As Mardi tackled slavery and Redburn the condition of sailors, slums, and emigrants, White-Jacket also has a social-comment component. The simplest thing to focus on here is corporal punishment in the navy. The descriptions are explicit and upsetting; Melville’s rhetoric is in full force and he thoroughly demolishes flogging as bad for body and soul, punished and punisher. And I learned from Wikipedia that “because Harper & Bros. made sure the book got into the hands of every member of Congress, White-Jacket was instrumental in abolishing flogging in the U.S. Navy forever.” Impressive (though I haven’t seen that claim elsewhere).
Other injustices against sailors in the navy are explored as well, including the general tyranny of the officers over “the people.” There is the constant acknowledgment that there must be rules and a hierarchy in order for the navy to function, though the rules in force are unfair, oppressive, and illogical. But then there’s also the inkling that it’s not really necessary to have all those rules anyway because Melville is a bit of a pacifist.
With things as they are, in any case, the interests of the people and the officers are hopelessly opposed. For example, officers hope for war and its accompanying glory, while the much more imperiled sailors do not:
This hostile contrast between the feelings with which the common seamen and the officers of the Neversink looked forward to this more than possible war, is one of many instances that might be quoted to show the antagonism of their interests, the incurable antagonism in which they dwell. But can men, whose interests are diverse, ever hope to live together in a harmony uncoerced? Can the brotherhood of the race of mankind ever hope to prevail in a man-of-war, where one man’s bane is almost another’s blessing? By abolishing the scourge, shall we do away tyranny; that tyranny which must ever prevail, where of two essentially antagonist classes in perpetual contact, one is immeasurably the stronger? Surely it seems all but impossible. And as the very object of a man-of-war, as its name implies, is to fight the very battles so naturally averse to the seamen; so long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature.
However, as we are reminded continually, this isn’t really about a man-of-war, but “our man-of-war world.” Can the abolition of any specific tyranny—say, the tyranny of monarchy and its replacement with democracy—do away with the tyranny of any powerful group with antagonistic interests? Melville is clear in many places that equality among men is a major concern, and often alludes to the superior justice of democracy. But he is deeply uncomfortable about how much “uncoerced” harmony will ever really be possible for the brotherhood he both loves and despairs of.
Melville attempts to give moderating advice about the condition of man-of-war’s-men, couching his complaints in an easy reasonableness that admits of the need for rules and order. But turning to “the very object of a man-of-war” (and the object of our man-of-war world?), it becomes clear he can’t stomach the enterprise.
Now, this Jack Chase had a heart in him like a mastodon’s. I have seen him weep when a man has been flogged at the gangway; yet, in relating the story of the Battle of Navarino, he plainly showed that he held the God of the blessed Bible to have been the British commodore in the Levant, on the bloody 20th of October, A.D. 1827. And thus it would seem that war almost makes blasphemers of the best of men, and brings them all down to the Feejee standard of humanity. Some man-of-war’s-men have confessed to me, that as a battle has raged more and more, their hearts have hardened in infernal harmony; and, like their own guns, they have fought without a thought.
Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and bodyguard of the Devil musters many a baton. But war at times is inevitable. Must the national honor be trampled under foot by an insolent foe?
Say on, say on; but you know this, and lay it to heart, war-voting Bench of Bishops, that He on whom we believe himself has enjoined us to turn the left cheek if the right be smitten. Never mind what follows. That passage you can not expunge from the Bible; that passage is as binding upon us as any other; that passage embodies the soul and substance of the Christian faith; without it, Christianity were like any other faith. And that passage will yet, by the blessing of God, turn the world. But in some things we must turn Quakers first.
The national honor certainly means something to Melville. There is no question that he values it, and values the great republican project he’s witnessing come of age, for all its flaws. But he cannot escape a harsh and exacting conscience, “never mind what follows.” It’s the principle of the thing. And with all the bleakness of detestable and noble humanity in his novels, he remains committed to the ideals of equality and dignity of the individual. I always feel very at home with his mix of love, discomfort, and alienation.
I feel like there’s so much more to think about, and I’m already looking forward to someday coming around to a re-read of all Melville’s works. But I’ll close up White-Jacket with this admonition:
Yet the popular conceit concerning a sailor is derived from his behavior ashore; whereas, ashore he is no longer a sailor, but a landsman for the time. A man-of-war’s-man is only a man-of-war’s-man at sea; and the sea is the place to learn what he is. But we have seen that a man-of-war is but this old-fashioned world of ours afloat, full of all manner of characters—full of strange contradictions; and though boasting some fine fellows here and there, yet, upon the whole, charted to the combings of her hatchways with the spirit of Belial and all unrighteousness.
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