The Benthic in Fiction: The Terror of the Whale

Herman Melville's seminal 1851 novel Moby Dick or The Whale stands as part of a rich tradition of the uncertainty felt by man when confronted with the sea and its inhabitants. Life on land is static where the sea is mutability incarnate. The sun, aid to man's dominant sense, cannot penetrate to the bottom of the oceans. Uncertainty, then, is our natural reaction to the depths of the sea. Melville, Jules Verne, Lovecraft and others use this primal trepidation to their advantage. The whale, Moby Dick, takes the natural enmity between open air and the sea even further: as an albino, the sun is inimical to him. Ahab's quest is to dredge up, make sense of and murder a force that seeks concealment and secrecy.

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, linked thematically and via numerous allusions to Melville's magnum opus, draws on the idea of the whale to create its eloquent and monstrous antagonist, judge Holden. While not a true albino, Holden's skin is "nearly devoid of pigment" and his size, well over seven feet in height and massive in frame, is a clear bridge between himself and the overwhelming horror of Moby Dick. Holden, like the whale, is also a murderer of children (Moby Dick kills the the son of the Captain of the Rachel)) and a killer of men. Holden's great size and strength (among other things, he uses a howitzer ripped free of its carriage to fight his way out of an Indian raid) impact the characters of McCarthy's novel in a fashion similar to the whale's slaughter of the sailors. Holden, after the Glanton Gang is butchered at the fords they've co-opted, hunts down survivors in a strange, meandering fashion. Where Moby Dick destroys the Pequod in a red rage, Holden kills methodically and for arcane reasons. That both novels explore in detail the nature and consequences of violence can be no coincidence.

Holden's demonic nature, heavily alluded to during a story regarding his introduction to the gang and, among other scenes, during a loosely-described scene in which the sound of his speech threatens the sanity of Tobin the expriest and the novel's "protagonist," the kid, adds another layer to the conflict between deep-dweller and sun. Not only does it scorch Holden when he loses his hat, symbolizing his exposure to the world of man, it burns his skin as the Eye of God suddenly aware of an infernal presence in its realm. Holden even says to Toadvine, following the escape from the fords, that he "must have [his] hat" and will "pay any price for it." Holden's tongue and mouth become chapped and bloody during his brief hatless sojourn, and while he sometimes removes it as a matter of course during interactions with other characters it is never for long and almost always inside.

The deep gnostic imagery in McCarthy's novel (blindness, crippling injuries, weakness and blood) corresponds to the unnatural, godlike presence of the albino whale. Unknowable, Moby Dick terrorizes those who pursue it. Similarly, Holden is beyond the understanding of his fellow marauders by virtue of his prodigious intellect, loquaciousness and physical otherness. In relating Moby Dick's benthic nature to the judge, one must look to Holden's mysterious origins. While out of powder and fleeing pursuit, the Glanton Gang comes across Holden in the wilderness and accept his guidance on a hellish journey down into a twisted, mazelike hellscape of broken rock and volcanic glass. There Holden, with preternatural speed and ability, makes gunpowder for the company which then slaughters wholesale its enemies. This place, never visited, explained or reference again, could be Holden's place of origin or natural habitat. Where Moby Dick and the judge share physical characteristics, Holden takes mystery from the belly of the earth while Moby Dick takes it from the fathomless deep.

Word of the Day: Languorous.
Book of the Day: Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, a light-hearted deconstruction and subversion of the fantasy genre. Drags high fantasy joyfully through a blood-choked gutter.
Author of the Day: Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus and other works.
Author vs Author of the Day: Bram Stoker vs Cormac McCarthy.
Result: Too violent for print. McCarthy wins.