Diane's Precis 1.22

Diane Kim

Elliott, Geoffrey. "Melville's MOBY-DICK." Explicator 67.4 (2009): 252-254. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Jan. 2013.

     In” Melville’s Moby-Dick,” Literary critic Geoffrey Elliott asserts that Melville deliberately uses medieval undertones in the two “Knights and Squires” chapters. Through an analysis of chapter’s title, structure, use of words, and plots, Elliott confirms his point that these chapters indeed have many ties to medieval trends. He illustrates in detail how each aspects of Melville’s writing connects to Arthurian Romance tradition in “Alliterative Morte Arthure,” “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” and Malory’s works. Then, Elliott explains deeper meaning behind those correspondences. Elliott points out medieval undertones in chapters “Knights and Squires” in order to argue that Melville poses Ahab as a tragic hero.

     Elliott compares many different aspects of “Knights and Squires” with Arthurian Romances literatures in order to prove that there exists a parallel between them.  Elliott explains that the lengths of descriptions of each shipmates and harpooners, who are ranked higher than common crews, follow Arthurian trend. In fact, Arthurian tropes determine the length of character description according to their importance as description of Stubb, Flank, Tashtego, and Daggo is in lesser amount. Not only that, the fact that Melville devoted pretty much the whole chapter to describe Starbuck alone and gathered remaining officers in long lists of names and shorter descriptions than that of Starbuck proves Melville’s intention to draw connection between his novel and Arthurian literature. Therefore, the absence of Captain Ahab from and Queequeg from the common description, who are of great importance follows the same convention, and foreshadows their future roles in the story.

     Moreover, Elliott argues that Melville presents the ship’s officers as heroic knights of Arthurian legend. As evidence, he presents his previous parallel between Moby Dick and Arthurian tradition. In other words, he uses his previous evidence to support extended analysis. This connection he draws allows him to further analyze this chapter as a foreshadow that the crew of Pequod will be condemned. In Arthurian legend, except for the case of Galahad, all of the knights degenerated and fell. Moreover, this connection implies that similar loss of the flower of Christian Knighthood (Chivalry) happens in Pequod. According to Elliott, the fall of crew members make their captain Ahab a tragic hero. With this evidence, Elliott concludes that Melville uses these chapters to further his purpose of making Ahab a tragic hero.

      I think this article would have been more effective with an inclusion of brief summary or background information about Arthurian Romance or plot summary of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” or “Alliterative Morte Arthure.” His thesis makes readers to pay attention to the fact that Ahab is presented as a tragic hero. In fact, before, reading this article, Ahab seemed more like a tyrant. However, this article offered a new perspective to look at this character. Then from here, having said that all the crew members are considered honorary knights and heroes, readers can start ponder upon the interactions between officers, especially Starbuck and Stubb, with Captain: Whether it is constructive and collaborative, or not.