Herman Melville spent many hours beavering away at Orientalist claptrap in the Freudian classic Moby Dick. Fedallah, the hair-turbaned, Mandarin-jacketed Parsi harpoonist, is interpreted by many as a devil figure. I should’ve paid more attention in high school English.

Fedallah - A strange, “oriental” old Parsee (Persian fire-worshipper) whom Ahab has brought on board unbeknownst to most of the crew. Fedallah has a very striking appearance: around his head is a turban made from his own hair, and he wears a black Chinese jacket and pants. He is an almost supernaturally skilled hunter and also serves as a prophet to Ahab. Fedallah keeps his distance from the rest of the crew, who for their part view him with unease. [Link]

Here’s an excerpt about the hunter who never slept:

… even as Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go below. [Link]

He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent –those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; when though, according to genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours. [Link]

Many a denim-shirted English major draws a link to Beelzebub:

And so, in the character of Captain Ahab, we have the American Faust; a Nantucket Quaker whaleman who appears to have sold his soul to the devil [represented by the non-Christian Fedallah] in return for revenge on Moby Dick. [Link]

Fedallah is so sinister that the rest of the crew speculate that he is the devil himself, come to take Ahab’s soul. [Link]

Another interpretation is that Fedallah represents Ahab’s own madness:

… Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee’s shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab’s…

… these two never seemed to speak - one man to the other - unless at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary… At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance. [Link]

Ahab’s misinterpretation of the prophecy of his death…

Fedallah make three prophecies regarding Ahab’s demise: He will have neither coffin nor hearse, but he will see two hearses on the water, one not made by mortal hands and of wood grown in America, before he dies; Fedallah, ever his pilot, will go before him; and finally, only hemp may kill him. Ahab grossly misinterprets these predictions… [Link]

Issuing a prophecy about Ahab’s death, Fedallah declares that Ahab will first see two hearses, the second of which will be made only from American wood, and that he will be killed by hemp rope. Ahab interprets these words to mean that he will not die at sea, where there are no hearses and no hangings…

The whale is harpooned, but Moby Dick again attacks Ahab’s boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death… The men can see Fedallah’s corpse lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. [Link]

… reminds me of the Narasimha myth:

Hiranyakashipu asked for the following: That he would not die on earth or in space, nor in fire or water, neither during the day or at night, neither inside a building nor outside, not by a weapon of holding (i.e a sword) or throwing (i.e an arrow), nor by anyone created by Brahma. Thus being granted this boon, Hiranyakashipu then believed himself to be immortal… [Link]

The Cliff’s Notes interpretation will get you no more than half credit on your essay

The leader of the “five dusky phantoms,” whom Ahab has secretly brought aboard to serve as his private boat crew, is the mysterious Fedallah, who serves as the captain’s harpooner. An ancient Asian, he is reported to be a Parsee–a member of a religious sect descended from the Persians and devoted to the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster in the sixth century B.C., contrasting the spirits of light or good (Ormazd) with the spirits of darkness or evil (Ahriman).

Here, the significance is that Fedallah is a man of mystery, a non-Christian who seems to be Ahab’s guide or guru. Some critics suggest that, because Fedallah is a Parsee and supposedly devoted to good, he is a double agent, an assassin sent by God to eliminate Ahab. (If one considers that the Parsees were “devoted to “doing God’s work” as opposed to “devoted to good,” it is possible that Fedallah is doing both. Given Ahab’s perspective of God and the universe, this interpretation of Fedallah and his role is valid.)

Through his actions, though, Ahab’s guide seems more demonic–perhaps a Parsee who shares Ahab’s madness and perceives the same evil that the captain sees. [Link]

The ‘56 movie eliminated the Fedallah character, while a ‘98 TV version cast Singaporean actor Kee Chan as the infamous hunter.

Related post: Parsi wedding