. Brisbane remembered Roystnof saying ettins were somehow related to orks. Suppose these ettins had been friends of these orks? Just another reason for them to hate him. Brisbane was not sure how much protection his medallion offered, but he wasn’t too interested in finding out.

Snaggletooth began to say something but cut himself off. He shook his head in frustration and Brisbane smiled inwardly at Snaggletooth’s language barrier. He was sure the ork wanted to question him about the death of the ettins, but was unable to because he could not make himself understandable to Brisbane.

Snaggletooth’s reaction to this realization was, again, to punch Brisbane in the gut. This one hurt much more than the first one had, and Brisbane screamed into his gag. The ork said something to his goons and Brisbane was dragged off to one side of the cavern.

Brisbane reached out to Angelika, who Snaggletooth still carried in his hand. Help me, Angelika. I need you.

Her voice answered immediately. —There is nothing I can do until I am once again in your hands. Be strong. That time will come.—

How do you know?

—I know.—

A light dawned in Brisbane’s head. Angelika, do you know if Roystnof is still alive?

—This I cannot say.—

Brisbane and the orks were tucked away in one of the rough corners of the ettins’ cave. Snaggletooth separated himself from the others and stood, with arms outstretched, in front of the rough stone wall. A silence fell among the other orks and Brisbane’s interest immediately perked up. Something was about to happen.

Snaggletooth, his arms still outstretched, beckoning to the stone wall, said one word in his strange orkish tongue. Ursh-low. Brisbane heard it distinctly. He had no idea what it meant, but he was sure that was what Snaggletooth had said.

There was a grinding noise in the cave, like stone being scraped against stone, and before Brisbane’s dark-adjusted eyes, the section of the wall Snaggletooth was standing before began to swing open like a door.

It was a door. A secret door like the one Shortwhiskers had found at the entrance of the temple or at the end of that endless tunnel. Except this door wasn’t opened by pushing on a certain spot slow, steady, and right into the wall. This secret door was opened with a word. A magic word. Ursh-low. Open sesame.

Magic? Did Snaggletooth and the orks have their own type of magic? What else could they do? In all the rumors Brisbane had heard about orks, none of them ever said anything about them having magical powers. They were reputed to be insanely evil, maliciously cruel monsters who attacked without fear or quarter, but they were not supposed to be wizards. Brisbane wondered if he shouldn’t try to forget everything he had ever heard about orks.

The section of wall had opened all the way to reveal a pitch black tunnel leading down into the very bowels of the Crimson Mountains. Snaggletooth turned to look at Brisbane and there was a definite smile on his lips. It spread out under his pig nose like a wound and revealed nearly all of his snaggled teeth. It made him look like a demon out of some hellish nightmare.

Brisbane decided he was not going to be taken into that dark tunnel. To hells with that idea. Once that door shut behind them—with a dull, hollow thump, like the dropping of a coffin lid, Brisbane was sure—the little light they received from the cave’s entrance would be gone and Brisbane would be lost in a world of darkness with only five angry orks as his guides. Well, he was not going to let that happen. Brisbane let his legs go slack and he sat down hard on the floor of the cave.

The orks bunched up around him, grumbling at him and poking him with their stiff fingers. Brisbane tried to ignore them. He crossed his legs and bowed his head. Snaggletooth broke his way through his men and stood in front of the sitting human.

Brisbane stared at the ork’s feet, housed in worn boots and blackly present in the darkness. Go to the hells, Snaggletooth. I’m not moving. Quicker than Brisbane would have thought possible, Snaggletooth’s right foot swung up and hit Brisbane right in the face. His head rocked and he rolled over onto his back. Pain lit up the area around him and Brisbane was sure the ork had caved his face in. The other orks brought Brisbane to his feet and he offered up no resistance.

Snaggletooth put his face back into Brisbane’s and shouted something, evidently not caring that Brisbane could not understand him. Brisbane knew the punch was coming before it landed, but somehow, it still took his internal organs by surprise. A broken face and now something ruptured in his gut. This rebellion tactic certainly had its attractions.

Brisbane was pushed, wheezing for breath and bleeding from the cheek, into the dark tunnel behind the advancing form of Snaggletooth. The four other orks followed behind, one with his hands clamped firmly on the bonds that secured Brisbane’s arms behind his back.

Brisbane cried out to Angelika, searching for any kind of solace she might be able to offer.

—Be strong, young Brisbane. Our time will come.—

The secret stone door shut behind them, dropping the small group into the gloom of utter blackness. Brisbane was wrong. When it shut, it sounded more like a prison door than a coffin lid.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

For Your Own Good by Alice Miller

I stumbled upon Alice Miller when I somewhat randomly picked up a copy of Thou Shalt Not Be Aware in some used bookstore somewhere. In this volume, For Your Own Good, with the subtitle, “Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence,” Miller pursues much the same theme as she did in Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, a concept she called “poisonous pedagogy.” Its roots go all the way back the the very foundation of childhood “education” in our society:

Those concerned with raising children have always had great trouble dealing with “obstinacy,” willfulness, defiance, and the exuberant character of children’s emotions. They are repeatedly reminded that they cannot begin to teach obedience too soon. The following passage by J. Sulzer, written in 1748, will serve as an illustration of this:

“As far as willfulness is concerned, this expresses itself as a natural recourse in tenderest childhood as soon as children are able to make their desire for something known by means of gestures. They see something they want but cannot have; they become angry, cry, and flail about. Or they are given something that does not please them; they fling it aside and begin to cry. These are dangerous faults that hinder their entire education and encourage undesirable qualities in children. If willfulness and wickedness are not driven out, it is impossible to give a child a good education. The moment these flaws appear in a child, it is high time to resist this evil so that it does not become ingrained through habit and the children do not become thoroughly depraved.”

It is interesting to me the way willfulness is reflexively asserted to be equal to wickedness and evil. But let’s continue with the passage.

“Therefore, I advise all those whose concern is the education of children to make it their main occupation to drive out willfulness and wickedness and to persist until they have reached their goal. As I have remarked above, it is impossible to reason with young children; thus, willfulness must be driven out in a methodical manner, and there is no other recourse for this purpose than to show children one is serious. If one gives in to their willfulness once, the second time it will be more pronounced and more difficult to drive out. Once children have learned that anger and tears will win them their own way, they will not fail to use the same methods again. They will finally become the masters of their parents and of their nursemaids and will have a bad, willful, and unbearable disposition with which they will trouble and torment their parents ever after as the well-earned reward for the “good” upbringing they were given. But if parents are fortunate enough to drive out willfulness from the very beginning by means of scolding and the rod, they will have obedient, docile, and good children whom they can later provide with a good education. If a good basis for education is to be established, then one must not cease toiling until one sees that all willfulness is gone, for there is absolutely no place for it. Let no one make the mistake of thinking he will be able to obtain any good results before he has eliminated these two major faults. He will toil in vain. This is where the foundation first must be laid.”

I’m going to go on quoting this passage at length because I find it so absolutely fascinating and so absolutely foundational to Miller’s thesis. Read the paragraph above one way and you will say, yeah, that’s how you raise obedient children, but read it another way and you will say, gosh, that’s also how you create abused and mindless robots.

“There, then, are the two most important matters one must attend to in the child’s first year. When he is over a year old, and is beginning to understand and speak somewhat, one must concentrate on other things as well, yet always with the understanding that willfulness must be the main target of all our toils until it is completely abolished. It is always our main purpose to make children into righteous, virtuous persons, and parents should be ever mindful of this when they regard their children so that they will miss no opportunity to labor over them. They must also keep very fresh in their minds the outline or image of a mind disposed to virtue, as described above, so that they know what is to be undertaken. The first and foremost matter to be attended to is implanting in children a love of order; this is the first step we require in the way of virtue. In the first three years, however, this -- like all things one undertakes with children -- can come about only in a quite mechanical way. Everything must follow the rules of orderliness. Food and drink, clothing, sleep, and indeed the child’s entire little household must be orderly and must never be altered in the least to accommodate their willfulness or whims so that they may learn in earliest childhood to submit strictly to the rules of orderliness. The order one insists upon has an indisputable influence on their minds, and if children become accustomed to orderliness at a very early age, they will suppose thereafter that this is completely natural because they no longer realize that it has been artfully instilled in them. If, out of indulgence, one alters the order of the child’s little household as often as his whim shall dictate, then he will come to think that orderliness is not of great importance but must always yield to our whim. Such a false assumption would cause widespread damage to the moral life, as may easily be deduced from what I have said above about order. When children are of an age to be reasoned with, one must take every opportunity to present order to them as something sacred and inviolable. If they want to have something that offends against order, then one should say to them: my dear child, this is impossible; this offends against order, which must never be breached, and so on.”

What’s fascinating here is the way in which order is, admittedly, an artificial construct, indoctrinated into a child so that its willfulness can be suppressed. They must be made to believe that order “is completely natural because they no longer realize that it has been artfully instilled in them.” The same thought is carried to a more diabolical conclusion in the next paragraph.

“The second major matter to which one must dedicate oneself beginning with the second and third year is a strict obedience to parents and superiors and a trusting acceptance of all they do. These qualities are not only absolutely necessary for the success of the child’s education, but they have a very strong influence on education in general. They are so essential because they impart to the mind orderliness per se and a spirit of submission to the laws. A child who is used to obeying his parents will also willingly submit to the laws and rules of reason once he is on his own and his own master, since he is already accustomed not to act in accordance with his own will. Obedience is so important that all education is actually nothing other than learning how to obey. It is a generally recognized principle that persons of high estate who are destined to rule whole nations must learn the art of governance by way of first learning obedience. Qui nescit obedire, nescit imperare: the reason for this is that obedience teaches a person to be zealous in observing the law, which is the first quality of a ruler. Thus, after one has driven out willfulness as a result of one’s first labors with children, the chief goal of one’s further labors must be obedience. It is not very easy, however, to implant obedience in children. It is quite natural for the child’s soul to want to have a will of its own, and things that are not done correctly in the first two years will be difficult to rectify thereafter. One of the advantages of these early years is that then force and compulsion can be used. Over the years, children forget everything that happened to them in early childhood. If their wills can be broken at this time, they will never remember afterwards that they had a will, and for this very reason the severity that is required will not have any serious consequences.”

Order and obedience to that order. Again, that is not only how you are evidently supposed to raise children, it is also absolutely (and not coincidentally?) how you create willing thralls to fascism. The closing message here seems to be go ahead and beat your children. Beat them, in fact, until they forget they were beaten.

Here’s Miller’s own commentary on this horrific set of ideas.

It is astonishing that this pedagogue had so much psychological insight over two hundred years ago. It is in fact true that over the years children forget everything that happened to them in early childhood; “they will never remember afterwards that they had a will” -- to be sure. But, unfortunately, the rest of the sentence, “the severity that is required will not have any serious consequences,” is not true.

The opposite is the case: throughout their professional lives, lawyers, politicians, psychiatrists, physicians, and prison guards must deal with these serious consequences, usually without knowing their cause.

And:

If primary emphasis is placed upon raising children so that they are not aware of what is being done to them or what is being taken from them, of what they are losing in the process, of who they otherwise would have been and who they actually are, and if this is begun early enough, then as adults, regardless of their intelligence, they will later look upon the will of another person as if it were their own.. How can they know that their own will was broken since they were never allowed to express it?

It really is the seeds of authoritarianism -- looking upon the will of another person as if it were their own. As children, the other is a parent. As adults, the other is the leader of their nation.

For Your Own Good

That’s all tragic enough, but in For Your Own Good, Miller takes these ideas one step further, and addresses the inherent cruelty in not just the abuse, but in the indoctrination that the abuse is “for your own good.”

When people who have been beaten or spanked as children attempt to play down the consequences by setting themselves up as examples, even claiming it was good for them, they are inevitably contributing to the continuation of cruelty in the world by this refusal to take their childhood tragedies seriously. Taking over this attitude, their children, pupils, and students will in turn beat their own children, citing their parents, teachers, and professors as authorities. Don’t the consequences of having been a battered child find their most tragic expression in this type of thinking?

Because of course this cycle continues, the adult who was beaten as a child beating their own children for the same reasons they were indoctrinated to believe. But like the falsity of the order that their will was sacrificed for, the true reasons for continuing the abuse are also hidden from them.

For parents’ motives are the same today as they were then: in beating their children, they are struggling to regain the power they once lost to their own parents. For the first time, they see the vulnerability of their own earliest years, which they are unable to recall, reflected in their children. Only now, when someone weaker than they is involved, do they finally fight back, often quite fiercely. There are countless rationalizations, still used today, to justify their behavior. Although parents always mistreat their children for psychological reasons, i.e., because of their own needs, there is a basic assumption in our society that this treatment is good for children.

It is not, in fact, for the child’s own good. In a strange and deeply buried way, parents beat their children for their own good.

Sexual Abuse

Miller summarizes this poisonous pedagogy, whatever its source, with the following maxims.

1. Adults are the masters (not the servants!) of the dependent child.

2. They determine in godlike fashion what is right and what is wrong.

3. The child is held responsible for their anger.

4. The parents must always be shielded.

5. The child’s life-affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic adult.

6. The child’s will must be “broken” as soon as possible.

7. All this must happen at a very early age, so the child “won’t notice” and will therefore not be able to expose the adults.

And in these maxims we see the roots not just of authoritarianism, but also sexual abuse.

When we consider the major role intimidation plays in this ideology, which was still at the peak of its popularity at the turn of the century, it is not surprising that Sigmund Freud had to conceal his surprising discovery of adults’ sexual abuse of their children, a discovery he was led to by the testimony of his patients. 

Miller is extremely critical of Freud and his “theory of drives,” a theory, she feels, wholly dependent on and continually perpetuated by the very poisonous pedagogy that helped give it rise.

We can understand why this theory omitted the fact that it is the parents who not only project their sexual and aggressive fantasies onto the child but also are able to act out these fantasies because they wield the power. It is probably thanks to this omission that many professionals in the psychiatric field, themselves the products of “poisonous pedagogy,” have been able to accept the Freudian theory of drives, because it did not force them to question their idealized image of their parents. With the aid of Freud’s drive and structural theories, they have been able to continue obeying the commandment they internalized in early childhood: “Thou shalt not be aware of what your parents are doing to you.”

Authoritarianism

It’s sick and perverse. And it is from these simple maxims and their theories to which that they give rise that we see not just the rules for rearing children into obedient adults, but when written on a larger canvas, for preparing adults for cultural and political authoritarianism. 

When terrorists take innocent women and children hostage in the service of a grand and idealistic cause, are they really doing anything different from what was once done to them? When they were little children full of vitality, their parents had offered them up as sacrifices to a grand pedagogic purpose, to lofty religious values, with the feeling of performing a great and good deed. Since these young people never were allowed to trust their own feelings, they continue to suppress them for ideological reasons. These intelligent and often very sensitive people, who had once been sacrificed to a “higher” morality, sacrifice themselves as adults to another -- often opposite -- ideology, in whose service they allow their inmost selves to be completely dominated, as had been the case in their childhood.

The reference to terrorists may throw some people, but the larger point is just so obvious. Through this poisonous pedagogy, children are not taught to be good, they are taught to sublimate themselves to another’s order. At first, that order is that of their parents. But then, it can easily be the order of the authoritarian.

Miller sees this dynamic perhaps most painfully present in the Holocaust.

The more insight I gained into the dynamics of perversion through my analytic work, the more I questioned the view advanced repeatedly since the end of the war that a handful of perverted people were responsible for the Holocaust. The mass murderers showed not a trace of the specific symptoms of perversion, such as isolation, loneliness, shame, and despair; they were not isolated but belonged to a supportive group; they were not ashamed but proud; and they were not despairing but either euphoric or apathetic.

The other explanation -- that these were people who worshiped authority and were accustomed to obey -- is not wrong, but neither is it adequate to explain a phenomenon like the Holocaust, if by obeying we mean the carrying out of commands that we consciously regard as being forced upon us.

People with any sensitivity cannot be turned into mass murderers overnight. But the men and women who carried out “the final solution” did not let their feelings stand in their way for the simple reason that they had been raised from infancy not to have any feelings of their own but to experience their parents’ wishes as their own. These were people who, as children, had been proud of being tough and not crying, of carrying out all of their duties “gladly,” of not being afraid -- that is, at bottom, of not having an inner life at all.

Purging the Hate of the Self

And in all of this -- we see not just the child being imprinted upon, but crucially the parent, imprinting upon the child all the things they hate, and then working, for the first time, to purge them from the child and from themselves.

The pedagogical conviction that one must bring a child into line from the outset has its origin in the need to split off the disquieting parts of the inner self and project them onto an available object. The child’s great plasticity, flexibility, defenselessness, and availability make it the ideal object for this projection. The enemy within can at last be hunted down on the outside.

Peace advocates are becoming increasingly aware of the role played by these mechanisms, but until it is clearly recognized that they can be traced back to methods of child raising, little can be done to oppose them. For children who have grown up being assailed for qualities the parents hate in themselves can hardly wait to assign these qualities to someone else so they can once again regard themselves as good, “moral,” noble, and altruistic. Such projections can easily become part of any Weltanschauung.

Weltanschauung, indeed. It becomes not just a pedagogy, but an entire worldview. It explains everything. I hate this thing about me. It’s not me, it’s them. I hate them. Each sentence a kind of non sequitur, and yet somehow ever-binding, generation after generation.

Both child abuse and its consequences are so well integrated into our lives that we are scarcely struck by their absurdity. Adolescents’ “heroic willingness” to fight one another in wars and (just as life is beginning!) to die for someone else’s cause may be a result of the fact that during puberty the warded-off hatred from early childhood becomes intensified. Adolescents can divert this hatred from their parents if they are given a clear-cut enemy whom they are permitted to hate freely and with impunity. This may be why so many young painters and writers volunteered for the front in World War I. The hope of freeing themselves from the constraints imposed by their family enabled them to take pleasure in marching to the music of a military band. One of heroin’s roles is to replace this function, with the difference that in the case of drugs the destructive rage is directed against one’s own body and self.

War, addiction -- it explains everything.

Case Studies

In the second half of the book, Miller applies her theory by examining several figures in history, looking deeply at their specific poisonous pedagogic circumstances in childhood, and then tracing them to specific (and destructive) neuroses in adulthood. The first of these historical figures is Adolf Hitler -- and there are a lot of surprising revelations (to me, at least) in this analysis.

Hitler flattered the “German, Germanic” woman because he needed her homage, her vote, and her other services. He had also needed his mother, but he never had a chance to achieve a truly warm, intimate relationship with her. Stierlin writes:

“N. Bromberg (1971) has written about Hitler’s sexual habits: ‘...the only way in which he could get full sexual satisfaction was to watch a young woman as she squatted over his head and urinated or defecated in his face.’ He also reports ‘...an episode of erotogenic masochism involving a young German actress at whose feet Hitler threw himself, asking her to kick him. When she demurred, he pleaded with her to comply with his wish, heaping accusations on himself and groveling at her feet in such an agonizing manner that she finally acceded. When she kicked him, he became excited, and as she continued to kick him at his urging, he became increasingly excited. The difference in age between Hitler and the young women with whom he had any sexual involvement was usually close to the twenty-three-year difference between his parents.’”

It is totally inconceivable that a man who as a child received love and affection from his mother, which most Hitler biographers claim was the case, would have suffered from these sadomasochistic compulsions, which point to a very early childhood disturbance. But our concept of mother love obviously has not yet wholly freed itself from the ideology of “poisonous pedagogy.”

Using Hitler as one of her case studies is problematic (I think), because there are so many conflicting reports and perceptions about him. Biographies were written to glorify him, after all, so where is the truth and where is the hero-worship?

Such problems don’t arise with her next case -- that of German serial killer Jurgen Bartsch.

Jurgen’s gifts helped him primarily to adapt to his situation in order to survive: to suffer everything in silence, not to rebel against being locked up in the cellar, and even to do well in school. But the eruption of feelings in puberty proved too much for his defense mechanisms. (We can observe something similar in the drug scene.) It would be tempting to say “fortunately,” if the consequences of this eruption had not led to a continuation of the tragedy.

“Naturally, I often said to my mother, ‘Just wait till I’m twenty-one!’ That much I dared to say. Then of course my mother would say: ‘Yes, yes, I can just imagine. In the first place you’re too stupid to get by anywhere except with us. And then, if you really did go out into the world, you’d see, after two days you’d be back here again.’ The minute she said it, I knew it was true. I wouldn’t have trusted myself to get by alone out there for more than two days. Why I don’t know. And I knew for sure that when I turned twenty-one I would not go away. That was crystal clear to me, but I had to let off a little steam once in a while. But to think that I might have had any really serious intentions about it is completely absurd. I never would have done it.

“When I started my job I didn’t say, ‘I like it’; I didn’t say ‘It’s horrible’ either. I didn’t actually think that much about it.”

Thus, any hope for a life of his own was nipped in the bud. How else can this be described but as soul murder? So far, criminology has never concerned itself with this kind of murder, has never even been able to acknowledge it, because as a part of child-rearing it is perfectly legal. Only the last link in a long chain of actions is punishable by the court. Often this link reveals in minute detail the crime’s entire sorrowful prehistory without the perpetrator being aware of it.

Soul murder. It’s an apt description of what is happening, in this case and in so many others. But, as Miller here points out, soul murder is not a crime. It is just the way children are raised.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.