Images of the Saved and the Drowned in Herman Melville's Moby Dick
Primo Levi's distinctions between the saved and the drowned exist in many novels--even those that were written before the Holocaust even happened. In Melville's Moby Dick, There is an example of the saved and an example of the drowned. Though Melville obviously did not intend for these characters to have any relation to the Holocaust, the distinctions created by a survivor of the Holocaust illuminate the emotional states these characters are in.
Pip, the little deck boy, becomes one of the drowned after a near death experience in which he is left in the middle of the sea by his whaling boat. Before he is rescued, he experiences the utter lonliness of the sea:
"In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. 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. Now, in calm water, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of the self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?" (page 453)
This experience is reminiscent of the words Levi uses to describe the situation of Nazi camp prisoners who had to become either saved or drowned: "desperately and ferociuosly alone." Pip, unable to tolerate the lonliness he feels in the hour before he is rescued by the Pequod goes mad--losing his "brightness" and his soul to the sea:
"By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul." (page 453)
Pip loses touch with his shipmates and himself; he cannot continue to live as he had and resigns himself to his condition "indifferent as his God."
The image of the saved in Moby Dick is Ishmael--the narrator of the book. This man is the only survivor of the tragedy borne upon the Pequod by the White Whale and Captian Ahab. Whether he bears the guilt that plagues the survivors of other tragedies is never stated. However, we never know if he really is "Ishmael" for the opening line of the book is insufficient evidence of this fact. This may indicate that he does feel the guilt of the saved and that he wants to bear witness to what he has seen.
Other than the fact that he is the lone survivor of the shipwreck, Ishmael bears other traits of the saved. His survival was allowed by his good fortune in many instances and his passive participation in others. He was not like his fellow shipmates--putting his life on the line to pursue Ahab's monomania. He stood back often, allowing others to perish before himself. Though he played a role in much of the action on the boat, he was not a harpooner, nor was he at the most dangerous end of the "monkey-rope."
As the ship goes down, Ishmeal tells of his good fortune in being thrown from Ahab's boat. Like Pip, the sea nearly swallows him up. However, as he begins to sink and become one of the drowned (in a literal and figurative sense), Queequeg's coffin pops to the surface and serves as a life raft carrying him to the safety of the Rachel. His life is saved by the symbol of his best friend's death.
Whether Ishmael feels the guilt of the saved remains a mystery, perhaps because his character's narration never delves into the deeper recesses of his own soul. Or perhaps, the reader is to assume that he has felt the guilt and it has passed. Whatever the case may be, Ishmael stands as a figure of the saved, showing that Levi's observations on human nature were not created by the Holocaust but rather brought out by that horrific event.