Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

185functions as protection against the fear of death. However, this role is reversed and the doubleharbors inside it the idea of death and the uncanny.The doubloon, another kind of doppelgänger, revolves around Ahab’s egotisticalsublime. Like the whale, the doubloon is an explicit allegorical sign and it invites allegoricalexegesis. This allegory does not attempt to avoid or transcend the inescapable fact of temporality.In this world of allegory, the meaning constituted by the allegorical sign refers to the meaning ofa previous sign. The doubloon, like the White Whale, expresses the inscrutability of the figure ofthe Other. The act of reading the doubloon is posited as an impossible and arbitrary act. This isdetermined by Pip’s conjugation: “I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look” (413).We see that the value and meaning of doubloon is determined by the inscriptions on it. Theseinscriptions cast on the coin are laden with history and allusions to Hawthorne. Reading thedoubloon, Starbuck says:A dark valley between three, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in somefaint earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom,the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If we bend down our eyes, thedark vale shows her mouldy soil; but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance halfway, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fainsnatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely,mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. (411)This is reminiscent of Hawthorne’s invocation of the Sun of Righteousness in The Scarlet Letter.In Moby-Dick, Ahab “seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptionsstamped on [the doubloon], as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself insome monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some certain significance