• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Effie Caldarola
          • John Garvey
          • Father Ed Dougherty, M.M.
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
  • CR Radio
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe

‘Moby-Dick’ and the online search for identity

August 24, 2020
By Brett Robinson
Catholic News Service
Filed Under: Commentary, Guest Commentary, Uncategorized

Back in June 2013 an intrepid social media user set up a Twitter account to post lines from Herman Melville’s novel, “Moby-Dick.” Individual lines, one at a time, for seven years now. The lines are posted in no particular order and they are sometimes accompanied by an illustration or a photograph.

How many followers do you suppose the Moby-Dick Twitter account would attract? 1,000? 10,000? The answer is nearly 70,000 as of this writing.

This says something about our relationship to literature in the digital age, and our relationship to stories in general. The fear for years now has been that the internet is suffocating our ability to read books, especially long ones like “Moby-Dick.” Who has the attention span to read a 500-page novel?

The sound bite style of posting little bits of prose from such a gorgeous novel surely diminishes the story’s impact on the reader. And yet the hunger for great stories remains. What has changed is how we tell the story and how we see ourselves in it.

The same can be said of Scripture in the digital age. Social media are full of partial psalms and snippets of the Gospel. Is that a bad thing? Hasn’t the church always been able to adapt to the new medium of the age to share the Gospel in new ways? Of course it has.

But as St. John Paul II said in “Redemptoris Missio,” it is not the content of a culture that defines its newness, it is the “new techniques” and “new psychology” that arise as a result of new technologies. In other words, the content of the Gospel is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, but the culture in which it gets expressed is always changing.

St. Paul VI said the tragedy of our time is the “split between the Gospel and culture.”

Healing the split between the Gospel and culture today starts with understanding man’s desire to spend so much time sailing (or surfing) the seemingly infinite abyss of the internet.

Like Ishmael, the famous protagonist in Melville’s novel, the digital sea seems to provide an escape from the “damp, drizzly November in (the) soul.” We seek information and relationships for hours a day and never seem to find exactly what we are looking for. Despite its apparent bottomlessness, at the end of the day, the internet makes us feel as though we’ve come up short.

A million comments and tweets appear every second seeking attention, a kindred spirit, a witness. Each communique from the keyboard of users worldwide is one more shout into the abyss waiting for an echo of acknowledgment. Psychologically speaking, the internet has become more than a tool for gathering information and connecting to other people; it has become an arena for working out one’s identity. One comment, one tweet, one photograph, one line at a time.

“Call me Ishmael,” the immortal first line of Melville’s novel tells you all you need to know. The explorer, like the sailor on the high seas of digital culture, needs to be known. To the extent that the need to be known is not being satisfied at home, at school or in the parish, the propensity to dive ever deeper into digital culture’s seductive depths is heightened.

Answering the existential question “who am I?” by merely associating with like-minded people online is too insular. We have to look outward, nay upward, for the one who answers our call, who knows our story, line by line, from beginning to end.

Copyright © 2020 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Print Print

Primary Sidebar

Brett Robinson

Robinson is director of communications and Catholic media studies at the University of Notre Dame McGrath Institute for Church Life. He writes for Catholic News Service.

View all posts from this author

| Recent Commentary |

An invitation from God

‘Annunciation’: Salvation and the words of the air

Fully entering into the Triduum

Question Corner: Jesus became man so I could become God?

The mental health crisis crosses all boundaries and ages

| Recent Local News |

Catholic Charities’ William J. McCarthy Jr. named Loyola’s Business Leader of the Year

Sister Joan Cooper, O.S.F., dies at 94

Pathfinders: Five Archdiocese of Baltimore women who made history

Sister Elizabeth Ellen Kane, O.S.F., dies at 81

RADIO INTERVIEW: Dining with the Saints

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • An invitation from God
  • Vatican envoy warns UN General Assembly racism mutating and ‘reemerging’ globally
  • ‘We all need to do more’: House hearing demands action over Nicaragua regime’s anti-Catholic persecution
  • Notre Dame Cathedral reopening date announced as reconstruction on its famous spire wraps up in eastern France
  • AI and the meaning of life: Tech industry turns to religious leaders
  • Movie Review: ‘John Wick: Chapter 4, a festival of fatality’
  • Pope calls European bishops to be prophetic voices for peace
  • En la frontera de México y EE.UU., defensores de migrantes que buscan asilo hacen un llamado a la acción
  • At U.S.-Mexico border, migrants’ advocates call for action on U.S. asylum policy

Search

Membership

Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2023 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED