Moby Dick is about capitalism
It is not a radical approach to understand Moby Dick as a novel about capitalism. Way back in 1951, in ‘Call me Ishmael, Charles Olson said Moby Dick was about ‘INDUSTRY’.
Spermaceti candles, made from a waxy substance found in the head cavities of the whales, were sought after for their clean, bright flames.
There is a linear line of development between the pursuit of sperm oil in Moby Dick and the contemporary fossil fuel industry. Our exploitation of the natural world for energy has progressed from using sperm oil to kerosene to petroleum.
Peak sperm oil was reached in 1846, five years before the writing of Moby Dick.
The Grand Armada describes two ways of marking whales Drugging:
All whale-boats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross each other’s grain at right angles; a line of considerable length is then attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more whales are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not every day encountered; while you may, then, you must kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them.
The waif:
The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of which are carried by every boat; and which, when additional game is at hand, are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near.
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