Proof Positive for Change

As I thumbed through my Sunday Times yesterday morning, the only section that grabbed my immediate attention was The Week in Review. Beneath a picture of a rippling, blackened sea was the headline, “The Ahab Parallax.” I immediately flashed a knowing grin as I pulled the section from the heaping bulk and lovingly flattened the fold beneath my thumbs just as a seamstress would eliminate a wrinkle from a fine piece of cloth. Leaning back in my chair, I felt the space around me fill with echos of my undergraduate days and I was no longer alone.

As a literature major, by the time I graduated from the University of Texas, I had read Moby Dick three times. Granted my first read was in high school, I still found it more than coincidence that my most respected professors were also the most insistant that Moby Dick be at the top of their reading lists. I can still see the noble pride on Professor Freeman’s face when he derided a classmate for openly complaining about having to read such a “long stale piece of shit.”

“Excuse me, young man. What was that that you said?” he barked.
The boy froze as his arrogance melted from his shoulders, just barely managing to lock eyes with the Professor after a few very uncomfortable shifts and changes in his seat.

“Young man, if you think that Moby Dick is a stale piece of shit, then I can deduce two things about you right this second. One, is that you have never read Moby Dick and two, is that you will fail my class. So don’t waste my time. Get the hell out of my room and don’t ever come back.”

After the poor guy tucked his books into the nook of his arm and shuffled out of the room, Professor Freeman’s face immediately lit up as the door clicked shut.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what you hold in your hands is the greatest novel ever written in the English language. It is THE quintessential masterpiece that is so brilliantly written, it still resonates today, even though Melville penned it in 1851.”

The most obvious parallel that Randy Kennedy has drawn between the novel and the current events of today are “…the daily reminder of the limitations, even now, of man’s ability to harness nature for his needs.”

This is merely one of the many complex themes that Melville employs throughout the novel, but it is a cornerstone of the story, which makes it all the more relavent and all the more troubling. Man’s need to dominate nature is a theme that has only intensified through time, which Mr. Kennedy very aptly states in his piece, even after the warning the Exxon spill gave us, we continued to “push ever farther and deeper” for more reserves of oil.

Ahab had a similar warning after loosing one of his legs to his nemesis, Moby Dick, yet rather than stay on dry land, he stubbornly persisted to to return to the sea to lay his claim to ever more of the precious spermaceti while smiting out his mortal enemy in the process.

“We want our comforts but we don’t want to know too much about where they come from or what makes them possible.”

Mr. Kennedy doesn’t extend the reach of his article beyond the oil spill itself, but I immediately made a corollary. Since plastic is a derivative of petroleum, and since the link has just been made that the by-products of plastics are responsible for causing the rise of auto-immune disorders like celiac disease, autism, ADD and ADHD, may the BP spill be the huge awakener as proof positive for change. Lest we all suffer the same fate as captain Ahab, sailing towards an emminant demise all in an attempt to cling to a way of being that is just no longer viable.

It’s time for a revolution to occur. It’s time to break our ties with petroleum. It’s time to eliminate the excessive use of plastics in our everyday lives.

We’ve been given our second warning. So far, let the record show that the white whale has removed our second lower leg, and we are currently standing on our knees.

Raphael Morghen, 1758-1833
The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci, 1800
Etching and Engraving, 10 1/2 x 36 3/4 inches
The Leo Steinberg Collection
The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Italian Etcher and Engraver