The essay ends with a directive:
In The Whale, an essay that reveals such a glimmer is the one Charlies asks to be read to him. It has been written years before by his daughter. I wish I could quote it but here’s the gist as I recall it from the fil.
In the first few minutes of the film, “The Whale,” we get to know that Charlie is fully aware of his miserable existence, and that is why he doesn’t like people seeing him in person. Charlie taught online writing courses at a university, and he never opened his camera and always told his students that there was some issue with his laptop. It is at this point that you realize Charlie has some serious, unresolved issues that are eating him up from within. Charlie had a compulsive eating disorder, and things had gotten so bad that he was told he could die any moment from congestive heart failure. The imagery of him eating compulsively, his difficulty in dealing with his disorder, his panic attacks, him profusely sweating, groaning and writhing in pain, is created in a manner that makes you feel uncomfortable and grotesque at the same time.
When we first saw him on camera, he was watching an adult film, and a missionary named Thomas walked in upon him. It felt like Charlie was about to die because he was suddenly experiencing a lot of pain in his chest, and Thomas began panicking upon seeing him because he didn’t know what to do. It was a very chaotic situation where Thomas got scandalized by seeing that he was watching explicit content, which for him was probably a sin, and then he didn’t know what to do because Charlie told him not to call an ambulance. Thomas found it absurd when he asked him to read an essay that some student had written analyzing the novel by Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.
*Spoiler warning for the end of The Whale**
Charlie is enamored with the essay because he recognizes it for what it is—which is to say, a reader using a work of literature to process the deepest issues in her life. In this instance, his daughter, through Ahab, feels angry at the whale (Charlie) for (in her case) abandoning her as a little girl. But at the deep level that literature can take us to, she realizes that getting revenge on her father will not bring her happiness—that, in fact, her father is no more malevolent than the whale. Indeed, all her acting out in school is a way of evading her deep sadness about feeling alone. The novel has provided her with a way to frame her hurt feelings and find a positive way forward. Rather than continuing to blame Charlie and remaining trapped in victimhood, she can acknowledge her loneliness and search for positive ways to move forward.
I finally learned, after that year of introspection in Slovenia, that I needed to listen carefully to whatever my students were saying about literature—and to take their insights, which were sometimes no more than glimmers—and help them develop them. It’s labor-intensive work, involving paying close attention to their brainstorming, their proposals, their rough drafts, their final drafts, and their revisions. Throughout I would tell them that there had to be something at stake in their essays, and when I saw what I called an “energy point” in their writing, I would point it out to them and encourage them to develop it.
We see a similar thing with Charlie and Ellie. Charlie spent years hiding from Ellie because he didn’t want to be honest with her about what he looked like now. And he didn’t want to have the inevitable confrontation about his leaving with Alan. But knowing he only had such a short time left to live, he made the effort, finally. And, yes, Ellie was mean, cruel, petty, and in some ways evil. But she was also there. And simply being there gave father and daughter an opportunity to heal. If only he had done this years earlier, what would have happened? Would Ellie be the angry person she is? The “evil” person Mary describes? And would Charlie still be so large? Would he have had the capacity to forgive himself for what happened to Alan? Would he be in a much better place?
Charlie couldn’t walk or move properly, and he mostly stayed on the couch. His days were mundane, and apart from reading the essays of his students, he didn’t have any exciting activities to look forward to. What gave him the utmost gratification was a piece of writing that was blunt and honest. He always told his students that instead of being objective, they should be honest. As a teacher, he employed unorthodox methods, and he didn’t mind even if they blatantly criticized the classics. He was open to different perspectives and opinions, and he made his students believe that what they thought didn’t need to resonate with the rest of the world.
The Whale Ending Explained: Step Into The Light
But, after all, the war of 1914-18 was only a heightened moment in an almost continuous crisis. At this date it hardly even needs a war to bring home to us the disintegration of our society and the increasing helplessness of all, decent people. It is for this reason that I think that the passive, non-co-operative attitude implied in Henry Miller's work is justified. Whether or not it is an expression of what people to feel, it probably comes somewhere near to expressing what they feel. Once again it is the human voice among the bomb-explosions, a friendly American voice, ‘innocent of public-spiritedness’. No sermons, merely the subjective truth. And along those lines, apparently, it is still possible for a good novel to be written. Not necessarily an edifying novel, but a novel worth reading and likely to be remembered after it is read.
The Whale ending explained as Brendan Fraser breaks down film
In there is one of those revealing passages in which a writer tells you a great deal about himself while talking about somebody else. The book includes a long essay on the diaries of Anais Nin, which I have never read, except for a few fragments, and which I believe have not been published. Miller claims that they are the only true feminine writing that has ever appeared, whatever that may mean. But the interesting passage is one in which he compares Anais Nin — evidently a completely subjective, introverted writer — to Jonah in the whale's belly. In passing he refers to an essay that Aldous Huxley wrote some years ago about El Greco's picture, . Huxley remarks that the people in El Greco's pictures always look as though they were in the bellies of whales, and professes to find something peculiarly horrible in the idea of being in a ‘visceral prison’. Miller retorts that, on the contrary, there are many worse things than being swallowed by whales, and the passage makes it dear that he himself finds the idea rather attractive. Here he is touching upon what is probably a very widespread fantasy. It is perhaps worth noticing that everyone, at least every English-speaking person, invariably speaks of Jonah and the . Of course the creature that swallowed Jonah was a fish, and was so described in the Bible (Jonah i. 17), but children naturally confuse it with a whale, and this fragment of baby-talk is habitually carried into later life — a sign, perhaps, of the hold that the Jonah myth has upon our imaginations. For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale's belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter happens. A storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echo. Even the whale's own movements would probably be imperceptible to you. He might be wallowing among the surface waves or shooting down into the blackness of the middle seas (a mile deep, according to Herman Melville), but you would never notice the difference. Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility. And however it may be with Anais Nin, there is no question that Miller himself is inside the whale. All his best and most characteristic passages are written from the angle of Jonah, a willing Jonah. Not that he is especially introverted — quite the contrary. In his case the whale happens to be transparent. Only he feels no impulse to alter or control the process that he is undergoing. He has performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, .
The Whale ending explained by the plays writer, actors, directors
I first met Miller at the end of 1936, when I was passing trrough Paris on my way to Spain. What most intrigued me about him was to find that he felt no interest in the Spanish war whatever. He merely told me in forcible terms that to go to Spain at that moment was the act of an idiot. He could understand anyone going there from purely selfish motives, out of curiosity, for instance, but to mix oneself up in such things was sheer stupidity. In any case my Ideas about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney. Our civilization was destined to be swept away and replaced by something so different that we should scarcely regard it as human — a prospect that did not bother him, he said. And some such outlook is implicit throughout his work. Everywhere there is the sense of the approaching cataclysm, and almost everywhere the implied belief that it doesn't matter. The only political declaration which, so far as I know, he has ever made in print is a purely negative one. A year or so ago an American magazine, the , sent out a questionnaire to various American writers asking them to define their attitude on the subject of war. Miller replied in terms of extreme pacifism, an individual refusal to fight, with no apparent wish to convert others to the same opinion — practically, in fact, a declaration of irresponsibility.