At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud told the world that, above all else, human beings are internally driven to reproduce and to avoid death. In the early 1980s, French philosopher Michael Foucault expounded upon this notion, determining that the act of reproduction which yields life – sex – is actually inextricably linked to death. In the natural world, salmon battle upstream just to reproduce and die. Female praying mantises bite the heads off of their partners while mating. The sex/death relationship, then, is a natural phenomenon. Hemingway and Melville, too, insist that the two are intertwined. In both Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Melville's Moby-Dick, sex and death are juxtaposed against one another. If the act of having sex yields life, and the act of killing yields death, then it follows that in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan cannot bring himself to kill another individual because he is actively engaged in sexual relations. In Moby-Dick, the whalers are capable of killing ruthlessly because they are out at sea with no women, and consequently, not having sex. Today, 70 years after Hemingway and 160 years after Melville, the themes of sex and death are a common couple, not only in the novel, but also in television, film, music, art and more.
Sexual imagery is rife throughout For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway repeatedly alludes to a “thickness” in Robert Jordan's throat that develops when he sees or thinks of Maria (22, 23, 24, 25, 32, 67, 91). He says that it “gives him pleasure” to say that he cares for her (91). Maria becomes an object of Robert Jordan's natural, sexual affections, as Hemingway colors her with earthly and animalistic characteristics. When Robert Jordan first sees Maria, he compares her to a “colt” (25). Later, he gives her the nickname “little rabbit,” a word choice Eby calls a deliberate, if obscene, maneuver on Hemingway's part (Hemingway 69). Eby writes, “In Spanish, rabbit is conejo, also the common Spanish slang term for cono, or cunt, a fact that Robert Jordan, as a college instructor of Spanish, should certainly have known” (206). Maria is also described with earthy tones; she is “brown,” “golden,” and “tawny” (Hemingway 22, 43, 92). She is often standing near the mouth of the cave (obviously a yonic comparison), her body is described with geographic descriptions, and her sexual power makes “the earth move” (159). Because Robert Jordan knows he is likely embarking on his last days of life, pursuing Maria for sex is a natural survival technique.
The act of sex and the act of killing are almost mirror images throughout For Whom the Bell Tolls. A good place to begin is with Maria's declaration that she dies each time she and Robert Jordan make love. The “death” that Maria speaks of has come to be referred to as la petit mort, or “the little death,” and is a metaphor for orgasm. It refers to the moment when one approaches sexual climax and the mind seemingly ceases to exist. Even though Robert Jordan does not face his own death until the novel's end, he prepares for the big event by experiencing a series of “little deaths” while engaged in sexual relations with Maria.
One of the most prominent scenes where death and sex meet in For Whom the Bell Tolls takes place when Andres discusses his baiting of the bull. The violent images of the bull's death reflect the lovemaking that is simultaneously taking place between Robert Jordan and Maria:
He had held the bull's tail … pulling and twisting … the bull rocked and bucked under him … his fingers locked and his body tossed and wrenched … the ear clenched tight in his teeth … drove his knife again and again and again into the swelling, tossing bulge of the neck that was now spouting hot on his fist as he let his weight hang … and banged and banged into the neck (365).
The very next chapter opens with Robert Jordan waking up next to Maria. Hemingway intended for Andres' killing of the bull to represent the sexual activity of the main characters, further strengthening the bond between sex and death.
The theory that Robert Jordan is incapable of to blowing the bridge or killing another human being because he is actively engaged in having sex is verified by Pilar's story of Pablo's massacre of the Fascists. After Pablo had watched the “poling and striking and pushing and heaving” and murdering of men, he informed Pilar that they would have no sexual relations that night, an indication that his sexual urges had been fulfilled by killing (125). Conversely, Robert Jordan's sexual urges are satisfied, therefore he has no desire to kill. Originally, he claims to believe “only in his work,” but after he meets Maria, he can think of her only (33). When he begins to think negatively of his task to blow the bridge, he tells himself to change the subject, and, consequently, begins to think about Maria (43). Once he begins having sexual relations with her, he realizes that he is now responsible for Maria (and perhaps a child should she become pregnant). He is conflicted about his primary duty to his country and his new-found duty to protect Maria: “I cannot have a woman doing what I do. But thou art my woman now” (73). The gypsy, who tries to convince Robert Jordan to kill Pablo to better increase their success of blowing the bridge, chastises Robert Jordan for his debauched behavior:
When thou needest to kill a man and instead did what you did? You were supposed to kill one, not make one! When we have just seen the sky full of airplanes of a quantity to kill us back to our grandfathers and forward to all unborn grandsons including all cats, goats and bedbugs (79).
As Robert Jordan realizes the responsibility he is creating for himself, he becomes farther detached from his mission to blow the bridge at all costs, and to kill another human being for the sake of his own country.
Even Robert Jordan recognizes the violent energy that is expelled through his sexual activity. Maria rejects his lovemaking advances after having submitted to them twice previously. She claims their previous sexual encounters, coupled with pain from the damage done to her when she was raped, have made her too sore to engage in sexual activity so soon. Robert Jordan decides that he will “keep any oversupply of that for tomorrow,” when he is to blow the bridge (342). He knows that refraining from sexual activity tonight will increase his ability to kill tomorrow.
Despite the fact that there are no female characters in Moby-Dick, sex and death are still capable of being prominent themes. Robyn Wiegman, the author of “Melville's Geography of Gender” writes that “while women are excluded from participation in the male bond, their exclusion becomes the vehicle for the masculine to incorporate the feminine as a marker of the democratic and transformatory potential of relations among men” (749). Her article discusses the presence of feminine characteristics within Melville's masculine construction of the Pequod and its men. While it can be determined that the whalers are capable of killing because they are not actively having sex with women, sexuality is expressed homoerotically throughout Moby-Dick. Weigman identifies the homoerotic nature of Melville's text: “Melville's phallic punning and masturbatory imagery, particularly in Moby-Dick, are exploration[s] of the social potential of male homosexuality to break down the forces of aggression identified with the patriarchal structure” (Wiegman 748). His presentation of homoeroticism also compliments the pervasive death theme of the novel. Like Hemingway, Melville also insists that sex and death are related.
Crain's article, mentioned at the beginning of this essay, focuses on cannibalism and homosexuality in Moby-Dick. He claims that one man eating another's flesh is in itself a homoerotic act. Queequeg, of course, becomes an object of Crain's interest. Indeed, Ishamael and Queequeg have the most sexually questionable relationship in the novel. Shortly after meeting and sharing a room (and bed) together, Ishamel wakes to find “Queequeg's arm thrown over [him] in the most loving and affectionate manner” (Melville 33). He becomes fond of cuddling up to the cannibal:
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg – a cosy, loving pair (54).
Although there are no women in Moby-Dick, the sex/death connection is established early on in the novel by Queequeg, the “queer” cannibal.
Crain also claims that “maritime life … provokes the question of homosexuality and power. Sailors surrender their affection and control to their captain. Their bodies are his to use” (40). While Captain Ahab does not attempt to engage in sexual relations with any of his crew, he does attempt to make more masculine men out of those who present homosexual characteristics. For example, Ishmael becomes confused when he wakes up at the helm of the ship to find himself turned around:
Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I soon on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildering feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted (Melville 341).
Crain explains that in the nineteenth century, the word “inverted” referred to the modern-day equivalent of the word “homosexual,” used to describe one who takes on characteristics of the opposite sex (40). Crain argues that the word was used deliberately, to indicate homosexuality, because later, Ahab tries to “prove to his men that he has the power to make 'inverted' compasses point true again” (Crain 40). Ahab gives “inverted” men the opportunity to reclaim their masculinity, by utilizing their sexuality through the ruthless killing of sperm whales.
The very act of harpooning is reflective of motions associated with masturbation and sexual penetration. No clearer reference is made to the act of killing as sexual activity in the novel than when Stubb kills his first whale on the Pequod. Stubb “slowly churns his long sharp lance into the fish” while the whale expires in a orgasm-like death flurry. Humorously, both Stubb and the whale are described as smoking pipes – Stubb's is tobacco, and the whale's is its “vapoury jet.” When the whale finally dies, Stubbs proudly proclaims, “Both pipes smoked out!” (Melville 236) Here, Stubbs' killing of the whale is depicted as a sexual activity, the whale his partner. Melville adds humor to the scene by allowing the couple to complete their sex/death ritual with a smoke.
Perhaps the most homoerotic scene in Moby-Dick occurs when Tashtego falls into the Great Heidelburgh Tun, a cistern holding the “precious” spermacetti for which the sperm whale was hunted. When Tashtego prepares to harvest the spermacetti, he mounts the tun with “erect posture,” “like a treasure-hunter” seeking the spermacetti, which was “all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk.” As Tashtego comes closer to harvesting all of the spermacetti, he “has to ram his long pole harder and harder, deeper and deeper into the Tun.” When he accidentally slips and falls into the vat, Ishmael calls it a “queer accident,” and later, a “queer adventure” (279). Certainly Melville used the word to indicate both the strangeness and the homoerotic nature of the incident. The death of Tashtego is also suggested during this event: “... had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermacetti” (Melville 280). Once again, Melville links sex to death as further indication of their inextricability.
Sex and death are important themes in For Whom the Bell Tolls and Moby-Dick. Both Hemingway and Melville infer that the two are unavoidable consequences of life. Hemingway proves that Robert Jordan's sexual and violent tendencies are completely natural by tying his desires to Maria, who is symbolic of the earth and its animals. Melville exhibits that, even in the absence of women, men must express their sexual urges in one form or another. For the whalers, their sexual desires are expressed homoerotically and by the relentless killing of whales. The act of having sex yields life, and the act of killing yields death, but the characters in these novels cannot engage in one without sacrificing the other. Both authors indicate that sex and death are natural, and more importantly, that they are undeniably tied to one another.
Works Cited
Crain, Caleb. “Lovers of Human Flesh: Homosexuality and Cannibalism in Melville's Novels.” American Literature 66.1 (1994): 25-53. Print.
Eby, Carl. “Rabbit Stew and Blowing Dorothy's Bridges: Love, Aggression, and Fetishism in For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Twentieth Century Literature 44.2 (1998): 204-219. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Scribner, 1940. Print.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Dover, 2003. Print.
Wiegman, Robyn. “Melville's Geography of Gender.” American Literary History 1.4 (1989): 735-753. Print.
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