Unfathomable: The Meaning and Significance of

Sea Monsters in Western Literature

By

Alexandra M. Tammaro

A thesis submitted to the faculty of

The University of Florida

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of the Arts in English

Department of English

The University of Florida

April 2013

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Acknowledgements

As the culmination of my undergraduate research, I was allowed to write a thesis on sea

monsters, starring some of my favorite stories of all time. Oh man, what a thing. So much

gratitude is owed to all of the people who have made this undertaking possible, and I hope I can

express just how thankful I am. Mom and Dad, thanks for mailing me gingersnaps and patiently

enduring my research-induced psychosis. Ashlyn Rothenberg, Alex Flores, and Maggie Paxson,

thank you for being continuous sources of love and encouragement. I shudder to think what sort

of monster I would be without our adventures together. You guys make me feel like such a

champ, and the success of this thesis is owed in large part to you. A special thank-you goes out to

Spencer Smigielski, who was the very first person I pitched this idea to. Just his initial

excitement was enough to motivate to create the very best paper I could. I also have a rather

peculiar thank-you for the Mysterious Stranger who would periodically come into the library

where I work and recommend books and pitch ideas. I don’t know what sort of cosmic event

caused our paths to cross, but I’m grateful to have met you!

Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Smith and Dr. Ulanowicz., the truly brilliant professors

who have shaped this paper in more ways than can honestly be accounted for. The insight,

encouragement, and ideas they have shared have given me such a sense of confidence and

validation, and that is one of the products of this research endeavor that I value most. I hope to

be a cool English professor myself one day, and if I can inspire one person the way they have

inspired me, I will count myself an undisputable success.

Alex

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Abstract

The sea monster is a literary archetype that has been a part of the Western literary

tradition since the beginning. From Leviathan to its more modern reimaginings, sea monsters

have represented a spectrum of fears. This paper takes some of the most well-known sea

monsters of Western literature and analyzes their role within their respective novels and in

relation to the pantheon of sea monsters as a whole. Featured works include Moby-Dick, Twenty

Thousand Leagues under the Sea, “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Sea-Raiders,” and the Bible. The

paper gradually comes to focus on Moby-Dick as the preeminent example of how sea monsters

represent what we fear and how they act as mediums for commentaries on meaning, morality,

and the questions we as humans have about our universe. Moby-Dick is specifically examined

from a Biblical perspective, and the White Whale is explored as a modern reincarnation of

Leviathan.

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I. Introduction

The enigmatic sea monster is a literary element that, like the oceans, spans time and

space, as well as genre and meaning. However, the hub of the most influential of these stories

lines up with the mid to late 19th and the early 20th century, when sea travel and industry were

beginning to grow and very real sea monsters – formerly unknown species such as giant squid

and sperm whales – were starting to become household subjects. With these new landscapes and

new forms of life turning up at such a rapid pace, science struggled to keep pace, and this

resulted in factual outlines colored with fantastical or even theological meaning, something

reflected by the literature of the time through images of good versus evil, home versus the

invader, and order versus chaos. While sea monsters take on many different shapes and

manifestations, and while the meaning they are imbued with may vary wildly, they still represent

a fundamental discomfort in the collective human conscience regarding our place in the universe.

Their role in Western literature serves as a conglomeration of our collective fears, and because of

this, they make exceptionally effective antagonists.

II. The Ocean

Before a study into the role of sea monsters in literature can begin, the environment in

which they exist needs to be assessed. The ocean is a uniform and immutable entity. It is vast in

three dimensions, and even though the physical sea has boundaries, the oceans within literature

are often characterized as boundless and infinite. Even more so than a desert, the surface of the

ocean is a vast expanse of a singular image and uniform sensory input. However, despite the

monotony of the surface landscape, the ocean is absolutely teeming with life, all the way down to

the darkest abysses. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, we have

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explored less than five percent of the ocean, leaving an immense amount of uncharted territory

that has never even been seen by human eyes. The ocean is seen as a primal source, both literally

and metaphorically, and some of the oceanic life of today still look relatively the same as they

did when life first began on Earth, such as the modern day jellyfish and the prehistoric

medusozoa they are descended from (Cartwright 746), compounding the ocean's inherent

primordial implications and reinforcing a sense of deep time.

Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea uses the vastness of the ocean as a

device to evoke awe and facilitate his extraordinary adventure story. Captain Nemo and his crew

venture into new landscapes that border on our world and the world of fantasy, such as vast

forests of sea kelp, subterranean tunnels that connect oceans, and even the lost city of Atlantis. In

Chapter 35 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, “The Mast-Head,” Ishmael ponders on the same

quality that captivates Professor Arronax during his time aboard the Nautilus: the “infinite series

of the sea” on which one's spirit becomes “diffused through time and space” (Melville 169 and

171). Victor Hugo’s The Toilers of the Sea describes the ocean as “melancholy: tumult and

silence combined” (Hugo 186). These novels, as well as the rest of the novels discussed in this

paper, are “set against the backdrop of the sea and the exotic forms it contains” (Kaplan 140),

creating a canvas on which a portrait of the sea monster can be applied.

The ocean is often its own character in sea monster stories, and Alfred Lord Tennyson's

poem “The Kraken” is one of the best examples of how the ocean plays an important literary

function. In his poem, the “abysmal sea” (Tennyson line 2) is characterized by its extraordinary

depth both in time and in a physical sense. The ocean is “so deep, in fact, that direction stops

making sense” (Maxwell 2). Even the light, which instructs so much of life on land, tries to “flee,”

but instead of being able to escape from the Kraken, it can only “flee about” (Maxwell 2). This

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basic but disturbing demonstration of chaos calls the reader to challenge the natural laws that get

taken for granted, as the light is lost in a “sort of endless, pointless wandering, panic dissipating

into stunned bemusement” (Maxwell 2). As Tennyson establishes the depth and quality of the

ocean, he then fills it to the brim with grotesque life forms, including the Kraken itself and the

“unnumbered enormous polypi” (Tennyson 9) that exist around it. As soon as the density of life

in the ocean is established, Tennyson moves on to creating an overwhelming sense of time depth

by describing the “ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep” of the Kraken and the “millennial

growth” of the other life forms in the abyssal regions of the sea (Tennyson 3 and 6). The poem

becomes a sort of relative time line, which starts with the primordial emptiness of creation –

much like the empty deep of Genesis – and ends with the Kraken rising from the ocean bottom at

the time of the Apocalypse. Using the Kraken as a reference point, the descriptions of time not

only suggest a universe that is even older and grander than previously considered, but their effect

also asks the reader to questions a universe in which a creature like this slumbering Kraken can

exist.

III. Cephalomania

Sea monster literature revolves around and is perfectly embodied by a phrase in Jules

Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: “the question of the monster” (Verne 7). The

question of the monster requires an assessment of what the monster is and what it is not. In other

words, the global population in Verne's novel is struggling to compose and apply a definition to

the entity responsible for wreaking such havoc in the oceans of the world. The two sides of the

argument are relegated to the realms of science versus the supernatural. In Verne's novel, the

world is buzzing with the rumors of a mysterious and exceptionally destructive sea monster, an

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enigmatic creature or machine which we later learn is a submarine called the Nautilus captained

by a man named Nemo. Discussion of the monster is “the fashion” and “all kinds of stories were

circulated regarding it” (Verne 7). As “legends of ancient times” were reawakened and “societies

of savants and scientific journals” (Verne 7) both attempted to explain the beast, the question of

the monster became a global issue, and the world became an arena for the science versus

supernatural debate.

A real-life phenomenon inspired the one in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and

it started with The Toilers of the Sea and its horrific descriptions of the devil-fish, which is

essentially an under-developed image of the octopus. Entitled “cephalomania,” this late- 19th

century octopus-based sensation made cephalopods a familiar creature, much like what happened

with sperm whales when whale oil became a household necessity. This time period is also when

the first aquariums came about, thanks to the manufacture of newly perfected formula for

artificial salt water, and soon people were able to see fish and octopi firsthand (Babb 20). As

cephalopods became ingrained in popular culture, cephalomania became a phenomenon that

“align[ed] humanity's fears with the increased knowledge of biology and physiology” (Babb 19).

In other words, octopi and squid became hybrids with explanations rooted in both science and

the supernatural. Just like in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, discoveries of such alien-

looking organisms sparked discussion of old myths, “cannily conflating the age-old nightmares

of Scylla, hydras, gorgons, [and] kraken” with the scientific discoveries regarding cephalopods at

that time (Babb 19). What results from this conflation is a horrifying plausibility, where despite

the fact that these monsters are disturbing and totally alien, science has proven that creatures like

these actually exist, leading people to wonder what else could be lurking in the deepest recesses

of the oceans. Verne articulated this fear perfectly in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea:

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The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us. Soundings cannot

reach them. What passes in those remote depths – what beings live, or can live,

twelve of fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters – what is the organization

of these animals – we can scarcely conjecture. (Verne 12)

Hugo's book is guilty of some of this attempted conjecture, as the octopus of his narrative rather

gruesomely drinks the blood of whatever hapless victim strays into its lair, and this belief went

unchallenged for almost a decade, when Henry Lee published a collection of essays called The

Octopus; or, The 'Devil-fish' of Fiction and of Fact in which he scientifically disproved Hugo's

depiction. Regardless, Hugo can hardly be blamed for drawing from non-scientific conclusions

to describe his sea monsters, since it was being practiced by society and authors at the same time.

Cephalomania is a direct product of the many discoveries being made so quickly during

this time period and the consequent inability of science to keep up. Because of this disparity, a

space was created that the public imagination had to fill with less-than-scientific explanations.

Herman Melville picked up on this, and in Moby-Dick, we see it mirrored through Melville's

merging of “apocalyptic rhetoric [and] fastidious observation with scientific ambitions”

(Maxwell 8). The novel itself acts as one very long attempt to explain the mysteries of the deep,

going from the economic benefits of whale oil to the taxonomy of whales to the representation of

whales in art to the Biblical significance of whales. The narrative structure of Moby-Dick “probes

into the whale from every conceivable angle” (Kaplan 141), and readers are constantly receiving

and trying to consolidate different types of information that attempt to explain not only the whale,

but also bigger, universal, existential problems. It is impossible to conflate all of these angles and

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pieces of information regarding the whale and its universe into one coherent image of Moby-

Dick itself, and in this way, Moby-Dick resembles the Bible, but that will be expanded upon later.

Even if literary sea monsters are thoroughly fantastical, such as those of H.P. Lovecraft's

“Dagon” or “The Call of Cthulhu” for instance, science is often a weapon employed to attempt to

understand the monster and therefore metaphorically defeat it. Both Lovecraft and Verne

“construct stories in which all the resources of art, science, or religion are directed, on a global

scale, towards picturing [the monster]” (Maxwell 8). That is, all modes of understanding are

focused on engaging this monster on an objective level. In addition, the main characters in sea

monster stories often exhibit some form of intellectual superiority, even if it is in a parodied

manner like Melville's pseudo-intellectual Ishmael or China Miéville's trendy scientist

protagonist in Kraken. In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the main character uses his uncle's scientific

papers and teams up with an expert archaeologist to unravel the mystery of Cthulhu. As the

narrator in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Professor Arronax embodies a “strict

adherence to known science or pseudo-science [and] a journalistic style ornamented by a wealth

of technical detail,” casting a scientific light on his adventures in the Nautilus and lending them a

degree of credence and objectivity.

IV. Unveiling the Sea Monster

Of course there is no need to address the correlation between monsters and their fearful

aspect, but trying to detail exactly why they are scary is a much trickier pursuit. There is

something significant but elusive about sea monsters that makes them more disturbing than their

terrestrial counterparts. It could be that sea monsters are generally larger, or it could be that

nothing on land remotely resembles the things scientists find (and are still finding) in the deepest

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reaches of the ocean. The thought of the pitch-blackness and pressure so strong it could crush a

submarine is deeply unsettling, but it could also be the vast, almost frightening potential for

discovery in the undisturbed parts of the sea, where the human mind is the only limit for what

sort of creature could be lurking in the dark of the “unfathomable watery depths” (Lovecraft 24).

In literary tradition, sea monsters often represent a spectrum of insecurities, one of the major

ones being the fear of the invasive Other, the “threatening figure of anomaly within the well-

established order of things” (Beal 4). If sea monsters represent the unknown and the collective

anxieties of a community, their historical use as markers on unexplored parts of the world map

sums up this notion perfectly:

On ancient maps, the terra incognita, or “unknown territory,” was sometimes

marked by images of fantastical monsters accompanied by textual warnings, the

most famous being hic sunt dracones, “here be dragons.” These monstrous figures

indicated regions of dangerous uncertainty. They show where the limits of

knowing are. They dwell on the threshold between the known and the unknown,

this world and its other-worldly beyond. These monsters are interstitial figures,

makers of the inside/outside. (Beal 194)

The cartographical role of the sea monster is precisely congruent with its literary function. Sea

monsters are both known and unknown and occupy a space between normal reality and what lies

beyond it. Both in literature and in real life, sea monsters “stand for the haunting sense of

precariousness and uncertainty that looms along the edges of the world, the edges of society, the

edges of consciousness, and the edges of religious understanding and faith” (Beal 57). Sea

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monsters are vessels in which an anxious population throws their fears, anxieties, and doubt.

Leviathan in the Book of Job is a “quintessential representation of the monstrous as a

figure for the wholly other” (Beal 7), and this is rooted in its puzzling physical descriptions and

its preeminence over all other life on Earth. Representing chaos and the cosmos, “krakenish

creatures” are disturbing in that they are not as alien as one would think, and they “manage to

retain their otherness even while asserting their closeness to humankind” (Maxwell 12).

Appearances aside, the sea monster “embodies 'what you fear most, what your culture and

environment have taught you is the worst thing that can happen to you” (McConnell as quoted in

Babb 24). This notion is prevalent in Moby-Dick and its dealings with people of other

nationalities and religions, which are often targets of misdirected fear and insecurity. The word

“monster” comes from the Latin monstrum, which is derived from the verbs “monstrare (“show”

or “reveal”) and monere (“warn” or “portend”) (Beal 6), and sea monsters in literature very

literally live up to these definitions. As literary devices, sea monsters threaten and destroy both

physical property and established mental constructs. They represent not only an apocalyptic

presence within the narrative, but an apocalyptic experience for the reader as well, since they

serve as literal revelations and agents of fear.

The one consolation for the fear of the sea monster is its inability to exist outside its

element. Despite its status as an apex predator in the ocean, sea monsters are utterly ineffective

on land, and the only time humans fall prey to them is when they venture into the territory of the

monster. For instance, Tennyson's Kraken “shall rise and on the surface die” (Tennyson 15),

meaning as the Apocalypse is happening, and as the Kraken “makes his debut before an audience

'of men and angels,' he immediately expires, as does the poem” (Maxwell 6). While it makes

sense that a deep-sea creature could not survive the ascent due to pressure changes, there is

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something significant about sea monsters downgrading from overwhelming agents of power and

destruction to limp, impotent things at the surface. In Chapter 59 of Moby-Dick, “The Squid,” the

men aboard the Pequod spy a dead squid bobbing at the surface, “a vast pulpy mass, furlongs in

length and breadth” with “innumerable long arms [. . .] curling and twisting like anacondas”

(Melville 301). Even though this particular squid is dead, the sailors experience a palpable sense

of portent, and the entire chapter is permeated by a sense of dread. A giant squid, the ultimate

predator when lurking the deep ocean, is a “weak, disoriented, moribund thing” at the surface,

“horrified by air, crushed by its own self” (Miéville 9). Finding one floating dead at the surface is

frightening in that it is a suggestion of what thrives below. Even though actual sea monsters

cannot exist at the surface, their literary counterparts do not lose all of their potency. The story

surrounding Cthulhu says he must remain sleeping under water until “the stars [are] right,”

(Lovecraft 367). Spells and the protection of his underground city are the only thing preserving

him, yet the potential is what creates the most dread, the imminence of something older than

“infinities of chaos” (Lovecraft 367) waking up again. If Cthulhu were to turn up face-down on

the surface, physically it would look like a big dead fish, but one with horrible cosmic

significance. And if Moby-Dick were to metaphorically beach itself, it would be crushed by its

own weight, but its layers upon layers of meaning and its metaphorical significance would not

recede with the tide.

V. Sea Monsters, A Survey

Literary sea monsters come in many different forms. Perhaps surprisingly, what makes a

monster widely varies, but there are still some constants, a formula for a creating an aquatic

monster. For instance, sea monsters are generally described as very large and very old, and in just

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about all cases, there is an agency behind the monster that is not animal instinct but something

more supernatural. Tennyson's Kraken is a monster that is, as mentioned before, almost as old as

the Earth itself, and it is “a kind of creature that could practically be anybody's ancestor”

(Maxwell 5). Much like Lovecraft's Cthulhu, who sleeps in the ancient submarine city of R'yleh,

Tennyson's Kraken “is hidden away in a dark watery place, lead[ing] a restful, unconscious

existence” (Maxwell 6). Moby-Dick is described as exceptionally old and large as well, and one

of the biggest questions in the book revolves around his motivation, sentience, and apparent

sense of divine justice.

When it comes to descriptions of size in sea monster literature, “adjectives such as

'colossal', 'gigantic', 'huge', and 'immense' are ubiquitous” (Babb 30). A positive correlation

between size and fearsomeness makes sense, but in order for a literary sea monster to possess the

full extent of its immensity of meaning, the literature proves it must be immense in size as well.

Historical tales of sea monsters were often characterized by sailors mistaking a sea creature for

an island, and while this comparison can sound excessive, the actual measurements of the

animals these stories are based on are considerable. For instance, a female giant squid can reach

43 feet long, with eyeballs 15 inches in diameter (Babb 30). Male sperm whales can reach almost

80 feet in length, making them large enough to cripple and even sink a full-sized whaling ship,

an event that was not without historical precedent. In Nathaniel Philbrick's book In the Heart of

the Sea, a semi-biographical account of the ramming and sinking of the whaleship Essex by a

large sperm whale. This historical event inspired the ending of Moby-Dick, in which the whale is

also described as being exceptionally large in size.

As far as more specific physical descriptions, sea monsters are often described through

inference as opposed to direct detailing. This evasive form of non-description prompts

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supplementation by imagination, heightening and highlighting the uncanny parts of these

monsters. The Toilers of the Sea features a specific region of ocean located between the Channel

Islands that is described as a mosaic of horrifying sea monster parts:

In this dark world roam fearful living shapes, created to be unseen by the human

eye. Vague forms of mouths, antennae, tentacles, gaping jaws, scales, claws, and

pincers float and quiver in the water, grow larger, decompose, and disappear in the

sinister transparency. (Hugo 186)

H.P. Lovecraft's literature is distinguished for this technique. Lovecraft's “nameless

monstrosit[ies]” (Lovecraft 59) are meant to go beyond the human ability to comprehend, a

characteristic which often leads to madness and death in his protagonists. Because the

protagonists in these stories are limited by their humanity in attempting to understand the

monsters they encounter, the effort leaves their minds unhinged. This phenomenon links back to

the ability to metaphorically defeat the monster through being able to correctly identity and

understand it, but according to God, “any hope of subduing [Leviathan] is false” (Job 41: 9),

even if it is just on a comprehensive level. Readers experience this incomprehension very

explicitly when it comes to the diction within Lovecraft's text, as they are first challenged to

correctly pronounce “Cthulhu” and then are presented the verbally intimidating hymn associated

with it: “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn” (“In his house at R'lyeh dead

Cthulhu waits dreaming”) (Lovecraft 363). When sea monsters are described in this oblique way,

it plays on a religious convention where one is incapable of viewing a god in his true form, like

in the Greek myth of Semele or the Biblical God, “whom no man hath seen nor can see” (1

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Timothy 6:16). Tennyson's Kraken is “described obliquely and by reference” (Maxwell 7),

defining the monster by its surroundings as it sits in its latent state, giving readers descriptions of

its influence on the environment but very few solid descriptions of the monster itself. The Bible

sets the precedent with its notoriously boggling description of Leviathan in the Book of Job:

Who can open the doors of its face?/ There is terror all around its teeth./ Its back

is made of shields in rows,/ Shut up closely as with a seal./ [. . .] Its sneezes flash

forth light,/ and its eyes are like the eyelids of the/ dawn./ From its mouth go

flaming torches;/ sparks of fire leap out./ Out of its nostrils comes smoke,/ as

from a boiling put and burning rushes./ Its breath kindles coals,/ and a flame

comes out of its mouth./ In its neck abides strength, and terror dances before it.

(Job 41:14-22)

This description literally does not allow for the formation of a coherent image. For a monster to

have doors within its face and an abstract concept like terror emanating from its features, it must

exist outside of the capacity of language and understanding. And without language, how else can

a sea monster exist within literature? Readers are left with a mental picture of something

resembling a plate-armored furnace with ghastly teeth, and this nebulous combination of

incomprehensibility and frightening suggestion is something that makes sea monster literature all

the more potent.

This begs the question then, what would happen if we were able to comprehend these

monsters? As stated previously, it would mean metaphorically defeating them, but at what cost?

H.P. Lovecraft, through his protagonists, would argue that humanity is not meant to understand

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the developments of the universe. The traumatized narrator in “The Call of Cthulhu” believes

“the most merciful thing [. . .] is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents”

(Lovecraft 355). Discovering the Cult of Cthulhu and eventually encountering the monster itself

drove the narrator to desperate madness, and in glimpsing “all that the universe has to hold of

horror” (Lovecraft 378), he only the terrible knowledge he had gained dies with him. Miéville's

Kraken parodies this notion. His protagonist, Billy Harrow, is a scientist working as a curator at

the London Museum of Natural History who specializes in mollusks and cephalopods. His

scientific mastery is challenged when his prized specimen – a perfectly preserved giant squid –

goes missing, and the story spirals into tales of cults and magic and situations so far outside the

realm of science as to be irreconcilable. So what can be learned from sea monsters, and are they

even meant to be understood? Herman Melville never provides a solid source of motivation or

agency represented by Moby-Dick, but he “seems to suggest that even if the Kraken were to

appear on the water, there might be nothing to learn from it except that the universe is an

unplumbable riddle” (Maxwell 10). That is, perhaps sea monsters exist simply to defy what we

think we know about the universe.

Sea monsters as characters come in a variety of models. There are the classically

established sea monsters, a category which includes the Biblical Leviathan, Moby-Dick, Cthulhu,

and so on, human sea monsters, such as Captain Ahab and Captain Nemo, as well as mechanical

sea monsters and even cosmic sea monsters. While a sea monster is defined by its physical

surroundings, the meaning and the consequence of its existence are what establish its place in the

literary world. As previously deliberated, the Leviathan of the Bible is the progenitor of many

modern sea monsters. Characterized as “the peak of Creation” in the Bible, it is the ultimate

testament to the power and wrath of God as a “grand mixture of horror and beauty [and] of

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overwhelming power and light” (Pardes 2). Even though Leviathan is originally from the Bible,

it has become an important character in modern literature as well, and it could be argued that the

sea monsters of modern literature are simply reincarnations of the Biblical Leviathan.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is a special case in the world of sea monster

literature, in that it features a trifecta of monsters: the giant squid and sperm whales, which

together comprise the animal component, Captain Nemo, and the Nautilus. This relationship

creates a conglomerated “Kraken [that] is explored through a circle of analogies among man,

squid, and machine” (Maxwell 8), making the novel a discourse on the transmutable nature of

monstrosity. The sperm whales and giant squid in the novel are explicitly characterized as evil,

antagonistic creatures by Professor Arronax and Captain Nemo, which is surprisingly out of

character for them both, given their scientific minds and intellectual authority. Captain Nemo

sees these whales as no more than “cruel, mischievous creatures” that deserve to be

“exterminat[ed]” (Verne 224), and moments later, he undertakes a mass slaughter of the whales,

an episode which constitutes the most gruesome part of the novel. The school of giant squid that

appear later in the book are described in a similar way, and their malicious agency is attributed to

“the Creator” (Verne 267), making them, like the sperm whales, imbued with purpose and

beyond the realm of simple animal life. In both of these instances, Nemo and Arronax break

away from their normally objective points of view and describe these creatures in ways

incongruent with science, and this firmly establishes the whales and the squid as monsters in the

context of the novel.

H.G. Wells' squid in “The Sea Raiders,” display a similar malevolent motivation as

Verne's monsters. The protagonist of the story is a “retired tea-dealer” named Mr. Fison who

discovers some “Haploteuthis ferox” – a fictitious name for giant squid – as he is exploring the

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rocky coast of Sidmouth in England (“The Sea Raiders” 184). When he encounters the squid

devouring the body of a human being, the squid collectively “regarded him with evil interest”

(The Sea Raiders 185) before pursuing him, a crisis he only barely escapes. Extrapolating from

the fact that these squid lack an official scientific name and therefore any nonfictional

counterpart, these squid could hardly be described as simple biological creatures. Instead they

are characterized by their particular malevolence and voraciousness. Mr. Fison then takes a boat

out in order to “point out the exact spot of his adventure,” (The Sea Raiders 186) but ends up

getting ambushed by the squid, resulting in the death of one of the boatmen. Not only does a

boatman die, but the “large boat [. . .] with three women and a little child in it” he saw only

moments before was “pitch[ing] clumsily, bottom upward” after the ordeal ended (“The Sea

Raiders” 190), and Wells’ decision to make women and a child fall victim further demonstrates

the maliciousness and ruthless intent of the Haploteuthis.

H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu and Dagon occupy a more fantastical branch of sea monster

classification. Both Cthulhu and Dagon sleep under the sea, just like Tennyson's Kraken, and

they also share a “regressiveness” and “primaeval or prehistoric status” (Maxwell 2), playing on

the age and theological significance of sea monsters that is common in Western literature. While

these particular monsters are components of a pantheon of cosmic monster-deities, Lovecraft's

short stories approach them not as unrestrained fantasy but as manifestations of the impossibly

real violently invading the realm of the very real. Lovecraft creates a scenario where there is

breach in what we understand to be reality, and what comes through is monstrous enough to

break a human mind simply because it exists. In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the narrative is told from

an objective and scientific point of view as the narrator goes through his recently deceased

uncle's notes and manuscripts, all of which deal with a disturbing subconscious phenomenon and

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a sinister statuette made by sleeping man. The story runs on a “circulation of energies among

poet, squid, and cultist” (Maxwell 8), creating a narrative undertow that eventually brings the

protagonist face to face with Cthulhu and then abruptly into madness.

In addition to traditional sorts of beasts, humans can also be interpreted as sea monsters,

and they are often part of a monstrous relationship, such as Captain Ahab and Moby-Dick and

Captain Nemo and the Nautilus. Friedrich Nietzche's famous quote - “Battle not with monsters

lest ye become a monster” – is an apt characterization of Nemo and Ahab, in that they not only

create their own monsters but also act as one themselves. Ahab is driven mad by the need for

vengeance on Moby-Dick, and his quest eventually leads to apocalyptic event that kills everyone

on board the Pequod except for Ishmael, who lives on as a testament to one man's monomaniacal

obsession, an ending strangely congruent with Captain Nemo's. While they are each associated

with a monster that serves as a sort of prosthesis, Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab also

symbolize how “deities reside in the human breast” (Kaplan 143). Ahab cannot exist without his

monster counterpart, yet when they do encounter each other, chaos ensues. The first meeting

results in Ahab losing his leg, and the second time results in the death of Ahab and those that

swore their allegiance to his dark purpose. As Ishmael describes in the novel, his vengeance

comes to consume him to where “all evil to crazy Ahab, [was] visibly personified, and made

practically assailable in Moby-Dick” (Melville 200). Moby-Dick's supernatural elements -

specifically those regarding its sense of vengeance or righteous fury - are never fully explained.

Readers are never conclusively told whether Moby-Dick is a sentient being that is full of

“retribution, swift vengeance, [and] eternal malice” or perhaps just a natural anomaly charged by

Captain Ahab's “intangible malignity” (Melville 622 and 200).

Captain Nemo is another human sea monster who cannot exist without his monstrous

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prosthesis, the Nautilus. Nemo literally lives inside his mechanical monster, as opposed to

constantly trailing behind it like in Ahab in pursuit of Moby-Dick. Together Nemo and the

Nautilus cause an unspecified but very significant amount of death and destruction. The White

Whale and Ahab can never meet without catastrophic consequences, but Nemo's physical

situation within the Nautilus is Verne commenting on the monstrous potential all humans hold

inside themselves, in which he “set[s] aside his fear, examine[s] the monster, and identif[ies] his

own role within it” (Kapplan 145). The Nautilus’ mechanical efficiency and the indomitable spite

of Captain Nemo combine to create a truly formidable sea monster. In The Toilers of the Sea,

Hugo notes that “human will contained in a mechanism confronts the infinite” (Hugo 191), and

this principle is directly applicable to Nemo and his submarine. In addition to being physically

situated inside his sea monster, the simple fact that Captain Nemo is a misanthrope – a human

that is, in essence, anti-human – creates a fundamental oxymoron that makes him more of an

Other than a part of humanity, adding to his own role as a human sea monster.

As previously mentioned, the Nautilus is a sea monster in its own right. Not only is it

named after a sea creature, but it resembles one too:

The Nautilus's nearness to the animal kingdom, and especially to cephalopoda,

remains at issue throughout Verne's novel. Shelled and chambered like its

biological namesake, immense and aggressive like a Kraken [. . .]” (Maxwell 9)

As a “machine with animal affinities” (Maxwell 9), the Nautilus is not only a harbinger of

destruction but a grotesque mirror of aquatic life. Armored and bright like Leviathan, the

Nautilus is a scientific marvel that navigates all the oceans of Earth, completely unhindered by

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borders, water pressure, or the need to stop on land. While the Nautilus is the physical agent of

destruction, Captain Nemo provides the malevolent agency. Almost completely self-sufficient,

the Nautilus features a “unique synthesis of mechanical and organic elements” that “protects and

enables” Nemo to navigate in a world he would not otherwise be able to access and explore

(Maxwell 9), and the fact that it was created by an anti-human human adds another degree of

monstrosity to the submarine.

Space is often metaphorically tied to the ocean. In all popular science fiction, people

aboard spacecraft maintain the naval rank system and maritime vocabulary. Cthulhu and Dagon

are both technically from space and thus fit into this category, but the best example of a cosmic

sea monster is the sand worm of Frank Herbert's Dune. While the story does not take place on

the ocean and even though the worms do not technically live in an aquatic environment, all of the

elements that make a sea monster story are there: the actual beast, the vital significance of water,

and an element of the supernatural. Instead of a liquid ocean, the worms lurk beneath an endless

sea of sand on the planet Arrakis, and they are deified by the native inhabitants, the Fremen. The

Fremen refer to the worms as “shai-hulud,” which, when capitalized, is also the name of their

principle god. Water plays a very different role in Dune than in other more traditional sea

monster stories, but this difference makes its role even more significant and meaningful in

Herbert's novel. Water is it is fatal to the sand worms, but they are inextricably tied to it. When a

sand worm comes in contact with water, it is the catalyst in creating the Water of Life, a drink

that is necessary for higher-level Bene Gesserit religious ceremonies. In addition to the sacred

nature of the water, its scarcity has a doubly mysticizing effect. Preserving and rationing of the

water is carried out with extreme scrupulousness and reverence, down to the practice of

extracting water from deceased people as a part of their funerary rites. In short, even though the

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sand worms and the ecosystem of Dune have an opposing relationship with water, this

relationship makes water all the more important, both in the course of the story and in analysis of

the novel as a whole.

In addition to the sand worms, the Martians in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds are

reminiscent of sea monsters in that they bear an uncanny resemblance to the Haploteuthis ferox

of “The Sea Raiders:”

These two monsters might easily be mistaken for each other. Both have 'rounded'

bodies roughly the same size; both have 'one might say' a 'grotesque suggestion' of

a face, with eyes that are 'large', 'intelligent', 'intense', and hostile; both have a

prominent, 'tentacle surrounded' 'excrescence' of a mouth resembling a 'beak'; both

have browning skin that 'glistens' like 'shiny' or 'wet' leather; and both are 'ghastly'

and 'monstrous'. (Babb 18)

Even though the Martians of Wells' novel are made to appear as unrecognizable and grotesquely

foreign as possible, the people of Woking notice the resemblance, and one soldier exclaims,

"octopuses," [. . .] "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about fishers of men--fighters of fish it is this

time!” (The War of the Worlds 47). The image is heightened when a tripod - a “charging

leviathan” (The War of the Worlds 125) - emerges from the sea in pursuit of a ship of refugees.

VI. Sea Monsters and the Apocalypse

As previously discussed, the supernatural and even the theological are often vital

components to a sea monster story, ranging from overtly religious, such as in “The Call of

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Cthulhu,” to very subtle, such as in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Not only are sea

monsters often suggestive of religious themes, but they often carry apocalyptic implications as

well. The path of destruction left by Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, the world-destroying and

mind-shattering existence of Cthulhu, and the invasion of octopus-like Martians are all examples

of the apocalyptic qualities of sea monsters, but Moby-Dick provides the best example. As

mentioned earlier, Moby-Dick is based on an actual event, which Nathaniel Philbrick relates in

his book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Essex. Even in his rendering of these

nonfictional accounts, one of the prominent themes in the narrative is the baffling circumstances

in which the whale attacked and the descriptions of the whale that caused the sinking of Essex.

Owen Chase, the first mate of the Essex, recorded in a later account of the event that they had

been “victims of a 'decided, calculated mischief' on the part of the whale” (Philbrick 89). Chase

sensed a “strange, unfathomable purpose” (Philbrick 89) in the sperm whale, and what caused

this strange behavior is impossible to determine. Philbrick's book shows that not only are sea

monsters impressive in size, but they tend to bring apocalyptic consequence as well, both in

fiction and nonfiction.

VII. Moby-Dick as a Biblical Text

The greatest testament to the religious implications of sea monsters and their

accompanying narratives is Moby-Dick, a novel that recreates and modernizes one of the most

impressive monsters of the Bible, Leviathan, and makes him eminent, physical, and able to be

pursued. Not only does Moby-Dick star a reimagining of the progenitor of all sea monsters, but it

is also very reflective of the Bible as a book in its form, function, and purpose. While Moby-Dick

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certainly resembles the Bible in size, it also contains indisputable narrative and functional

similarities. For instance, Moby-Dick contains 135 books with a hodgepodge of characters

narrating them, creating a story “in which biblical rebels and outcasts assume center stage”

(Hutchins 20). These testimonies include parables, sermons, and prophecies, many of which

involve narrative themes that reappear several times in relation to many different circumstances

and characters, such as the mystery surrounding Moby-Dick, the constant reminder of the

superstitious nature of sailors, and the supernatural qualities of the sea.

Like the Bible, the plot and the parables in Moby-Dick “reproduce commonplace biblical

doctrines and stories” (Hutchins 29), such as themes of justice, faith, and repentance. For

Melville, Moby-Dick also serves as a reflective text, and the novel was his expression of “the

sum total of metaphysical questions about himself and the universe which will not bear scrutiny

or explanation” (Kaplan 142), an expectation that is often placed on the Bible. Melville received

much criticism for his novel being immoral and an “attack” on Christianity for its modern ideas

(Hutchins 19), and many of its scenes are indeed blasphemous, such as Ishmael worshiping an

idol with Queequeg. Melville himself called the book “wicked” in his personal letters, but he

also stood behind it as a critique of modern America's outdated standards of moral behavior,

saying the he wrote the “Gospels of this century” (Melville quoted in Hutchins 19). The parts of

Moby-Dick that caused so much friction with the public were the result of Melville encouraging

readers “to challenge a text instead of merely accepting its lessons as a modern for moral

development” (Hutchins 25), a prompt that extends to both his novel and the Bible. Melville saw

the rigid adherence to outdated Biblical doctrines failing the United States, and through his novel,

he did not attempt to dislodge Christianity altogether, but to create another portrayal that more

appropriately addressed a modern day America.

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Many of the publicly instigating ideas came in the form of disguised sermons1 within the

text. Monologues and soliloquies comprise much of Moby-Dick's text, yet they often adopt the

form and function of what could be viewed as a sermon. Whether personal, shared, spoken, or

thought, these are moments that reflect ideas that often touch on controversial morality, faith,

integrity, and even blasphemous subjects, as is often the case with Ahab and Ishmael, both of

whom are constantly preaching about one thing or another. Ishmael's “exegetical gymnastics”

(Hutchins 21) often test the limit of what could be considered blasphemous, especially in

chapters like “A Bosom Friend,” where he not only worships an idol but also shares a bed with a

pagan cannibal, albeit a very friendly one. This sermon includes the line “Now Queequeg is my

fellow man” (Melville 58), a notion that is synonymous with “love thy neighbor” (Mark 12:31).

This rewording of a common Biblical axiom reinforces the notion of Moby-Dick being “a new

iteration of and a commentary on the salvific narratives” of the Bible (Hutchins 19). In other

words, Ishmael's reasoning for his actions is a sermon for a modern time. Melville is not

disparaging the Bible itself but how people interpret (or misinterpret) its lessons and act on them.

Ishmael's potentially sacrilegious behavior is “a critique on Christian practice” (Hutchins 21) as

opposed to an ostentatious disregard for it. Chapter 17, “The Ramadan,” generates a similar

moral effect. Ishmael reasons that “so long as [a] person does not kill or insult any other person”

for believing in a religion (Melville 94), then this person is free to practice as he wants. He goes

as far as to lightheartedly criticize Christianity, saying Hell is a creation resulting from

“dyspeptic religionists,” and these insensitive practitioners “[make] this earth of ours an

uncomfortable inn to lodge in” (Melville 94).

On the other end of the spectrum, Ahab's sermons appeal to a darker point of view. Where

1 For the purposes of this paper, the definition of a sermon is a narrative moment in which moral lessons are taught

or important ideas are explained.

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Ishmael's sermons aim to an outward audience and are meant to produce positive results, Ahab's

are performed solely for his personal gain and to further his burning vengeance. Chapter 36,

“The Quarter-Deck,” is the first instance of Ahab's style of sermon, where he passes around a

goblet in a perversion of the Communion ceremony, sealing the fates of the entire crew of the

Pequod. Chapter 119, “The Candles” is another instance of Ahab's ecstatic religious outbursts. In

an intense moment of fervor, Ahab calls up to the lightning: “Leap! Leap up, and lick the sky! I

leap with thee! I burn with thee; would fain be welded by thee; defyingly I worship thee!”

(Melville 551). Starbuck sets Ahab's blasphemy in sharp relief when he yells, “God, God is

against thee!” (Melville 552). Despite his dedication to vengeance, there are instances where

Ahab grapples with his humanity. He is an “unrepentant Jonah” (Pardes quoted in Hutchins 30),

and for this, he is ultimately killed whereas Jonah escaped relatively unharmed. One of the

primary lessons in the Book of Jonah is “the prophecy of doom is a conditional prophecy that

will come true only in the absence of repentance” (New Oxford Bible 1302). Starbucks ultimately

advocates this fact, but despite the signs and warnings and pleadings, Ahab cannot avoid the

confrontation with his fate, which is embodied in the whale. He is a manifestation of the hate and

rage “felt by his whole race from Adam down” (Melville 200), and as the champion of this

collective sentiment, he cannot stand down from his duty.

In a sense, Moby-Dick picks up where the Bible left off, thousands of years later with

God's promise of an apocalypse still hanging over the heads of the people of the world, and with

this continuation in mind, Moby-Dick becomes a “modern third testament meant not to subvert

but to supplement the Bible” (Hutchins 22). As purported earlier, religion often comes into play

in regards to sea monster stories, and Moby-Dick is the most explicit example of this pairing.

While the Christian elements are unquestionable, Melville crafts an interesting denomination of

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the faith that revolves entirely around the sea. Chapter 7, “The Chapel,” Chapter 8, “The Pulpit,”

and Chapter 9, “The Sermon” are the most explicit references to this sea-based religion2. Father

Mapple's sermon takes place upon a construction resembling a main-top, and he adopts the role

as the captain of the congregation within this ship-like structure. As potentially blasphemous or

affected as it might appear at first, Ishmael realizes Father Mapple's style of preaching is not a

collection of “mere tricks of the stage” but instead “symbolizes something unseen” (Melville 44),

perhaps the very same agency that motivates Moby-Dick. The Father's service is so deeply

rooted in Nantucket maritime culture that it could not exist without the sea as a storytelling aid.

In fact, there is so much addition to the story of Jonah that it sounds like a tale based more on the

life of a sailor out of Nantucket than a man of Biblical times. The parable of Jonah is a core

component of Moby-Dick, and Hutchins notes that not only does the name Jonah occur more

than eighty times in the novel, but he also views Ahab as an archetypal Jonah character, as

Ahab’s “refusal to forgive the whale that took his leg consumes him and leads to his destruction,

just as Jonah's refusal to forgive Nineveh” leads to his punishment and resultant torment

(Hutchins 30-31). Father Mapple, often described as an expression of the sea itself with his chest

heaving “as with a ground-swell” (Melville 52), creates a religious vocabulary, with the Paul the

Apostle becoming “Pilot Paul” and the Rock of the Ages becoming “The Keel of the Ages”

(Melville 54). Significantly, Father Mapple also says “God came upon him in the whale”

(Melville 53), a phrase that anticipates both an explanation of Moby-Dick and a Biblical

justification for Ahab’s death.

In terms of structure, Moby-Dick and the Bible share a similar format, narrative style, and

phraseology, all of which “borrows from the Bible stylistically” (Hutchins 22). Moby- Dick is a

physically substantial book; after all, “few other works of American literature have the Bible's

2I propose “Whale-igion.”

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heft” (Hutchins 22), and its narrative is arranged in a way that resembles the Bible's organization.

The books of the Bible, which generally have a set principle or lesson, often resemble Moby-

Dick’s chapters, and just like the Bible, some of these chapters are told by guest-narrators,

whether it is Stubb, Ahab, or any other member of the crew. While the narrative starts with

Ishmael, the text of Moby-Dick begins with “Extracts.” Directly following the preamble hailing

all “Sub-subs” everywhere, is the first extract, a line from Genesis: “And God created great

whales” (Melville xxv and xxvi). This Biblical commencement not only creates a tie to the Bible

from the beginning, but it also creates a deified image of the most potent power in Melville's

novel, the White Whale itself. And, as will be discussed later, both the Bible and Moby-Dick end

with a confrontation featuring a beast and an apocalypse.

Moby-Dick does not have a singular, completely reliable narrator. Instead there is Ishmael,

a conglomerate of “multiple prophetic personalities” who creates an “inherent instability of

narration,” a stylistic choice that is found in both the Bible and Moby-Dick (Hutchins 22 and 23).

This instability, along with Ishmael's “alias” (Hutchins 23) – “Call me Ishmael” (Melville 1) –

creates a narrative that has no figure to take accountability for it, yet it asks the readers to believe

its message anyway, a request that really only makes sense a Biblical framework. From the very

beginning Ishmael expresses his special relationship with the sea. The sea is his sole healer when

he is depressed, and it gives his life purpose, similar in both a metaphorical and literal sense to

all of the inhabitants of Nantucket, whose economy relies on the sea. Because of this connection,

in no other setting could Ishmael's journey take place.

Ishmael's frequent digressions often convey an educational tone. He is constantly

addressing the reader and breaking the fourth wall, as the Bible often does, yet so much of what

Ishmael says is simply incorrect. Both the Bible and Moby- Dick “refuse to provide their readers

Tammaro 29

with chronological or authorial certainty; both texts ask the reader to exercise faith, to read with

confidence” (Hutchins 24), and this is especially true with Ishmael narrating. While much of

Moby-Dick deals with knowledge and revelation, Ishmael's struggle with the truth “calls into

question the very possibility of the 'natural verity'” that Ishmael attempts to share (Cantalupo 105

quoting Melville). Ishmael is a practitioner of if-then logic, and this inductive method is his

avenue of reasoning, whether it leads him to science or the supernatural and whether the products

of his reasoning are true or false. To Ishmael, his truths are valid simply because he came to them.

This sort of reasoning is what causes Ishmael to believe the whale to be a fish, despite all the

hard evidence proving otherwise.

As the narrator, Ishmael explicitly asks his readers not to view the story of Moby-Dick as

a “monstrous fable” or “still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory”

(Melville quoted in Cantalupo 103). Despite his plea, it simply cannot be helped.3 Ishmael's own

narrative style often dips into the metaphorical and allegorical, and he himself uses stories to

illustrate (his) truths. He even starts the story with how “the portentous and mysterious monster

roused all [his] curiosity” (Melville 8). Ishmael invests so much metaphor and portent and

symbolism into the whale, the ocean, and the characters surrounding him, that it makes him an

excellent embodiment of the science-versus-supernatural conflict that invests so many sea

monster stories. In Chapter 83, “Jonah Historically Regarded,” Ishmael defends the integrity of

the biblical story while discrediting the attempts by a priest to give the story a more logical

interpretation, saying the priest’s effort to create at explanation “shows his foolish, impious pride

and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy” (Melville 401). Instead of this

priest's attempt to espouse religion and science, Ishmael prefers a sermon like Father Mapple's,

which lends itself to a religious understanding that endorses his particular experience. Ishmael's

3I hope Ishmael will pardon me.

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brand of logic does not adhere to a strictly logical code or one built entirely on faith. Instead he

hovers somewhere in between, sometimes defending a biblical story and sometimes refuting

solid facts. Very often within the novel he is fully aware of his portentous feelings, such as

during and after Ahab's ecstatic sermon in Chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” yet he more often

than not chooses to simply ignore them or explain them away.

Prophecies play a very important part in the narrative of Moby-Dick, and this inextricably

ties it to the Bible, specifically to Revelations and the Apocalypse. Despite their frequent

appearance and importance, Ishmael, like previously stated, is quick to demystify these

prophecies through explanation. When something remotely odd happens, he is quick to step in

and say in so many words, “the thing is common in [the] fishery” (Melville 454). His

unwillingness to let his readers take some allegorical lesson or view a particular event as

prophetic is just another manifestation of Ishmael's struggle with what is fact and what is fantasy.

Despite being part of a culture he regularly reminds us is particularly superstitious, Ishmael will

not let himself be viewed that way. In Chapter 19, “The Prophet,” Ishmael and Queequeg meet

Elijah, a man who approaches them out of the blue, warning them of Ahab and the inevitable

doom that attends him. Elijah's role in the book is minimal, but one has to wonder at the

circumstances of his prophecy and whether he is a true prophet or a false one. Elijah warns

Ishmael and Queequeg, asking if there was “anything down [on the contract] about [their] souls”

(Melville 100), foretelling the fatal end of the crew. While Queequeg does drown at the end,

Ishmael happens to escape on an object completely imbued with symbolic value, a coffin

featuring the same markings as the “twisted tattooings” on Queequeg's body (Melville 524).

While this prophecy seems dubious, Ahab and his role within the novel are defined by the

prophecies that have been made about him, all of which are tied to the whale and are inevitably

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fulfilled. One source is an old Gay-Head “squaw” who said Ahab's name would one day “prove

prophetic,” as if the Biblical precedent – the “vile” and “wicked” king Ahab (Melville 88) – was

not already portentous enough. Elijah produces a prophecy that appears to have no definite

source when he asks Ishmael and Queequeg if they heard “nothing about [Ahab] losing his leg

[. . .] according to the prophecy” (Melville 101). Ahab himself recalls this particular omen later

in the novel when he acknowledges “the prophecy was that [he] should be dismembered,” yet he

then assumes the role of prophet, a position that is usually not adopted but bestowed, and he says

“I prophecy that I will dismember the dismemberer” (Melville 183) in an attempt to thwart his

predetermined fate.

One of the most important sources of prophecy and portent come from the various

animals in the story. Apart from the whales, the other animals – especially the sharks, the birds,

and the giant squid – are veritable “prophets of doom” (Cantalupo 102). The use of other animals

as agents of portent is another facet of the science versus supernatural debate. Melville combines

the supernatural and the natural in order to “call into question the new-found reliance on the

scientific method as a way to truth, particularly the truth of the future – that is, prediction”

(Cantalupo 104). In other words, science cannot create prophecies. The sharks make appearances

during critical parts of the novel, including Chapter 64, “Stubb's Supper,” Chapter 135, “The

Chase – The Third Day,” and finally the Epilogue. In Chapter 64, they are likened to a

congregation that Fleece, the ship's cook, is being forced by Stubb to preach to. In a prophetic

moment, Fleece tells the sharks, “Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much

for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint” (Melville

321). Echoing the story of Jonah, even the sharks, if they repent their “woraciousness,” can

become “angel[s]” (Melville 321). When Ahab and his crew sail out to meet Moby-Dick on the

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third day of the chase, the sharks “maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars” (Melville 616),

reducing their size with every dip into the water. Starbuck sees this as portentous, and while

Ishmael recognizes how ominous it might seem, he is quick to explain it away, as is his fashion.

In the epilogue, both the sharks and the sea-hawks follow alongside Ishmael in his coffin/life-

preserver; “[T]he unharming sharks [. . .] glid[ing] by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the

savage sea-hawks sail[ing] with sheathed beaks” (Melville 625). When Moby-Dick destroys the

Pequod, killing everyone except Ishmael, it “fulfill[s] the prophecy of the secondary beasts [. . .]

allow[ing] Ishmael to float away from the primal scene of doom intact, turning what would have

been silence into a narrative” (Cantalupo 107). Thus Ishmael becomes the lone testament to what

happened aboard the Pequod. Various species of birds appear in the novel, including sea-hawks,

sea-ravens, and the albatross, and they all make appearances during times of particular

ominousness. For instance, in Chapter 51, “The Spirit-Spout,” the sea-ravens, a colloquial name

for cormorants, haunted the Pequod, which Ishmael says they see as “uninhabited” and

“appointed to desolation” (Melville 255). The cormorant is a powerful symbol in literature. In

Book 4, line 196 of Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan disguises himself as a cormorant. To suggest

that Satan is following the Pequod would not only explain the supernatural phenomena that take

place within this chapter, but also the uncanny nature of the voyage itself. The cormorant in

Paradise Lost “sat devising death/ to them who lived” (Paradise Lost Book IV, 197-198), which

is exactly what Ishmael concludes the sea-ravens are doing as they hover around the ship. The

enigmatic appearance of the dead squid was unusual enough for the men of the Pequod to “invest

it with portentousness” (Melville 301), and as mentioned before, this entire chapter is

characterized by this sense of trepidation. The grotesque image of the dead bobbing mass “of a

glancing cream color” conjures the image of a bloated corpse, and Starbuck puts the universal

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feeling of dread into perspective when he says, “Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought

him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!” (Melville 301).

Fedallah is another source of prophecy, and unlike Elijah, his are strangely specific and

improbable, yet they are fulfilled without fail. Fedallah's are also the most apocalyptic of all the

prophecies, especially considering they involve the eventual encounter with the While Whale and

Ahab's death. The relationship Ahab has with Fedallah resembles that of Faust and

Mephistopheles. Ahab, like Faust, desires something enough, in this case revenge, to “make a

bargain,” and according to the eloquent Stubb, Fedallah - “a devil in disguise,” seeks to “get

[Ahab] to swap away his silver watch, or his soul” (Melville 355). The other pagans in the story

assume an interstitial role in terms of their religious involvement. While they are free from

misgivings of blasphemy, as evidenced by their complete silence and total willingness to

participate in hellish ceremonies, such as using their blood to temper Ahab's harpoon, they are

not free from religion completely. They are often sources of prophecies themselves, and this role

equates them with the “coterie of prostitutes and publicans in the New Testament” (Hutchins 20).

Significantly, they also appear to be free from the influence of Ahab, at least in terms of fear.

They participate in his blasphemous rites, but not because they are afraid. When the ship's

compass goes inverted – another moment where something portentous happens but Ishmael

casually explains it away – “the pagan harpooners remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if

impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hears from inflexible

Ahab's” (Melville 563). Even when the apocalypse is taking place around them in the last

chapter of the novel, they “still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea” (Melville 623).

Instead of fearing for their souls in the face of their impending deaths, an emotion that would

come naturally to a God-fearing man like Starbuck, the harpooners remain defiantly stoic and

Tammaro 34

resolute.

VIII. Moby-Dick as Agent of the Apocalypse

While the ocean's role in sea monster literature has already been considered in this paper,

within Moby-Dick it takes on a special and more specific significance. In this case, the

primordial implications of the sea, specifically the bottom of the sea, are linked with Heaven,

Hell, and Eden, the latter explicitly in regards to the fatal battle over the acquisition of forbidden

knowledge. The attainment of insight is constantly being addressed in the novel. In Chapter 93,

“The Castaway,” Pip gets spooked, leaps out of the whale boat, and is then left to float in the

ocean for hours, where he is fundamentally changed by the effects of “the intense concentration

of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity” (Melville 453). Yet it was not simple

madness that overcame Pip, but instead something like extreme self-consciousness paired with

the utter isolation, and it refined his mind into something so clear and even prophetic as to appear

like madness. The question remains, then, what quality the ocean has that could change someone

in such a profound way. When he is rescued, Pip talks about how he was drowned and is still lost

at sea, and Ishmael provides an explanation:

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths,

where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his

passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and

among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,

God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the

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colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom. . . . (Melville 453)

Separation from the physical body and the resultant revelation of divine knowledge made Pip

into an oracle-like character, one whose seemingly insensible rabbles became eerily foreboding,

and this insight appears to come straight from the source, not only from God within the novel,

but also from Melville as an author. For example, Pip asking “how did it get there?” about the

wedding ring his father found in a tree is actually a question of “the future as present” and is

applicable to the fate of the Pequod, making it prophetic (Cantalupo 102-103). Instead of insanity,

Pip comes to acquire “celestial thought” from this episode (Melville 454), one which resembles

an exaggerated baptism or a religious initiation, and it comes not from trauma or hypothermia,

but from the acquisition of knowledge. Ishmael and Ahab seek tirelessly to know this monster,

but they are thwarted by the “impenetrable veil” of the sea (Melville 145) and the limits of

human understanding. Ishmael vocalizes this difficulty perfectly:

To grope down into the bottom of the sea after [the sperm whales]; to have one's

hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this

is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan!

(Melville 147)

As mentioned earlier in this paper, to know a monster is to metaphorically defeat it, but the cost,

whether it is faith, sanity, epistemology, or even the fate of the Earth, is often what creates the

central conflict of the story. Within this beautiful mirror of an underwater Garden of Eden, Pip

sees creation and eternity unfolding. However, like Moby-Dick, it has an immensely dark side in

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addition to a beautiful one, where one encounters a “whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors”

(Melville 529), and this stems from the “ancient concept that the netherworld is found in the

deep” (New Oxford Bible 1304). After Jonah gets swallowed by the whale, he says he called God

from “the belly of Sheol” (Jonah 2:3), another instance that ties the bottom of the sea to Hell.

Because Moby-Dick drags all of his victims down under the water as opposed to killing them on

the surface, there is a sense that he is physically delivering them to the underworld in an act of

final judgment, and this instills Moby-Dick's method of killing his pursuers with divine intention.

In a moment of foreshadowing, Starbuck cries “[s]hall we be towed by [Moby-Dick] to the

infernal world?” (Melville 611), correctly identifying Moby-Dick's modus operandi.

The search for Moby-Dick is inseparable from the pursuit of knowledge, whether it is in

relation to the various prophecies or the simple act of sitting on the mast-head and descrying a

whale. The mast-head is a sort of nexus of revelation, and Ishmael attributes it to the mystic

quality of the sea:

“he [. . .] takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue,

bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen,

gliding beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of

some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts

that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood,

thy spirits ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and

space. (Melville 173)

With the sea as an agent of revelation and Moby-Dick as the Beast of Revelation, there is a sense

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that while the human soul is constantly called to the sea, it is a realm that can never be fully

revealed to humans, at least in their physical human form. The passage blends the idea of heaven

and the sea and insinuates they are one in the same, and this recurring theme facilitates the notion

that Moby-Dick is a modern Biblical text. In Chapter 23, “The Lee Shore,” the sea is

characterized as “indefinite” and “infinite” as God, and later in that same chapter, the sailor

Bulkington is promised an “apotheosis” (Melville 117) by way of the ocean.

Moby-Dick is just as transmutable as the sea. Some of the most beautiful descriptions in

the book are his, yet so are some of the most frightening. Whales in general are imbued with

special distinction in Moby-Dick, as they are all regarded as descendants of Leviathan. Therefore,

they are classified by the degree of Leviathan they contain, at least according to Ishmael. This

classification takes place largely in Chapter 32, “Cetology.” The chapter is characterized by a

pseudo-scientific arrangement of whales that is based more on poetics and flourish than any

scientific information. Ishmael starts with a disclaimer, saying he is attempting a “classification

of the constituents of chaos” (Melville 145), and this hints that such a feat should not even be

ventured. He backs this notion by borrowing quotes, and therefore the credibility he does not he

himself own, from “those lights of zoology and anatomy” who testify to the “unfitness to pursue

our research in the unfathomable waters” (Melville 145). In other words, since the ocean is so

impenetrable and since the best scientists in their fields cannot categorize whales, the

responsibility to correctly organize them is certainly not his. Ishmael uses his own sort of logic in

order to categorize the whales, and he starts by establishing that despite all the factual evidence

and hard science, whales are actually fish. Then he arranges them by size, with the larger whales

containing more “Leviathanism” (Melville 157) than the smaller ones, as if creating a pedigree

from the original Leviathan. The whales’ descriptions are fraught with religious images,

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including that of the Finback, the “banished and unconquerable Cain of his race” (Melville 147),

the Black Fish's “Mephistophelean grin” (Melville 153), and the Sulphur Bottom whale with its

“brimstone belly” gained by “scraping the Tartarian tiles” at the bottom of the ocean (Melville

152). Once again Ishmael embodies the science versus supernatural dispute through his mix of

scientific and supernatural descriptions, but he later says it is a necessary mix when writing about

whales. In relation to all other members of the animal kingdom, these descriptions would be

“unwarrantably grandiloquent, but when Leviathan is in the text, the case is altered” (Melville

496). Posing the whale above all other animals, the whale adopts the role as “king of the

boundless sea” (Melville xxxvii). In fact, according to Ishmael, penning its description deserves

a “condor's quill” and “Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand”4 (Melville 497) and results in extreme

exhaustion.5 With whales holding such a prestigious place in the animal kingdom, Moby-Dick's

place as the “old great-grandfather” (Melville 478) hints at his position as an agent of God and

the bringer of Apocalypse.

As a whale of “uncommon magnitude and malignity” (Melville 194), Moby-Dick is

perhaps the most famous and most potent sea monster in literature. The image, or perhaps the

illusion, of Moby-Dick is one that Melville keeps purposefully cryptic. The most information

regarding the whale comes in the form of hearsay, speculation, stories shared by other whalers,

and superstition, which is important in creating the ultimate image of a deadly sea monster. The

question of his existence, purpose, or sentience is never definitively addressed, but judging by

what Ishmael shares (as well as Melville), he is far from an ordinary whale. Moby-Dick is

sovereign of the sea with an apparent supernatural agency over other creatures, suggested when

Ishmael talked of sharks “dash[ing] themselves against the rocks” in their attempt to flee from

4Again, I hope Ishmael pardons me. 5I personally know this to be true.

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the whale (Melville 197). Chapter 41, “Moby Dick,” is a collection of stories told by Ishmael

that constructs the most complete picture of the whale in the entire novel, although it is still an

enigmatic portrayal. Ishmael has not personally encountered Moby-Dick yet, but he paints a

monstrous portrait. Readers are led to understand Moby-Dick as a malicious god, one that doles

out judgment and death and one who is both an agent of nature and a divine emissary, a bona fide

Leviathan. Moby-Dick is a supernatural force who mirrors the blasphemer he must inevitably

meet at the end of the novel.

Among the many unanswered questions surrounding Moby-Dick, the whale's level of

sentience and its intent is a pivotal one. Moby-Dick's appearances seem to have definite purpose

and meaning. When Ishmael describes how injury and death always follows its appearances, it

seems Moby-Dick exists in order exact justice. At one point, sperm whales are described as

“judiciously malicious” (Melville 224), which implies that the fatalities caused by sperm whales

are prescribed by a higher power. The purpose of Moby-Dick's existence is akin to a holy purge,

where his “desperate hunters” with their “inflamed, distracted fury” are wiped out, leaving

“serene, exasperating sunlight that smile[s] on, as if at a birth or a bridal” (199). This description

creates the image of a degenerative blight on the Earth, personified by men like Ahab, and

Moby-Dick, by destroying sources of malignancy, as the force that restores balance. Moby-

Dick’s “sickle-shaped lower jaw” (Melville 199) compounds this image of the whale as a reaper.

Ishmael's stern reminder that “not a gallon [of oil] you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood

was spilled for it” reinforces the idea of balance and sacrifice (Melville 224).

As a sea monster, much of Moby-Dick's fearsomeness is partly a psychological

phenomenon. Within the novel, the whale is a very real character, but he is also tied to the

“monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some men feel eating in them”

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(Melville 200). While Ishmael makes it clear that Ahab projects all of his “bodily [. . .]

intellectual and spiritual exasperations” onto Moby-Dick (Melville 200), he presents the whale as

a psychological construction in itself by constantly alluding to the extraordinary

superstitiousness of sailors and the fact that Ahab's greatest battle – the one that encompasses

most of the book – is his inner one. Like the sea, Ahab's “larger, darker, deeper part remains

unhinted” (201), and, like Moby-Dick, readers never get a definitive conclusion regarding his

violent madness. Ahab is ascribed a lethal purpose, but “what Ahab is unable to see is that the

evil he externalizes in the whale also exists in himself” (Gilmore 157). This implies that only

death could be the conclusive end for Ahab, for if he did not have that externalized evil to hunt,

if he did not have Moby-Dick, he would not only lose his purpose for existing but also the

coping mechanism that keeps him from burning from the inside out. In the end, he is “doomed to

disaster because the object [of his revenge] is really himself” (Gilmore 157).

Part of what reinforces Moby-Dick's status as a monster is the sheer amount of weight it

holds in the minds of the specific subset of humanity it is relevant to, the sailors. This particular

culture is partly characterized by “the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors” which

abound within the maritime community (Melville 195). Yet what sets this legend-based culture

apart from corresponding cultures on land is the fact that sailors have to face the monsters they

learn to fear, and when they do, they face not only a physical sea monster, but one whose

dreadful reputation precedes it. Moby-Dick is a fearsome whale with a long trail of destruction in

his wake, and “those repeated disastrous impulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors”

upon him create a monster much worse than could have ever actually roamed the seas (Melville

159). The White Whale is a partial product of the “half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural

agencies, which eventually invested Moby-Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that

Tammaro 41

visibly appears” (Melville 196), and Ahab's obsession is a more focused and therefore more

caustic version than that of the general sailing population.

Ahab's relationship to Moby-Dick is perhaps the strongest bond in the entire novel,

surpassing Ishmael's love for Queequeg and even Stubb's love of his pipe. Nothing could

dissolve Ahab's need for revenge, a vengeance of Biblical proportions, and even when he seems

to realize the journey will kill him, he presses on because it is his fundamental purpose for

existing. Ahab is essentially an angry Job; a man dealt an injustice that he is unable to endure

patiently. When God asks Job, “Can you fill [Leviathan’s] hide with harpoons?” (Job 41:7),

Ahab’s monomaniacal passion answers instead of Job’s stunned silence. When God declares, “If

you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!” (Job 41:8), Ahab

sails around the world in furious pursuit. Ahab literally cannot contain his hatred, and instead, he

is overwhelmed with a “frantic morbidness” (Melville 200). Ahab is described as devilish and

obsessed to the point of cruelty, yet his humanity peeks through every once in a while, reminding

readers that at least some part of him is still human, pitiable, and burdened. However, it is soon

made clear his destiny involves facing Moby-Dick and exacting his “audacious, immitigable, and

supernatural revenge” on the whale; all his life led up to this one climax (Melville 202). In

addition to the slew of prophecies that inextricably ties him to the whale, it seems fate ordained

such a meeting too. When Ahab descries Moby-Dick, he says “none of ye could have raised the

White Whale first” (Melville 595), which reinforces the influence of fate on their meeting. On

the second day of the chase, Ahab actually smells the whale before anyone else can even see it,

and while Ishmael in his characteristic way dismisses this event to being common enough

amongst whalers, in this context, it appears like destiny. To Ahab, it is. He believes the “whole

act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed [. . .] a billion years before this ocean rolled” (Melville

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611). Compared to the amount of time described in the last line of the novel – “And the great

shroud of the sea rolled on as it had rolled five thousand years ago” (Melville 624) – Ahab's fate

actually holds more water.

Ahab and the White Whale are both cryptic characters; most of their personal descriptions

come in the form of second-hand information, from menial hearsay all the way to legends and

prophecy. Captain Ahab pursues a task that “was not for mortal man” (Melville 197). Finding

one whale in the vastness of the ocean is highly improbable, yet despite having the whole sea to

roam, Moby-Dick still “revealed his identity [. . .] to those who knew him” (Melville 199). The

impossible fact that Moby-Dick appears to Captain Ahab proves some sort of divine intent is at

play, that this second meeting was destined to happen. Melville solidifies Moby-Dick's relation

to Leviathan by choosing the 41st chapter of Moby-Dick to introduce the whale, reflecting

Chapter 41 of the Book of Job, which is where the famous monologue given by God to Job about

Leviathan takes place, a portion of which is quoted earlier in this paper. The first line of this

chapter, “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook?” (Job 41:1), is precisely what Ahab intends

to do. Ahab is Job with a dark temper and a prodigious need for vengeance, and “the relevance of

this prophecy to Ahab is confirmed” by making the chapters the same (Gilmore 159). Ahab is the

defiant answer to God saying, “No one is fierce enough to rouse [Leviathan]” (Job 41:10).

The final battle – the apocalyptic scenes that comprise the last three chapters of the book

– creates an ending that carries the “unmistakable accents of Revelation” (Gilmore 157). Before

the chase starts, a final portent makes itself known to the men of the Pequod. The first man that

went up to the mast-head to keep a look-out for Moby-Dick falls overboard and never surfaces

and neither does the life preserver thrown after him. The crew saw this “not as a foreshadowing

of evil in the future, but as the fulfillment of an evil already presaged” (Melville 570). This is the

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start of the End. Finally all the portents and prophecies and warnings and foreshadowing begin to

reveal their consequential truths. It starts with the “ghostly baptism” (Melville 588) bestowed

upon the Pequod by the Delight when the crew of the Delight throw the corpse of one of Moby-

Dick’s victims overboard. When Moby-Dick is descried on the first day of the chase, the scene

does not immediately dissolve into splintered boats, flying harpoons, and “a boiling maelstrom”

(Melville 608). Instead readers are presented with a beautiful image that is undeniably heavenly:

. . . the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical

rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters

interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on

either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side... A gentle joyousness – a

might mildness of repose in swiftness invested the gliding whale... the glorified

White Whale as he so divinely swam. (Melville 596)

This is the Moby-Dick from the “The Spirit-Spout,” an ephemeral and solitary entity that

represents the gem of all creation. However, when the battle begins, Moby-Dick's character

drastically changes, and there is “retribution, swift vengeance, [and] eternal malice [. . .] in his

whole aspect” (Melville 622). The dual personalities of Moby-Dick make him an interesting case

for a sea monster. In no other work of literature covered in the scope of this paper has there been

a sea monster that simultaneously represents both the resplendent divine and the malicious yet

judicious reaper. As Moby-Dick is “vibrating his predestinating head” (Melville 622), another

instance that proves Ahab’s life is inescapably tied to this moment, the captain’s fate is officially

sealed. As the battle begins, Moby-Dick becomes charged with the “malicious intelligence” he is

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known for (Melville 598). Directly preceding Ahab's death, Moby-Dick seems “combinedly

possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven” (Melville 618), evoking the image of Lucifer,

the most beautiful of angels who returns in the Book of Revelations as the ultimate enemy, and

this analogy gives the impression that Moby-Dick is exacting his own vengeance on Ahab. The

final image is one absolutely abundant with apocalyptic implications:

[. . .] and so the “bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak

thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went

down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had

dragged a living part of heaven along with her and helmeted herself with

it. (Melville 624)

However, unlike the Bible, there are none who gain admittance to the kingdom of Heaven after

the Judgment has been wrought, save for Ishmael, the lone survivor and “solitary heir to the

covenant” (Gilmore 161), floating on as the sole source of testimony regarding the Apocalypse

of the Pequod.

Moby-Dick is often alluded to as an “American Apocalypse” (Marx 3), in that the novel is

an apocalyptic story that hits closer to the heart of Americans than any other nationality. As a

“symbolic matrix” (Marx 3), various examples of questionable morality in American history,

culture, and society could be applied to the fate of the Pequod, from geopolitical fears to a fear of

tyranny and Communism (Marx 3). As stated previously, Melville wrote Moby-Dick as a modern

American edition of the Bible, a reminder to never forget “the fullness of the Bible's moral

messages” (Hutchins 33). In a time when America was becoming a player in the world market,

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especially because of its whaling industry, “the myth of national destiny [. . .] dominated

American thought” (Gilmore 154), leading people like Melville to ascribe some meaning to a

future that was difficult to discern from where they were standing.

VIX. Conclusion

Some of the most famous characters in Western literature are sea monsters: Captain Ahab

and Moby-Dick, Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, and Leviathan, the patrimonial monster, who is

constantly being summoned and channeled into various new incarnations through literature,

music, art, and other mediums. These monsters influence so many aspects of life, and they

represent a spectrum of unknowns. We live on a planet that is still so alien to us, and the

monsters that riddle our literature slide by in the dark recesses of the ocean – and our minds – at

this very moment. When we evoke sea monsters in our literature, we are confronting the

insecurities present in our life, from geopolitical anxieties to crises of faith, and in order to defeat

these sea monsters, we challenge them through our reading and interpretation of their roles in

literature.

Tammaro 46

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