Moby-Dick, myth, and classical moralism: Bulkington as Hercules.(Critical Essay)

Readers of Moby-Dick have long been fascinated by the figure of Bulkington, who makes an exemplary appearance early in the novel and then mysteriously vanishes from the narrative. First introduced in "The Spouter Inn" (Ch. 3), Bulkington subsequently appears at the helm of the Pequod in "The Lee Shore" (Ch. 23), where he serves as the inspiration for Ishmael's well-known disquisition on the choice between sea- and land-based values. Bulkington accordingly impresses Ishmael in "The Spouter Inn" as an extraordinary physical specimen; whereas in "The Lee Shore" his reappearance inspires the narrator with rhapsodic praise of Bulkington's moral fiber as a man preferring the open sea over the port, hardship over comfort, solitude over society, and intellectual freedom over dogma. Students of the novel's composition have wondered whether Bulkington was meant to play a larger role in the narrative, despite Ishmael's initial disclaimer that Bulkington was "but a sleeping-partner" shipmate, and his later verbal cenotaph of the heroic sailor's life and death in "The Lee Shore" ("this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington"). Harrison Hayford, for example, interprets Bulkington as an "unnecessary duplicate" originally intended for the major role of Ishmael's companion that Queequeg later assumed, but kept as a vestigial presence after final revision of the novel. (1)

Other critics have sought an underlying thematic meaning in Bulkington's appearance, or adduced his significance from an assumed biographical model. Thus half a century ago, Melville's first important myth critic, Richard Chase, postulated that Bulkington was the novel's "true" Promethean and democratic hero, who nevertheless had to disappear from the narrative because if he remained he would have been compelled to resist the despotic command of Ahab, the novel's "false" Prometheus. In the late sixties, S.A. Cowan argued that Bulkington represented the virtues of Emersonian self-reliance in the quest for truth, and the preference for philosophical realities over social conventions that forms part of an intellectual tradition going back to Plato. More recently, Robert K. Wallace asserted that the figure of Bulkington embodied Melville's admiration for the painter J.M.W. Turner, whose work allegedly influenced the writing of Moby-Dick. (2) Although occasionally suggestive, none of these potential sources for the character of Bulkington has proved to be fully convincing.

Quite possibly, another implicit model for this mysterious Southern seaman exists, one that combines the mythological, philosophical, and iconographic levels of significance that the critics cited above have imputed to this character. Keeping in mind that Bulkington is ultimately invoked as a "demigod" and given a parting "apotheosis," I would like to suggest that the figure of Bulkington is a modern embodiment of the semi-divine Greek hero Hercules (Herakles), and his appearance in "The Lee Shore" draws on a famous moral topos associated with Hercules's life, the "Choice of Hercules" between Pleasure (or Vice) and Virtue, as well as the example of the hero's agonizing death through self-immolation and subsequent apotheosis. These mythic associations, in turn, may enhance our understanding of Bulkington's role in the novel and resolve some of the mystery arising out of his emblematic appearance.

A wide range of mythic lore surrounds the life of Hercules, the classical Greek hero par excellence, and has provided the subject matter for a substantial amount of literature and art from classical times to the present. (3) Among the many allusions to his life in classical literature, Hercules was the subject of surviving dramas by Sophocles (The Women of Trachis), Euripides (Herakles) and Seneca (Hercules Furens, Hercules Oetaeus). In classical art and sculpture, Hercules was most often represented with a lion-skin cloak, club or bow. (On his trip through Naples in February 1857, Melville would observe the well-known Farnese Hercules, a full-length statue featuring the brawny hero leaning on his club.) (4) Originally known as an embodiment of physical strength and courage, Hercules was eventually given a complementary identity as a representative of moral fortitude, an identity influential in both classical and modern Western culture. In keeping with the latter tradition, the Victorian art critic John Ruskin asserted in a mythological treatise that Hercules was "the perpetual type and mirror of heroism, and its present and living aid against every ravenous form of human trial and pain." (5)

According to Greek myth, Hercules was the son of Zeus and Alcmene, the mortal wife of Amphitryon, and was early endowed with a god-like strength that included superior skills in archery and wrestling; but he was also afflicted with a violent temper and subject to fits of madness due to persecution from a jealous Hera. (6) Hercules is perhaps best known for the Twelve Labors he performed for King Eurystheus of Argos, during which he vanquished a number of terrible beasts and accomplished several superhuman tasks throughout the Peloponnese and greater Mediterranean world: strangling the Nemean lion, destroying the nine-headed Lernean hydra, capturing the golden-horned Cerynthian hind, overcoming the Eurymanthian boar, cleaning the filthy stables of King Augeus of Elis, driving off the noisome Stymphalian birds in Arcadia, capturing the Cretan bull, harnessing the man-eating mares of Diomedes in Thrace, procuring the girdle of the Amazon queen Hippolyta on the Black Sea, obtaining the cattle of the three-bodied Geryon on the island of Erytheia off the coast of Spain, procuring (with the help of Atlas) the golden apples of the Hesperides in the far west, and collaring (with the help of Athena and Hermes) the three-headed dog Cerberus in the underworld.

Along with these tasks Hercules had time to overcome the giant Anteus, set up the Pillars of Hercules, establish the Olympic Games, sail with Jason and the Argonauts, fight the centaurs, conquered Troy, …