On fanatics

Here is an essay I wrote about the character Gabriel in Moby Dick. Timely.

In 1840 “the Millennial Church or United Society of Believers, commonly called Shakers” due to their frenzied dancing during worship, reached what would be its largest size of approximately 6000 members. The Shakers principle settlements were in the Northeast, and in them men and women were enjoined to live chaste lives in separate living quarters, coming together to work and pray. Work they did, as nothing was more highly prized in the Shaker community than the pursuit of perfection in craftsmanship. Compared to American society at large, the Shaker communities of the time were quite progressive, with equal rights for women, no private property ownership, and a steadfast refusal to bear arms or aid in any militaristic action. Largely remembered today for their elegant furniture, only a few shakers remain, all living in a single village in Maine.
The beginning of the movement sprung from Ann Lee, born in 1736 in Manchester England. An illiterate housewife, Ann eventually saw a divine vision of Jesus, and, as is often seen in similar situations: “Hence she received the title of Mother and hence those of the society who received and obeyed her testimony, found a great increase in the power and gifts of God; while on the other hand, those who rejected it, lost all their former light and power, and fell back into a state of darkness, and into the common course of the world.”i This passage from the Shaker manifesto, “A Summary View” aligns well with the doctrine being preached by Gabriel, the shaker aboard the whaler Jeroboam that is encountered in chapter 71 of Moby Dick. For the individual reading Moby Dick at the time of its publication, this inclusion of the shaker character Gabriel will highlight two key issues.
The first is that Gabriel is or at least was a member of “the crazy society of Neskyeuna Shakers.” The contemptuous description of him as a “great prophet” who “descended from heaven by the way of a trap-door” with a vial that contained not gunpowder but laudanum, states quite clearly that something is rotten in Denmark. The further description of his exploits in winning the minds of the Jeroboam’s crew, so as principally to avoid any strenuous work further tarnishes Gabriel, and transitively, that sect which he sprung from. Here Melville’s derision of the Shaker movement is rather explicit, and seems intent on illuminating the string pulling of those in power. Gabriel’s Panglossian claims of controlling the plague aboard the Jeroboam would be a hard swallow for the erudite reader of Moby Dick, who likely having read the Shaker’s “A Summary View” would also have read the recently published The Rise and Progress of the Serpent from the Garden of Eden to the Present Day by Mary M. Dyer. Dyer’s damning account of the Shaker community, particularly tales of Ann Lee’s liasons with many men, and the shaker elder’s terming of their own drinking to excess as “suffering the sins of others” seems a bit far-fetched at times. Nevertheless, it introduces an element of realism to the written record surrounding this strange community of people, and though bellicose in its prose, is more satisfying than the largely regurgitated “A Summary View.”
Second, the differences between the madness of Ahab and the madness of Gabriel are shown in this chapter. Gabriel must resort to trickery to charm the crew of the Jeroboam to do his bidding. Not so Ahab. While Gabriel drops from trapdoors, and whispers with the tincture of laudanum, Ahab hammers a golden doubloon into the stout wooden mast of the Pequod as he proclaims his only goal. Gabriel is all smoke. Ahab is all fire. Both are men operating in the world and of the world, but only Ahab is righteous in his intent. His destiny is the whale, the wall of knowledge. “Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough.” Both men have incited otherwise sane men to follow them wherever they may lead, but only Ahab’s eyes are wide open. The use of a sect like the Shakers, well known at the time for their passionate and serious adherence to their principles, serves to increase Ahab’s umbra, as well as distance his quest from the errand of a common fool.

Sources:
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Green,Calvin Wells, Seth A Summary View of the Millenial Church or the United Society of Believers, commonly called Shakers. Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1848.

Melville,Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Penguin, 1988.

Dyer, Mary The Rise and Progress of the Serpent from the garden of Eden to the present day. Albany: 1847

Melville,Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Penguin, 1988.

Melville,Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Penguin, 1988.