Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

153most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife” (43). LeslieFiedler points out in An End to Innocence (1948) that Ishmael, the narrator of Moby-Dick, andQueequeg, the cannibal, are dubiously associated in bed when they awake at the Spouter Inn.Melville is thus quite implicit about the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. Queequegis, of course, the racial Other.Let us now study one of the shadows or doubles of the Ahab, Pip. Pip fell out of time. Hewas left alone to float on the ocean. “Out from the center of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp,curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest”(396). Stubb’s racial comments: “we can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whalewould sell for thirty times what you would, pip, in Alabama” (395). The ship’s organizationaleconomy resembles any of today’s societies. Pip, much like Narcissus, is looking fortranscendence within the oceanic void or “the intense concentration of self in the middle of such aheartless immensity” (396). Pip was considered mad. “Indifferent as his God,” Pip is Ahab’sdouble because of his trauma, because he has looked into the face of death and annihilation; hehas met the Real. This renders him mad, but also the double of the madman, the philosopher orthe negative theologian. Pip resembles Ahab but at the same he fails to be his shadow. Ahab takesPip as his double: “Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven ofmy heart strings, come let’s down” (489). The cord reminds us of the cord connecting Ishmaeland Queequeg. He is the philosopher and Ahab is the thinker. Ahab, a Hamletian thinker, says tohimself: “Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I so suck most wondrous philosophies from thee!Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!” (495). A whale linecauses the death of both Pip and Ahab. Plunging into the oceanic abyssan epitome of