Moby-Dick And Lessons In Science Writing

Literature classics like Moby-Dick bring the natural world to life in vivid, beautiful and haunting ways. What if these novels were co-taught by literature and biology professors?

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AsianScientist (Mar. 14, 2016) – Some books have been on my “to-read” list for so long, they’ve developed personalities. Anna Karenina rolls her eyes every time I give up—she knows I’ve never made it past the first five Russian names. A Suitable Boy and his enormous extended family camped out on my shelf for so long it started to sag—so I donated him.

I’m happy to report, however, that last year’s sperm whale excitement* finally made me crack open Moby-Dick (who was beginning to beam disgruntled “read me” signals in Whale out into the ether). It took approximately 500 years, but I finally got to the end of this wonderfully strange novel.

Even if you haven’t read Herman Melville’s most famous work, you’re probably already somewhat familiar with its premise: led by the doggedly determined and vengeful Captain Ahab, the crew of the whaling ship the Pequod goes on an epic, ill-fated hunt for the legendary white whale.

[*The Singapore sperm whale will be on display at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum from 15 March 2016. For more details, check out the LKCNHM Facebook page.]


Ishmael, the whale geek

What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer breadth and depth of information on whales, whaling, and seafaring that Melville somehow crammed in together with the plot. He does this through the book’s narrator, Ishmael, who, like a fly on the wall of the Pequod, describes daily life on the ship in minute and engaging detail.

He is also just a little bit whale-obsessed: entire chapters are devoted to whale anatomy and taxonomy; to enumerating all the ways in which a whale uses its tail; to describing in gory detail how whale blubber and oil are harvested; to lamenting the inaccuracies in artists’ depictions of whales… you get the idea.

Ahab’s doomed-from-the-start quest got old pretty quickly for me (my eyes would glaze over every time he launched into one of his manic soliloquies) and these “whale bits” soon became my favorite parts of the book.

A large part of the fun comes from Ishmael’s personality: whale geek extraordinaire, with a sense of humor and an endearing penchant for hyperbole.

Just check out how enthusiastic he is about his task: “Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me…”

This attitude is entirely appropriate for his subject matter—the untamed majesty of the immense, almost alien creatures that inhabit the depths of the open ocean. But this is, after all, a book about whaling, so don’t expect too much sentimentality—the hunting scenes, in particular, will stick with me for a long time, their raw brutality both mesmerizing and stomach-turning.


When literature and science collide

At some point, I started to realize that classic literature isn’t as far removed from modern day science writing as you might imagine. Science writers often struggle with conveying complex concepts and technical details in an engaging manner, and we could certainly take a leaf out of the book of the masters of fiction—only a writer like Melville could blindside me with a thousand obscure whale factoids, and actually get me to enjoy it.

Science columnist Carl Zimmer has previously expressed his admiration for the science writing in Moby-Dick, and makes this intriguing suggestion: what if the novel were co-taught by literature and biology professors? It’d be fascinating not just to read it as a work of literature, but also to explore its place in the history of science and wildlife conservation. Melville’s attempt at a taxonomic classification of whales, for example, is pre-Darwin; in another chapter he also makes the case that the whaling industry of the time cannot possibly drive the sperm whale to extinction.

But quibbling about the accuracy of the whale scholarship in Moby-Dick is, I think, beside the point. Do too much of that and we’ll miss Ishmael/Melville, waving his arms in the air, splattering the reader with ink from his volcano-sized pot, and unintentionally giving a masterclass on how to bring the natural world to life in any number of vivid, beautiful, humbling, and haunting ways.

I was certainly intimidated by this book—it’s easy to get lost in one of its many lengthy and complex sentences (which, by the way, make beautiful sense—if you make it to the end, that is). If I’ve convinced you to dive in, may I recommend the Moby-Dick Big Read, where you can listen to it a chapter at a time, each read by a different person (the cast includes a good number of celebrities).

I’ll leave Ishmael, reflecting on the complexity of his subject, with the last word, which I think will resonate with scientists and writers alike: “Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep. I know him not, and never will.”



This article is from a monthly column called The Bug Report. Click here to see the other articles in this series.

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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Shuzhen received a PhD degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA, where she studied the immune response of mosquito vectors to dengue virus.

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