Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling (and i'm not being flippant)
Hell is brought upon earth in a blast of light and fury—the first explosion of a nuclear weapon. It’s not quick. It expands with a malicious languidness, bringing to earth a uniquely personified malady.
This isn't the violence of nature: prey dead on the ground, a city flattened by an earthquake. This is the evil that men do.
At least, that’s the way evil is depicted in the Twin Peaks episode “Gotta Light?”. Well, maybe—it’s an odd episode, to say the least. Twin Peaks is keenly interested in the evil men (that is, mankind) perform. It personifies Evil as a man named Bob, who was born in that very explosion, goes on to possess humans, and pushes them to commit horrible crimes and elicit suffering. Despite being possessed, the humans are in no way blameless in these crimes. After all, we created this monster. Perhaps he’s been here all along.
David Lynch isn’t trying to tell us that the evil of men only began on July 16, 1945, on a rocky desert in New Mexico. Rather, this image brings into view something eerily banal in the absolute catastrophe of human evil—something we seem to have been doing to ourselves for a very long time. After all, there is something very, very strange and old in these woods.
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Illustration by Chiara Baker
“Scully, do you think you could ever cannibalize someone? I mean—if you really had to.”
They’ve only been stranded for a few hours, so Mulder is, obviously, asking the pertinent questions. However, with no food or rescue in sight, his joke teeters on a dangerous, if not unfathomable, edge.
There is further irony in that Scully’s dog, Queequeg (named after the “Moby Dick” character and one of literature’s most iconic cannibals, probably second only to Mr. Lecter himself), was just devoured by an unknown monster only a few scenes earlier. Cannibalized? Unlikely, but the poor dog was eaten whole.
The scientist she is, Scully answers pragmatically, “Well, as much as the very idea is abhorrent to me, I suppose under certain conditions a living entity is practically conditioned to perform whatever extreme measures are necessary to ensure its survival. I suppose I’m no different.”
She’s right. A few moments later in the scene, Scully interrupts Mulder’s philosophizing to grieve for her dog: “Poor Queequeg,” she laments. Right again—poor Queequeg.
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When Ishmael first lays eyes on Queequeg, he reacts as many of us would when faced with absolute unfamiliarity. Not only is Ishmael a good, God-fearing Christian boy and Queequeg a pagan; Queequeg is also a cannibal. Ishmael is initially afraid of him, particularly because the two will be sharing a bed. When he finally meets Queequeg, Ishmael’s fears are not dampened by the man’s appearance: Queequeg’s entire face and body are covered in tattoos. To make things worse, Queequeg speaks very little English, and when he does, it’s in fragmented sentences. Yet, the two only mutter a few sentences to each other before Ishmael becomes quickly drawn to Queequeg’s comeliness and gentle nature. “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal,” Ishmael thinks, “Than a drunken Christian.”
After spending just one night together, Ishmael awakes with Queequeg’s arm thrown around him in what he describes as “the most loving and affectionate manner.” Despite their vast differences, the two develop an incredibly intimate relationship (that, by today’s standards, could likely be read as romantic). Ishmael cares for Queequeg deeply; he admires his character and demeanor. Queequeg is from the fictional island of Kokovoko, located in the South Pacific Ocean, very distant from Ishmael’s world. Ishmael not only accepts their cultural differences—an admirable trait in a 19th-century man that by today’s standards should classify as the bare minimum—but also shows a deep interest in Queequeg’s past. The two treat each other with respect, specifically regarding their spiritual differences—except for one specific moment.
The two continue to share a room and bed as they make their way to Nantucket. At one point, Queequeg practices a long period of silence and fasting as part of his religion (the details of which aren’t shared with the reader). At first, Ishmael is unconcerned by this and gives his friend space. Later that evening, when Ishmael is unable to access their quarters, he fears that Queequeg—who is locked in the room and not answering Ishmael’s calls—has suffered apoplexy and died. He panics and attempts to open the door through any means necessary, eventually bursting it open with his body weight. He finds Queequeg as he left him: silently focused and praying. Ishmael is terrified. He is worried that Queequeg’s practice will harm his friend. “For Heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and have some supper. You’ll starve, you’ll kill yourself,” Ishmael begs, but Queequeg remains in prayer. Of course, this arises from Ishmael’s ignorance of Queequeg’s practice, but also from a deep worry and love for the man who is now effectively his partner (their official title now being bosom friends). When Queequeg finally finishes his fast and joins Ishmael in bed, Ishmael goes into a long rant on why Queequeg’s practices make no sense to him and simply present a danger to his person. He finishes by telling Queequeg decisively:
“Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.”
What Ishmael is trying to get at here is that humans have a knack for turning the mundane into the sensational. That whatever hell and punishment might be described in our religions, much like prejudices the two men once held about each other and the fear Ishmael felt when meeting Queequeg, have their origins in the human mind. Of course, Ishmael fails to actively apply this to his own belief system, but the reader can see it clearly. All of our deepest fears, the evil that surrounds us, the horrors we dread: we are their creators.
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“Why did you name your dog Queequeg?” Mulder asks Scully.
“It was the name of the harpoonist in Moby-Dick.”
Scully explains to Mulder that her father used to read the novel to her as a little girl. She called her father Ahab; he called her Starbuck. Logically, she would name her dog Queequeg.
“It’s funny—I just realized something,” she says.
“It’s a bizarre name for a dog, huh?” Mulder jokes.
“No. How much you’re like Ahab.”
She elaborates further and says, “You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or mysteries; everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmology.”
Mulder has, at this point, basically been driven to insanity in his search for proof of a government cover-up of extraterrestrial life, or, as he likes to put it, “The Truth.” He threw away a promising career, lost the respect of his peers, and was labeled a madman by practically all who know him. Scully compares Mulder’s hunt for extraterrestrials to Ahab’s hunt for the white whale: both obsessions put at risk everyone around them and are impossible to truly capture.
“You know, it’s interesting you should say that because I’ve always wanted a peg leg.”
Mulder avoids Scully’s eerily accurate reading of his character in a statement he defends as “not being flippant.” He explains that if he did have a peg leg or hooks for hands, it would be enough for him to simply carry on living: “It’s heroic just to survive.” Without such ailments, one is expected to find success, to make something of themselves. He implies that if he, like Ahab, had a peg leg, he wouldn’t feel the need to uncover the mystery that is currently his life’s only purpose and obsession. Unlike Ahab, he could be content just living.
“And that’s not flippant?” Scully asks.
“No. Flippant is my favorite line from Moby-Dick: ‘Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.’”
What Mulder has just unconsciously admitted is the truth that makes him and Ahab such tragic heroes. Both Ahab and Mulder suffered great losses at the hands of the objects of their obsession: Ahab his leg, Mulder his sister. But both men don’t go on their hunts with the intention of getting what they lost back—both very aware that that is long gone. No, they are consumed by their need for vengeance. They go on these quests because they are unable to accept reality and drive themselves to madness in their infatuation, no matter what it costs them or those around them. Mulder’s refusal to acknowledge his similarity to Ahab even though it is spelled out right in front of him further highlights his unwillingness to face reality and illustrates his deluded state. Ironically, Mulder is able to quote Ishmael’s statement on how men create their own hell, but by labeling it as flippant, he is purposely blind to how his own manic quest has resulted in most of his life’s miseries.
Unlike heroes of old, this quest is not given to Mulder or Ahab by some god or deemed upon them by fate—they did this to themselves.
After Mulder quotes Ishmael, Scully hears a noise. Still stranded, they attempt to shoot at it, fearing that what they are facing is the monster they have been searching for during this episode. The monster reveals itself to be a man wading through the water. The deep ocean Scully and Mulder feared turns out to be just a shallow part of the lake. All of these hours, the two have only been a few feet from the old woods that stand on the shore.
Illustration by Chiara Baker
So we realize that Mulder and Scully were never truly stranded. In all their flippant remarks and sarcastic comments, they never dared to fully acknowledge the danger surrounding them, nor did they realize that every perceived threat was of their own making.
If hell exists, it’s not a distant fiery realm, nor is it an unknown monster. The root of human suffering can almost always be traced back to humans, and sometimes, our own selves. It begins, as Ishmael humorously put it and Twin Peaks darkly illustrates it, in the most banal of human actions. Like Mulder and Ahab, we make our own hell. This is the evil that men do.