America!
Three giant harpooners to spear the great white whale.
1. Queequeg, the South Sea Islander, all tattooed, big and powerful.
2. Tashtego, the Red Indian of the sea-coast, where the Indian meets the sea.
3. Daggoo, the huge black negro.
There you have them, three savage races, under the American flag, the
maniac captain, with their great keen harpoons, ready to spear the
white whale. ...
Doom! Doom! Doom! Something seems to whisper it in the very dark
trees of America.
Doom!
Doom of what?
Doom of our white day. We are doomed, doomed. And the doom is in
America. The doom of our white day. ...
Melville knew. He knew his race was doomed. His white soul, doomed.
His great white epoch doomed. Himself, doomed. The idealist, doomed:
The spirit, doomed. ...
What then is Moby Dick? He is the deepest blood-being of the white
race; he is our deepest blood-nature.
And he is hunted, hunted, hunted by the maniacal fanaticism of our
white mental consciousness. We want to hunt him down. To subject him
to our will. And in this maniacal conscious hunt of ourselves we get
dark races and pale to help us, red, yellow, and black, east and west,
Quaker and fireworshipper, we get them all to help us in this ghastly
maniacal hunt which is our doom and our suicide.
The last phallic being of the white man. Hunted into the death of
upper consciousness and the ideal will. Our blood-self subjected to
our will. Our blood-consciousness sapped by a parasitic mental or
ideal consciousness.
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic
American Literature
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