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Loss without Remedy: Moby-Dick and the Laws of Compensation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2023

Geoffrey R. Kirsch Open the ORCID record for Geoffrey R. Kirsch [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Reading Moby-Dick alongside the groundbreaking tort and accident jurisprudence of Melville's father-in-law, Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, reveals that the white whale's attack on Captain Ahab involves the same questions of risk, responsibility, and redress posed by nineteenth-century industrial accidents. More specifically, Ahab embodies the recrudescence of an earlier, revenge-based conception of justice that emerges in reaction to the pro-business jurisprudence of Shaw, in which industry was increasingly shielded from liability to its victims in cases of “pure accident”—precisely the possibility Ahab is fatally unable to accept. As narrator, Ishmael in turn augurs the rise of a new legal order that disavows the focus on blame and responsibility altogether.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 138 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 37 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

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