The Passive Supplicant

F.O. Matthiessen compares Pip’s character in Moby-Dick to William Shakespeare’s fool in King Lear, where even “the exalted words of a lunatic could penetrate to heavenly mysteries” (428). There is a sense that the most profound truths have to be said outside of social conventions and propriety; the speaking of truths requires the unassuming fool, unconstrained by society, to unveil divine knowledge in a time of crisis.