A White Whale found on (http://www.earthraceconservation.org/black-days-white-whales-1)
It is widely known that “Pym” by Mat Johnson is a satirical rewrite of Edgar Allan Poe’s, “ The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”. However, after having begun to read Herman Melville’s, “Moby Dick” I believe that Johnson has also drawn from this classic novel.
It is not explicitly known whether or not Ishmael and Queequeg are involved in a homosexual relationship. However, there are strong implications in the language that Melville chooses to describe their friendship that indicates this may be so. For example Ishmael says, “I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife” (Melville 36). After their relationship develops a little more Ishmael tells us, “he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married”(Melville 56). This is similar to a relationship we see in “Pym” where characters Jeffree, and Carlton Damon Carter, ARE explicitly involved in a homosexual relationship, and are in fact married. This could be a reinterpretation of the relationship between Pym and Augustus in Poe’s novel, but the development of that relationship is minuscule and is not as erotic as that of Melville’s, leading me to believe it was “Moby Dick” which had a stronger influence on the development of these characters.
It seems that the abominable snowman-like figures in Pym’s novel are nowhere to be found in Poe’s. Perhaps they were designed to counter the Tekilian’s, but Johnson’s beasts are not inhabitants of Tsalal, and Chris Jaynes does directly incorporate the Tekilians at the end of the novel. Edward W. Said, sparked my attention in “Reflections on Exile and Other Essays” when he described Moby Dick as a “monster albino whale”, reminding me of the albino monsters in Johnson’s novel (Said 358). It is possible that Johnson’s monsters were developed based off of the infamous Moby Dick.
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“Moby Dick” has had a large influence on popular film/literature culture. The second installment of the popular Sci-Fi series Star Trek, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” is based off of the plot of Moby Dick, and includes monologues from the text.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7WlyuI7xGI
