Chapter 26: Day 26: Knights and Squires
“But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of [sic] valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.”
Musings:
This is one of my favorite passages in all of Moby-Dick. Ishmael is foreshadowing the fall of Starbuck. Letting us know that men who, as Father Mapple warns us, “seek to please rather than to appal! [ . . . ] whose good name is more to him than goodness! [ . . .] who, in this world, courts not dishonor! [ . . .] who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!” are not pleasing to God or to mankind.
But even though Ish brings back the ideas from Father Mapple, he tempers it. Yes, Ish says, men can be awful. They can murder and cheat and be idiots, but there is something so beautiful about the idea of mankind in the ideal, that when someone, especially a good man, fails it is hard to watch.
I think about people I have known in my life who were good friends, daughters, parents, and did foolish, criminal, or immoral things. It is hard to watch someone succumb to drugs or ignorance or act out of hatred. Humanity in the ideal is beautiful. And I love the way we understand right here and now that man in the ideal, Starbuck, will fall.
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