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3.2 Natural Consciousness of Starbuck
Starbuck is the first mate of the Pequod, and he is devout Christian. So we shall learn the understanding of the relation between man and nature in Christian thought before talking about natural consciousness of Starbuck. The Christian believe that nature is the gift from the God, which is the tool for human. The God creates human by his own image, and wish human can manage the whole creature of nature. In addition, God give all the fruit and vegetable as food. Second, the Christian believe that nature is the tool from God to punish human, so human must obey the rule of nature.
In Bible, Adam and Eva were kicked out of the garden of Eden because eating forbidden fruit, and were punished by God. The God told them that they should get food through hard work. They must work hard just to feed themselves until they died into the soil. Because they come from the dust, they still went into the dust when they died. So in Christian the relation among human and nature and God is mostly impressed between man and God. Nature usually is ignored by people, and is described as the fool of God. So for the Christian the attitude to nature is paradoxical, sometimes they obey the nature, actually God, sometimes they just purse the benefit to confront nature. Starbuck is a typical example in this aspect.
However, the consciousness of Starbuck also comes from his cowardice. As a Christian he chases the benefit, and in the novel the benefit is the whale oil . In another aspect, he is obedient to nature. It is this contradiction which makes him lost. Starbuck tried several times to resist the order of Ahab, but he failed. In his heart he knows that the revenge of Ahab may bring them to death, so the first time he tried to revolt. But under the despotic power of Ahab and temptation of the money, he yielded without resistance. After several times, all his resistance was ended by failure. In fact, we can never think his action as resistance, and it is just a kind of performance of cowardice. He is typical businessman, which really decides his mind is the benefit. This is Starbuck, a person full of contradiction, which finally led him to the destruction. In the hell, he may blame all this to the Ahab, but I think it is his contradiction and greedy which bring him to the death. So Starbuck’s natural consciousness is egoism, and he never obeys the nature or controls it, and all he wants is money and benefit. At last, he sank into the ocean with his weakness and desire. So natural consciousness of Starbuck is nothing but money and his greedy, and he is a totally selfish person.
3.3 Natural Consciousness of Ishmael
“All me Ishmael.” This is the first sentence of the novel. Ishmael uses the first person to review his experience of whaling and what he saw in the Pequod. He is not only the narrator of the story but also the one who experienced the whole story. This voyage actually includes two levels of meanings-one is the real whaling voyage, another is the trail of Ishmael’s thought. During these two trails, Ishmael is exploring the relationship between human and nature. Not like Ahab and Starbuck, he takes a equal vision to the nature, and to seek the nature under the nature.
As we all know, Ishmael has several motives to go to sea, however, chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale itself. In the novel, Ishmael writes this, "Such a portentous and dangerous monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped me to save me to my wish. Wide other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with and everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coast". However, in the novel gives readers a expression of poet more like a sailor. And also he is a philosopher in his heart. During the whaling travel, he is always thinking about the relationship between human and nature.