Father Mapple
| Father Mapple | |
|---|---|
| Moby-Dick character | |
| Created by | Herman Melville |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Minister |
| Nationality | American |
Father Mapple is a fictional character in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851). A former whaler, he has become a preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman's Chapel. Ishmael, the narrator of the novel, hears Mapple's sermon on the subject of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale but did not turn against God.
The sermon presents themes which concerned Melville and run through the rest of the novel. Father Mapple believes, as Captain Ahab does, that truth is clear to see, and that human beings must pursue it in spite of all obstacles. Ishmael, on the other hand, finds that truth has many forms and is difficult to see or understand.
Enoch Mudge, a Methodist minister who was the chaplain of the New Bedford Seamen's Bethel, and Father E.T. Taylor, pastor of the Seamen's Bethel in New Bedford and another Methodist, served as models for Father Mapple. Before his own whaling voyage, Melville heard Mudge preach at the Seamen's Bethel. Mudge was a contributor to Sailor's Magazine, which in December 1840 printed a series of sermons on Jonah. Father Taylor was a well-known preacher whose admirers included Emerson and Whitman. Both Taylor and Mapple fused Biblical imagery and colloquial language to deliver "anecdotal sermons to rough sailor congregations while perched theatrically on an elevated pulpit decorated with ship gear and backed by a wall painting of a seascape." The rope ladder is Melville's own amplification.
As David S. Reynolds explains, Melville was keenly aware of the popular literature and oratory of his time. Father Mapple's sermon is inspired by the more imaginative style of sermon that was becoming very popular in the United States. In addition, Reynolds argues, that Father Mapple would choose Jonah for a topic is in keeping with a 19th-century tradition of retellings of the biblical account in sermon form; Reynolds cites examples from as early as 1829. Such sermons employed nautical metaphors and colloquialisms, "producing a mixture of the imaginative and the sacred that directly anticipated Father Mapple's salty sermon".
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