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The chapter “Cetology” in Melville’s Moby Dick offers a rarity amongst the literary cannon: a bonafide system with which to interact with the mostly intangible objects of the deep. It is of my opinion that this system of cetology forms the lens through which Ishmael perceives the watery world, and in the spirit of this tradition of creation, I have fashioned for myself a system with which to confront the unknown. While listening, keep in mind that the entire book describes multiple leaps over the border between the known and the unknown – most of the book involved Ishmael preparing himself (and the reader) for a confrontation with the unknown. What else is he doing when he elaborates on the line, or the monkey rope, or the taxonomy of whales, than desperately defining the known? This is my projection of a draught of a cetology of self. It is incomplete, but as Ishmael states: “I am the architect, not the builder”.

Any attempt to boldly launch oneself out into the deep must first make a grave observance of the existence and nature of absolute borders, the finite region which separates the known, the real, or the observed from the unknowable, imaginary, or invisible. This necessitates a systematized manner of conceiving borders, both literal and non-literal. Yet this is no easy task. To say, “the unknown” would be to implement a construct of a word meant to symbolize the chaos of an infinite void, never to be fully grasped by the individual mind. This problem is compounded by the phenomenon of time, which eternally rearranges, creates, or destroys knowledge, reality, and the perceived. These dichotomies will be amassed together under the names light and dark, although we will utilize the Melvillian metaphor of sky or flame vs. the sea as well. The system, then must be as fluid in its acceptance of the void as it is rigid in its definitions of time, and the known. I dub this system pale-ontology, the ontology of borders and being. To confront the question of the void, though, is a ponderous task; no ordinary internet scholar in a coffee shop is equal to it. To confront that awful nothingness which spawns indomitable abominations of the deep, and to reach after it; this is a fearful thing. But I have groped my way through Moby Dick, and I have pondered, perched on the precipice of my own pale-ontological border between light and dark; I am in earnest, I will try. But first, there are some preliminaries to settle. The name necessitates some opening discourse. The English word “paleontology” is composed of three Latin roots: “Palaois”, meaning “Old, or ancient”, “On”, meaning “Being”, and “Tology”, meaning “the study of”. “Ontology” by itself refers to the study of being in the world, and therefore all “ologies” are an Ontology of sort, in the sense that they reveal the world in a certain way. Therefore, the scientific school of paleontology concerns itself with the study of old or ancient beings. While the proposed pale-ontology also must address ancient beings, it’s etymology is different, utilizing the Latin word “Palis” instead of “Palaios” for the initial root. Palis literally means “stake” in Latin, but was re-appropriated by the British (the initial inventors of the first paleontology) in order to refer to borders (specifically, a British controlled province in Ireland). Indeed, if you were to sally up to an Englander 150 years ago, and asked him what was on “the other side of the pale”, he would direct you to the nearest wall or fence and tell you to climb it. This word also benefits from its association with a lack of color, or whiteness, which elicits thoughts of that venerable manifestation of the unknown, Moby Dick, who even now swims away from that very same light, down into the consuming darkness of the deep. Therefore, my pale-ontological system contains within the very word itself a dedication to the search for and taxonomy of the liminal space between the experienced and the imagined. Now we must define time and the known. Much of the pale-ontological system will rely on these two concepts, of which contain within them a pale-ontological border between the firmness with which we must accept the words and the ghastly chaos behind their meaning. True definitions, however, are fleeting; they take into account their own premature failure in totally encapsulating the abstraction the word is meant to stand for. Therefore, for the purposes of this pale-ontological investigation, time will be defined as light traveling at the speed of light and the knowable will be defined as light traveling at the speed of light in relation to an individual subject or body of subjects. There you have them. Utilizing this definition, time emerges as a measurable, quantifiable, and physical object with a calculated rate of travel, which therefore can be experienced by individuals in a manner which is unique to them as they relate to their perception of the light itself. Knowledge (the interpretation of the light) functions as a byproduct of individual relation to the light, and therefore is entirely subjective. Light travels at 671,000,000 miles per hour, and to experience the light from any given point is to experience the time it took for the light to get there. For example, if someone on Alpha Centuri (4.37 light years away), were to look at Earth with an incredibly high powered telescope, they would see Earth in mid 2004. The summation of all experience of our sun, then, extends in a sphere with a radius of 4.5 billion light years (the life of the sun), and all human experience exists within a sphere of light with a radius of 1-200,000 light years. Consider: it takes light about 5.3 hours to reach Pluto. Therefore, mankind has always been reaching towards the stars, unknowingly reflecting the light of the sun far into the abyss of deep space. Now of the constituents of chaos, we will turn to what one of the best authorities has laid down: the text of Moby Dick.

“Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part” (56). Note that it is not the darkness or the light which really is under examination here, but rather the border between them. Darkness may construct our identity, but darkness can only be conceived in relation to the light, and Ishmael can only experience it by throwing a sheet over his head, erecting a border between himself and the light.

“The whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth in Aladdin’s lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still houses an illumination” (436). Again, the ship’s hull functions as a pale-ontological border between the light of experience and the blackness of the void. The whaleman kills in order to provide humanity with individual suns, so that we may together and by ourselves emit light into the blackness of space, or the depths of the ocean. This light functions as an artifact of our existence.

Ahab, when awakened from his frenzied dream-state (that place between reality and the unknown), is described as “a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself” (205). Ahab’s pale-ontological border lies firmly within himself; it is manifested as the driving, monomaniacal force which forces the action of the novel. He is also split between the light (a physical, calculable, object moving at a predictable speed) and the darkness of blackness. Note that he requests the carpenter to create a body for him with “a skylight on top of his head to illuminate inwards” (479). He has no interest in this expulsion of light, for it questions his status as an individual sovereign being.

Not to mention the main use of spermaceti: LIGHT! That Promethean light stolen from the Gods so that humans can craft their own sources of radiating experience, expand concepts of the known, and chart a course out into the eternal void of blackness!

And Moby Dick himself? That venerable manifestation of the deep? He appears in order to remind us of the finite nature of our borders, both physical and mental. He smashes the hull of the Pequod, which helped contain the light before. He leaves Ishmael alive, alone, and desolate amongst the eternal movement of the sea, smashing his experience of and preparation for whale-action with a flex of his powerful spine. There are many Moby Dicks in this world, to be sure, and they all have this power to painfully destroy what was once known, real, or perceived. The atom bomb, for instance. But where does this leave us? What is left for pale-ontology to teach?

Exalt in the ruination of things, and in then prepare for new borders, for time continues on its inexorable course. All this means that the light which contains its existence and experience has left Earth, never to return. While Ishmael bobbed amongst the vacuous sea for a day waiting for salvation, the light containing Ahab’s final struggle with the whale had already reflected off of the pale hulk of Moby Dick and sped out of our solar system, into the unknown. At the end, Ishmael floats on a pale-ontological border between the depths of the ocean, which contain the history of nearly all life on earth, extending back to the formation of the planet, and the depths of space above him, the void which extends into infinity and contains every possible experience with being on a border between the known and unknown.

Confrontation with the unknown borders leaves Ishmael a helpless and solitary cell amongst the androgynous void of the sea; even when physically saved by the Rachael, Ishmael is still “another orphan”.

Now, as I stated at the beginning, I leave my pale-ontological system standing thus unfinished. I have established the wordplay, to be sure, but it still remains as to what reaches of the text pale-ontology can accommodate.