Father Mapple
| Father Mapple | |
|---|---|
| Moby Dick character | |
| Created by | Herman Melville |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Minister |
| Nationality | American |
Father Mapple is a fictional character in Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick (1851), as well as in adaptations of the novel. He is a former whaler who is a preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman's Chapel. Ishmael, the narrator of the novel, hears Mapple's sermon on the subject of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale but did not turn against God.
The sermon presents themes which concerned Melville and run through the rest of the novel. Father Mapple believes, as Ahab does, that truth is clear to see, and that human beings must pursue it in spite of all obstacles. Ishmael, on the other hand, finds that truth has many forms and is difficult to see or understand. [1]
Models for the character
Enoch Mudge, a Methodist minister who ran the Seamen's Bethel in New Bedford, and Father Taylor, a Methodist minister who ran the Seamen's Bethel in Boston, may have served as models for Father Mapple.[2][3] Melville heard Mudge preach at the Seamen's Bethel and Mudge was a contributor to Sailor's Magazine, which in December 1840 printed the ninth of a series of sermons on Jonah.[4]
Father Mapple's sermon
Ishmael, a sailor soon to sail for Nantucket, where he will embark on a whaling voyage with Captain Ahab on his ship, the Pequod, goes to the Whaleman's Chapel, in New Bedford.[5] Father Mapple appears and climbs a "manrope", a ship's rope ladder, to his pulpit, which is the form of a ship's prow:[6] "Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed beak."[7]
Father Mapple addresses the parishioners as "Shipmates" [7] and leads them in a whaling hymn:
- The ribs and terrors in the whale
- Arched over me a dismal gloom,
- While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
- And lift me deepening down to doom.
- ...
- In black distress, I called my God,
- When I could scarce believe him mine,
- He bowed his ear to my complaints-
- No more the whale did me confine.
- With speed he flew to my relief,
- As on a radiant dolphin borne;
- Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
- The face of my Deliverer God.[7]
- ...
Mapple then takes as his text "And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." The lesson, he says, is a "two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God."[7]
Jonah, the figure in the Bible, Mapple begins, refuses God's commandment to go to the city of Nineveh and prophesy against rampant sin but instead tries to flee by taking passage on a ship. The sailors know from merely looking at him that Jonah is some sort of fugitive:
"Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom."[7]
But the Lord raises a great storm, and after Jonah confesses to the sailors that his disobedience is the cause, Jonah is "taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea." Instantly an "oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still." Yet the storm follows Jonah, and he drops "seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him".[7] Jonah prays unto the Lord:
But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just ... And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.[7]
Mapple returns to the "two-stranded lesson":
Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me ... And now how gladly would I ... listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things ... Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God ... This, shipmates, this is that other lesson ... Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation![7]
Thematic significance in the novel
Father Mapple's sermon addresses questions that fascinated Melville and tensions that run through the rest of the novel, since Father Mapple believes, as does Ahab, that truth is clear to see, and that human beings must pursue it in spite of all obstacles; Ishmael on the other hand finds that truth has many forms, and is difficult to see or understand.[8]
John Bryant argues that this sermon of Jonah's duty to deliver God's "appalling message" of destruction to the people of Nineveh parallels Melville's duty to "confront his own readers with the blasphemy yet logic of Ahab's anger and defiance".[2] Nathalia Wright emphasizes Melville's general use of Biblical rhetoric and tone, and that his "prophetic strain" is most distinct in Father Mapple's sermon. Melville has Mapple use "the most familiar linguistic device of the Hebrew prophets", such as the repeated ejaculation "Woefullness of time", "outer darkness", "the blackness of darkness", and "the quick and the dead".[9]
In notable adaptations
Father Mapple was played by Orson Welles in the 1956 film.[10] Gregory Peck, who played Ahab in this film, won a Golden Globe as Father Mapple in the 1998 television series, Moby-Dick. [11]
Notes
- ^ Analysis: Chapters 1–9 Moby-Dick Spark Notes
- ^ a b Bryant, John and Haskell Springer. (2007). "Introduction," In John Bryant and Haskell Springer (eds), Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. A Longman Critical Edition. New York, Boston: Pearson Education, p. xii
- ^ Wendy Knickerbocker, Bard of the Bethel: The Life and Times of Boston's Father Taylor, 1793–1871 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 292–295.
- ^ Heflin (2004), p. 41.
- ^ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Chapter 7 "The Chapel"
- ^ "Major Symbols in Moby-Dick". CliffsNotes. 2014. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Chapter 8, "The Pulpit"
- ^ Analysis: Chapters 1–9 Moby-Dick Spark Notes
- ^ "Biblical Allusion in Melville's Prose," American Literature 12.2 (1940): 185–199.
- ^ Moby Dick (1956) at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Moby Dick TV movie on IMDb
References and further reading
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale (London, New York 1851).
- Heflin, Wilson L. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas Farel Heffernan, ed. (2004). Herman Melville's Whaling Years. Nashville Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 0826513824.
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External links
- Chapter 9 – Versions of Moby-Dick, Moby-Dick (American 1851) Melville Electronic Library, Hofstra University.
- Orson Welles Delivers Father Mapple's Sermon
- Movieclips
- Father Mapple Filmography IMDd
- "The Sermon" Text.