XXI. The World

 

Meaning: Completion, success, reward and joy.

Depiction: Older Ishmael, after the events of the book, stands on a beach. This is not the Atlantic shore that he departed at the beginning, but a tropical clime, as you can see by palms in the background.  You can tell he is more experienced; his body is more muscular,  his face slightly lined, his stance is confident, and his forearm is tattooed with a whale skeleton. He faces the ocean, but stands in the opposite direction which he stood as The Fool. It's clear he's about to go to sea again, but it's a new journey.

Text: Chapter 102: A Bower in the Arsacides, and other chapters which refer to older Ishmael.

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing—at least, what untattooed parts might remain—I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.

Comments: When I read Robin Van Glider's The Beige Moth blog that recaps and discusses Moby Dick, I realized that Ishmael is really two characters: the novice whaler who is a character in the narrative, and the older, wiser sailor who writes it. For all the tragedy in the final chapter, Moby Dick's true ending is more bittersweet. From the biographical bits buried in preceding chapters, we see that Ishmael not only survives, but thrives after his rescue. He has known great sorrow, but also experienced passionate joy and requited love. He has travelled all over the world, and delights in recounting his sea tales to new friends. He's now an old hand at whaling, but is still the lovable literary nerd who writes poetry and continues to be obsessed with everything relating to whales. In short, he is a man in full.

NEXT UP: The Minor Arcana, starting with the Ace of Wands.