Moby Dick & the Return of Right Whales

Right Whale 2019

Could it be true, or is just another of those bizarre dreams some of us experiencing during our pandemic-haunted nights? Yes, it's true! After months of listening, mostly in our vehicle we have completed what many have set out to do, only to falter along the way. Twenty-four hours of a classic American novel, Moby Dick, all 135 chapters, plus an epilogue. Never have we encountered a novel which was at the same time brilliantly written and mind-numbingly tedious, at least in some portions. At times we felt we could go no further but stubbornly journeyed on to the dramatic conclusion. 

Herman Melville was a remarkable man with an astounding breadth of knowledge for a person of his era. He was also intriguingly ahead of his time in the generosity of outlook when it came to other races and religions. 

As a result the narrator of the story, Ishmael, speculates and explicates and pontificates about many subjects, including the volume of whale-hunting throughout the far reaches of the oceans of the planet. Ishmael addresses the possibility of extinction, only to dismiss the possibility. He cites the hunting of elephants in Asia as an example of a species that is killed in abundance but is essentially "too big to fail", a supposition which was sadly untrue. He also makes reference to the bison of the great plains of North America. One hundred and seventy years after the publication of Moby Dick, bison, elephants, and whales are threatened and their abundance and size has not protected them from human predation.

 Even for someone such as Melville with his astonishing knowledge and vision, the prospect of exhausting the seemingly inexhaustible was beyond his ken. 

We can be grateful that a number of whale species have recovered after relentless destruction in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ironically, the discovery and use of fossil oil was a reprieve for the denizens of the deep. Some species are still threatened, including the Right whales which recently returned to the Bay of Fundy. There are so few now that the birth of ten calves is cause for celebration. 

I wonder what the thoughtful Melville, who obviously pondered God as Creator and Sustainer, would think about the planet we inhabit today, where so many species are gone or diminished? Actually,  I'm somewhat grateful that he can't comment!