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這篇「文學評論」是一個「借他人酒杯，澆自己塊壘」的範例。雪萊夫人動筆寫《科學怪人》這本小說時只有18歲(或剛滿19歲)，該書出版時她也只不過20歲；談對「現代性」的理解和批判，應該陳義過高。我不熟悉雪萊夫人其它的作品，但我從來沒有看過討論「現代性」的學者引用過她的觀點或大名。
從下文內容，我得到對作者的了解，遠多於我對這兩本小說的進一步認識(1)。例如：
1) 巴涵先生是一位(英國國教？)教友。
2) 巴涵先生跟我一樣厭惡川痞。
3) 但在「現代性」或「現代情況」議題上，巴涵先生則跟我的立場背道而馳。
附註：
1. 我讀過《科學怪人》，也讀過兩、三篇關於它的介紹/評論。我沒讀過《白鯨記》，但讀過相當多關於它的介紹/評論；從而得知其故事情節。
索引：
Frankenstein：《科學怪人》
Hamartia：(性格上)致命缺點，導致身敗名裂的性格，後果嚴重的行動失誤或判斷錯誤
hubris：虛驕(沒有基礎或自以為是的驕傲)，傲慢，盛氣凌人
Melville, Herman：美國作家，《白鯨記》作者
Moby-Dick：《白鯨記》
monomania：偏執狂或單一狂熱；它指的是：一種心理狀態或行為傾向，患者將全部的心思、注意力和精力，極度專注或癡迷於單一事物、單一想法、或單一主題
Shelley, Mary：《科學怪人》作者，詩人雪萊的夫人
A Continuing Warning To Modernity ‘Frankenstein’ (1818) & ‘Moby-Dick’ (1851)
Hate, Hubris, and Hamartia
Marc Barham, 05/20/26
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“All mortal greatness is but disease.” — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
The Guardian newspaper this weekend published its list of the 100 best novels. 170 novelists, critics, and academics were polled for their top 10, ranked in order, and the results were tallied to compile an overall 100. My favourite top two novels were on the list. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was at No 30, and Moby Dick was at No 15.
I believe strongly that these two novels should have been at the No 1 and the No 2 position for the reasons that I will put forward in this article. One is a gothic masterpiece that is the first science fiction story, and the other is a political and psychological journey into the depths of charismatic power, revealed by the life and death struggle for that giant white nemesis.
The main overarching reason is that they are both unique works of prophetic fiction that become more relevant every day in our mass modernity and scientific ‘progress’. They are both a warning to humanity about our future that has been unheeded because the tragic tale of immediate revenge is so visceral and horrific. The relevance of each novel to our survival is undeniable, yet we still are not listening.
Shelley alerts us to the new Prometheans who are creating the new masters of our fate, and Melville is alerting us to the unstoppable disaster inherent in hubris and monomaniacal obsession. When you have read both, you will understand the danger that the human race is in.
Moby Dick foreshadows the approaching Cult of Personality that would lead humanity into two World Wars in the next century. Melville’s masterpiece shows this madness in its full glory and illustrates the religious devotion and fanaticism that would show its ugly head in the following century.
Sigmund Freud wrote on 17 January 1915 that the war proved that man’s evil, primitive impulses do not disappear but are at most only being suppressed in times of peace. Yet they are not even suppressed in “times of peace”. Both novels describe the psychology of hate and violence that are born through the hubristic ideology of science and the hateful supremacism of religious fanaticism. We were warned.
When he died in 1891, Herman Melville was virtually forgotten, with Billy Budd still in manuscript and unpublished, and Moby-Dick a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author’s death.
However, today, Moby-Dick is, in the words of the Oxford Companion to English Literature,
“The closest approach the United States has had to a national prose epic”.
I have to admit that it took me over 50 years of my life before I was prepared to sit down and read Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville. If you have read this challenging work, then you know why my statement of intent sounds so ominous.
Moby-Dick is usually described as an elemental novel in which the outsider Ishmael is pitted against the fathomless infinity of the sea, grappling with the big questions of existence. Actually, reading Moby-Dick is very similar. Except the reader is pitted against the almost fathomless infinity of the meanings of the novel, which grapple with the big questions of existence.
I made it through. And I am glad I did. Battered and bruised metaphysically but enriched existentially by the epic tale from the mind of Herman Melville. It must sit high up or float high in the list of Great American Novels.
Of course, I knew the basic story well from the John Huston film (1956) — with Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab (see screenshot above) and Richard Basehart as Ishmael and a screenplay by none other than the great storyteller Ray Bradbury — and the countless TV adaptations that appear at regular intervals.
But I was not fully prepared for the deepness and depth of writing that I encountered. I was somewhat prepared, in being very well-acquainted with the plays of Shakespeare, but I did at times flounder in the ocean of metaphysical and allegorical meanings that Melville creates page by page in this now undeniable masterpiece of hubris and obsession.
But, I made it through because of the singular narrative catalyst that dominates and determines the entire story — and any film or adaptation made — the person of Captain Ahab and the revenge of Captain Ahab upon the white whale that took his leg — Moby-Dick.
Around this deadly and ungodly obsession with the whale, the whole story hangs. It is as dark and haunting as Frankenstein. Captain Ahab, through psychological manipulation and the use of targeted violence, captures the loyalty of the crew to follow him in his plan for revenge upon that whale.
It is quite chilling how Melville’s story of 1851 resonates with us today as we witness the rise and rise of the political demagogue in America and Russia, and to a lesser extent in England. It is this that makes Melville’s story work so well and resonates with the world we are living in right now.
We have seen leaders in our modern history — during the war and after — take people with them into the Abyss. And in the 21st century, we have witnessed new demagogues take center stage and, by force of personality and manipulating the truth, have — and still are — pushing their followers ever further toward tragedy aboard their own ship of State.
All of the characters that Melville creates are so believable and so real because he probably had met many of them during his time at sea. And of course, the climax of the story was partly inspired by combining a real attack upon a whaling ship, the Essex, and by the exploits of a real whale named the Mocha Dick. Yes, I have heard the jokes about Starbucks and a Mocha Dick please,” but I am English, so they are not as funny as they would be in America. Sorry.
But of course, it takes more than just two bizarre events to write Moby-Dick. A story based upon obsession and a monomaniacal revenge can never fail to hook the reader. And in the end, that is really what keeps you going through the increasing levels of obsessive madness.
A madness caused by this obsession in a psychic feedback loop of increasing biblical justification. The obsession of ‘monomaniacal Ahab’ and the obsession of the monomaniacal author of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville. Both men create this gargantuan tale. We know where the idea for that giant whale, Moby-Dick, came from. But where does Captain Ahab come from? Where do his obsession, his hatred, and his madness truly originate?
It is no coincidence that when Herman Melville arrived in London in October 1849, he was seeking inspiration, and whilst installed in lodgings overlooking the Thames at Charing Cross, he spent his time visiting publishers and getting drunk. Stumbling home, he saw whales swimming down Oxford Street. It was as if they were haunting him. A month later, after a diversion to Paris, he returned to New York with a new book he had been given, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
I did not know this fact before I read Moby-Dick, but knowing it now provides one with an interesting new understanding of the character of Ahab through the themes Mary Shelley brings to her masterpiece of hubris, obsession, and revenge, to name but a few. These, without a doubt, connect both novels.
And of course, we have the monsters and the monstrous in both.
“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.” — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
But for me, the characters of Captain Ahab and Dr. Frankenstein, as written by their respective authors, are also stark warnings to us — that were missed at the time and have grown more prophetic as time has passed — because of the sheer power of the narrative and the sheer adventure of the pursuit of both creatures by their respective creators.
We lose ourselves in the force and power of these sweeping narratives. And the reader, ‘us’, is literally involved at the ‘heart of darkness’.
Although I say ‘creators’, is it not the case that Moby-Dick created Captain Ahab when he took his leg and possibly his manhood as well? And in Frankenstein, it is difficult to know who really pursues whom, to the ends of the Earth, and that reckoning in the ice-filled Arctic. It is the same with Ahab and Moby-Dick. Who is pursuing whom? Which is the truly monstrous? The creator or his abominable creation. The answer is perhaps too easy — both — but nonetheless it is so irredeemably true.
Neither of the novels has an ending that one could describe as cathartic (in any moral sense) within the narrative. Good nor Evil are triumphant. Good nor evil are defeated. Both ask us questions about the abuse of power and its interaction in men who have ungodly, yet godlike power.
Moby-Dick is a political warning about the potential threat of charismatic leaders to bind a group into unthinking allegiance and eventual self-destruction. Frankenstein is a warning of the replacement of the natural order and/or God by unbounded, arrogant men of scientific discovery and creation. Together, they form a warning to us in modernity. One we all missed and are still ignoring.
They are both, as well, great tragedies. They are tragedies of great men who become bad because they question, challenge, and defy God. This is hubris. And both Captain Ahab and Dr Frankenstein are punished for this.
But the tragedy is compounded because the hubris of great men and their iteration in the form of the modern demagogue leads to the punishment and death of the guilty and the innocent. This is another missed warning of Frankenstein and Moby-Dick.
Our sympathies still cannot reside with their nemeses, as the Whale and the creation of a new iteration of ‘Adam’ have contributed to terrible deaths in both stories. Yet we must have empathy at least. Sympathy will take a little longer.
As the historian and moralist Lord Acton (1834–1902) wrote in a letter to a friend in 1887,
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
One wonders if he might have read both Frankenstein and Moby-Dick. I would suggest he may well have, as the letter was written in 1887. These two masterpieces would have only confirmed his opinion.
Written by Marc Barham
Column @ \timetravelnexus.com on iconic books, TV shows/films: Time Travel Peregrinations. Reviewed all episodes of ‘Dark’ @ site https://linktr.ee/marcbarham64
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