Becoming (Merely) Human
Digital Jung Season 4, Episode 10
The latest episode of Digital Jung is now available:
Transcript (Excerpt):
This episode is going to be something of a departure from the standard format I generally follow in this podcast. I want to come back one more time to the relationship between Ahab and Starbuck that I started to look at in the last episode –Episode 9 of this season, The Gorgon’s Eye.
Of course, there’s so much more that plays out between these two figures in the novel than it’s possible to address in any comprehensive way in just of couple of podcast episodes. But what I want to do here is to take a close look at one very powerful scene that takes place between the two of them towards the end of the book. And it’s a scene that acts as a kind of heartbreaking coda, in a way, to their particular story.
In it, as we’ll see, we get that image again of the eye that was so central to the theme of the last episode. But here it reappears in a very different and, I think, surprising way.
The scene that I’m talking about occurs in Chapter 132: The Symphony. In what follows, I am going to read through the entire chapter section by section, stopping along the way to highlight some of what I see as the crucial moments, and adding some commentary from the perspective of the Symbolic Life.
So, let’s just jump right in. Here is Chapter 132 from Moby-Dick, titled The Symphony:
“It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at the equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.”
I have noted before that this is a novel that is thoroughly devoid of female characters. That’s obvious enough on the surface. You don’t need me to point that out. However, there is a way to understand this aspect of the novel from a symbolic perspective.
When we’re looking at a fairy tale, let’s say, through a Jungian lens, one way to begin to understand what’s going on is to identify what’s missing. For instance, in the Grimm’s collection of tales there are dozens of stories that begin with a king and his three sons. There is no mother or sister and the action of the story often involves the search for a bride for one of the sons.
In such cases, as Marie-Louise von Franz points out in her book The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, “the general structure seems to point to a problem in which there is a dominating male attitude, a situation which lacks the feminine element.”
If we approach the situation of Moby-Dick with a similar understanding, we could say that one of the central problems of the novel is the “lack of the feminine element.” And so, when it shows up, as it does here in this passage contrasting the “feminine air” with the “masculine sea,” we know something of vital importance is being highlighted.
It's not really possible to open up the whole question of the masculine and the feminine in any real depth here. It’s enough for now to get a sense of what they point to simply within the context of this chapter….
Please be sure to check out the rest of the episode. You can find it wherever you listen to your podcasts or simply by clicking this link: S4 E10: Becoming (Merely) Human.
Thanks for listening and take good care!
Can't wait to listen. Arriving on my birthday no less. What a gift. Thank you.