The chapter "Stubb's Supper" in Moby Dick has often been dismissed by critics as a comic interlude in a weighty text. But this brief exchange between Stubb, the Pequod's second mate, and Fleece, the ship's ancient black cook, is thematically much more important than a cursory reading of the episide as mere comic relief contends. Within this brief chapter are developed some of Melville's most important observations concerning the brutality of nature (both human and nonhuman) and the issue of race.  

The chapter begins with the midnight towing of a whale, which Stubb's crew has harpooned, back to the Pequod. Stubb, "flushed with conquest," orders his black harpooner, Daggoo, overboard to cut a steak from the carcass. Such a request is not out of character for him inasmuch as Stubb was "intemperately fond of whale as a flavorish thing to his palate." ¹ Very quickly, Melville contrasts the gluttonous first mate's supper at the capstan with the spectacle of a school of sharks feeding ferociously on the same whale only a few yards away: "[T]housands of sharks, swarming round the dead Leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness . . . wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head" (423). First joined in the reader's mind by their noisy feasting on the whale's flesh, Stubb and the sharks are further entwined by Melville's description of the methodical, human, characteristics of the sharks' feeding spree; the "symmetrical mouthfuls" they bite from the whale's body "may be best likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking a screw" (423). The sharks feed with human precision, while the human eats with sharklike ferocity: "[W]ere you to turn the whole thing upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing . . . a shocking sharkish business enough for both parties" (424).

Apparently in need of entertainment to accompany his supper, Stubb awakens Fleece from his sleep on the pretense that Fleece has overcooked his whale steak. Fleece, unhappy about being summoned at such an hour, enters the scene, a decrepit but obedient figure: "shuffling and limping along . . . with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play" (425). Several critics have argued that Fleece's character is merely a comic one: what Edward Grejda has called a "stage nigger." ² But Melville's pathetic description of this character hardly deems him a fit victim for minstrel show jesting. Aged, deaf, and crippled, Fleece seems more an object of pity than amusement. It seems likely that had the author wished to create Fleece's character only for "comic relief," as F.O. Matthiessen has suggested, he would have created a more viable target for his humor than the ninety-year-old Fleece. ³ This is not to say that Fleece possesses no comic value, for it seems clear that Melville intended "Stubb's Supper" to contain a good deal of humor. Certainly, on its surface, the chapter appears to be straight out of a minstrel show, and many nineteenth- and twentieth-century readers have continued to view the scene as a humorous exchange between a sharp-witted second mate and the stereotypical "simple darky" cook. ⁴ However, a closer look at this seemingly comic scene reveals that the humor in this chapter, like so much of Melville's humor, carries a serious and often subversive meaning.

The dialogue between the two begins with Stubb's complaint that Fleece has overcooked his steak. Then, with the pretense for his harassment established, Stubb carried his "fun" a step further; suddenly claiming to be bothered by the commotion the feeding sharks are causing, he orders Fleece to deliver a sermon chastising them for their noisy behavior: "Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em that they are welcome to help themselves civilly . . . but they must keep quiet . . . now then, go and preach to 'em!" (425). Fully aware that he has been sent on a fool's errand, Fleece makes it clear that the sentiments he has been ordered to express are those of "Massa Stubb" and not his own:

"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to sat dat you must stop dat dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lip! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!" (426)

Although the sermon's language is indeed humorous, Melville resorts to the use of exaggerated black minstrel dialect for Fleece's character for reasons beyond mere entertainment. First, by making Fleece's remarks humorous through the use of dialect, Melville is also adding extra weight to the cook's words. By making such lines humorous, and therefore memorable, he heightens their effect on the reader in a subtle yet powerful manner:

"Your woraciousness, fellow critters, I don't blame ye so much for: dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel, for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned." (426)

Here, the dialect of the cook is decidedly humorous, yet the subject of his message is a theme crucial to Melville's text: "savagism" versus "civilization." It is a recurring theme throughout much of the book, and yet, at no point are Melville's convictions as clearly stated: an "angel [man in a "civilized" state] is not'ing more dan de shark [man in a "savage" state] well goberned."

Aside from giving the cook's language additional impact, this minstrel humor also provides the author with the perfect disguise from which he can express unpopular ideas without fear of detection. By placing his great truths in the mouths of an aged "simple darky," Melville is able to cloak ideas that might be deemed unacceptable coming from a narrator closer to his own persona, such as Ishmael. In an action that mirrors this subtle deception between author and reader, Fleece couches a clandestine message in his sermon to the sharks; as Robert Zoellner has noted, ⁵ many of the comments he offers to his "congregation" are in fact aimed at Stubb, who stands gleefully eavesdropping on the sermon he has ordered the cook to give:

"I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; so dat de briggness ob de mout is not to swallar wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into the scrouge to help demselves." (427)

Clearly, the remark concerning sharks who possess large mouths and small bellies refers to the loud yet cowardly antics of the sharklike Stubb. Yet the sailor fails to grasp the cook's censure, and answers with a remark that leads the reader to ask whether it is Stubb—not Fleece—who is now the laughingstock: "Well done, old Fleece," he replies, "that's Christianity; go on" (427).

Finally, Stubb urges the cook to complete his sermon with a benediction so that he may return to his steak. His benediction, aimed, ostensibly, at the sharks, and clandestinely, at the sharkish second mate, seems to prophesy the death of Stubb and the Pequod crew. Fleece's sermon ends with an almost direct curse upon his higher-ranking persecutor: "Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damnest row as ever you can; fill your dam' bellies 'till dey bust—and den die" (427). In a final attempt at boosting his ego at the expense of the cook, Stubb orders Fleece to bow to him as he is being dismissed. He does so, but Melville gives him the chapter's last words, as the cook sums up the underlying truth of this episode: "I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself" (430). Despite his outward gestures, such as his final bow to Stubb, Fleece's last lines finally maintain the same clandestine resistance to authority that he exhibits throughout the chapter.

— ROD PHILLIPS, Michigan State University