Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

209Religion serves as a source of cetology. Here, we have a re-turn to the question of the origin. Thestory of Jonas functions as a supplement to Ishmael’s narrative. As in Oedipus, everything startswith an oracle and a sermon. In Moby-Dick, we have many sermons. The oracle is that of thestranger (The Prophet Elijah) who is considered to be crazy and who (fore) tells Ishmael theevents as they will happen. “The Sermon Chapter” talks about Jonah and the whale: “it is a twostrandedlesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men and a lesson to me a pilot of the living God” (57).Jonah sinned and when he realized his sin was the cause of the calamity, he asked his crew to casthim into the watera metaphoric purging of his sinsonly to be swallowed by a whale.Swallowed by the whale, Jonah regains his unity with the mother. Godthe Father“spoke untothe fish” (63). The whale “vomited out Jonah upon the dry land,” a duplication of the literalgiving birth. When Ahab encounters the one-armed captain we see two points of view: one ishappy and the other is not.The link between Ahab’s frustration and his castration is very clear in the narrative. Inboth cases, everything boils down to the Lacanian manquea lack that is at the heart of desireand writing. The ivory leg refers to the absent present phallus, which brings the fort/da game tothe fore. Ahab is mutilated by the whale and his satisfaction depends on his lodging his harpoonin its belly. It is interesting to consider the matter of the prosthesis as the inadequate corrective tocastration, or the very mark of lack. Just as the ivory prosthesis is the sign of the traumatic dismemberment,so too the harpoon cannot fail to be a sign of phallic aspiration. The other onearmedcaptain has renounced the search by saying, “didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough?What should I do without this other arm?” The other captain tells him, “give him your left arm forbait to get the right” (419). Getting the right is getting the right to write. One captain renounces