Moby-Dick is generally regarded as its author's masterpiece and one of the greatest American novels. The basic plot of Moby-Dick is simple. The narrator (who asks to be called "Ishmael") tells of the last voyage of the ship Pequod out of New Bedford, Mass. Captain Ahab is obsessed with the pursuit of the white whale Moby-Dick, which finally kills him. On that level, the work is an intense, superbly authentic narrative. Its theme and central figure, however, are reminiscent of Job in his search for justice and of Oedipus in his search for truth. The novel's richly symbolic language and tragic hero are indicative of Melville's deeper concerns: the equivocal defeats and triumphs of the human spirit and its fusion of creative and murderous urges.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (1 of 39), Read 58 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Ann Davey davey@tconl.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 12:29 PM
It's time for the official discussion of Moby Dick. Let the
games begin.
Ann
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (2 of 39), Read 51 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Slongwhite bookworm@greeneland.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 01:14 PM
I'm just about half way through this book. I should be
through it in about 3 days or so.
I am one of the people who nominated this book because
a teacher I had a few years ago said this was one of the
funniest books she had read. Halfway through, I definitely
can't see her point.
I thought I had read this book before, but now that I'm
this far into it, I suspect I never made it past the first
chapter. If I wasn't reading it with everyone here, I
probably wouldn't have made it as far as I have. I keep
losing the narrative thread, and being surprised when
suddenly we are reading about the Pequod. It seems like
more of a natural history of the whales and whaling. If I
hadn't already read two books about that in preparation
for reading this book, I think I would be a little lost even
in those sections.
But I'm still slogging through it and I will finish it (I have to
keep telling myself that I WILL finish this book)!
Karen
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (3 of 39), Read 55 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 01:28 PM
Wow, I am intrigued by your teachers comment about this
being a funny book. I am not sure I remember ever
hearing anyone saying this...I like the idea.
I am not very far into this. I read it,oooh a long time ago.
fifteen years ago maybe...and I am very surprised how
'easy' I am finding this re-read. I mean relatively, my
feelings of my previous read was I loved it, but found it
very hard work. I think maybe this time is 'easier' because
I am a more patience older reader, but I don't know. I
guess I should wait until I get a little farther along, ha ha.
I am really loving it though.
(I am trying to think of novels that have the kind of
examination of good and evil and power and madness
and nature among females...I would say Wings of the
Dove except that is set in a social world as opposed to
natural world...)
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (4 of 39), Read 55 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dale Short dshort@bham.rr.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 02:16 PM
I'm still plowing ahead as well. Like Candy, I'm finding this
attempt a lot less daunting than earlier (and in my case,
all unsuccessful) reads. Maybe it's because I'm trying to
go on pure faith and not worry about connections yet, as
CRs taught me to do where Faulkner is concerned.
Karen: I thought the first night at the Inn, where Ishmael
meets Queequeg, was a delight and a major hoot. I sure
can't say that I see humor as an ongoing thread, though.
Makes me wonder what kinds of things your teacher
thought were funny in the real world.{G}
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (6 of 39), Read 50 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Slongwhite bookworm@greeneland.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 03:22 PM
I definitely agree with the meeting in the Inn being
majorly funny. English was her second language (I believe
Polish was her first), so perhaps she saw things in the
language that we just don't see. I haven't gotten to some
of the things she thought were so funny, many of which
had to do with a subject Steve emphatically does not
want to discuss in relationship to this book :-)
Karen
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (5 of 39), Read 53 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 02:20 PM
Here are a few scenes which I think are funny:
- Ishmael first meets Queequeg;
- Ishmael is back on board the Pequod after his whale
boat is swamped;
- Queequeg is offered ginger tea, complements of Aunt
Charity, instead rhum;
- the discussion about what the captain of the Jungfrau
has in his hand.
I find it interesting that Ishamel calls "valiant" other
whaling ship captains who set out to hunt specific whales
yet he calls Ahab "monomaniacal." The only distinction I
can see between the two cases is that the other captains
hadn't jeopadized Ishmael's life in their pursuit whereas
Ahab had.
I have always been curious about the name Moby Dick
and this site tells a bit about its origin:
http://www.melville.org/mobyname.htm
Besides Moby Dick, there are several other white things
mentioned in the novel, the blankness of Ahab's soul, the
white squid, the dead flayed whale. Perhaps not relevant,
but it occurred to me that the white page can be a
frightening thing for a writer.
On a technical note, Ishmael tells us that that the bottom
of the whale-boat is 0.5" thick and will not bear much of a
concentrated weight so it was rather imprudent of Ahab
to get into one with his peg leg.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (7 of 39), Read 52 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 05:03 PM
The night sleep in the Inn was so funny.
Um just a little note, I like how Ishmael says that there is
a difference between being paid to go on a voyage than
paying to go ona voyage. Ishmael believes the way to go
ona voyage is to be paid, and he looks down on
tourists/professional travellers.Then Father Mapple taks
about how Jonah paid to go his voyage to get away from
god and he was a god-fugitive.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (8 of 39), Read 51 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Monday, April 01, 2002 10:14 PM
Am I right that, since we have two months with Moby Dick,
we'll be talking about it in May too? I'm only on page 400
and was hoping we had until May 1st (-: However,
sometimes it's nice to talk about it while you're reading
too. Ann and I did that one whole summer with War and
Peace.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (9 of 39), Read 54 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 12:11 AM
"It seems like more of a natural history of the whales and
whaling."
Perhaps it's no more about whales and whaling than Huck
Finn is about taking a raft trip down the Mississippi.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (10 of 39), Read 47 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 10:32 AM
In the chapter "The Mast-Head" there are poetic
passages that remind me of Edmund's tales of the sea in
Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. I
quoted this O'Neill passage before on CR but here is a
portion of it again along with several excerpts from MOBY
DICK.
From MOBY DICK:
"In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly
pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative
man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet
above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the
masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and
between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters
of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots
of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand,
lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled
but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the
drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into
languor."
"For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for
many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young
men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and
seeking sentiment in tar and blubber."
"'Why, thou monkey,' said a harpooneer to one of these
lads, 'we've been cruising now hard upon three years,
and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce
as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here.' Perhaps they
were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them
in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like
listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this
absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves
with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the
mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep,
blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature;
and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that
eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some
undiscernable form, seems to him the embodiment of
those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by
continually flitting though it."
From LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT; Edmund:
"When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for
Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker
driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing
astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the
masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering
high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and
singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost
myself-actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved into
the sea, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight
and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged,
without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild
joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life
of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that
way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I
was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm
sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow
drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none
of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke
pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me.
Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above,
and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream
over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the
moment of ecstatic freedom came. The peace, the end of
quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment
beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and
dreams!"
Robt
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (11 of 39), Read 47 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dale Short dshort@bham.rr.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 10:39 AM
Robt: Gosh, but that's some beautiful writing. Makes even
a land-bound soul like myself want to go to sea. If only I
(a) could swim, and (b) didn't have the worst imaginable
vulnerability to motion sickness.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (12 of 39), Read 45 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 11:28 AM
I'm telling you, I have already bought some boat
magazines and am mapping my trip along the east coast.
I want whales and seals and shrimp under my pillow. I'm
trying to figure out what I can do to get paid to be ona
boat. i've already confessed I'm not that great of a cook,
so that's out. But I can do a mean swab of the decks. My
mum trained me well. I just don't want to break a nail.
There is so much about whales, I can see this as a whale
history lesson for sure Martin, but you are also right that
it has so much more to do with men and their ideas and
attitudes to whales and the ocean...and er ah each
other...
Robert, you monkey, great quotes, avast avast keep em
coming!
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (13 of 39), Read 44 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Anne Wilfong anne.wilfong@gte.net
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 12:56 PM
Hey, all,
I'm not reading the book but I'm listening in on parts of
the discussion here. Has anyone mentioned that
Discovery channel will be airing a special on Moby Dick?
It's on Sunday night, 9 p.m. Eastern. Looks good, from
the commercial.
Anne
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (14 of 39), Read 44 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 01:06 PM
Did you know the recording artist Moby is the great-great
nephew of Herman Melville?
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (17 of 39), Read 47 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 01:29 PM
The quoted material by Robert definitely expresses the
feelings that can sweep over you while at sea. On the
other hand an overly developed aesthetic sense is not
the best friend a seaman can have and if one should
surface, a friendly bos'n will usually be available to bring
you back to earth (this example is only loosely translated
from the original Bos'n Speak):
"Get yer head outta yer ass, Haggart, fer crissakes 'fore I
have to pick that block out from 'tween your goddamn
eyes. Jesus 'n Mary, lad, pay some fookin' attention when
yer on my deck, 'cause this ain't the friggin'
mother-coddlin' navy, got it?"
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (15 of 39), Read 48 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 01:20 PM
That is a beautiful passage you transcribed, Robt. It
struck me, too. And what a strangely parallel passage
from the play.
Ishmael contemplating the painting in The Spouter-Inn
(Chapter 3):
Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable
sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you
involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that
marvellous painting meant.
I would have to say that his description of his reaction to
this painting pretty well describes my reaction to this
book.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (16 of 39), Read 48 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 01:23 PM
heh heh.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (18 of 39), Read 49 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Slongwhite bookworm@greeneland.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 01:50 PM
Steve -- LOL!! I do think that is a pretty good description
of this book.
In order to make more headway, I have started reading it
online. I can have it on my screen, look like I'm working,
but actually be reading. I've managed to read about 150
pages so far in the last 2 days between doing that and
reading my hard copy on the way to and from work.
Interestingly, I actually find myself able to focus better on
the book and absorb more of it when I read it off the
screen rather than off the printed page. This is not my
usual reaction to reading books in an electronic format.
Karen
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (19 of 39), Read 52 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 02:14 PM
I need a little assistance from one of our resident Latin
scholars:
Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine
diaboli!
I believe a rough translation would be, "I do not baptize
thee in the name of the father but rather in the name of
the devil." Am I close?
Martin, I think you are suggesting that this is more than
just a fishing story. (I loved that, Dick.) I'm sure that we
will get to the much cussed and discussed allegorical
factor here over the next couple of months. If allegory it
is, I find it an extremely nihilistic one.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (20 of 39), Read 50 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Lynn Isvik washualum@yahoo.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 03:21 PM
Steve, your translation is exactly the one I came up with
based on my many-years-old memory of 9th grade Latin
class. It's amazing how much of that stuff can stick with
you though!
Lynn
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (21 of 39), Read 43 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 05:37 PM
Thanks, Lynn. As I said, I think we're pretty close. It was
of interest to me because that scene wherein Ahab
tempers his new harpoon's barbs (made from razor steel)
in the blood of the harpooneers is one of my favorites.
I want it of the true death-temper.
Pretty primal stuff.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (22 of 39), Read 28 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 02, 2002 10:01 PM
Steve,
I think you're right on regarding the significance of the
painting at the outset, a foreshadowing of things to
come, always.
And I'm not so sure I'd call the allegorical nature of the
book nihilistic, although I can see how one would arrive at
that assessment.
Did everyone skip over all that cataloguing of all that
whale knowledge at the outset?
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (23 of 39), Read 28 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 09:04 AM
I've read every word so far, Martin, and I actually found
the chapters on the different whales to be fairly
interesting. Is his information still true or is it now out of
date? The only chapters that I've found a bit difficult are
the ones criticizing various artists' depictions of whales. Is
there a reason for that, apart from the foreshadowing of
the one quoted in this thread?
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (24 of 39), Read 27 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 10:09 AM
In the chapter "Affidavit" Melville mentions the ill-fated
1820 whaling voyage of the Essex which was destroyed
by a purposeful attack from a sperm whale. Once again
I'd like to recommend IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: THE
TRAGEDY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX by Nathaniel Philbrick
which is an updated account of this horrific voyage and
the against-all-odds survival of several crew members,
utilizing a recently discovered first-hand account written
by the cabin boy along with the account of the first-mate
from which Melville quotes in MOBY DICK. Besides being a
good story, Philbrook's explanation of the whaling
industry is very helpful. Also, Sebastian Junger's A
PERFECT STORM is the great grandson of these tales and
shows that the economic structure of today's fishing
voyages has been handed down from the whaling days.
Also a rip roaring good read.
Robt, getting butcher by the day
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (25 of 39), Read 25 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dale Short dshort@bham.rr.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 10:24 AM
Robt: Let me add a big two thumbs up for Junger's THE
PERFECT STORM. I listened to it on audio, and found it to
be gripping, heart-pounding, all those good words, plus
beautifully constructed as a narrative. Also, as you say, a
real education about the fishing industry and the
unconventional people who inhabit it.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (27 of 39), Read 28 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 10:44 AM
Barbara said:
>>I actually found the chapters on the different whales to
be fairly interesting.<<
So do I, Barbara. I am always reminded of a passage in
Hemingway's The Green Hills of Africa when this point
comes up. It was the process of whaling and Melville's
descriptive passages which the narrator in the book
praises in the following passage:
>>We have had writers of rhetoric who had the good
fortune to find a little....of how things, actual things, can
be, whales for instance, and this knowledge is wrapped in
the rhetoric like plums in a pudding. Occasionally is there,
alone, unwrapped in pudding, and it is good. This is
Melville. But the people who praise it, praise it for the
rhetoric, which is not important.<<
As usual, you must decide how much of this is
Hemingway, and how much the character he created. But
thinking of Hemingway's style, I think this is a fair
summation of the point of view that description of the
real, stripped of decoration, is the best prose. So by that
scale, skipping the whale and whaling descriptions is to
miss the best of the book. I don't buy that completely, but
it is an argument for reading all of these passages,
because they are really part of what Melville is doing.
I am going to make a valiant effort to participate in this
discussion. So much to read, so little time. The anthem of
CR.
Felix Miller
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (28 of 39), Read 21 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 12:18 PM
Really thought-provoking excerpt, Felix. We tend to wait
for the dialogue and action in reading. This change of
perspective gives me pause.
And, Robt, your closing made me smile.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (26 of 39), Read 27 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
George Healy malword@ameritech.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 10:24 AM
Melville sprung out of a time that stood as the glory of
allegorical writing in American Lit. But he deepened it,
shadowed it, and redefined it. I find it extremely tiring to
read all of Moby Dick as if everything is encoded... and I
wonder if Melville tired, for once, of the procedure also?
The whale is, literally, a blank slate upon which anything
or nothing can be imposed. Can Ahab's quest be seen, in
a way, as an insane (albeit heroic) attempt to stamp
meaning upon a blank? Somehow I see the White Whale
as the death of hidden meaning, raging out of its pages
to batter books like Pilgrim's Progress and Everyman and
The Song of Roland to bits. The slews of information on
whales, whaling, etc., provide contrasting tension against
the vortex at the book's heart and seem to me to be the
writer's version of harpoons going into the side of Mystery
itself, trying by sheer proliferation to kill what can't be
killed but only gloriously wounded.
One benchmark for 'greatness' in literature that I think is
desperately underrated is the feeling books give that the
author has 'lived' them in the course of writing them... I
can't think of a single novel I can truly account great that
doesn't seem to me as if the author had truly
experienced, at least emotionally, what transpired in it.
On that count alone, Moby Dick stands as one of the very
greatest of novels because Melville really conveys the
sense of everything in his mind being at stake...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (29 of 39), Read 27 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 12:33 PM
I find it extremely tiring to read all of Moby Dick as if
everything is encoded...
Amen, George. But the trinity of mates and harpooneers,
the broad ethnicity of the crew, the whiteness of the
whale, and such seem to beg for it, don't they?
Can Ahab's quest be seen, in a way, as an insane (albeit
heroic) attempt to stamp meaning upon a blank?
Setting aside the question of whether Ahab was really
insane, in my opinion the answer is yes. (I know just
enough about the subject matter that follows to get in
trouble.) If existentialism posits individual responsibility
amid an absurd and irrational universe and holds that the
individual defines himself in these circumstances by his
own actions and struggle, then this has to be the great
existential novel. In that sense, I suppose it is not
nihilistic.
Clearly, "The Whiteness of the Whale" is the key chapter
in the book in that regard, but there are other references
to all this in addition to Ahab's rants. For example and
with regard to the poor Alabama boy Pip's madness:
He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke
it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's
insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal
reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which,
to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then
uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
And God's indifference is white.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (30 of 39), Read 24 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 12:39 PM
from Cetology chapter "by the terms of my definition of
what a whale is-ie a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail"
and "Finally:It was stated at the outset, that this system
would not be here, and at once, perfected."
and of his accounting of whales:" grand ones, true ones,
ever leave the copestone to posterity. god keep me from
ever completing anything. This whole book is but a
draught-nay, but the draught of a draught. OH, Time,
Strength, Cash and Patience!"
I find this chapter very very interesting and very funny. It
really shows how whales at least begin in this book...his
recollections are from the odd books he has read on
whales and the odd sightings. They are very concerned
with what kind of oil and payment people get from
whales...and the idea that he keeps calling them fish
always cracks me up. Remember, at this point he has
never been ona whaling expedition before.
It's not that these accounts are "wrong" his descriptions
are fine, humps, colors, horizontal tails, and oil supply.
Very practical. And I don't feel our understanding of
whales today is "correct" but it is very different than even
an understanding of whales a couple of years after this
book was written(Origin of the Species for example).
We are being set up here to think we can know a whale,
yet he is smart this Ishmael by saying he knows his
version is just the beginning and only an ongoing
research.
Right after his chapter on Cetology he goes into the
"domestic peculiarity" and the class of men onboard a
whaling ship, and their hierarchy... this is quite brilliant to
me. He seems to describe Ahab in the last paragraph
much how I might be inclined to consider describing my
experiences with a ..well, a whale!
"But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his
Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode
touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I
have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him;
and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and
housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in
thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and
dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!"
It cracks me up that he is right beside Ahab, yet feels he
is a mystery, and with all his research on the whale in
previous chapters reliant on a few physical attributes he
is confident in (at least beginning to)cataloging
whales...and really we are right away seeing that Ahab
too is a force of nature like a whale. And it cracks me up
that he describes the social classes and functions of
those on the ship...yet has no idea about the ABSOLUTE
social dimension of whales. (I have spent many hours in a
small craft while one whale or another has stared at me,
or swam around the boat or flipped his tail,breached... or
watched super pods off the sides of ferries).
I think the cetology chapter kind of wittingly or unwittingly
shows that when we approach a topic with one goal we
often limit our view of that topic. The whalers naturally
approach whales financially, I've got no problem with
that,but his focus at least at that point in the book is
actually dangerously narrow.
Of course, just before he talks about the mystery of Ahab,
he says " Nor will the tragic dramatist who would depict
mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct
swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his
art, as the one now alluded to."
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (31 of 39), Read 23 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 01:06 PM
I think that is a good insight George about Melville kind of
riffing on the wholesomeness of Pilgrims Progress. writing
a quest book that is much more challenging than idea of
some kind of spiritual "payment". I think we see some of
this set up with the money for whales...(there is a lot to
do with money and motives in this book). that we quest
expecting some moral payoff or reward or something...
I also think this book is so rich it hardly seems needed to
search for hidden meanings, my god, every page is jamb
packed with ideas and parallels and juxtopositions...yikes
hidden?! PUHlease!
(Of note: "meridians"
"thought he, its a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a
pagan"
"seemed to be saying to himself -"its a mutual, joint-stock
world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these
Christians.")
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (32 of 39), Read 25 times, 1
File Attachment
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dale Short dshort@bham.rr.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 01:16 PM
Steve: Wow! I never realized that there was an Alabama
boy aboard the Pequod. Neat.
I guess it's no coincidence, then, that it's an Alabama girl
(Sena Jeter Naslund; see photo) who recently wrote
AHAB'S WIFE, the NY Times bestseller based on the
one-paragraph description of Ahab's wife in MOBY DICK.
Small world...I just had a chance to interview her about
AHAB'S WIFE for Alabama Public Radio. It hasn't been
broadcast yet, but in the meantime I've archived it on my
Web site if anybody's interested in giving it a listen. It's
15 minutes. Link is:
http://www.writerstoolkit.com/sena15.rm
>>Dale in Ala.
SENA.JPG (16KB)
Sena J. Naslund
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (34 of 39), Read 19 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Slongwhite bookworm@greeneland.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 01:29 PM
Dale --
Wow!! That is most excellent. I started reading Ahab's
Wife this morning. I figured there is no better time to read
than with Moby Dick fresh in my mind as a reference.
Interesting that she formatted the book after Moby Dick
(a multitude of short chapters with one or two word titles,
the quotes at the beginning, even the LENGTH of the
book).
I don't have a sound card on this computer here at work,
but e-mailed myself the link at home so I won't forget to
go listen to it.
Karen
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (33 of 39), Read 20 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Slongwhite bookworm@greeneland.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 01:22 PM
So far we have mentioned Eugene O'Neill, Hemingway
and John Bunyan in relationship to this book. I kept
thinking of Shakespeare.
From Cetology:
But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help
suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but
signifying nothing.
Which, of course, brings to mind the only passage of
Shakespeare I actually know by memory, having been
required by a high school teacher to learn it. From
Macbeth, but I don't know which Act or even which
character:
Life's but a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon
the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Also, I thought one of the funniest parts of the book was
the section set up as a play. I pictured it like a musical,
everyone kind of prancing around the boat and singing...
Karen
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (35 of 39), Read 16 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 01:52 PM
I'm glad you mentioned Shakespeare, Karen. It reminded
me that I've been thinking of him when I read Ahab's
soliloquies. In fact, I keep wanting to read them out loud.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (36 of 39), Read 15 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Slongwhite bookworm@greeneland.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 01:55 PM
Oh, absolutely. I caught myself muttering under my
breath a few times as I was reading those, which
probably isn't a good plan while sitting on a public bus or
subway :-)
Karen
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (37 of 39), Read 20 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 03:18 PM
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned
almost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port;
even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and
more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground.
Dick, a thing of tangential relevance. It is interesting to
note that Ishmael retains the traditional feminine pronoun
even when referring to a "whaleman."
I note that Lloyd's List has now determined, after over
two and a half centuries of using the feminine pronoun, to
go with "it" when referring to a ship. Apparently, they
tried this transition about four years ago but temporarily
yielded to the protests of traditionalists:
Macho mariners responded with the insistence that ships
always had been and ever would be female (bloody-minded,
expensive, continually needing a lick of paint). . . . ["Pronoun
Overboard" by Julian Barnes, The New Yorker, 4/8/02.]
Later I shall take up the equally interesting usage of
"There she blows!" in reference to a sperm whale.
Steve
Ishmael says, "Nantucket! Take out your map and look at
it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it
stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the
Eddystone lighthouse", which I most certainly did. What
would be much to Ishmael's amazement is our ability to
keep an eye on the weather in Nantucket Harbor via
webcam here. Fantastic streaming video! Be sure and
check out the sidewalk cam, to which there is a link.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (38 of 39), Read 9 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 04:54 PM
Perhaps Dick has enough sailing experience to fill us in on
what Ahab said:
"But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that
tiger-yellow crew of his-- these were words best omitted
here; for you live under the blessed light of the
evangelical land. Only the infidel shark in the audacious
seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado
brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab
leaped after his prey."
Robt
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (39 of 39), Read 3 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Wednesday, April 03, 2002 05:52 PM
Suffice it to say, Robert, that it wasn't, "Good gracious,
men, you call this deck clean?"
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (40 of 66), Read 84 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 10:04 AM
While the tempering of the barbs in blood is a really great
scene, there are an extraordinary number of scenes filled
with as vivid an imagery as one will find anywhere.
Another is the bizarre one wherein Tashtego falls into the
head of the whale while it is suspended next to the ship
after they have dipped nearly all of the spermaceti from it.
(Chapter 78.) A macabre incident. Ishmael uses obstetrical
metaphors to describe Queequeg's rescue. There was
danger of a breach birth, but Queequeg managed to turn
Tashtego and bring him out "in the good old way--head
foremost." The whale's head, very nearly a coffin, became
a womb.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (41 of 66), Read 85 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 11:51 AM
Increasingly I am aware that Moby Dick should probably
not be taught to co-ed classes and certainly not below the
college level.
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (42 of 66), Read 83 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 12:31 PM
Aye, Steve.
And let's not forget the coffin/life preserver at the end,
after Moby Dick has used that fearsome head to wreck
that fine technology of the whaling ship.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (43 of 66), Read 82 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 12:51 PM
For sure, Martin. Nice turnabout that, also. And the whole
thing starts with a coffin--Peter Coffin, the inn-keeper.
I am interested in your (or anyone else's, for that matter)
take on the interplay between Ahab and Starbuck. Permit
me another quote:
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing
with curses Job's whale round the world, at the head of a
crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and
castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the
incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in
Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and
recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask.
Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed
by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac
revenge.
I don't think that Ishmael is using the word "incompetent"
here in the sense that we normally use it today. I think the
sense here is that of "powerless." So Starbuck's virtue or
right-mindedness is unaided by what? Is it simply a
situation where Starbuck lacks a sufficiently strong will to
match Ahab's?
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (44 of 66), Read 81 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 01:30 PM
I'm fairly certain the concept here is that virtue alone,
unaided by action, is impotent (incompetent) to obtain its
ends.
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (45 of 66), Read 86 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 01:35 PM
Spoken like the good Nietzschean you are. Perhaps Ahab
is the true Übermensch.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (46 of 66), Read 78 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 03:27 PM
Yeha, i think he is an attempt at depicting an Obermuench.
Just like Kurtz and the Judge are too. (oh sorry, you just
knew I was going to have a hard time not thinking of Blood
Meridian in this reading, right?)
(If Kurtz, the Judge and Ahab were ina fight...who would
win?)
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (47 of 66), Read 80 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 04:01 PM
The judge.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (48 of 66), Read 77 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 05:09 PM
We know that, because the judge is beyond time and
mortality, just as Ahab is the essence of mortality.
But, for all of that, they both have sprung from the mind,
creatures of the ego, don't you think.
Steve -- getting off deadline here, so I can devote some
time to your thoughtful question about Ahab and Starbuck.
It's here where in an earlier discussion John Matthews
pulled a passage describing Ahab and his virtues. It was a
startling revelation. And the warning was fairly taken
about rushing to judgment. Now that I have time I'll see if
I can find that passage.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (49 of 66), Read 76 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Lee Clark leilia_c@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 10:14 PM
I reread Moby Dick about 3 years ago, and so do not feel
up to the journey at this time. My conception of Moby Dick
contains the idea that man has a need to personalize the
world around him. He cannot contend with the reality of a
world with no meaning. Overall, the contemplation that we
do not matter is too daunting. I think for Melville the world,
here and in the “cosmos” were natural entities, not some
supernatural force. Melville was in favor of the natural man
and had an appreciation of the native lifestyle, in tuned
with nature. We have evolved to deal with our inner and
outer surroundings in a manner that is individual to our
particular species, i.e. the whale, i.e. the man.
But even native man has his myths; again an attempt to
personalize the world, to try to understand and find
meaning for what is…Ahab’s attempt to deal with the loss
of his leg, was a stab at control of the world around him by
personalizing that loss. He imagined his situation would be
improved, if he could “get even” with this “evil force” that
robbed him of his leg. Moby Dick, the whale, was natural
life as it is, oblivious to us, without malice, always moving
on, despite our rages, our joys, our mourning and despite
our attempts at control.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (50 of 66), Read 67 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
R Bavetta rbavetta@prodigy.net
Date:
Thursday, April 04, 2002 11:14 PM
It's been at least 40 years since I read this book, but from
what I remember, and from my own take on things, I like
your explanation, Lee.
Ruth
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the
world was mad. Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (51 of 66), Read 70 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 12:02 PM
Regarding the Übermensch, some might take the position
that Ahab is a Nineteenth Century Hitler. I wouldn't agree.
See if you can find your passage, Martin. I'm interested.
As for Starbuck, I found this passage concerning him to be
the most revealing:
And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly,
visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding
firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of
the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot
withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of
an enraged and mighty man.
The courageous Starbuck is simply overmatched by Ahab's
will.
I am thinking about what you have said, Lee. I think one
has to sort out the viewpoints of Ishmael (Melville) and
Ahab. They are different, and you have made a start on
that.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (52 of 66), Read 62 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 01:49 PM
Meanwhile, yet another reason why we must pay very
careful attention to every jit and every jot in this book: it
foretells the future!
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (53 of 66), Read 57 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:10 PM
Yikes. Those code breakers need to see A Beautiful Mind.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (54 of 66), Read 57 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:11 PM
But that is a good example of applying meaning to the
world.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (55 of 66), Read 57 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:13 PM
Martin, can you explain to me how the judge is beyond
time and mortality and Ahab is the essence of mortality? Is
Ahab the essence because he decides about what lives or
not?
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (56 of 66), Read 54 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:27 PM
Here's what I had in mind, Candy:
The judge is without birth, without death, which makes him
beyond time. He appears as an apparition initially and
defies death (even as he leads ALL the others to it).
Now Ahab is bound to die. We know that from the first
moment we meet him. He's already half dead (or
castrated) when we meet him and he's coming back for
seconds with a fire in his eye.
He refuses to recognize the fact -- and in the book it is a
fact (the hardware to prove it is in Moby Dick's back and
there are supporting eyewitness accounts) -- that the
white whale is beyond death. Every other in the book
who's had the pleasure of an up close and personal
meeting with MD recognizes it and fears him for it.
Not Ahab. He rages, not at the dying of the light, but at
the light period. More directly than a water bug on a warm
summer night, he's throwing himself into it. Hence, his
mortality.
It's neat what McCarthy has done with his Ahab, no?
They are both creatures of the ego, in essence the yin and
yang of ego.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (57 of 66), Read 56 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:28 PM
Two passages that inform the relationship between Ahab
and Starbuck that always come to mind in an important
way for me are: 134 The Chase---Second Day, p 804 in the
Modern Library edition which begins:
"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever
since that hour we both saw---thou know'st what, in one
another's eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the
front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand---a lipless,
unfeatured blank......."
...and on to the brief "Fates' Lieutenant" soliliquy.
The second is the entire 132 "The Symphony" which Ahab
is referring to in part or whole above, and which also
contains wonderful grist and reference for Judge Holden
and Cormac McCarthy's vision of this matter and its nature
as well.
Thank's again for the invitation and the warm welcome.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (58 of 66), Read 59 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:29 PM
Oh, pardon me. I forgot to mention; I'd be real interested
in the passage you are thinking of as well Martin.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (59 of 66), Read 46 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:56 PM
Uh, Okay. I see because Ahab goes straight for it. I think I
understand more what you mean about the two, judge
and Ahab as being polars in the ego. that seems accesible
to me. It's the idea that the judge is beyond time and
death that is hard for me to understand. I think this is a
part of a naive side of me Martin. I see th judge a sdefying
death, for sure. Beyond death, no I don't see that, but I
DO see that he himslef feels that he is beyond death. that
kind of personal belief of the judges is part of his strength
and why he defies death. I do not see the judge as an
immortal, but I see him believing that about himself. And
that does make for a powerful personality. I tend to take
the judge and the whales fairly literally. I also tend to see
the desert and the nature in Blood Meridian as a parallel to
the whales in Moby Dick-rather than the judge and the
whale.
I am really enjoying thinking about this stuff.
To me about the blanks(the whitenesses) in Moby Dick, I
see McCarthy using the phrase "I ain't nothin" or "you ain't
nothing" (reoccurs in almost all his novels) as a worthy
concept to compare.
I see the judges self perceptions as immorrtal a form of
adding meaning to life. And that doing so can give one a
kind of power...
more must chew on these last couple fo posts for a while...
Believe it or not I have a customer at the bar I work at and
while slinging beer and martini's we get into some fun
talks about these two books the last couple of weeks. This
has becoem a kind of hilarious road show to the other
customers as we get pretty worked up about "meaning"
and metaphors...and have had quite a rowdy discussion
about whether there is any humor in Blood Meridian, and
whether it works as a parody...
cheers!
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (60 of 66), Read 45 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 03:58 PM
John Mathews, nice to know you...welcome to Constant
Reader-warning-it's addictive!
...and I am going to look carefully at the section you
mention with Starbuck and Chapter the Symphony as I ride
the subway to work...thanks for the heads up!
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (61 of 66), Read 47 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 04:03 PM
By the way John Matthews, the version I am reading is
from a second hand store, a delightful copy for students I
guess by Rhinehart Editions, 1957. a strange antique rose
or salmon color. Ish. Plain. With an introduction by Newton
Arvin. For the life of me I can't find this section called The
Symphony, should keep me busy hunting it...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (62 of 66), Read 38 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 05:04 PM
The difference between Ahab and the judge, in my mind, is
that Ahab is a human possessed by his demons whereas
the judge is a demon possessed of his humans. While the
two characters may well be oriented toward the same pole
star (although I'm still thinking on that), their actions and
characters spring from two fundamentally different
sources.
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (63 of 66), Read 38 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 05:05 PM
And now I'm wondering: Can one ever be oriented towards
a pole star?
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (64 of 66), Read 35 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 05:56 PM
"The Symphony" is Chapter 132, Candy and immediately
precedes "The Chase--First Day" near the end.
Its a wonderful chapter in which Starbuck and Ahab meet
on deck and Ahab soliliquizes again and Starbuck has a
sort of epiphany. It ends with:
"But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the mate
had stolen away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but
started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there.
Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail."
I think Martin believes Judge Holden is not circumscribed by
'birth, life, death' in the way that Ahab even acting as the
'fates' lieutenant' is. And it is certainly so that the Judge is
seeming always one step ahead of the circumstances in
"Blood" and more knowledgeable in a rationalistic sense (if
not a gnostic one)......and of course the dance of fire in the
epilogue to Blood is a much different dance than the one
that Ahab does on the back of the whale..............
Fedallah, Ahab, Sutpen, Kurtz, Judge Holden.....even
Gatsby (if one thinks of Owl-eyes) like so many characters
stare into the abyss and see eyes of some sort looking
back. I really don't know what I think about that or what is
actually looking back, but I concede that metaphorically at
least, Judge Holden is still dancing in the epilogue.....and
even Ishmael is not doing that.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (65 of 66), Read 28 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Edward Houghton eddh@pacbell.net
Date:
Friday, April 05, 2002 06:08 PM
On the relationship of Starbuck and Ahab. No matter what
Starbuck may think, Ahab is the Captain. And Captain's
were within their rights to hang mutineers, weren't they?
EDD
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (66 of 66), Read 15 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Ernie Belden drernest@pacbell.net
Date:
Saturday, April 06, 2002 12:27 AM
As usual I am only 2/3 through the book and gave it a
good deal of thought. What initially struck me was
Melville's command of the English language. He is a
fantastic and powerful writer and has been compared to
Shakespeare. Today's readers will consider him wordy but
we need to take into account that he wrote during more
leisurely times than we have today. The other thing that
struck me was his breadth of knowledge. Then we could
call his writing powerful and unusual. Just the same I feel
he gets carried away on a tangent of times.
His writing leaves a powerful impact on the reader and
that is his strength. Melville seems to be possessed by the
whale almost as much as Captain Ahab. Also he describes
the whale in mystical terms. He unexpectedly appears out
of nowhere and wants to take revenge on the whalers
who have tormented him. He appears in Captains logs in
different oceans and at identical dates.
Is Ahab insane? Well he suffers from a deadly idea fixe if
this is the right term. Moby Dick is his only interest and
whaling in general comes only accidentally. Also he needs
converts and has little use for people who question his
fanaticism. Well one could name it a whale inspired
paranoia, all consuming and all powerful His inability to see
things in proportion and his obsession with Moby Dick
makes this paranoia all consuming. His willingness to
sacrifice himself as well as his ship mates is a dangerous
obsession indeed.
To say that this book is funny says something about the
reader but not the author. This is a very serious book and
the ending supports this statement.
I wish I had the answer to one question. Was whaling
truly an almost deadly occupation? Was there a large
number of whalers who did not make it back? I understand
that commercial fishermen in Alaska engage in the most
dangerous occupation in the US
Ernie
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (67 of 112), Read 120 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, April 06, 2002 04:03 PM
Edd, that is very true about Captains authority. Probably
a handy thing to remember in this book.
Ernie, I really appreciated what you said about this book
being written when times were more leisurely for book
reading and writing. That is an excellent observation. I
am enjoying reading this with every bit of leisurely
attitude I can. I find I delight in how much detail Melville
gives us. George mader a good point also that there is a
sense that Melville was having a good time telling this
story. Shakespeare and dickens give me the same feeling
reading them as this book, The Confidence Man(WOW!)
and Billy Budd for example. I feel like I could sit by a fire
and listen to those three talk my ears off.
(John, I have never had the sensation of the judge being
in the epilogue of Blood Meridian. I always thought that
the point of the epilogue was showing us something, a
force, OTHER than the judges existence...that in fact the
judge does not have such a long term role in life as he
may have in a concetrated period of the world of Blood
Merdian. Another way I would put this is...the judgre says
"It makes no difference what men think of war. War
endures. I feel the epilogue says:"It makes no difference
what the judge thinks of men. Men endure." But I seem
to be very much alone in seeing the epilogue as void of
the judge...so I am open to being completely wrong
about my reading of the epilogue, ha ha. there are a long
list of readers who believe the judge is an
immortal[supernatural ?]being. Not me.)
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (68 of 112), Read 121 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Saturday, April 06, 2002 11:32 PM
I do not think the Judge occupies the epilogue either. A
simple and as is customary limited analogy about my
observation of that subject would be to view the epilogue
of "Blood Meridian" against the epilogue of "Moby Dick." A
comparison and contrast as it were.
The judge does not occupy the former as Ahab does not
occupy the latter, but in both instances we have just
finished reading a text in which each dominates.
The dance in Blood is primordial and Promethean;
Ishmael is afloat in the mother ocean, suspended by
Queegueg's coffin and rescued by Rachel. Fire and
Water.....
There's a lot in that and I think McCarthy was much
aware of Melville's epilogue when he wrote his own. I'll
read the "Blood" epilogue again if you or anyone wants
to compare them in detail.
As I see it, the 'comic' aspects of the book dwindle rapidly
when Ishmael and the Pequod go to sea.....though much
of the first section is delightfully funny. When you get to
the "Knights and Squires" chapter you might still imagine
yourself in for a seagoing "Don Quixote" if you did not
already know better. It doesn't take long to dissuade one
after that though I suspect.
What do y'all think of Bulkington? One of the enigma's at
the heart of the book.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (69 of 112), Read 119 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, April 06, 2002 11:46 PM
John -- Last night I was re-reading the Symphony chapter
and think like you that it helps considerably in
understanding the relationship between Starbuck and
Ahab.
The Quarterdeck, of course, also helps; as does Ahab and
Starbuck in the Cabin. These two chapters seem to act as
bookends in defining a good part of the relationship
between the two.
In Quarterdeck, Ahab galvanizes the crew to his purpose:
hunt and kill Moby Dick, who described in mythical terms.
And Starbuck (how prescient) brings the issue back to the
business at hand, that is filling the hold with whale oil.
In the second chapter, Starbuck discovers leakage in the
hold and hence the need to delay the mission as the
Pequod approaches the end of its quest, as the Burtons
are raised. Even as Ahab enlists a musket to give his
rhetoric even more fire power, Starbuck stands his
ground and the economically wise thing is done.
And in the scenes that John is citing, the division between
the two is lowered and man-to-man they reveal
themselves before pursuing their end(s).
I think they are a set of opposites that define one
another.
Starbuck is perhaps as necessary to Ahab as the whale.
And perhaps Ahab is necessary for Starbuck to fully exist.
They each bring out qualities in the other that might not
otherwise be exposed. They water seeds in each other
that grow.
The relationship between Startbuck and Ahab is one of
many similar relationships between seeming opposites
that define one another on this voyage.
One sailor's thoughts.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (70 of 112), Read 110 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 10:35 AM
I've hesitated to say this because I'm sure it is trite to
even bring it up. I spend a lot of time feeling sorry for
these whales. I have to keep reminding myself that these
whaling ships are not exactly technological wonders and
the playing field is relatively even. However, this morning,
while reading Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the
Virgin", I decided that Melville may have some of the
same ambivalence. It doesn't even seem to be only of the
respect of the hunter for the hunted type (an attitude
I've never quite understood, not being a hunter).
But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one
arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be
murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other
merrymakings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn
churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to
all.
Ah, the irony dripping from that last line.
Also, I love the parting bit of philosophy in this chapter:
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my
friend.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (71 of 112), Read 113 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 11:55 AM
I am delighted that you brought up Chapter 36, "The
Quarter-Deck," Martin. That includes Ahab's most
extraordinary speech, which is addressed to Starbuck. It
begins:
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in
each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there,
some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the
mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning
mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can
the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the
wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to
me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis
enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him
outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the
white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will
wreak that hate upon him. . . .
There's reams of philosophy in that commencing with
Plato. (Forgive me quoting so much in my notes. I can't
help it with this book.)
And then at the end of that speech, Ahab speaks of
Starbuck in an aside:
Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in
his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now,
without rebellion.
That brings me to the subject of mutiny, which is
expressly addressed in the book. It is not a simple issue
resolved with reference to a captain's unquestioned
authority. A mutiny lead by Starbuck was a very real
possibility here, and Ahab recognized it. But more on that
later.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (72 of 112), Read 116 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 01:48 PM
Barb, your post made me giggle because I was secretly
feeling sorry for the whales, too.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (73 of 112), Read 121 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 05:37 PM
I am far from finished with the book, but I keep returning
to a sense of good and evil within this man named Ahab,
and it puzzles me. One one hand, he is the God fearing,
proud captain, and on the other, a diabolical force with a
singular goal in his life..to destroy the entity he see as
the incarnate of all evil. (Good turning to evil as a means
of destroying evil?)
This goes way beyond revenge, and I, tho admittedly
struggling to understand this man, see Ahab as a double
headed false idol, on one side an idol of godliness and
the other, almost satanical in his obsession. But, when
you think about it, I suppose this is an exaggerated
account of the nature of all humankind.
Ahab thought the demon was born of the sea, but it
wasn't..it was born of Ahab. He created his own demon.
I'm struggling hard to understand this book and this man,
Ahab, but figure all I can do is give it my best shot and
learn what I can from the rest of you.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (74 of 112), Read 96 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 07:57 PM
Whoa. The whale’s plight trite? I don’t think so. One of
the more salient strokes of the brain oar that we’ve had
here. Stroke away sister. It takes a subtle mind to
recognize that Ishmael does indeed feel that way.
Speaking of subtle minds. Aye, Steve. I was holding that
quote about punching through the mask of the illusory
physical world for this rejoinder. We’re pulling the same
oar, lad.
So what about this transcendence? Do you think it might
be possible that’s what this whole book is about? You
and others have noted that there seems to be little
transcending here, more of the bottomless pit of nihilism.
And do you think that it’s Ahab who does the
transcending?
I think there is a break through the illusion of the physical
world here, but not Ahab. It’s the whole point of the
thorough examination of the journey, including the much
slandered whale parts mentioned at the outset here. For
if you skipped over the examination of the illusion, that is
the physical, especially anatomical, then you missed this:
“Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale
should see the world through so small an eye, and hear
the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a
hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of
Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the
porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of
sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. –Why then do you
try to ‘enlarge’ your mind? Subtilize it.” From The Sperm
Whale’s Head
Subtilize your mind. Is that not what Ishmael’s journey is
about? Something not everyone may be aware of. There
are profound and ancient philosophies (this text refers to
them) that hold we are nothing more than the
accumulation of our perceptions and their processes,
which are infinite in their nature. The key to punching
through that very same mask to which Ahab alludes is to
slow down the process of perceiving. Let it happen in a
bigger space. And if one does, one can punch through.
The key isn’t keener senses. On the contrary, the senses
as the gateway to our perceptions block more out than
they let in. Otherwise, the mind runs the real possibility of
shorting. (See The Castaway when Pip falls overboard
into the infinite sea – talk about a big space.)
It happens to Pip when he falls overboard:
“The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but
drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely,
though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths,
where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world
glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the
misermerman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and
among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip
saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects,
that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal
orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom,
and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.
So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from
all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial
thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and
weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his
God.”
Pip’s sanity – used to the more modest views of things
allowed in by his senses – is overwhelmed by the
experience. His sudden exposure to this big space
overwhelms his sanity. What does Pip offer us afterwards
with this Wisdom gained? He becomes a Shakespearian
fool hence forth. He is wise, but in a crazy way. He has a
fool’s crazy wisdom.
No. Pip has seen the conditions in which Moby Dick lives.
But his mind was not subtilized – a gradual process – and
so it was not prepared to see beyond the mask. And
predictably, he is overwhelmed.
The doorway to punching through the mask seems to be
death. And Pip does, I guess, punch through in this near
death experience. But it’s not the subtilizing of the mind
that Ismael urges in the chapter on the whale’s head.
That breakthrough is left for another.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (75 of 112), Read 99 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 08:03 PM
Beej -- You're absolutely right that the monster is created
in Ahab's mind. We see that at the end of The Chart:
"God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a
creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus
makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that
heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates."
Ahab's mind is lacking in that subtilization don't you
think?
It's also very neat that only Ahab raises Moby Dick. No
one else does.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (76 of 112), Read 107 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 08:30 PM
My husband refers to Ahab's vengeance against Moby
Dick as 'Jihad.'
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (77 of 112), Read 105 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dale Short dshort@bham.rr.com
Date:
Sunday, April 07, 2002 08:54 PM
Beej: Or perhaps, in Ahab's honor, "jihab." {G}
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (78 of 112), Read 87 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 03:26 PM
I like what you have to say about your mixed reaction to
Ahab, Beej. I think our reactions are supposed to be
mixed.
I do take small issue with your assessment that he is
God-fearing--in the sense of piousness anyway. Captain
Peleg sheds light on this as he is describing Ahab to
Ishmael:
He's a queer man, Captain Ahab--so some think--but a good
one. Oh, thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. He's
a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak
much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. .
.
I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as mate
years ago; know what he is--a good man--not a pious, good
man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man--something like
me--only there's a good deal more of him. . . .
It seems to me that an important aspect of Ahab's
character is that he is utterly without fear of God. Peleg
also makes the point with his stories of their travails
together at sea that Ahab is a great captain nonetheless.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (79 of 112), Read 88 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 03:48 PM
Yep, I see you're right..Not God fearing as much as he is
god, at least on his ship and in his mind. Is this why he
has such a vengeance against Moby Dick, do you think?
because the whale challenged his deity? (I might be
really stretching it here, but only because I really want to
understand this book, and particularly, this man.)
This is slow going for me, but I'm determined to finish it.
I'm tending to take Ahab as a symbol for the basic nature
of mankind. Am I okay with doing this or am I trying to
delve into something that really isn't there? It just seems
to me that Ahab is an exaggerated portrayal of how we
humans all are, at least sometimes.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (80 of 112), Read 93 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 04:12 PM
A symbol for the basic nature of mankind? Very well could
be, Beej. But let me be honest and say that I myself have
far more questions about the book than I do answers.
For that reason I have tried to read it very closely this
time.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (81 of 112), Read 86 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 09:11 PM
Ahab, in chapter 36, refers to Moby as the the supreme
inscrutable evil, and Melville does seem to empower the
whale with hints of supernatural abilities, a monster who
can simultaneously be in several places by swimming
through the under bowels of the sea. Starbuck tries to
reason with Ahab and says "Vengeance on a dumb
brute!...that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!
Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab,
seems blaphemous."
Ahab responds, "..some unknown but still reasoning thing
puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the
unreasoning mask...how can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white
whale is that wall.."
Ahab spent his life in competition with whales. How could
he let it lie, to lose the competition through the
horrendous loss of a leg, to lose the competition to
something as simple as the blind instinct of a dumb
animal? He doesn't..he sees instead, a REASONING thing,
a SUPREME evil, who has imprisoned him, and he has
gone mad with the inability to be released from this
prison wall (he sees as the whale), until he can thrust
through it.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (82 of 112), Read 80 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 09:40 PM
There was a program on the Discovery Channel last night
called Moby Dick: The True Story. It was about the 1820
disaster of the whale ship out of Nantucket, the Essex,
from which Melville got his inspiration. When Melville did
his own whaling 20 years later, he carried a copy of the
memoirs of Chase, the First Mate of the Essex. Much of
the gruesome story of the Essex takes place after it is
sunk by the great white whale. The crew set out in 3
boats, and were lost at sea for several months.
Cannibalism was involved. The whole incident must have
had quite an impact on Nantucket.
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (83 of 112), Read 83 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 09:44 PM
MAP, I saw the last half of that. How horrible to have to
choose straws to see who will be killed in order to feed
the rest of the crew.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (84 of 112), Read 77 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Monday, April 08, 2002 11:50 PM
This particular book intimidates the heck out of me, it
always has, and if I ask a lot of questions, it's only
because I feel too insecure about my own judgements on
it. I don't know if it's just me, or if it has to do with the
fact that for soo long I've heard it's a 'man's book,' or
what the reason is.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (85 of 112), Read 71 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 11:22 AM
What do you mean when you say the book "intimidates"
you, Beej?
I also quoted Ahab's response to Starbuck that you cite
in your number 81 above. It is one of the more
extraordinary speeches in the book in my view.
Are you sure Ahab is mad? I know that Ishmael insists
repeatedly that he is, but do you believe that?
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (86 of 112), Read 87 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 01:04 PM
The book intimidates me because I went into it with the
belief that I would never be able to truly understand
much of what it says, and I bet I'm not the only one who
feels this way. It's just so much a part of a man's psyche
that I would not be able to cognitively grasp the primal
emotions of a hunter in a thousand years. I don't think
women are genetically conditioned, the way men are, to
understand those feelings about the hunt. Simply put, I
cannot relate to it. I certainly do not mean to begin a
debate on male/female books, I am only saying how I,
personally, feel about it. I was telling John that I felt that
way. He told me that's precisely why a woman has a
difficult time picking the book back up, and a man has a
difficult time putting the book back down.
I knew Ahab's response was already posted in here
somewhere but I couldn't find it. And I think he reveals so
much about himself in it, it bears repeating anyway.
Do I think he's mad? I'm not sure, but deep in my heart,
no, I don't. I think hes obsessed. I think he's irrational. I
think the white whale is unrealistically built up in his mind.
I think he's so completely focused on his revenge that the
line between that and madness is gossamer thin. But, no.
I don't think he's mad. He might be crazy, but he's
probably not insane.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (87 of 112), Read 83 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 04:17 PM
He might be crazy, but he's probably not insane.
Eloquently put, Beej. I really don't know whether he
qualifies as insane or not. That's why I asked. And yes,
that speech is well worth quoting two, three, four times.
I was not trying to incite one of those guy book/chick
book discussions either. Your use of the word "intimidate"
interested me. That's all. I've been intimidated by big
black guys in a bar. I've been intimidated by female
lawyers. . .and by other stuff I won't go into, but not by a
novel.
I think you meant that you feel defensive here because
the book doesn't do anything for you. You shouldn't feel
that way. You've made a valiant effort. Forget about it,
and read something that does it for you--would be my
idea on the whole thing.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (88 of 112), Read 84 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 05:06 PM
Beej, this book intimidates me too. There are a few books
out there that do this to me, and it is partly why I engage
them every couple of years. Blood Meridian. Gravity's
Rainbow, don Quioxte.
It's not exactly that I feel intimidated like I am "stupid" to
be able to understand them...it is that they seem to
grapple with what it is to be human and to be alive.
I believe women and men have been taught and biology
has also given them different motives and methods to
explore life and its meanings.
I asked earlier if anyone could think of female characters
ina book "Like" Moby Dick....or rather female characters in
nature with a group of women.
For whatever reason, that we no longer hunt with each
other(archaeological evidence suggests both women and
children DID hunt in the past)...we no longer do...
I can imagine a novel in a corporate setting with women
battling out with the meaning of life and money and
power...
But culturally...I don't think we consider that women think
about philosophy and the meaning of life.
I believe that death, bloodshed and physical struggle
have long been culturally associated with men. One of
the reasons that women do not seem to have to "seek"
bloodshed is that bloodshed comes to us. We come of
age with the knowledge of death and bloodshed. Men do
not by sheer will of their bodies, they do seem to have to
seek it out to achieve deliverance(Ie knowledge and first
hand experience with it. This often happens when a man
goes to war. Or to the hunt.
Women by the sheer design of our "purpose" we are
clearly linked to the meaning of life...which is simply "Life".
Boys don't get that. Its all a mysterious quest for them.
The quest comes to girls.
I believ though, having said what I have here...that
women would be more understanding of the male and
their cultural programing and their restlessness with
domestic life if they spent a little time reading military
books and strategy,(James Jones is a favorite of mine-I
have his shorts including The Thin Red Line always
nearby) or Moby Dick, or Blood Meridian...as some
examples.
Just like it would be wise for men to understand the
cultural sacrifices imposed on women since we gave up
(through social and cultural pressures) our 'heat' cycles to
be able to breed at any point in our cycles. A book I
would recommend men reading would be by Mary Sherfy
on the prehistory of female sexuality. (I'll try to find the
exact title, it's in the basement somewhere ha ha.)
I mean do we really know of many situations where life or
death is involved and a group of women is in the weeds
of it? Not too many...I mean to an outsider a quilting bee
doesn't conjure up philosophy-but of course it does
occur...heh heh...
Men do not tend to perceive the domestic arena as a
place to challenge life or death, of course women tend to
keep the domestic arena "clean and tidy"...so men tend
to see it as a place of repression rather than mystical or
physically challenging or philosophically
challenging...which anyone who has spent time with a
four year old knows just how philosophically challenging it
can be around the house, or for that matter a fourteen
year old.
Perhaps women could embrace a little wildness and
mystery in the household instead of making it run like a
tight ship all the time. A ship should be run like a tight
ship, a home perhaps more like a think tank...ha ha...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (89 of 112), Read 96 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 05:52 PM
I'll finish it, alright..I'm too stubborn and too close to
being done, not to finish it.
Candy, your post is really thought provoking. Very
interesting. (It amuses me you added Don Quixote to
that list, because I've read it several times and consider it
one of my all time favorite books. I guess there's hope for
me yet.)
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (90 of 112), Read 67 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 08:50 PM
Since watching that program on the Essex, I've been
giving some thought to the theme of cannibalism, which
definitely runs through MD. The show said that
cannibalism was known to be a part of nautical life. In
MD, of course, there's Queequeg. But a more graphic
description of flesh eating can't be found than in Chapter
LXIV, Stubb's Supper.
Stubb orders a whale steak for his dinner:
About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted
by two lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his
spermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan
were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on
whale's flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings with his
own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks,
swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on
its fatness....Though amid all the smoking horror and
diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing
up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where
red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed
man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant
butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving
each others' live meat with carving-knives all gilded and
tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths
are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead
meat...
Well, you get the picture.
All this talk about flesh eating, I definitely find daunting.
I think I'll go have some lentils and rice.
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (91 of 112), Read 64 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Lee Clark leilia_c@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 09:08 PM
There are many ways to grapple with what it is to be
human and to be alive. Not a literary work of art, but the
book, House of God comes to mind. I thought it a good
point that for many men, the domestic arena may not be
seen as the place to challenge life and death. As if that is
the only way to really experience life and find meaning.
But life can and is challenging, even if we are not putting
ourselves in positions of life and death. That conviction is
a fairly narrow perspective. “Life is”, however we choose
to live it. The wind, the water, the beasts all add another
layer to that life…and of course, homo sapiens are just
one of many beasts here. We are all part of “nature” and
we all deal with life and meaning, either spoon fed to us
by religion or we make our own way (okay, a nasty dig).
A book with women dealing with nature might be, My
Antonia, by Willa Catha.
Culturally, except for a few, I don’t think men or women in
general, think about philosophy and the meaning of life.
I really liked the comment, "women do not seem to have
to "seek" bloodshed is that bloodshed comes to us."
And along the lines of male/female. Chapter 90, Heads or
Tails. From the Laws of England, “whales captured on the
coast of that land, the King, a Honorary Grand
Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be
respectfully presented with the tail. Is this to say men are
cerebral? And women just a piece of….? Okay, maybe
stretching it…
lee
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (92 of 112), Read 65 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 09:46 PM
I don't think you're stretching it Leilia.
This novel itself accepts the reality that women are closer
to violence, life and death and the sacrifice of bloodshed.
Via nature...whereas men are cut off from this and we
have rituals built up to progress them towards an
understanding. Maybe if eales hung out with women
more often they could come closer to seeing how life and
death is right here beside us.
From Moby Dick chapter...anyone notice how the "Moby
Dick" chapter actually just talks about Ahab.
(before I forget, I don't see Ahab as insane, I see him as
a money grabbing, war mongerer. He totally sucks in my
book. I can't stand him. Hes a complete idiot who has no
clue how nature is or works. No water loving animal
experienced person would be pissed at a whale for biting
off its leg. I am GLAd that whale bit off his bitter stupid
leg)
Melville understand the knowledge intrinsic in being a
female:
"Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a
thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you
would not come to any chiselled hearthstone, or aught
hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes
and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does,
the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to
make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth."
(Ahab is out of it. He has no idea of nature and its
workings, he is a shame to be a whaleman. He puts
sailors to shame.)
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (93 of 112), Read 52 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Lee Clark leilia_c@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 09, 2002 10:36 PM
On a side note, I am not ashamed to admit, my
household is not run like a tight ship, possibly, I need an
Ahab to be the “holder of the keys".
Leilia
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (94 of 112), Read 48 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Sherry Keller shkell@starband.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 07:05 AM
Candy, what interesting ideas. I think you're onto
something. I've often heard MD described as a book
about good versus evil. I always wondered about that,
because it was implicit that MD represents evil. But
where's the good? I think it's Ahab who's evil, as Candy
said. Nature is neither good nor evil, it just is. Ahab's
great tragedy is that he personified nature, and took a
lot of good men down with him.
Sherry
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (95 of 112), Read 53 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 08:43 AM
I agree Sherry. Especially his tragedy(or folly) was to
personify nature. Some pages I actually laugh out loud
because it seems so ridiculous that a person wouldn't
know better.I also see this novel as criticizing
retribution-as in some motives for action...not all action
but when motivated by revenge.
What all do we personify in life and nature? God? War?
Our enemies? Animals?
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (96 of 112), Read 49 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 12:24 PM
But how do you really feel about Ahab, Candy? No need
to hold back.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (97 of 112), Read 52 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 12:27 PM
But , the personification of nature is exactly what is
sought in Romanticism. Consider this 1807 poem by
William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
We want a personal relationship with nature but on our
terms. Nature isn't passive or inert, though. It has its
own rules. A person sees a cute animal and reaches to
pet it
but when that animal turns and bites the person, e
wants to kill it.
What is evil in nature is any creature which goes against
our purpose; which does not willingly give itself to our
needs. And so it has been since humanity opened its
eyes, as Ahab tells Starbuck, Ch. 134, p. 804 MLC, "This
whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee
and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am
the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders."
Ahab was forty years hunting whales and this made him
proud. His hubris was such that it drove him to attack the
whale with a six inch knife (Ch. 41, p.266 MLC) and it was
then that he lost his leg. Thus, injured in pride and body
he is compelled to attack again. Is this not the pattern of
all human conflict?
Ahab felt superior to any whale. Indeed he felt
constrained by his own body and the limitations of
science. Like Faust he wants it all but unlike Faust he has
no one with whom to bargain.
As isolated as Ahab saw himself, he was not isolated in
his purpose. Given the choice between Starbuck's view
and Ahab's, the crew chose the latter and Ahab is not too
surprised, Ch. 37, p.242 MLC, " 'Twas not so hard a task.
I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one
cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they
revolve."
The part in each which accepts Ahab's cogged circle is the
need for survival which can acknowledge no limits, which
can tolerate no obstacle.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (98 of 112), Read 49 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 01:06 PM
Yes, Dean, and it seems to me that with his cogs turning
the crew's wheels, Ahab is the epitome of the
charasmatic leader.
"Insane" is such a weak and useless word. It conveys
nothing. I have decided to defer to our resident
psychiatrist, Ernest Belden, who instructs that Ahab
suffers from an idée fixe, an obsession, with an overlay of
whale-inspired paranoia. I'm sure that comports precisely
with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), and
it's good enough for me.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (99 of 112), Read 43 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 01:59 PM
I've been thinking about your note, Candy. . . .female
characters in nature with a group of women. The only one I
can think of that comes close is Jean M. Auel's Clan of the
Cave Bear, which is of course pretty weak anthropology
because, as you point out, the dichotomy between male
hunters and female gatherers was not all that clean.
All that aside, I can only tell you that I have a very
visceral reaction to this book every time. For me, the
pacing of it--the slow build-up--is perfect, and by the time
I get to those three chase chapters at the end, my blood
is up. I have to admit that. (At the point that I'm closing in
on the end, I'm in total agreement that we don't have
time to fool around helping the Rachel look for her lost
children.)
I enjoy discussing the various in and outs of the
thing--Ahab and Starbuck, for example--but in the end
the true impact of the book on me is not a cerebral one at
all.
Therefore, I think the point of the thing is not a rational
contemplation of the meaning of life. Rather, the point is
that life is given meaning through action--for the guys
who don't get it, anyway.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (100 of 112), Read 38 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 02:39 PM
Steve, yes, Ahab is charismatic. It makes me wonder why
there are no business leadership seminars based on
Ahab. After all, they do encourage people to take risks
and not to fear failure.
I agree that Ahab is not insane. The way that he speaks
with Starbuck and how he speaks of his wife are
evidence of that. Instead, we see a man who has
dedicated his whole life to hunting whales.
Ahab feels the loss of what he has given up to hunt
whales. He also feels the anguish of that circumstance
which is typical to sailors, the unmarked grave. An
anguish which he expresses in his soliloquy to the
whale's head Ch. 70, p.450 MLC. It is also mentioned in
Ch. 7, pp.50-51 MLC so that very early in the novel we
are made aware of the significance of a coffin to those
who live and die on the seas.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (101 of 112), Read 37 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 02:46 PM
I couldn't agree with you more Steve, and I would give
you a high five if we were in the same room. I feel much
the same way reading Moby Dick as I do Hamlet and
Antony and Cleopatra. Both which I forgot to mention
earlier on my intimidating book list earlier to Beej. I tend
to see similar ideas in Hamlet(and of course Blood
Meridian because the judge lectures the kid about his
lack of action, how he held back in the ceremony they all
joined in to together, he says the kid is the only one who
held his heart back. Blood Meridian suggests that history
favors might and the winner.)
I also see where Dean is going, and I get the idea that
Dean has kind of outlined ideals of Manifest Destiny.
What partly fascinates me about Moby Dick is all this is
going on and yet the novel also suggests to me that
there is a time for reflection on action...but I could be
weakon this and must think about it some more. And, if
action gives meaning to the world, I see this as also
including Starbucks actions...so I am mulling this right
now...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (102 of 112), Read 35 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 03:35 PM
I also find fascinating how the novel often reminds the
reader that the reader is comp licit in this story and how
it is read.
"So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest
and most palpable wonders of the world, that without
some hints touching the plain facts, historical and
otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick
as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable,
a hideous and intolerable allegory."
And we are often reminded of the complicity of
non-whalers in the whaling industry. That's right,
warning! This is a Consummerland Novel, heh heh.
" For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and
candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of
man's blood was spilled in it."
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (103 of 112), Read 37 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 03:36 PM
Candy, I should hasten to add that I did not intend to
imply that I am the hunter primeval modernly incarnate.
Quite the contrary, and that is why my own reaction to
this interests me.
Actually, I see a very great similarity between Hamlet and
Starbuck. I think they are birds of a feather. When
Starbuck ineffectually contemplates killing Ahab, he is
Hamlet all over the place.
Dean, very neat observations. Forty years of whaling
have stripped Ahab of civilization. He has become a
perfectly elemental man in a perfectly elemental world.
This came to me while reading your remarks.
Yet, he knows how to manipulate that crew. Notice how
he relies on ceremonies to bind them to him. Very like
Hitler in that regard. A leadership seminar based on a
study of Ahab would work.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (104 of 112), Read 38 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 04:32 PM
Ahab is an indomitable human spirit who would have
been honoured as a hero if he had brought his men home
even as Ernest Shackleton was honoured for not losing a
single man on his ill-fated Endurance expedition to
Antarctica.
As it was, only one man survived, Ishmael.
"Call me Ishamel," he says as he begins his tale after his
experience on the Pequod. "Call me Outcast" for he is an
outcast as he belongs to no group, he is not a conqueror
like Ahab or a religious like Starbuck, neither mocking like
Stubb nor pragmatic like Flask. He is outcast by his own
equanimity. His sense of balance estranges him from
those who inhabit the extremes. As Ishamel advises us
(Ch. 73, p. 473 MLC)
So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head,
you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist
in Kant's and you
come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some
minds for ever keep
trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these
thunder-heads overboard,
and then you will float light and right.
Ishamel speaks from experience for he did indeed "float
light and right" on the coffin and survived.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (105 of 112), Read 48 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Beej Connor connorva@mindspring.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 04:42 PM
Dean, Your posts on MD have been tremendously
insightful...excellent. Just outstanding. Thanks for sharing
these insights. I've realized a lot about this novel,
because of your comments, here.
Beej
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (106 of 112), Read 38 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Jody Richael
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 05:38 PM
I enjoy your thoughts also Dean and need to go back and
read some more!
Where do I start! I am almost done with the book. I had
read about the first half and was not really enjoying it. I
loved the actual storyline of the Pequod and Ishmael but
the side notes about Cetology and whales in pictures,
etc. were driving me crazy! I thought they were boring,
verbose (do we really need to be given EVERY SINGLE
example he can think of), and annoying because he
would make sweeping assumptions based on no data .
From the very first page I got the impression that Ishmael
was prone to exaggerating and describing the world from
his own very biased perspective. Then I decided to stop
reading and go back and review everything again and try
to really understand why Melville would try to do this.
When I did that I found that I really did enjoy the book
more. The book is so rich in symbolism, themes and
imagery that I still feel like I am missing at least half of
what Melville would like to convey.
I am still undecided as to whether Melville means
Ishmael’s tangents and theories to be taken seriously or
in jest. And then I start thinking that perhaps he is vague
intentionally. I think one of the major themes of the book
is that we each view life from an extremely biased
perspective and that we all make life and the world
appear as we would like it to. I believe Melville intends for
us all to find different meanings in the symbolism of the
book. I haven’t actually encountered Moby Dick in the
book yet but I think it is certain that Melville intends for
Moby Dick to represent different things to different
people. In Chapter 42 he says that the whale means
different things to Ahab and to Ishmael.
I also think in the tangents, Melville is using whaling as a
vehicle to portray many issues men encounter in life. As
one example (and I have many) the chapter on Cetology
could be viewed as a demonstration of men’s tendency to
classify each other just as we try to classify whales. In
the chapters immediately following Cetology we are given
the classifications of the men on the ship.
Perhaps these tangents where Ishmael makes an
assumption on pretty much just his own opinion and
thoughts are an example of something we all do - make
conclusions on very little data and mainly our own
opinions. ( A good example is in Chap 45 where he tries
to convince us that Pricopius’s sea monster was a Sperm
Whale. Did anyone buy his arguments there?)
One more thought for now - Moby Dick is certainly an
engaging book of contrasts such as Christian vs. Pagan,
Civilized vs. Uncivilized, Life vs. Death, Good vs. Evil. I find
numerous contrasts of life vs. death within the same
event. A great example is when Tashtego is in the
whale’s head which is sinking and represented as his
coffin. Then suddenly events change and the head now
represents a womb and life. Melville juxtaposes chapters
to make the contrast stronger. Chapter 81 is a horrible
story that shows some of the worst sides of whaling and
whalemen while Chapter 82 is all about the honor of
whaling.
I am looking forward to the ending and more discussion!
Jody
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (107 of 112), Read 36 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 06:13 PM
Jody, I liked how he classifies whales and then classifies
the stauts of the men on a ship too. I don't see it it as
either a strength or weakness, or too much science or
not. I personally enjoyed all the "side notes" and
"asides". Very many passages are geared like a play,
which entertained me.
I too am really enjoying all the insights of different
readers here, very exciting stuff.
I believe this to be one of the most delightfully written
and told stories. I think there are many things about
Ismaels account, he is the first to say it is just a
beginning draught. I feel he means this also as a way of
saying we can't always know everything, and part of
being a human is beginning to classify, to measure and
sometimes accept and sometimes reject our
measurements. I find Ismael to be a refreshingly well
adjusted character...
I find this novel also terribly terribly funny, like Karens
teacher...to follow...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (108 of 112), Read 37 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 06:31 PM
Some ore quick quotes and thoughts I want to consider
and remember. I feel Ahab betrayed his crew in some
ways by having a secret crew below. I guess it was
because he anticipated some mutiny or doubts form any
old crew...so he had back up scabs just in case...but I felt
that was his first real bad treatment of the respect for his
crew, its a give and take, and a captain can kill a
mutineer, but he should have at first earned their respect
across the board...(before the secret crew, we see Ahabs
plotting and lying and secret plans to manipulate the
crew, he has all bases covered more than the reader
knows at first...
A quote I feel worthy of note:
"So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living
magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides
and her seasons for that."
I feel the novel differentiates between various motives
for action. Its not blind action that gives meaning, as I
see it.
Then we have the first whaling encounter, where Ishmael
boat gets wiped into Ocean and they spend the night
outside...after this are some very funny, to me, scenes
here begins the following chapter right after they get
pulled aboard after being in the dark all night cold...I find
this whole chapter "the hyena"chapter 49, hilarious...its
when Ishmael makes quick to write his will, his forth will
at sea. And he considers how sometimes life is a practical
joke. I love this writing and scenes...how he realizes his
life is at the talents of a side captain, and a mast man
and the wind...It is much like descriptions my friends have
told me when they joined the army and they realize what
their lives depend on is a bit of luck, a leader, folly and
courage...and they sort of buckle up and go for it...( or I
guess its one of the same realizations that make
someone go awol. heh heh)
It ends with..."Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling
up the sleeves of my frock, here goes for a cool, collected
dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the
hindmost."
Right after this guffah, is a conversation that I think is
outstanding, droll and serious all at the same time.
Perfect.
"Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had
but one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless
maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber-toe. Oh! he's
a wonderful old man!"
"I don't think it so strange, after all, on that account",
said Flask. "If his leg were off at the hip, now, that would
be a different thing. That would disable him; but he has
one knee, and good part of the other left, you know."
"I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him
kneel."
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (109 of 112), Read 39 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 07:26 PM
Mary Anne's point about cannibalism made me remember
that I read somewhere that Melville left one whaling ship
and wound up on a small island with a tribe of cannibals.
They befriended him and insured his survival. So, he must
have seen first hand the situation was not clear cut.
As usual when reading something this complex and
unusual, I find myself fascinated by the creator of it. I've
glanced through a few biographies of Melville at the book
store, but am making myself wait until this summer. I am
particularly curious about his religious beliefs though. This
book is full of comments dripping with irony about
organized religion. Chapter 81, "The Jeroboam's Story" is
a particularly bloodcurdling one. But, these references are
scattered throughout.
I agree with some of you who have said that Moby Dick is
a force of nature. And, the story feels to me like a fable of
the futility of man's effort to truly conquer those forces. I
don't really find questions of God, Satan, evil, etc. fitting
in here thus far (not finished yet, I'm on page 550). And,
I'm wondering if my viewpoint is affected by my own
highly agnostic beliefs or if this was Melville's intent.
Barb, chuckling at Candy's comments in parenthesis
about Ahab....
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (110 of 112), Read 27 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 01:40 AM
Thanks, Beej, Jody et alii.
Jody #106 "[the book says]...that we each view life from
an extremely biased perspective and that we all make life
and the world appear as we would like it to."
I agree and Ishmael makes this very clear in Ch. 99, The
Dobloon, where several people look at the coin and each
sees it differently. When Flask overhears the Manxman's
interpretation, he says "There's another rendering now;
but still one text. All sorts of men in one world, you see."
Candy, I'm glad that you keep mentioning the humour in
this book. It can't be overstated. Here are some other
funny moments:
- the situation of the captain going across to the gam.
Ch.53
- Stubb diddles the captain of the Bouton-de-Rose and
her aromatic circumstances. Ch. 91
- His experiences on the Samuel Enderby Ch 101.
- When Ishmael is measuring the whale skeleton, the
priests rebuke him with "Dar'st thou measure this our
god! That's for us." Whereupon the priests can't agree
"concerning feet and inches." Ch. 102
- -the description of the carpenter as "...like one of those
unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo [much
in a little thing], ..." and then he makes the carpenter
sound like a brainless Inspector Gadget. Ch 107
There is also constant word play throughout the book.
Here are only a few examples:
- Queequeg hits the mark with his harpoon and makes
his mark on the contract (Ch. 18)
- "...a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation,
even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they
anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as
they anoint machinery?" Ch. 25
- "The Rattler made a rattling voyage of it." Ch. 101
- during the discourse about the fossils of antediluvian
whales and then Ishamel says "... I am by a flood borne
back to that wondrous period ere time itself can be said
to have begun." Ch. 104
- when Ahab realizes that there is a problem with the
compass and we read, "... or if impressed, it was only
with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts
from inflexible Ahab's." Ahab then proceeds to magnetize
a needle. Ch. 124
Ishamel is a great story teller who isn't afraid of letting us
know that he has had an education. The book abounds
with allusions to Shakespeare, Blake, Cicero, Euclid,
Descartes, etc. and I found some of these funny in their
own right. I will post some later.
Barb #109 I don't know about Melville's religion but I
found Ishmael's attitude toward religion sensible and
amusing, as in Ch. 7, when he tries to convince
Queequeg, whom he calls "a sensible and sagacious
savage," of the bad effects of fasting by saying that
"...hell is an idea first born on an undigested
apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the
hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans."
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (111 of 112), Read 18 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 11:44 AM
Martin, it may appear as if I have ignored your wonderful
number 74 above. Actually, I printed it off and have been
carrying it around since in order to reread it and ponder
it. In the meantime I simply wished to make the point
that on its face, this is a rollickingly good adventures
story. Your questions:
So what about this transcendence? Do you think it might be
possible that’s what this whole book is about? You and
others have noted that there seems to be little transcending
here, more of the bottomless pit of nihilism. And do you
think that it’s Ahab who does the transcending?
Your use of the word transcendence got me thinking
about Ralph Waldo Emerson and the transcendental
movement with which Melville was clearly familiar. Kant
was the forbear of that movement, and Melville refers to
him specifically in the little reference Dean has provided
us. You will recall that those folks rejected religious
dogma and paradoxically also rejected reason as roads
to truth. Deification of nature and intuition were what
they advocated, and those landlubbers derived a
touchy-feely sense of well-being about our state of affairs
as a result.
The sea is different thing though. It seems to me that
Melville has turned transcendentalism on its head here.
He has given us a work that says that if one transcends
in the sense of Emerson, one is confronted with a
nightmare. I would say that Ahab does transcend and
detests what he finds to the bottom of his being. It is the
horrifying abyss of cruelly indifferent geological time. (I
think this is what he confronted while he was wrapped
up in the straight jacket on the voyage back after losing
his leg.)
Unlike Pip though, he is unbreakable. He chooses not to
go gently into that good night. His last defiant speech
before the line wraps around his neck and jerks him out
of the boat is something.
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (112 of 112), Read 4 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Jody Richael
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 12:37 PM
Another prominent theme in the book appears to be the
power of the individual will against other forces such as
chance and evil. A great insight into this is given in
chapter 185 The Mat-Maker as he describes weaving. He
compares weaving to three major forces is nature -
necessity, chance, and will. Ishmael says that chance is
the most powerful because it rules the other two. Does
Moby Dick represent chance?
I think religion definitely plays a part in the novel but that
Melville believes religion doesn’t define a person. Ishmael
seems to have been raised in a world where ’good’
people are Christians and ’evil’ people are not but he
doesn‘t necessarily believe this. Ishmael runs into
Queequeg who, as a pagan or savage may not be
Christian in word but certainly is in deed. Then he meets
Captain Bildad who is a “pious Quaker” but in fact is
Christian only in word and not in deed (“to him religion
and the practical world are separate”.) I think Melville is
intentionally mixing up labels society gives to people and
forcing his readers to rethink stereotypes. There are
certainly numerous connections to the Bible throughout
the book.
Jody
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (113 of 145), Read 70 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 02:17 PM
Thanks, Steve.
I think this all ties together into the religion question
that's bobbing up here.
I've been meaning to do a little research on it and this is a
perfect chance. My two readings as a middle-aged adult
have brought to mind (ha, ha) something I heard the poet
Donald Hall say: "Everything written is about the mind."
I've seen such a strong Buddhist influence (Buddhism
means awakened mind), yet how can this be?
Thanks to whoever originally brought up the question, I'm
getting my answer poking around today. In her biography
Melville, Laurie Robertson-Lorant offers this:
"Melville must have longed at times to dance out of his
head, to escape from self consciousness, from the endless
analytical thinking about thinking that bedeviled him. A
creative genius who found linear, rationalistic thought
frustrating, he was drawn to philosophers such as Sir
Thomas Browne and Robert Burton...
"In the poem and prose preface called 'Rammon,' a
mythical son of Solomon who is weary of life becomes
interested in Buddhism, especially the transmigration of
souls, as a release from his ennui. Following in the
footsteps of Siddhartha (the Buddha's last name before
his mind awakened), he goes on a spiritual journey and
meets Tardi, a 'suave and fluent' Tyrian importer and poet.
Tardi, a lover of Buddha who avoids 'entire segments of
life and thought,' tries to convince Rammon that he will
find happiness in the 'Enviable Isles,'/ but the young
prince decides he must live for the good that exists in his
present life. (Anyone thinking of Ishmael at this point?)
"'Bale out your individual boat, if you can , but the sea
abides,'" the narratopr Rammon had advised in his
preface, and with old age and death closing in all around,
this was probably the best Melville could do." (p.600)
Robertson-Lorant says that much of the Buddhist influence
came through Arthur Schoepenhauer's works, especially
those dealing with genius and madness, art and suicide.
"Schopenhauer's philosophy appealed to Meloville
because he saw in it a way to transform pessimism into a
positive force for the conditioning of the soul. Strongly
influenced by Buddhism, Schopenhauer argued that man's
will impels him to strive incessantly and that unhappiness
comes from fruistrated desire, as man rarely gets what he
wants. On those rare occasions when a man does fulfill his
desires, he immediately ceases to feel happy because the
absence of striving leads to ennui and emptiness.
Fulofillment is an illusory goal, but even so, man must not
despair." (p.606)
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (114 of 145), Read 68 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 02:40 PM
I also did a little digging in Shopenhauer's work The World
as Will and Representation and find this:
"...plurality of the homogeneous becomes possible only
through time and space, i.e., through the forms of our
knowledge. Space first arises by the knowing subject
seeing outwards; it is the manner in which the subject
apprehends something as different from itself. But we just
now saw that knowledge in general is conditioned by
plurality and difference. Therefore knowledge and plurality,
or individuation, stand and fall together, for they condition
each other. It is to be concluded from this that, beyond
the phenomenon, in the true being-in-itself of all things, to
which time and space, and therefore plurality, must be
foreign, there cannot exist any knowledge. Buddhism
describes this as Prajna Paramita, i.e., that which is
beyond all knowledge." (Behind the mask?) Accordingly, a
'knowledge of things-in-themselves' in the b being-in-itself
of things begins, knowledge ceases, and all knowledge
primarily and essentially concerns merely phenomena. For
it springs from a limitation, by which it is rendered
necessary, in order to extend the limits."
Sorry to go on at such length, but I think this sheds a
great deal of light on Moby Dick.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (118 of 145), Read 61 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 04:33 PM
This last passage from Schopenhauer, shall we call him
Arty?, helps describe the significance of what many
readers describe as tangents -- especially the passages
that go on in such detail about the whale.
At the outset, under Extracts, provided by a
sub-sub-librarian, we get a catalogue of accumulated
knowledge about the whale. It is presented as "valuable
or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird's eye view of
what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and
sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations,
including our own."
In short, it's knowledge, a collage if you will, defined by
the lines referenced by Arty that serve as the predication
for knowledge. And it concludes with this little song:
"Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea.
Note the capitalization of Whale and King. It seems to me
an indication that this whale is metaphor of that essential
spirit of being that transcends knowledge of which Arty
writes, and to which Ahab alludes in the behind-the-mask
speech on the quarter deck. Also see the Moby Dick
chapter:
"One of the wild suggesting referred to, as at last coming
to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the
superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that
Mobyh Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been
encountered in opposite lattitudes at one and the same
instant of time."
The landed world, a world defined by boundaries, is one of
separation based on knowledge (some of it laughably
wrong, some incomplete like all knowledge). This
grounded and chopped up world is what Ishmael finds
confining, just as Robertson-Lorant speculates that
Melville would have liked to dance out of his head.
In The Monstrous Pictures of Whales, Ishmael concludes:
"Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must
remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit
the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it
with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there
is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale
really looks like. And the only mode in which you can
derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour,m is by
going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no
small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him.
Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too
fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan."
Two important things here. It's the experience, as Dean
indicated above, that renders up a true understanding of
the whale's contours. And yes, that's metaphorical.
But also, as the author Bruce Olds asked: How do you
write about that which is beyond words? That which is
beyond the mask. The being that Schopenhauer,
Buddhism, and Melville indicate exists in us all.
Melville's answer is that you write about all that surrounds
it and that can be described in words, pictures,
dissections, and all the other ways that man tries to punch
through the mask. The illusion of the physical world is not
separate from the being behind the mask. It's a condition
that defines the being behind the mask. And studying that
condition is the equivalent of going whaling to know the
whale's contour.
Study the conditions (mask) that define the being and you
can know the being. Write about the mask, and you will
describe what lies behind it.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (115 of 145), Read 69 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 02:51 PM
Just out of curiosity, do your editions use Roman numerals
for the chapter numbers or not? My version was printed in
1950, and uses Roman numerals. I would guess that is
how Melville wrote it. Are Roman numerals even taught in
schools these days?
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (116 of 145), Read 65 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 03:57 PM
I have Roman numerals too, but then each chapter has
words for numbers. Thats why it has taken so long for me
to look up chapters, heh heh. I was sitting and working
outthe Roman numerals all last week till I noticed the
others...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (117 of 145), Read 69 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 04:00 PM
I am glad Steve brought up the question of Martins about
whether acentraltheme in this book is transcendence...it is
a lot to think about.
Martin, I have really been getting into your quotes of
Buddhism and Schopenhauer . I was reading a lot of
Schopenhauer a couple of years ago. Fascinating thinker.
I also was thinking about how well read Ishmael is, and
finding it charming. Alos a lot of reference to Canadian
locations. Hey, you know the classics, Schpenhauer,
Canada, it all makes sense...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (119 of 145), Read 64 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 06:48 PM
Martin,
Somehow I missed Arty(that is easier for me to spell, thats
for sure)the last post of yours about transcendence and...I
posted before you did, but they are now after your
posts...
all I can respond to your last post around 4:30...is that I
had tears. Take that however you like, but the ideas stir
something in me that I can not at this moment respond
with logic or words.
All of what you said is exactly why I return to certain
novels over and over.
Hey, and they happen to be guy books too. Heck, I should
have been born a man, I drink beer, hate shopping and
don't like to talk about my feelings.
Plus, I like man's mans books.
Off to cry some more and scratch my crotch and burp.
That was an awesome post Martin!!!(post 118) More
later...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (120 of 145), Read 59 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 07:10 PM
I've been puzzling through these notes for a while tonight.
What a lot to think about.... As at least one of the people
who posed the question about Melville's religious beliefs, I
appreciate your research, Martin. I think I understand the
first quote from Schopenhauer about striving and
frustrated desire. I can see that tie-in with the novel.
However, I'm not sure I'm understanding the second
longer quote. Was his point that nothing can ever be
completely perceived or was he only referring to a deity? I
really do see the tie-in with the "tangents" now though. It
makes a lot more sense. In fact, it might be possible to
plug most of my questions into this theme. However, I'm
starting to think that Melville probably didn't have one
overriding theme here.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (121 of 145), Read 59 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 07:14 PM
Mary Anne and Candy,
I distinctly remember learning Roman Numerals in school
(and kind of liking them for some odd reason, like a
puzzle) and I still got mixed up in an earlier note. I was
reading L as 100, instead of 50, and referred to something
being in Chapter 132 or something similar. Everyone was
gracious as usual and didn't correct me though.
I also remember, at least, one of my sons being exposed
to Roman Numerals a few years ago but not with much
emphasis.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (122 of 145), Read 57 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 10:07 PM
"I'm starting to think that Melville probably didn't have one
overriding theme here."
You're absolutely right, Barb. But there is a symmetry to
Moby Dick - the symmetry of yin and yang. Several
upthread have mentioned the juxtapositioning of
opposites in the text. And the opposites act on one
another to define one another.
This is the mid-point of the yin and yang process that we
all know, the symbol of the circle with the white and black
sections spooning around one another and the dot of the
opposing color within the other color, all symbolizing not
only the influence opposites have on one another, but
also that there's a little of the opposite within.
But that doesn't tell the whole story. Before that phase
there is a small barely deciferable ball. Then the mid-phase
discussed above. And finally another black dot.
The saying is that before the mind is awakened, the
mountain is a mountain. After the mind is awakened, the
mountain is a mountain. It's in that mid-phase that we
discern the opposites influencing and flowing into one
another. Yet the second dot is much different than the first
(although they look exactly the same), because we have
been through the experience defined in the mid-phase.
Regardless of whether Melville was thinking of yin and
yang, in his book we have at the outset Ishmael -- as
Dean so rightly points out, set apart from others like his
biblical namesake. We see him evolve as he reveals his
knowledge. Particularly in the early chapters we see this
meditation (that's how I think of Moby Dick) unfold. We
see opposites percolate into that mid-phase whose
symbol adorns so many key chains. And as the hunt builds
to its moment of resolution they all are absorbed in that
final black dot (aren't we all?).
In the end, Ishmael's voice is left. But is it the same
Ishmael as at the outset? After the experience of reading
the book, as Steve mentions, yes, in many senses he is
the same Ishmael. But, then again, no he isn't. Much has
been experienced.
And all the themes unfold within that framework.
Barb -- the second quote from Arty is phenomenological in
nature, and boils down to this:
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
Form is none other than emptiness
Emptiness is none other than form
It seems to me that Melville had a grasp on this (it's from
the Heart Sutra). He was a man whose poles were set far
apart. Perhaps far enough apart to incorporate an
experience of this.
Again, experience is the key to fully grasping this. As
Buddhist teachers constantly remind their students, this is
not an intellectual exercise. When you experience it, then
you have achieved it.
On the question of transcendence, I think Ishmael/Melville
has achieved much in this regard.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (123 of 145), Read 54 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
R Bavetta rbavetta@prodigy.net
Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2002 11:02 PM
A short cruise on the net tells me that 2002 is MOBY DICK
YEAR. By whose designation, I've yet to determine.
In honor of this discusssion, I've found a few poems on
the MB/Melville theme, and shall be posting them over on
the Poetry Conference.
Keep your eyes peeled, mateys!
Ruth
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the
world was mad. Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (124 of 145), Read 62 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
George Healy malword@ameritech.net
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 07:19 AM
Just caught up with this great discussion. Lots to digest...
Martin-
You hit upon what might be a near-motto for the book:
'...this is not an intellectual exercise. When you experience
it, then you have achieved it.' Problem being that the
ambitious Melville probably was trying to achieve both
spiritual and intellectual transcendence... dangerous and
contradictory goals that can drive one mad (see 'Pierre').
In 'Ahab & the Carpenter' Ahab jokes about making a man
50 ft. high, chest like the Thames Tunnel, 'arms 3 ft.
through the wrist, no heart at all, brass forehead, and
about a quarter of an acre of fine brains...' but NO eyes to
'see outward' ...he gets a skylight on top of his head to
illuminate inwards. In Ahab's fantasy his 'creation' gets no
eyes for watching for whales or horizons or storms... he
gets a lamp that shines clear through the really
threatening landscape of himself.
Melville sees the glory and the folly of Ahab's
intellect-heavy quest... so Melville is on a
multi-dimensional/faceted/pathed quest.
Interestingly, the chapter before 'the Carpenter', 'Ahab's
Leg', gives an unmistakable prediction of the end of all
too-intellectual quests... Ahab's ivory leg shifts off-center
underneath him and gores him from below. He spends
months in anguished recovery (or decovery) prior to
sailing. A terrible accident, definitely adding insult to
injury... but how infernally ironic to Ahab it must've been,
this suspicious reader-into-things... it must've seemed like
the whale had harpooned him! I can almost hear Hell's
laughter echoing through his head. Or, as Melville said:
'The ineffacable, sad birthmark in the brow of man is but
the stamp of sorrow in the signers.'
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (125 of 145), Read 64 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Nancy Nesbit mrs bracegirdle@aol.com
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 08:22 AM
Ahoy the ship! I'm coming on board...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (126 of 145), Read 65 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Nancy Nesbit mrs bracegirdle@aol.com
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 08:28 AM
Sad, sad the human soul to whom the mighty avalanche of
words found in Moby Dick
says nothing.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (127 of 145), Read 54 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 12:50 PM
Welcome Nancy. I think you'll find this crew more
energetic, more imaginative, and more insightful than
previous virtual sailings.
Sad? Really. Because I think behind the mask, Ishmael
finds a boundless expanse and little else. What I find
interesting is that from the crow's nest here that is
regarded as nihilistic, or sad. More on that later.
I've been on the trail Steve suggested, Emerson, and his
transcendental influence, if any.
The biographer Robertson-Lorant doesn't offer a lot, other
than that Melville read Emerson's essays. But I did find
this in regard to Melville's publication of a collection of
poems in Sept. 1866 called Battle Pieces:
"Henry Gansevoort thought the volume had 'some
beautiful things in it' despite 'so much of Emerson &
transcendentalism in his writing that it never (would)
touch the common heart.'"
But I also found this:
"By portraying himself as a mad 'scribbler,' Melville was
acknowledging the Dionysian wildness that impelled him to
mix epic, satire, and poetry with nautical adventure. The
enormous bursts of creativity he experienced, plus the
never-forgotten horror of his father's derangement,
constantly made him wonder how deep a 'thought-diver'
could go without falling into the abyss.
Now isn't that notion of a thought-diver interesting,
especially in light of his plumbing of the depths in MD, and
Pip's previously cited dip in the deep dark sea.
And finally this on the reception and earnings from MD:
In it's first month, Moby Dick sold 1,500 copies, 2,300 in
the next 18 mos., and 5,500 in the next 50 years.
For his efforts, Melville netted (I hope you're sitting down)
$556.37 initially. His lifetime earnings from Moby Dick
amounted to $1,260. Another $81.06 was paid to his
widow after his death in royalties.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (128 of 145), Read 56 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 01:11 PM
Martin, I have read before about the pitifully weak sales of
Moby Dick during Melville's lifetime but did not have the
precise figures until now. Thank you.
I think we can say that Melville's was generally a
miserable life, partly as a result of his own personality. It
makes me wish that I could revive him for five or ten
minutes. As his eyes fluttered open, I would lean over and
whisper in his ear, "Hey, Herman, it's 2002. Rest easy from
now on. You are the author of the greatest American novel
ever written!"
Steve
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (129 of 145), Read 55 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 01:38 PM
I was reading something the other day regarding Melville's
writing style -- obsessive, perseverant writing and
rewriting, with his wife doing the transcription of his
illegible scrawls. The same piece also suggested that
Melville was abusive in his relationship with his wife.
Knowing nothing about Melville's personal life, I still found
this interesting -- suggesting that at some level the
various characters of MB not only inhabit Melville's
imagination but are part and parcel of his own personality
and that his novel is metaphor for his own life, with Ahab,
Starbuck and Moby Dick, among others, locked inside his
skull in eternal, raging conflict.
Dick
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (130 of 145), Read 60 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 01:56 PM
Thanks for all the wonderful background. Martin.
Concerning transcendentalism it seems to me that the
novel is warning us away from it. Ishmael talks to
Queequeg to get him to give up his fasting. Ahab, also,
seeks to distance himself from human experience as when
he tosses away his pipe. Unfortunately, the social
structure of the ship does not permit Ishmael to talk
sense to him.
Ch. 35 ends with a direct warning against it:
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life
imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from
the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot
or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity
comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover.
And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one
half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent
air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it
well, ye Pantheists!
As for yin-yang, Ahab's transcendence lets him see it very
well, Ch 133, p.792 MLC
Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is
Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all
mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of
the peopled earth, nor gods nor men
his neighbors!
And so the message seems to be that transcendence is
the way to the vortex.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (131 of 145), Read 60 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 02:56 PM
Ishmael is like the Ancient Mariner except that I would
invite Ishmael to the wedding.
He mentions many great thinkers by name and makes
indirect reference to many others.Here are a few of the
references which struck me.
Ch. 81, p. 516 MLC, " ... the shadows that the three boats
sent down beneath the surface, must have been long
enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army."
Cicero, in his Tusculan Discourses, relates this anecdote
about the Battle of Thermopylae. A small band of Spartans
led by Leonidas had to hold the narrow mountain pass
against the invading Persian army of Xerxes which
numbered in the tens of thousands. Xerxes said to the
Spartans, "Our army is so great that you will not be able
to see the sky because of our arrows." Whereupon, a
Spartan soldier shouted, "Then we will fight in the shade."
Leonidas added, "Fight bravely, Spartans, today perhaps
we will dine with the shades." They were all killed but had
managed to hold the Persian army long enough to allow
large Greek army to mobilize and defeat the Persians.
Ch. 108, p.678 MLC Ahab says, "By heavens! I'll get a
crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one
small, compendious vertebra."
This reminded me of the opening of Hamlet's soliloquy in
Act 1,Sc.2,
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Both Ahab and Hamlet are frustrated in their ambitions to
the point of evaporation.
This one made me laugh out loud.
Compare the opening line of Ch.108
"Drat the file, and drat the bone!"
to "The Tyger" by William Blake, especially line 1 of verse 4
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6181/tyger_tyger.html
And don't forget Anacharsis Clootz, Ch.27, p.174 MLC
http://www.bartleby.com/65/cl/Clootz.html
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (133 of 145), Read 52 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 03:37 PM
More great posts to catch up on, this place is hopping!
Dean and all, I feel that there are insights into motivation
of whale hunting and degrees of its
worthiness-deliverance in the book. Many references to
war and money are made with whaling. There is a
difference made to whaling for food and heat. But then
there is whaling for the motives of revenge, and these are
seen as vanity and ego.
This is qualified also in the search and attainment of
transcendence. When the passage Dean quotes about the
abyss then offers horror when one sees ones identity. It is
identity and ego, as opposed to blankness, whiteness,
infinity, or transcendence that is the horror.
Martin, I was not feeling teary because I was "sad" but
rather because I had an emotional response to reading
many thoughts here about transcendence and this novel. I
do not see transcendence or going for the abyss as sad.
I think the horror is the far space between the motives of
say, Ahab, or many seeekers and the space towards a
feeling of abyss. Part of the horror is seeing how we are
not above the world. The revenge motives sink all action.
For all the bravery of facing nature, it is also an act of
ignorance that we are just as much involved in the abyss
as the stare of a whale.
I like what you said Martin about reading this book being a
form of meditation. I feel that way about all my favorite
books. It is an act of surrender to read this novel...just to
take each episode and anecdote and description and let
the book do all the work, rather than the reader.
I feel that Melville must have been terribly open to other
forms of spirituality, and this impresses me as I read Moby
Dick(or another favorite of mine The Confidence Man). I
know nothing about his life, I would have to go out of my
way to even know what year he was born, I am not big on
bios as many of you know. It made me feel very sad to t
hink of Melville being cruel to his family...he can NOT be
Captain Claggart! say it ain't so! Or that he made no
money on sales for Moby Dick.
And Steve, I agree with you, this is the greatest American
novel.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (134 of 145), Read 55 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 03:41 PM
Oops, speaking of transcendence, I seem to have entered
some parallel universe, where I think I'm losing posts, but
I am not. So I landed up kind of repeating myself here in
two separate posts. Sorry about that. Plus, I have two
sets of the same posts here in classics corner. Very weird,
the horror, the horror!
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (138 of 145), Read 54 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Nancy Nesbit mrs bracegirdle@aol.com
Date:
Friday, April 12, 2002 10:42 PM
"Ishmael is like the Ancient Mariner except that I would
invite Ishmael to the wedding."
I like that line, Dean.
Thanks for the welcome Martin. I was in the midst of an
intense read of James' " The Ambassadors" when I saw
your signal flag. It will take a little mental adjustment to
get my sea legs back.
My admiration for Mr. Melville and his book is based on the
fact that he is the most original of American authors that I
have ever read. Melville may have been influenced by wide
reading but who else but he would have thought to cobble
together such an oddly passionate book about whaling.
Although to call "Moby Dick" a book about whaling is much
like calling "Gone With the Wind" a book about the Civil
War. In either case the ostensible reason for the book is a
mere peg to hang quite another tale on.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (139 of 145), Read 48 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Nancy Nesbit mrs bracegirdle@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 12:09 AM
"Moby Dick" inspires us with terror and pity as any great
tragedy should. It is funny and furious, too. It isn't sad any
more than life is sad. It just is what it is.
I read "Moby Dick" in one week and breathlessly. I would
never have guessed that it would prove to be a page
turner but it got my attention almost instantly and held it
till the Pequod sank from sight.
I learned, at fifty, to trust my author. I close my eyes, so
to speak, and make a leap of faith. I don't fight him and I
don't keep running to critics or biographers to find out
what the author intended or what I should think. I let the
book tell me what the author wanted me to know. If I
don't get their message, I am apparently not worthy of it.
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (140 of 145), Read 42 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 02:37 AM
Hi Nancy, welcome to Constant Reader and Moby Dick!
All,
One thing about Ishmael I find so interesting, he's more
than cosmopolitan and well-read. He is what I always
thought of as a contemporary event. The recognizing of
other cultures language and art forms as "equal" in artistic
merit and cultural significance. he seems to be so
modern....like an anthropologist.
One bit he says how the carving on a weapon is as grand
as the Latin lexicon. It stuck out of the page at me...he
says several things like that throughout the book.
Beej has a poem about Moby Dick in poetry section and
something she says and something the poem says have
me thinking...
The kind of ego and self elation the whale hunters have is
so different than hunters of the pacific west coast, or
aboriginal hunting accounts. It was spiritual, not for ego
boosting, but spiritual because the blood of the whale
must be got, yet it was for food. The aboriginal hunters
had ceremonies to respect the death of the animal.
These hunters seem more like the cartoon versions of
deer hunters shooting each other, and deer and keeping
the horns and leaving the rest of the animal in the woods.
They are killing to find out and prove their own
existence...as if they are already cut off from
experience...Ahab seems out of touch with being alive...a
very dangerous thing in a hunter or a warrior!!!!
(I mean no disrespect to hunters who hunt for food, I feel
that is an honorable and necessary activity-I have no
respect obviously for those who leave food behind and
only keep a "trophy")
To me Ahab is a trophy hunter at times, not a whaler...or
fisherman...
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (141 of 145), Read 15 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 09:53 AM
Welcome, Nancy! Is this your first trip to Constant Reader?
I voted for The Ambassadors when it was up for the CC list
this year but it didn't make the cut. I hope it will be back
on the nomination list next year. I agree with you that
there needs to be a sense of just releasing yourself to the
author. And, I try not to read biographies or criticism while
I'm actually reading the book. However, I often pick up a
biography afterward if the author's originality and
creativity fascinate me. I really hate the deconstruction
efforts that reach to assign contemporary political
sensitivities though. Some of the recent writing about
Willa Cather drives me up the wall.
Barb
Topic:
Moby Dick - April Discussion (142 of 145), Read 11 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 10:07 AM
This discussion of yin and yang as it applies to Moby Dick
and, particularly, Ishmael makes sense to me. He seems
to alternate intense analysis (that's not quite the word,
but I can't think of a better one) with self-mocking irony.
Barb
Topic:
post new notes under Moby cont. (143 of 145), Read 18
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Ann Davey davey@tconl.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 10:08 AM
Something very strange is going on with the Moby Dick
thread (threads). Most of the notes have been duplicated
under a second thread, but not all. I wonder if there is a
system limitation involving the number of notes under any
one thread.
In an attempt to prevent any more notes from being lost,
please post all new notes under the Moby cont thread that
I just set up.
Ann
Topic:
post new notes under Moby cont. (144 of 145), Read 12
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Nancy Nesbit mrs bracegirdle@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 10:40 AM
Okay. Let's see what happens...
Thanks for the nice welcome, Candy and Barb. This is my
first visit to Constant Reader. It will take me awhile to get
used to the art of posting here but am nothing daunted as
long as I can talk about books with intelligent readers.
Martin once happened upon me in another readers' forum
surrounded by a pack of Moby hating philistines snapping
at my heels and making insulting remarks about Melville's
use of the English language. Just like Dudley Dooright, he
came to my rescue and we have been on good terms
since.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (5 of 14), Read 33 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Sherry Keller shkell@starband.net
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 02:37 PM
Nancy, let me add my welcome to Constant Reader. I hope you
stay for more than just the Moby Dick thread. Why don't you
post a note under the "Welcome" Conference and tell us a bit
about yourself and what you're reading.
Sherry
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (6 of 14), Read 31 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 03:33 PM
Thanks, Nancy, and welcome. I share your approach to
reading. I even avoid reading introductions until after I've
finished the book.
Candy, you expressed an opinion about the novel "despite
Ishmael's musings" but Ishmael's voice should not be so readily
discounted because his voice is Melville's voice. This becomes
apparent as we go farther into the story. Not only are the
dramatizations Melville but Melville's voice becomes more
prominent as we are told more and more things which Ishmael
could not possibly have known. Ishmael fades and Melville
appears.
This is what Ishmael tells us about good whaling and bad
whaling:
Ch. 82, p. 524 MLC. "The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was
the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it
said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not
killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of
our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the
distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders."
In other words, the only time whaling was pure was in myth.
And we may well ask, is there more honour in hunting down a
blind mutilated whale for its oil or going after the most
dangerous whale who will after all be used to feed the same
lamps?
We can try to get away from the sordidness by leaving land and
going on a ship, and leaving the deck to sit atop the mast and
feel ourselves at peace and unity. What brings us back is not
the return of identity but the horror of death, the root of all
sordidness.
There is no escaping the riskiness of life Ch. 47, p.311 MLC "...
this easy, indifferent sword must be chance-- aye, chance, free
will, and necessity--no wise incompatible-- all interweavingly
working together."
After his first lowering, Ch.48, Ishmael comes to terms with this
and in Ch.49 he tells us of his "desperado philosophy" seeing as
even belonging "... to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck's
boat" did little to shield him from risk as he imagined that it
would. He was kidding himself.
Ch.49 ends with
"Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my
frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and
destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost."
He can't run from it and he can't kid himself any longer so the
best he can do is face it with as much preparation as possible.
I think that you judge Ahab too harshly. Ahab is the only one
who gives the whale any reverence. We see this in his soliloquy
in Ch.70 The Sphynx.
We should also consider the gams. Every ship which has
lowered for Moby Dick has suffered losses. Each story justifies
Ahab in his quest.
I would compare Ahab to every person of great
accomplishment. Each one took er cause personally. Each one
in turn acted as a lightning rod through which all around them
were roused to action. That they did not succeed should not be
the only criterion for judgement.
As an example coeval with Melville, consider Sir John Franklin.
His last expedition on the ships Erebus and Terror set sail to the
north from Greenhithe in Kent on 19 May 1845. On July 26, the
captain of a whaling ship saw them off the coast of Baffin
Island. This is the last time the ships or the men were ever
seen.
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/education/fact_files/fact_franklin.html
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (7 of 14), Read 31 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 05:11 PM
Oh jeez, Dean, I have been so turned around with the double
threads here, and I do not remember WHY I said, despite
Ishmael...oops
I am taking your insight into Ahab very seriously. Really, and
will re-read your last post a coupe of times okay?
Perhaps I am too hard on Ahab, but I don't trust him. I wouldn't
want to go to sea with him, or be ina battle situation with him. I
feel those are very dangerous places to have such an ego
maniacal leader. Bad news, but let me think about this okay?
I make no argument that his "will" is what people admire about
him...I respect that kind of will to power too...but...I believe
there are parallels of will in the novel...but wait,
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (8 of 14), Read 30 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 06:33 PM
Candy, there is no doubt that Ahab is terrifying. When Ishmael
sees him he comes face to face with implacable will from which
Starbuck also retreated.
For the first time, Ishmael faces something with which his
philosophy, reasoning and affable nature cannot arrive at a
compromise the way he did with the outwardly terrifying
Queequeg.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (9 of 14), Read 28 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 07:00 PM
Dean, Right,I see where you are going...I am still thinking...
Seen any whales lately out there in Vancouver? This book has
really made me miss being out on the west coast, I spent a fair
bit of my time there out on the water, watching seals, otters,
whales, octopi...ah I miss it...
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (10 of 14), Read 28 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 07:07 PM
I like to look at the ocean but I rarely venture out onto it. I
prefer greenery to watery.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (11 of 14), Read 27 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, April 13, 2002 09:05 PM
A safe answer.
What's interesting is to compare Ahab's and Ishmael's
motivations for the hunt. Yes, Ishmael hunts the whale:
"I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I
love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not
ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and
could still be social with it - would they let me - since it is but
will to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one
lodges in.
"By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was
welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung
open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose,
two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless
processions of the whale, and, midmost of them all, one grand
hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air."
Essentially he's going for the same reason as Ahab. Ahab
wishes to punch through the mask to discover the being behind.
But what I think differentiates the two is that where Ahab writes
"monster" on the whale's brow, where Ishmael sees the whale's
noble nature. In the end, I think it's Ismael who, if he hasn't
actually punched through the mask, at least has bridged the
distinction between the mask and the being behind it.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (12 of 14), Read 17 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Sunday, April 14, 2002 09:05 PM
I’m reading MOBY DICK oh so slowly. I’m voyaging to the
chase, entering into the whaling experience haltingly, first by
fiction, then by fact, spits and spurts, filling in my awareness of
as outrageous a profession as ever there was. Splendid,
frustrating and poetic. I remember that the latter portion of
BILLY BUDD really soared; the narrative just took off and by
the conclusion I was in full flight. So far MOBY DICK has
narrative hiccups interspersed with voluminous interludes of
information. Melville reserves his magnificent economy for the
storyline only, almost as a tease. But I’m happy to be on board.
Robt
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (13 of 14), Read 17 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Sunday, April 14, 2002 09:13 PM
Oh, and I have to quote Dick from an above post because it’s a
brilliant remark:
“The difference between Ahab and the judge [from BLOOD
MERIDIAN,] in my mind, is that Ahab is a human possessed by
his demons whereas the judge is a demon possessed of his
humans…..their actions and characters spring from two
fundamentally different sources.”
Robt
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (14 of 14), Read 4 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Marty Priola mpriola@midsouth.rr.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 06:00 AM
Hoping I'm in the right place to post notes.
I'm starting the book soon. I hope, this time, to be able to
make it through.
But, as I'm about to start, and as I didn't see it mentioned
anywhere else, I think I'll ramble a bit about the first sentence.
"Call me Ishmael."
My inferences:
"My name may be Ishmael, but it's just as likely that it isn't. For
the purposes of this story, you the reader will need a name
whereby you can identify me. So we'll use Ishmael."
The name itself is fraught with meaning, the most prominent
being that of the perinnial outsider or outcast. (I can elaborate
more on this, viz. sources and whatnot, if anyone wants it.)
This all reminds me of the priest's tale in Cormac McCarthy's
The Crossing. It ends thus:
What the priest saw at last was that the lesson of a life can
never be its own. Only the witness has power to take its
measure. It is lived for the other only. The priest therefore saw
what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness.
Neither to Himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there
were no God then there could be no witness for there could be
no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. the
priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no
man who is not. To God every man is a heretic. Ther heretic's
first act is to name his brother. So that he may step free of him.
Every word we speak is a vanity. Every breath taken that does
not bless is an affront. Bear closely with me now. There is
another who will hear what you never spoke. Stones
themselves are made of air. What they have power to crush
never lived. In the end we shall all of us be only what we have
made of God. For nothing is real save his grace.
—Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing, 158.
As McCarthy's known to be a devotee of Melville's, it seems
only fair to bring him into the discussion (again).
—idjp
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (15 of 49), Read 90
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 11:50 AM
Robert and all,
Sometimes I find myself thinking....why? Why did he write
all these sections of information, and turning over
information. Maybe its part of naming. Ishmael is naming
everything he can about the whales.
And what other book is like this? At least does anybody
think of some other novels, written before or around the
same time as this one that have similar ways of telling the
story. Is Beowulf like this-having the three sections? I
don't know...I just am fascinated that he wrote this book
in this way.
It in so many ways has minimal plot...
still thinking...
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (16 of 49), Read 88
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:04 PM
Somerset Maugham addresses this question in his 1948
essay on the novel, Candy. At the risk of riling Martin, here
is what he had to say on the subject.
Montgomery Belgion in a sensible introduction to a recent
edition of Moby Dick has suggested that since it is a tale of
pursuit and the end of the pursuit must be perpetually
delayed, Melville wrote the chapters dealing with the natural
history of the whale, its size, skeleton, and what not, to do
this. I don't believe it. If he had any such purpose, during the
three years he spent in the Pacific he must surely have
witnessed incidents or been told tales that he could have
used more fitly to effect it. I should have said that Melville
wrote these particular chapters for the simple reason that he
could not resist bringing into the work he was writing any
piece of information that interested him. For my part I can
read all but one, that which deals with the whiteness of the
whale, with interest; but it cannot be denied that they are
digressions which impede the narrative.
. . .
If he composed Moby Dick in the way he did, it is because
that is how he wanted it. You must take it or leave it. He
would not be the first novelist to say: "Well, I might write a
more satisfactory book if I did this, that, or the other as you
suggest. I daresay you're perfectly right, but this is how I like
it and this is how I'm going to do it, and if other people don't
like it I can't help it, and what's more, I don't care."
To my way of thinking, that is as cogent a way to look at
this issue as any other.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (17 of 49), Read 84
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:07 PM
Marty,
That passage is really something from The Crossing. I
think it speaks very much to the exploration of naming and
fact finding in Moby Dick. I believe Martin has said a lot
about this with his idea of Melville saying everything all
around a subject while the real face is under that mask of
words and facts etc...
Dean,
I am still thinking about the differences between Ahab and
Ishmael, and asking myself if I am unfair to Ahab. I think
there is a different and important separation between
what Ishmael knows of whales and what Ahab knows of
whales. I am not sure I can agree that Ahab is more
respectful. I think Martins last post about their approaches
says it better than I can.
I am hoping to track down two examples, but of course
that means me sorting out all the post it notes I have
going on my poor weathered copy right now, which is
about to fall apart...
I love all these voices here and ideas about this book, ya
hoo-keep going Robert!
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (18 of 49), Read 83
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:15 PM
Oh Hi, there Steve with the interesting quote.
Hm, it is as cogent a way of looking at it as any. True.
But why do I keep feeling he is messing with the pace of
what we expect a story to be? I feel its almost downright
deconstructive this novel! But how could that be when
Mons. Lyotard was many years away from being born! ha
ha and not yet invented deconstruction!?
It seems to me that he is like Oliver Stone here, with odd
bits and montages and juxtapositions....determined to put
a stop to the kind of fast paced adventure story he is also
able to pull off in his sleep...he is messing with narrative,
and plot demands of readers here, he is the anti-Dickens!
and yet Ishmael seems as Dickenslike as they come...
just thinking out loud
LOVE that quote business...got any more?
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (19 of 49), Read 84
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:28 PM
I was also thinking how all the chapters on whales etc etc
that (hey has anyone ever re-written Moby Dick, without
all those information chapters...just the politics and
relationships and major plot, that would be a funny
exercise)reminded me that maybe all that information is
supposed to be like unified theory...like an Aleph?
here is short story link...what do you think?
http://www.phinnweb.com/links/literature/borges/aleph.html
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (20 of 49), Read 85
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:37 PM
As a matter of fact, I do, Candy. I also ran across a very
interesting essay on the novel done in 1943 by Clifton
Fadiman, which relates in a way to your question. This
short excerpt does not do justice to his overall thesis, but
I will put it up nonetheless:
It is generally recognized that the canons of the ordinary
novel do not apply to Moby Dick. If we applied them we
should be forced to put it down as an inept, occasionally
powerful, but on the whole puzzling affair. This was the
conventional opinion up to two decades ago. During those
decades we have discovered Moby Dick to be a masterpiece.
What caused this shift in perspective? To put it simply, we
discovered how Moby Dick should be read. We must read it
not as if it were a novel but as if it were a myth. A novel is a
tale. A myth is a disguised method of expressing mankind's
deepest terrors and longings. The myth uses narrative form,
and is often mistaken for true narrative. Once we feel the
truth of this distinction, the greatness of Moby Dick becomes
manifest: we have learned how to read it.
Moby Dick is a myth of Evil and Tragedy, as the Christian epic
is a myth of Good and Salvation. "Both the ancestry and
posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity
of Joy," thinks Ahab; and this central brooding conviction
threads every page of the story, even when it seems most
concerned with try-pots, harpoons, and sperm oil.
So yes, this novel is like the Aleph.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (21 of 49), Read 84
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:38 PM
And couldn't the Internet be a version of an aleph...
What would Melville think of the internet?
And Steve, when you whispered in his ear about his novel
is the greatest American novel you could also tell him how
whales are worshipped revered and protected...much to
do with his novel, I suspect. And what about the coffee
icon, that adopted a character who also represents the
coffee corporations mission statement to not damage the
earth while serving hot brew while they sought their own
ambitions...?
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (22 of 49), Read 86
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:42 PM
Ah we are posting at the same time again...I am madly
catching upp to your posts. Thank you, that is wonderful.
You know what, I am having a really hard time reading
those italics. Is that some special font or
something...different than the standard fare around
here?or do I need to get my eyes checked?
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (23 of 49), Read 87
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 01:54 PM
You will forgive me, ma'am, if I suggest that you are
coming on an age when it is time to look into a cheap set
of reading glasses. That would by no means be an
admission of defeat. A strength of about 150, I would
guess. One can acquire a set for less than ten US dollars.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (24 of 49), Read 87
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 02:58 PM
Ha, ha, Steve. If Somerset is right -- and he's not at least
not wholly -- then it's true, a reader can skip over those
parts and miss little, or nothing. Melville has just out
Franzened Franzen and all the other post modern writers
who like to show off.
But I have a question: Can you really read this, skip the
parts in question, and still have the same experience?
I can't. And I think I know why.
Let try to explain by looking at the issue askance. In some
forms of meditation, visualization is used, in addition to
chanting mantras, and sitting quietly; all during the same
session.
In the visualization, a detailed image is formed in the
mind. The more detailed, the better, because it enhances
how deep into the mind the meditator is able to dive.
As the visualization, through repeated practice, becomes
more detailed, so the mind is affected in ways the
practitioner could never have guessed. They range from
sharper vision and thinking, to a sense of alert peace from
the perception of living in an ever larger space.
And I think the chapters are integral in helping create that
affect. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I will profess
to practicing the type of meditation to which I refer. But
my brother, who is strongly opposed to practicing any kind
of meditation, is the one who first brought the significance
of the chapters about the whale to my attention.
For instance, in practicing a meditation on a figure
representing compassion, it's possible to feel ever more
compassionate. The will is steered and guided.
The same is true of Moby Dick. By contemplating this vision
of the whale, it's possible to a large degree to see and
experience Melville's perspective of what lies behind the
mask. And that's the real magic of this book, at least for
this half-blind reader.
A second benefit is that it gives us the scientific view of
the whale. We also have the commercial. The mystical. The
poetic, just to name a few perspectives that come to mind.
So many perspectives are needed to create the
experience. Maybe it's possible to read only parts and
come away from the experience having gained some
meaningful insight. But I'm skeptical.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (25 of 49), Read 82
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 03:06 PM
By the bye, Robert, YES to your recognition of the
significance of witnessing. Except I was thinking more of
the Judge, that hybrid if Ahab and his monstrous vision of
the white whale, who also has a soliloquy about the
significance of witnessing (Ismaeling?) and does a fair job
of cataloguing all that he witnesses from ancient cliff
paintings, to geologic finds, to name but a couple.
Topic:
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 03:16 PM
Martin, that is as fine an examination of the purpose
served by the cetology chapters as any I have come
across. From my own personal point of view, the pacing of
this novel as a result of those contemplative chapters is
perfect, as I said before. And I think you have articulated
why--something I could not do.
With that, it's time for you to forgive me for suggesting to
a first time reader that he skip those chapters if he feels
bogged down. My reasoning goes this way. The action
chapters here constitute as good an adventure as has
ever been written. It is a helluva straight-up chase story. I
figure that if a reader at least completes that aspect of
the novel, the odds are very good that he will reread the
novel in its entirety at some point--to the precise effect
that you describe. My suggestion was simply my own
devious way to persuade folks to read the entire novel
eventually. This most certainly is a novel that bears
rereading, as I'm sure you would agree.
Steve
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From:
Nancy Nesbit mrs bracegirdle@aol.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 08:51 PM
Skipping parts of "Moby Dick"? Perish the thought.
It has been eighteen months since I last read this book
but although I don't remember every detail of the story I
do vividly remember the pleasure I got from the
experience.
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From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 09:22 PM
Steve,
Thanks for your kind words. I understood the rationale
behind the recommendation and am in complete accord.
Another thing I've learned is: "whatever it takes to turn
the wheel." If skipping whale anatomy turns the wheel,
then I would make the exact same recommendation for
the same reason.
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From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 10:06 PM
Martin, I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis.
Perhaps Melville could have written a nice story about
whaling, and left out all the narratives about whale
pictures, types of whales, or whatever. But then you'd
need to read the book with about 20 reference books to
get the same effect. Now you just need a dictionary.
Can one desire too much of a good thing? - W. Shakespeare
MAP
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From:
Lee Clark leilia_c@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 15, 2002 10:23 PM
Moby Dick could be said to be a novel of mythic
proportions, with archetypical themes. So, something for
everyone… In light of the discussions here, I have decided
to have another go at Moby Dick; this time will be via an
MP3 file of an unabridged version. How will the experience
of the story be different, listening as opposed to reading
the words? Will it be similar to the populace listening to
Beowulf or Kalevela?
Leilia
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From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Tuesday, April 16, 2002 04:41 PM
Fine comments all around in my view. I am really enjoying
the readerly remarks of those here and am beginning to
feel a bit like Ishmael seeking a berth on a whaler as I
navigate the proliferation of discussions.
On the matter of the narrative and the digressions I offer
this. "Myth" may be viewed as a condensed cultural
narrative. Even when the story seems simple and
straightforward it is 'mythic' because of all of the elements
that it touches upon and evokes. The oral tradition with
repetition and intuition. Melville put all that stuff in to
provide breadth to support the myth; and though it may
be skipped at any reading, it is always there and when
one responds to the fundamental narrative, one tends to
be drawn to the cetology because its empirical breadth
reinforces the fundamental nature of the story. Its the
flotsom and jetsom that reminds us that it is a story being
written as well as a story being told.......I don't know if
that makes any sense.
EL Doctorow in the most recent meeting of the Melville
Society gives a wonderful presentation (don't have a link)
in which he reminds us that Ishmael is a talker, less a man
of action than a commentator and an explainer.
I've always been fascinated by the fact that Ismael is
narrating in both present time and from a time after the
events in the book take place. We hear from him as the
story unfolds and we are certain that it is a story retold
from after his return to land aboard the Rachel.
And of course there are long sections of the book in which
Ishmael is not present and is not the present time
narrator at all.
The Ishmael of the opening chapter and the Ishmael
found floating on Queequeg's coffin are two different
characters and narrators and putting the two together is
a great and difficult and dizzying enterprize.
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From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Tuesday, April 16, 2002 04:42 PM
Ishmael
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From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 07:27 AM
Excellent points, John. Just to add to your observation
that this tale has many elements of an oral tradition, oral
recountings tend not to directly go at their target. Like a
Shaman come back from the beyond to deliver the goods,
the oral presentation tends to provide a lot of what we
now regard as context (something separate but related to
the central truth) but that was considered a seamless part
of the whole before we had the written word that allowed
for widespread dissemination of knowledge, which parses
the oral whole.
This time through I saw Ishmael in the light you describe,
as a talker. Dean's point earlier that Ishmael fades is
interesting. Does the Ishmael mask drop and do we
witness Melville, or is it part of Ishmael's transformation?
This time through I heard Ishmael as witness/teacher,
very similar to a shaman's voice.
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 11:54 AM
There are definitely things which are related in the story
which Ishamel could not possibly have known. At these
times, Melville is the narrator.
I wouldn't say that this book wants to be taken as myth. I
think, rather, that this book wants show the reality behind
the myth.
It wants to show people what is being done to furnish
them with comforts. After all few people in 1850 had
actually seen a whale. There is no need to exaggerate the
size of a whale. The book has to work against myth to
impart the already impressive reality of what a whale is.
The book mentions the myths and representations of the
whale but also gives tangible reasons and explanations
for these myths and stories about the whale.
Melville's humble servant, Ishmael, measures the length of
the skeleton and provides direct observation. Thus, we
are given a real sense of the physical scale of a whale. We
are shown the reality underlying the myths.
The book also wants to give credit to the flesh and blood
people whose courage makes life's comforts possible. It is
Melville who tells us to use our oil carefully as it comes at
a terrible cost.
Melville also uses verisimilitude to break down the notion
that we are reading a fiction as when he attributes the
practice of tying both ends of the monkey-rope to Stubb.
Melville's descriptions and his powerful use of metaphor
move the book from fiction to reality. We are brought to a
view of whaling and life that is stripped of illusion and
self-deception. Ishmael serves as a model of someone
who learns to stop kidding himself; that there are some
things which can't be placated, not the least of which are
those which arise in the human heart. All of this only
enhances the final chase making it even more breathless
and heart stopping for the reader.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 12:53 PM
I don't mean to speak for John, but I think you're right
Dean that this story is to explore the reality behind the
myth, physically and metaphysically. It's a bridge between
the physical reality and the metaphysical, neither
excluding the other. And that's what lends it such a
mythical quality, I think.
On Ishmael's perspective, I wouldn't be so quick to
dismiss his ability to see inside Melville's head, to witness
events that he was not physically on hand to perceive
with the five senses. It's very logical and rationale to say
that Melville's voice takes over. But there really is more
mystery about it than just hearing Melville's voice. If the
reader allows that Ishmael narrates the whole, then I
think there's a greater sense of mystery.
By the bye, walk in any book store's nonfiction section and
you will find accounts of biographers, historians,
journalists, and others who are witness to what was
going on in someone's head and heart at any given
moment even though they were in no position to truly
witness it. Now, that's a mystery!
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From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 02:02 PM
Quite so Dean. I don't mean to imply that "Moby Dick" is
merely myth anymore than it is merely a fish story or an
adventure story or an allegory replete with symbol or a
philosophical treatise.
I think it so though that once aboard the Pequod, and
particularly once the mission to seek Moby Dick is made
clear, there is a concentration within the narrative in which
all of the thematic elements and issues that are evoked as
the voyage transpires take on a clear mythic significance
in much the same way that (for example) Ulysses' voyage
home from Troy does.
I confess, however, to sometimes getting pleasure in
thinking of the Sirens as a bunch of tarts and of 'Fast Fish
Loose Fish' as little more than sardines.
Another notion of mine, whether it has merit or not I do
not know, is that one difference between the oral and
written tradition is that Homer's audience knew all the
stories and legends (or most all) referred to because of
the common cultural heritage and the repetition.
In our age, the linear print age, the modern age of
technology and 'manifest destiny,' that is less likely so. I
believe Melville provided all of the digressive material to
aid in establishing (as I believe Martin and you have
pointed out) 'context.'
Interesting that industrial empire and manifest destiny
has not yet come up.
How much of the narrative that Ishmael is not privy to in
any way we can establish, do you think is his narrative
voice from after the fact reconstructing the voyage......in
part in the manner of mythmakers and story tellers? I
think some but don't know how much. There certainly
were no witnesses to confirm or deny that which he
chooses to tell.
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 02:20 PM
Martin, I certainly did not intend to say anything about
metaphysics.
John, what you call a narrative of "clear mythic
significance," I call "a really good story to which everyone
can relate." Would you say that I have made a fair
translation?
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 02:27 PM
Yup. I think that a 'fair' definition and a pretty good
description.
Makes me think of something Harold Bloom once said that
I liked. I'll see if I can find it.
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 06:09 PM
Holy cow. There are so many things going on in this
discussion I can hardly think where to begin responding.
First, John, both industrial commerce and Manifest Destiny
were brought up in this discussion. I know because I
brought them up, ha ha. And was sort of surprised it didn't
elicit a response or comment. I quoted a paragraph that
directly seemed to define and react to the idea of Manifest
Destiny. I also think the chapter "Will He Perish" goes on
more about this too.
I am not super qualified to speak at length about Manifest
Destiny, because this philosophy was only introduced to
me about four years ago. I had no idea that there were
humans who believed in this kind of idea..an idea that is
very far removed from how I was raised to look at life and
the world. I was not raised Christian, so had no idea there
was a philosophy within this religion that believed humans
were superior to animals. I was recommended a famous
work(which has left my memory, I believe written by an
American? Its totally famous, so I am embarrassed I can
not remember its title) and read several parts int he Bible
that people have used to argue in support of this
philosophy.
I feel Moby Dick has a lot to say and contests this
philosophy.
Having said that, I am loathe to say there is one single
intention in this novel. Which leads me to say that I feel
we are all approaching an agreement in this
discussion...that the last dozen or so posts seem to be
aligning. As Steve might say, we are closing in on th
central issues of this book.
While at the same time, the novel constantly dissipates a
notion of "central" argument.
Martin, I am intrigued by your use of meditation as a
metaphor for the structure of this novel. Did you make
that up, or is this a generally held reading of this book? I
was initiated by the Dalai Lama many dim years ago, and
although it was not a "visualization" technique I was
taught, the idea of having many approaches and letting
these narratives run their course while meditating was
something I experienced from my time as the worlds worst
Buddhist. I would venture to say "everything" versus
"specific" perspectives on nature was more in line with
Buddhism...and I would say that I find this idea of offering
"everything" to consider is part of what is beautiful (and
part futileness of aiming for everything ha ha)in Moby Dick.
I feel that is part of its lessons(for lack of a better word at
the moment).
Steve, I tried the glasses, a bunch of them, but it seems I
still have excellent vision, so they don't help. Trust me, an
optometrist was happy to try to get me to spend much
more than $10 U.S. but he couldn't find anything wrong
with my sight yet. He said come back in a couple more
years you eagle you. but don't let my bitching stop you
from those great literary criticism quotes!
dean and Martin, to reiterate, i feel you are both on to
something...and that each of your takes on the way this
book was written are not so at odds...
I guess I am more willing to say that Melville knew what
he was doing Dean. I feel it is constructed ina very
deliberate manner, and this makes me feel that it is partly
why it is such an impressive book. It is also why I feel it so
so different and its structure is "alternative" in some way
to represent that we readers may want to consider being
"alternative" in the way we look at life:on many aspects
our intellectualism, our commerce, our attitude towards all
lifeforms, nature as a whole.
I feel a sense that his forays into "accounting" challenge
why we have that capability. We assume that we are to
name and count nature because we are the boss, the
supreme animal here on earth...when Moby Dick seems to
sugggest our accounting abilities may have a different
purpose-to know what is out there, and how much of
it...not to harvest it, but also to protect it and respect it.
Or let it be.
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 06:17 PM
Dean and all,
Something I feel is important about Ahab as ishmael talks
about the mind of a whale, and its whale culture, freedom
and how long it has lived...he says, to my mind, one of the
most important things about Ahab..
"Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharoh's."
I feel that much of his gathering and accounting of facts
shows us that our inventions and so-called scientific
knowledge and our accomplishments in civilization is much
younger than our actual time here. Man and whale has
been alive longer than our civilized awareness of
ourselves, we have a knowledge and intelligence older
than our buildings and governments and kingdoms.
I'm on a ramble, but I just wanted to remember this line
for later...more in a bit...
about the whale facts and digression from plot. I love all
this stuff. I find I learn as much just relaxing and reading
as anticipating some plot line or resolution. Doesn't bug
me at all.
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From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 07:54 PM
Ha, ha, Candy. At the end, Ahab mentions he's been on
his course for "billions" of years. I took it out of an earlier
post thinking no one else would get it and if you have to
explain it...But that would make him several kalpas, truly
ancient.
"I am intrigued by your use of meditation as a metaphor
for the structure of this novel. Did you make that up, or is
this a generally held reading of this book? I was initiated
by the Dalai Lama many dim years ago, and although it
was not a "visualization" technique I was taught, the idea
of having many approaches and letting these narratives
run their course while meditating was something I
experienced from my time as the worlds worst Buddhist."
I am making this up as I go along, Candy, so please bear
with me. It's a process that started a few years ago (John
has been indulging it kindly and poor Dean has been
subjected to it as well). But the poet Donald Hall once
remarked more than 25 years ago that everything written
is about the mind. I had a very strong aversion to his
statement. And strong aversions signal something deep
under the surface.
More recently, after I started meditating irregularly myself,
it suddenly started to dawn on me how correct he is.
This time through with MD drives home the point even
more so than the previous read. And I really can see it as
a meditation. Ahab, Ishmael, and meditation all have the
same purpose: to punch through the mask; know (or
should that be gain gnosis of?) the contours of the whale
(not a whale); or liberation.
I agree. Dean and I are very close in our reads.
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 08:19 PM
John, while you are looking for the Harold Bloom, I will
quote from Maugham's essay for the last time (I promise):
Fortunately Moby Dick may be read, and read with passionate
interest, without a thought of what allegorical significance it
may or may not have. I cannot repeat too often that a novel
is to be read not for instruction or edification but for
intelligent enjoyment, and if you find you cannot get this
from it, you had far better not read it at all.
I agree with him. Moby Dick is a ripper of a story. I think I
have a decent grasp of the difference between allegory
and myth. Certainly, there is something of the mythic
about this novel, which is one of the reasons it is such a
ripper. It has a very primal appeal as myths are wont to.
Steve
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 01:08 AM
Martin, coming from your experience with meditation, the
quote from Donald Hall is interesting in a way I was not
acknowledging, because the "mind" to people who
meditate tends to be regarded like "the world" to people
who are Christian. That would be with suspicion. My
weakness as a Buddhist laid in the fact that I love the
world, the mind, the heart, the body, the animals. I would
have made a miserable Christian too:as they have fear of
the material world and think they are superior to animals.
Having said that, Donald Hall is correct that everything
written is about the mind...and that lays in heavy with the
sentence when Ishmael says so much ambition is Vanity.
And...now...
I believe a lot of Moby Dick is about love.
And hate.
I feel Ishmael may be love, and Ahab may be hate. The
only way anyone could be so obsessed about whale
facts(myself included) is if one loved the whales. Or. If one
hated the whale.
One of the things I dig about this book is every now and
then Ishmael keeps piping in, the only way to "know"
about whales is to be out on the ocean with them.
I like that, and feel it is true.
It reminds us that we can study all we want but
experience is the authentic(teacher?).
I like this mask deal. I have a number of friends who are
drag queens. "The mask" is a topic often discussed. Part
of their job as performers is to emulate the mask...but
part of the enjoyment as an audience is seeing the mask,
the female all of a sudden be confirmed as male then back
to female etc.
Part of the "whiteness" of animals listed, polar bears,
whales is that there is an idea of a blank slate. Ismael
calls himself a blank slate near the end of the book. A
blank slate is the perfect vehicle for masks and identity or
lack of identity.
Okay, I'm tired, I have no idea what I am trying to say.
Goodnight, see ya in the morning...
Candy
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 10:00 AM
Martin, could you explain to me how you got a reference
to metaphysics from my post #34? I'm still confused how
you managed to see that in my post and I would
appreciate an explanation.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Martin Zook mlzii@aol.com
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 11:56 AM
Easy Dean. Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had
written something to the effect:
Yes, Dean. We definitely have an examination of the
physical here -- especially in the whale chapters, as well
as detailing of the mechanics of a whaling vessel. But we
also have a similar examination of the metaphysical --
whether examining the expanse of the sperm whale's
forehead, or contemplations of spiritual aspects of the
physical.
The point being that the two are linked inextricably.
I did not mean to convey any connection between you and
the metaphysical. Ten thousand pardons.
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 01:26 PM
Martin, I find your response condescending but I accept
your apology.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 02:30 PM
I feel Ishmael may be love, and Ahab may be hate. The only
way anyone could be so obsessed about whale facts(myself
included) is if one loved the whales. Or. If one hated the
whale.
Of course I know you know that it is more complex than
that, Candy, but it surely is worth discussing.
Ahab hated only one whale, not the species. The spectrum
of attitudes is represented through the mates. Starbuck
regards them as God's creatures placed under our
dominion. Hatred of them is sacrilege to him.
It is the cruel Flask who seems to bear a personal grudge
against the entire species. The one time I flinched during
the hunts was when Flask took such pleasure in lancing
the ulcerous cyst, or whatever it was, on the side of the
one whale. It is interesting that Flask is described as
displaying a "pervading mediocrity."
Stubb simply seems to revel in the danger of the hunt,
and in that sense he loves the whales for providing it.
Steve
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From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 03:37 PM
I don't think of 'manifest destiny' as being a 'philosophy,'
except I suppose a political one. It is connected linearly to
The Great Chain of Being, a more realized philosophy in
which all of this earth have a place and man has dominion
of and over it as the top earthly link in the chain.
There is a hint of that in the variation of the enlightened
ideal that 'all men are created equal, but some are more
equal than others.' That's a taste of manifest destiny we
can all relate to I think.
Flask's "pervading mediocrity" is in part an absence of
imagination, marked contrast to Ishmael. Melville was
cursed by his imagination as well as stimulated by it.
Hawthorne withdrew from Melville I suspect because the
intensity of his imagination made him uncomfortable.....he
as much as said so after.
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From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2002 09:10 PM
Much of this discussion is way out of my league, but I do
subscribe to the "ripping good story" philosophy.
Can one desire too much of a good thing? - W. Shakespeare
MAP
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 19, 2002 11:52 AM
Hey Steve, yeah I was being little miss reductionist there
with the love hate thing..heh heh Okay I was super tired
and getting all punchy I'm not great at philosophy after a
good nights sleep, nevermind when I'm punchy. Although
when I am so punchy it sures feels spiritual! heh heh
Hey Mary Anne, sober us up a little with some more of
your feelings about this book. Are we being too high
falutin? heh heh...
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 19, 2002 04:35 PM
Okay, here's another part that just made me laugh out
loud.
It's at the end of the chapter Measurement of the
Whale's Skeleton.
"The skeleton measurements I shall now proceed to set
down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had
them tatooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period,
there was no other secure way of preserving such
valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and
wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank
page for a poem I was then composing-at least, what
untatooed parts might remain-I did not trouble myself
with the odd inches; nor indeed, should inches at all
enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale."
I laughed partly because there he was so impressed and
scared of all Queegeeg's tattooes...yet he was also
covered with a lot of tatooes.
Um, is it me, did I miss something, but doesn't it seem
weird that there is little or no mention of Queegeeg at
the end of the novel, his "friend" who must have died.
You'd think he would have made a bit of a goodbye to
him. I had this weird feeling that all of a sudden the
reason he says call me Ishmael is because he is also
Queegeeg. Like some kind of Manichean deal.
I was thinking how this paragraphy is like the idea of a
man in progress, there is the mask of tatooes too.(heh
heh) And he says he wants to leave a blank space for a
poem...or for his changes(?).
Probably just still punchy,
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Friday, April 19, 2002 05:33 PM
That's a good point about both being tattoed and yet
another funny bit.
Ishamel gives us a good description of Queequeg. We get
to know him well as in Ch.12, p.80 MLC
For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a
profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts
whereby to make his people still happier than they were;
and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas!
the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even
Christians could be both miserable and wicked; ... poor
Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked
world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.
In the end we are sorry to seem him go and that is the
best tribute which Ishmael could make for his friend.
Although, their motives might be the same both Ishamel
and Queequeg are self-outcasts from their communities. I
don't know if that's significant as with the fact that
Queequeg's mark is the symbol for infinity.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Jody Richael
Date:
Friday, April 19, 2002 06:42 PM
Wow! I have about 10 minutes to post something before
my kids wake up. I have been trying to keep up on the
other posts which has been no small feat. I have to agree
with Mary that much of the current discussion is beyond
me. Many of the topics being discussed are not things I
am familiar with, but that is one of the pleasures of this
forum -expanding my experience and being introduced to
new ideas.
I still need to do a lot of thinking about Moby Dick and in
honesty probably re-read the book a good many times
but as of this moment I am feeling that the book makes a
significant statement on the forces of chance and
individual will. (I’m not using the word fate because
Melville uses chance instead and I think they have
different connotations.) As Ishmael/Melville states in the
Mat-Maker chapter - chance is the supreme force. Isn’t
Moby Dick the story of one man who became so
maddened by the evil done to him in life that he tries to
muster all his individual will into one last assault on that
force which has hurt him? The white whale becomes for
him the representation of this force. As Melville
demonstrates throughout the book, individual will is a
powerful force that can change the course of chance but
can never entirely overcome it. (Starbuck tries even on
the third day to tell Ahab that it is not to late to change
his course.) Individual will is also not a force that affects
only one man’s life but all those around him as Melville
masterfully demonstrated in the chapter on the monkey
rope. In the end, the Pequod is destroyed by a
combination of the exertion of one man’s will (Ahab’s
madness and determination to kill the white whale) and
chance (Moby Dick’s fatal blow).
I cannot escape from the feeling that Melville was also
making a major statement that we read our own
meanings into events in the world and that those
meanings differ by person. Again, perhaps he is saying
that good and evil don’t really exist as forces in the world
but it is all chance. Good and evil come from how we
interpret those events. Once someone has implied good
or evil on an event they then frequently exert their will in
that direction to make it even more so. I loved the section
with the cook preaching to the sharks. Here we have a
symbol of something generally regarded as
representative of evil or malice (shark) when in fact the
shark is nothing but an opportunist and preaching of any
sort is completely ridiculous.
I didn’t really like Moby Dick when I first started it but by
the end I was fascinated with it. I can’t help feeling it
truly is a masterpiece - not so much for what I
understand in it, but more from a sense of all that I am
still missing. There seem to be so many pieces to work
into this great puzzle….
Jody
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Friday, April 19, 2002 06:59 PM
Jody, that was terrific.
Thank you for reminding me of the cook preaching to the
sharks. I had almost forgotten about it.
This is one of the most re-readable books I have ever
read.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 19, 2002 07:18 PM
I have to agree Dean, that this is one of the most
re-readable books ever enjoyable!
Jody, really liked your thoughts there. I tend to agree
with them.
I think there is a lot about things mean what we decide
to let them mean.
But what I see in Mby dick, is that we can have as much
layers of meaning as we like, as as much conviction as we
like, but we are a cog in life. We are not superior to
nature, but rather a part of it. Ahab believed he could
master the world, animals forces of nature. He was a sore
loser in the game of life, long before the whale got him
good. He believed foolishly that action gave meaning to
life. When it makes no difference wether we have
meaning or recognize the meaning inherent in the
function of nature....nature wins...nature is the force or
should I say THE force...
still thinking, must rush off to make a vodka tonic on this
hot Toronto evening...we had five days of spring and then
it sprung into summer tata!!!!
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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From:
Ernie Belden drernest@pacbell.net
Date:
Saturday, April 20, 2002 02:13 AM
After I put together the carefully assembled comments on
various aspects of Moby Dick I did, as I have often done
before, hit the wrong button and wipe dd it all out. Who
knows, this may be a blessing in disguise. It may force me
to condense and cut down on what I had previously
written.
Two aspects of the book stand out in my mind. The first is
the literary, the language, the description. He does
approach Shakespeare in this respect. He has a unique
style which in itself would call for fame and recognition of
Melville's writing. He does go into innumerable details as
was rather common in his days when people had plenty
of time to read and reflect. He blended his specific story of
Ahab and the whale into a general description of the art
of whaling. I found the last 150 pages especially
fascinating and appealing. The plot is well worked out
and dramatic.
There is a spirituality to this book as well. Various
postings reflect on religious and philosophical aspect of
this book. My own feeling is that the truly great artist
often deals with the "Ultimate". A religious person may
say that he comes close to recognizing god while the
literary, philosophical and scientific readers will describe
this phenomena in other terms. Melville's writing reflects a
profound under-standing of the deepest level of the
world, human nature and the profundity of being. In other
words, without saying so Melville's writing contains deep
thoughts about the nature of man and the world. We only
find this kind of writing in true geniuses and Melville was
one of them.
Ernie
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From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Saturday, April 20, 2002 08:43 AM
Ernie,
Thanks for your post. Right on. I’ll have more to say about
this later.
Robt
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, April 20, 2002 11:55 AM
Ernie, great post! And its so true about how he honed
in(well, maybe with all those pages honed is not that
correct wordd, ha ha) on the human condition. Not only
the human condition, but the condition of humans within
nature/of nature and natures power itself.
So much to think about from everyones posts. this has
been an epiphany inspiring discussion for me.
Thanks hope theres more!!!
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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Conf:
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From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Saturday, April 20, 2002 10:13 PM
Ernie said:
...He does approach Shakespeare in this respect. He has
a unique style which in itself would call for fame and
recognition of Melville's writing.
....
The language is indeed Shakespearean, and so is the
scale of the conflicts. The conflict between Ahab and Moby
Dick, the more subtle and psychological conflict with
Starbuck. Melville even adds touches from stage
directions, such as "Ahab solus."
Far back above, I quoted from Hemingway who remarked
on the rhetoric being not so valuable as the detailed
descriptions of whaling and whales. I don't subscribe to
Hemingway's judgement.
To digress, I will stipulate that the comments on Melville
were made by a character in a Hemingway novel, and it is
not appropriate to credit these comments as representing
Hemingway's own beliefs. I got in trouble with Steve on
that point long ago in a discussion on "The Short, Happy
Life of Francis Macomber."
However. The fabric of Moby Dick is indivisibly woven of
both the Shakespearean rhetoric and the passages of
expository description. The passions that rage in Ahab
are set in the context of a broad enterprise, and a natural
world which dwarf Ahab's rage and make his destruction
not only expected but obligatory.
I am enjoying all these notes, which are immeasurably
adding to my enjoyment of this great book. But that is
why we are here, isn't it?
Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a
pagan.
Felix Miller
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From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Sunday, April 21, 2002 10:50 PM
Finished! Thank God I never saw the movie of MOBY DICK
so I could just revel in the tale. It’s really a great book
and lives up to its exalted reputation despite the
maddening interruptions of background chapters. All is
forgiven. The climax is beyond equal.
Ahab turned out to be a more sympathetic character than
I expected. He was comfortably loathsome until the chase
was imminent and then there was a glimmer of
tenderness in his iron resolve, and valor galore. I had
figured, as I waded through oceans of detail, that MOBY
DICK was a cautionary tale of the destructive force of
retribution; and it was, but not quite that simple, of
course. Ahab’s lust for revenge, which had shorn away
everything else in his life and led to his annihilation, still,
in the end, gave him his greatest experience. There was
such an awesomeness to the finale that whatever life
lesson I’m left with seems just so much Sunday School
drivel. I can’t reduce the novel down to a manageable
platitude. Experience itself transcended the lessons
contained within it.
Robt
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 03:27 AM
On 04/21/2002 10:50:00 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>Finished! Thank God I never
>saw the movie of MOBY DICK so
>I could just revel in the
>tale. It’s really a great
>book and lives up to its
>exalted reputation despite the
>maddening interruptions of
>background chapters. All is
>forgiven. The climax is
>beyond equal.
Ha ha, that's funny. I have never seen the movie (or
movies) either, to this day.
>
>Ahab turned out to be a more
>sympathetic character than I
>expected. He was comfortably
>loathsome until the chase was
>imminent and then there was a
>glimmer of tenderness in his
>iron resolve, and valor
>galore. I had figured, as I
>waded through oceans of
>detail, that MOBY DICK was a
>cautionary tale of the
>destructive force of
>retribution; and it was, but
>not quite that simple, of
>course.
This is a great insight. It does feel like we are going to
hear about 'don't take revenge'. But you know what, I
believe it is still a cautionary tale on one level. Cautionary
about not thinking we are greater than nature, and can
conquer it. We can have all te ambition and revenge we
want, but nature is all encompassing, its force is bigger
than our personal grudges.
Ahab’s lust for
>revenge, which had shorn away
>everything else in his life
>and led to his annihilation,
>still, in the end, gave him
>his greatest experience.
>There was such an awesomeness
>to the finale that whatever
>life lesson I’m left with
>seems just so much Sunday
>School drivel. I can’t
>reduce the novel down to a
>manageable platitude.
>Experience itself transcended
>the lessons contained within
>it.
>
I see what you mean, except I feel that in those seconds
when he and Starbuck meet eyes, we find that it is the
water in Starbucks eyes that reveals their bond. Ahab
had so much around him, comradery, connections, that he
was so alienated by his own obsession with himself, he
neglected to see he had a family/co-workers if you will. I
feel a lot of sense of loss in this novel is his own drive cut
him off from humanity.
I like thought the aspect you note that even though he
was ambitious, and headed for death, his own folly---he
STILL had his greatest experience. Honest Robert, I
hadn't thought of it quite that way. It's true, he was alive
and connected even though he was full of folly...he had a
few minutes of bonding with nature and seeing his own
place in it...
I sure wish he could have left his crew behind though,
they had some great friendships and appreciations of life
with or without catching Moby Dick, heh heh...I would
have read a sequel without Ahab...
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 10:23 AM
Actually, Felix, it was I who got into trouble with Dale long
before that for identifying a narrator or a character with
the author. It is Dale who has taught us that lesson.
It is no accident that Shakespeare comes up. Clearly
Shakespeare was far more prolific, but Ahab equals any
particular creation of Shakespeare. Ahab's soliloquies, for
example, are the equal of any from Shakespeare's
characters. (Well, most of them are not really soliloquies,
are they? Orations, let's say.) There's a little of Hamlet in
him; a little of Macbeth; a little of Richard III. A complex
character, as Robert says.
Melville falls far short of Shakespeare in humor, however,
even though some readers here seem to find Moby Dick
hilarious. Whatever humor one finds in this novel is
certainly not in the Shakespearean category.
Steve
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 12:24 PM
I still keep laughing about the part I quoted here when,I
think it's Stubbs and Flask, are talking about the loss of
Ahab's leg. They are all serious, until one of them says
how they didn't know he still had his knee...because they
had never seen him kneel.
Ie; they had never seen him pray, that just cracked me
up. And it also implied they had never seen him humble,
which is also sad and funny, and a big insight into his
personality.
I think I see what you mean about the humour not being
like Shakespeare's. Yeah, in many ways that is so...but
there is a fair bit of word play, with double meanings, that
gave me a chuckle here and there. I would say that the
humor for the most part relates to a kind of humor in
Dickens in that people are funny in general with their
characteristics. But, I would say that the scene at the
beginning in the Inn was as funny to me as some of the
sexual mistaken identities in Shakespeare.
In a tragedy sense, I guess I see Ahab a lot like King
Lear, that he missed the love around him, right in front of
him. He choose an ideal over humanity. And I believe it is
wise to give that notion some thought as a cautionary
exercise. IMO.
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 12:56 PM
I recalled incorrectly, Candy. It was Karen's teacher who
found this book hilarious, per Karen:
I am one of the people who nominated this book because a
teacher I had a few years ago said this was one of the
funniest books she had read.
That one mystified me as it did Karen after she had
started the book.
You're quite right that there is humor of course. I simply
meant that I doubt Melville is capable of comedy, say, in
the manner of Shakespeare's Falstaff.
All this talk about humor aside, there are dramatic
one-liners galore in this that sound Shakespearean to
me. For example:
"D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's
in him pecks the shell. 'Twill soon be out."
Steve
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 01:52 PM
Yes, many of those lines, gave me a chill down my spine.
As for the humor and Karen teacher...a few years ago if I
had heard that I would have scratched my head. My
memory of reading Moby Dick, what 15 years ago did not
include humor or comfort of reading or meditation. I would
have described Moby Dick as difficult to read,
profound,serious.
I think one of my first posts here in this discussion was
saying how old age is good for something! I found this a
delightful, charming, easy to re-read book, and can't
imagine why I wasn't guffawing many years ago. Another
example of hilarious was the description of when a
captain goes between ships to visit another ship. It's all
about how he balances and form. Fine, but then, right at
the end of this explanation he describes how the captain
in a rocky sea may land up hanging on to the hair of a
rower. shit, I can just see that and undignified our poor
described captain is, he has had to resort to this just to
stay standing for protocol!
I would say there is an element of slapstick kind of humor
in this at times.
I believe I was so concerned with the cautionary tale
aspect when I first read Moby Dick, that I wasn't very
relaxed, I approached my reading with a kind of
intellectualism, and academic philosophical stress of a
young pretentious reader.
Moby Dick never changed, little old Candy got a better
sense of humor.
I hate telling stories that I come out looking like an idiot,
oh well, ha ha ha
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 01:56 PM
Okay, and almost all of the description of a carpenter I
found gut busting...I have to make sure all the carpenters
I know at least have read that chapter...they were so
gung ho and fix it ish...and I feel it was an apt portrayal
of someone who practices and loves that craft...and our
demands on them.
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 02:10 PM
I thought that the funniest scene occured in Ch.91, The
Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud. Stubb's exchange with the
Rose-Bud's captain is hilarious.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 03:30 PM
Yeah, that first two pages is pretty funny...in a dark sort
of way at first. The way Stubb thinks of the French is well,
pretty politically incorrect. In some sick sort of way, I get
a kick out of the dislike for the French from (some of!)the
British and Americans...one can see some of this in jokes
about french cooking in the movie Frenzy-Hitchcock plays
it up.It reminds me of a brochure I kept from a new casino
in Las Vegas a few years ago. It was selling the concept
for the Paris casino-hotel. It said: All the pleasures of
France without the French.
Of course, Canada is not without its banter between the
English and French speaking communities.
After the Pequod comes up to the Rose ship they see
they have caught one of their rejected whales, and the
place reeks of decay and rot...
He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just
got into the chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had
slung his nose in a sort of bag.
"What's the matter with your nose, there? said Stubb.
"Broke it?"
"I wish that it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose
at all!" answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem
to relish the job he was at very much."But what of are
you holding YOURS for?"
"Oh nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine
day, ain't it?Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a
bunch of posies, will ye, Bouton-de-Rose?"
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 03:44 PM
Points well taken, Candy and Dean. And as with the
passage you quote here, the humor that we find is more
often than not related to Stubb in some way. Stubb is
one of those men for whom humor is a survival tool.
Steve
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From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 04:58 PM
Candy, it was Stubb's word play with the translations
which I found humourous not that they were mocking the
French. But I agree with your appraisal of that part of the
book. One could say something similar about the
depiction of the cook.
On a different topic, here's an echo which I found
interesting.
In Ch.9, p.60 MLC, Father Mapple says in his sermon:
But all the things that God would have us do are hard for
us to do--remember that-- and hence, he oftener
commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we
obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this
disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying
God consists.
Then in Ch.135 we read,
"Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,"
murmured Starbuck to himself, as he coiled the
new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. "God keep us, but
already my bones feel damp within me, and from the
inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God
in obeying him!"
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
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From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 06:29 PM
I like the description of the odor wafting up from the dead
whales: "worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when
the living are incompetent to bury the departed."
Dick
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From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Monday, April 22, 2002 09:57 PM
Candy,
Of course MOBY DICK is Cormac McCarthy’s favorite novel.
The majestic natural element is the star of MOBY DICK.
Vastness. Constellations pass over this stage; Hamlet’s
palace is but a puny set. The immensity, grandeur and
supremacy of the ocean is a fitting environment for asking
big questions and pondering the meaning of life.
McCarthy picked up on it in BLOOD MERIDIAN, which in
many ways is an offspring of MOBY DICK, a tribute, a
reimagining. Change the wilderness to land and keep the
American conquest in the same time period. Inform the
story with biological and historical accuracy and create a
great character, someone wicked and wild, someone
compelling. Defy anyone to identify God’s hand in the
matter. Relegate Divinity to natural splendor. Fantasize
the folly of man. Indulge in gorgeous language. Celebrate
experience.
Robt
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From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 03:08 PM
Excellent observations, Robt. Just excellent. The bigness
of everything in this novel is so important.
I have been reading several things about the book in an
attempt to find someone who can articulate the reasons
for the impact of this novel, something I myself have
trouble doing. Just yesterday I found the very best piece
yet. It is by Alfred Kazin, and you can find it here. He says
the very same things you are saying--. . .this persistent
atmosphere of magnitude, the essential image on which the
book is founded.
Kazin also corrects me on something. He points out that
Ahab's speeches are Shakespearian, but Ishmael's voice
is quite something else. He's right. And another thing.
There is nothing in Kazin about that trite business of
Ahab's "madness." Kazin insists that he is a hero, and
that's the way I see him, too.
This is a long essay, but one of the few I've found that is
really worth reading. There are a couple of points I don't
agree with, but overall I found it very insightful.
Steve
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 04:15 PM
I haven't read the Kazin yet Steve, but thanks for
pointing it out, I'll get to it in a few minutes, I just quickly
wanted to add that I really agree with this idea of the
vastness, the magnitude. And I also really appreciate the
idea Robert of "celebrate experience".
Even without reading criticism my feeling has never been
that Ahab is mad or crazy or insane. No, no.
I understand why many people feel he is a hero figure. I,
obviously, do not share than impression. Although his
energy and excitement I do find is exactly what I admire
about heros in general. I don't feel he is a hero...but
neither do I feel he is evil. And I do feel the ending
represents "experience".
But let me go and mull and read...I am cautious to
embrace Ahab's will and energy for action...as I am
cautious to embrace Ishmaels' commitment to
contemplation...
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 04:20 PM
And quickly, as I am running off to work...here is a quote
that somewhat describes my recalcitrance to take sides
with either Ishamel or Ahab.
"Experimentation must give way to argument, and
argument must have recourse to experimentation."
Gaston Bachelard
Candy, late for work...
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (76 of 83), Read 29
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 05:03 PM
Candy, I think your view of Ahab is colored by the fact
that you are such a softie for wildlife and animals in
general. Now, don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly valid
point of view, and in fact, as I understand your various
remarks on the subject through this discussion, your
reaction to Ahab seems to correspond rather closely with
Starbuck's.
There is one major difference between you and Starbuck,
however. You will recall that when Ahab is hoisted aloft
with a rope higher than the mastheads, he trusts
Starbuck to oversee his rope:
So Ahab's proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the
only strange thing
about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one
only man who had ever
ventured to oppose him with anything in the slightest
degree approaching to
decision--one of those too, whose faithfulness on the
look-out he had seemed to
doubt somewhat; it was strange, that this was the very
man he should select for
his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an
otherwise distrusted
person's hands.
The difference between Starbuck and you is that Starbuck
watched the manrope faithfully. You would have let 'er go
and dropped the bastard in the drink.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (77 of 83), Read 33
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 08:18 PM
That is an excellent insight and finding
Dean......"misdoubt." How did you make that connection?
Starbuck is a wonderfully human enigma in the middle of
all this, and though I appreciate him with tried and true
practice, I'm pretty sure I do not do him justice.
The Shakespearian language and allusions are certainly
there but we should never forget the biblical as well. That
particular one is worth thinking about. Even beyond
Jonah, who also had his 'misdoubts.'
Topic:
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times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 08:37 PM
One of my favorite chapters in MD is LXXXVII - The Grand
Armada. The whale boat is surrounded by a shoal of
whales, as though it "had slid into a serene valley lake".
They are hemmed in for some time, until a wounded
flailing whale stirs things up.
First, the whales forming the margin of our lake began to
crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by
half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly
to heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and
nurseries vanished; in more and more contracting orbits the
whales in the more central circles began to swim in
thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was departing. A low
advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the
tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river
Hudson breaks up in Spring, the entire host of whales came
tumbling up in one common mountain....
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black
bulks, leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long
lengths. But by desperate endeavor we at last shot into a
temporary opening; then giving way rapidly, and at the same
time earnestly watching for another outlet....
Can you get any more descriptive than that? What a
master Melville is!
Can one desire too much of a good thing? - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (79 of 83), Read 29
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Felix Miller felix3rd@bellsouth.net
Date:
Tuesday, April 23, 2002 10:27 PM
Steve opined:
Stubb is one of those men for whom humor is a survival
tool.
Which survival his humor did not secure. Laughing all the
way.
Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a
pagan.
Felix Miller
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (80 of 83), Read 36
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 02:21 AM
Thanks, John. I thought that Starbuck's echo of Father
Mapple was interesting because it showed Starbuck's
crisis of conscience, how religious he was and implies
Ahab's place as god-figure.
Here's another echo.
Ch.47(XLVII), p.311 MLC
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started
at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild
and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my
hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that
voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees
was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego.
Ch.135(CXXXV), pp.821-822 MLC
A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck
downwards from its natural home among the stars,
pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there;
this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering
wing between the hammer and the wood; and
simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged
savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer
frozen there;
Mary Anne, that is a beautiful passage. I found that
chapter beautiful also for the way that it attributed
intelligence and personality to the whales.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 02:35 PM
Ha ha, that so funny Steve.
I must let you know that I am an enthusiastic meat eater.
I lived on a ranch at one point. I loved our cows, feeding
them, caring for them, fixing fences. But I had no problem
eating them. To be the two are related, it's loving them
alive as well as that they are what keeps you alive. I
have eaten all manner of wildlife. I have also painted and
photographed all manner of wildlife. I love the creatures
for their own, and for the life they give me. Did you know,
Innuit catch seals and whales, and they give the dead
animal a drink of fresh water that they carry with them
especially for that action?
I am touchy feely about animals, true. You may also recall
that my favorite genre of novels is interspecies.
I think, you are close to understanding my take on this
novel. I believe its Melvilles take on life. Remember, one
of your first impressions of thisnovel was that it was
nihilistic? I do not feel that at all. I believe some people
would call Melville an misanthropist. Heck, I believe I
might be called that, heh heh. But its not misanthropy. Its
a very real experience of feeling nature and that humans
are not the most powerful or superior force on the planet.
I simply have never experienced that. Period. Its one of
the most alien concepts to me. For me, Moby Dick, along
with Call Of The Wild as another example...has a world
view that sits very comfortable to a naturalist like me. I
am not a Humanist. I can't be because I experience
earthquakes, snow storms, oceans, whales, wolves,
gorillas, rock slides to have every bit as much influence in
the world as McDonalds or Bill Gates or Britney Spears.
Ahab believed humans were superior animals. Look, he
and the crew died doing what they love. I respect that.
Have you ever read Into Thin Air? About one of the Mount
Everest "disasters"? Its sad, the climbers made some
fatal flaws by not working as teams, and putting their
business before safety. BUT, they died doing what they
loved. Thats how I feel about the end of Moby Dick. I also
feel that there is a kind of ignorance about Ahab.
Ignorant of how the world works...
Yes, I appreciate his energy to "overcome" the odds...but
he is WRONG about life.
In your essay, I like how Kazin says Melville seems to
have almost a masochistic pleasure at seeing people
come to their end at the hands of nature. And in the
context of Ahabs motivation, their death is just. I agree.
Its not because they are "whalers" they die. Its because
they STOPPED being whalers to attempt to defy the order
of the universe, for Ahab to IMPOSE meaning. The
"meaning" they search for is right in front of them-its
called "nature" or "life" if you prefer.
The mask is the the actor.
Nature is writing the meaning Ahab doesn't see. heck,
Ahab represents a lot of people not getting the meaning.
Nature IS a narrative, and no one sees that more than
Melvilles. Nature is THE narrative.
This has nothing to do with me loving cute little animals,
which I do. It doesn't make me an misanthropist. I like
cute fuzzy people too, heh heh. I am all for having
comfort in my home with lights and heat...I am not
against finding those comforts in the world and bringing
them home. No hunter is. But I don't believe in putting
human intelligence above natures intelligence. And to do
so is folly. Not in a moral sense but in a dangerous reality.
Our intelligence is subservient to nature.
This novel is not moralistic or nihilistic, it is naturalist.
Some people call that misanthropic. i've been called
worse, heh heh.
I don't need to go out and drop the rope on the Ahab's of
the world, they do a fine job of dropping the rope
themselves.
I just don't want to be in their posse, thank you very
much. I'll get my own dinner. And pour fresh water in its
dead mouth.
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (82 of 83), Read 23
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 02:38 PM
Yes, Dean. I neglected to acknowledge the connection
you made between Starbuck's speech and Father
Mapple's sermon. So let me echo John. That was sharp of
you.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (83 of 83), Read 29
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 02:53 PM
Very good, Candy. I understand your point of view.
Adopting that point of view for the moment. . .
If Ahab personifies the manic need to impose one's will
upon nature, then he could be taken as a metaphor for
the species generally. We as a species display this
behavior--and we have been successful to the point that
one might regard the earth now as being infested with
homo sapiens. But through geologic time nature has
displayed some efficiency in correcting infestations of the
planet. Therefore, and as with the Pequod, the sea may
very well close over us all.
Which brings us to the question of whether even any
fossil record of Britney Spears will remain.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (84 of 87), Read 30
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 25, 2002 12:30 PM
Heh,heh, hey I see a new calling for you Steve, science
fiction novelist.
Uh, well, I don't know if Melville was saying all homo
sapiens are just like Ahab. He seems to be fairly well
versed in other cultures...for example I was really taken
with his references to weaving...there are several cultures
that have weaving as a metaphor for how we move in the
world and to what level our 'infestation' is manifested. (ha
ha that cracks me up.) Not every culture imposes itself
onthe world in the same way...some tip toe...but they are
also becoming extinct-maybe thats why. When you put
Ahab next to an Andean mountain farmer, the latter is
going to fade away. I am not sure that the novel is saying
our fate as an animal is to be covered by the seas. Maybe
he is suggesting that it takes all levels of 'imposing'
ourselves in the world to live. I wouldn't exactly say that
we impose in the world, I believe our design is every bit
as "natural" as the design of a whale. In Moby Dick,
Melville is not just careful...he explodes with making sure
we get the idea that part of our design is action...and part
of our design is contemplation, or as Martin wouldsay,(and
so did Kazin) meditation. Action and meditation both
contribute to our survival. And as far as 'imposing' a lot of
the world benefits from our imposing. Hey look at tobacco
and marijuana plants. I bet they wouldn't have flourished
so much if we hadn't enjoyed their so-called poisonous
features. We have quite the symbiotic relationship with all
plants. Of course, we need to remember its
symbiotic...especially when it comes to the plants and
animals we have almost over used or threatened. That is
if we think its worthwhile to 'save the whales'. Maybe its
not. Maybe its just fine if we use up all the whales and the
rainforest. If we are a part of nature, maybe we are
justified to impose ourselves on it. The jury is still out. I
tend to desire to tip toe-just a little bit-but then, I am in
line to disappear with that attitude as history
demonstrates, heh heh. History records might over tip
toers. Me and Britney, lost for the ages? Ah, Britney is as
big as Cleopatra, she'll stand the test of time.
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (85 of 87), Read 23
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Thursday, April 25, 2002 09:06 PM
Vic is reading a book called The Metaphysical Club, which
he really loves. He read a section to me about how the
Civil Was may have meant the demise of cotton for the
South, but it was the end of whaling for the North. Over
80 whaling ships were lost during the war. Half were sunk
by the North in a futile attempt to blockade a harbor. The
rest were sunk by the South because they were seen as
potential military targets.
After the war, whaling was done mostly for whale bone,
as petroleum and kerosene had been discovered. The
book points out the irony of keeping up the dangerous
voyages for the sake of keeping up women's corsets.
Can one desire too much of a good thing? - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Friday, April 26, 2002 06:54 AM
Ooh, that book sounds interesting. It reminds me of the
chapter in salt where lack of salt really affected the Civil
War.
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (87 of 87), Read 7
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, April 27, 2002 08:42 PM
Uh oh. We seem to be running out of steam here, and
with another month to go on our discussion.
I am a bit mystified that Melville makes such a big thing
about the Manillan whalers on the very first lowering of
the boats (Chapter XLVIII) but then they seem to
disappear from sight and mind. Did I miss something?
There presence added intrigue, but then it was dropped.
Can one desire too much of a good thing? - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, April 29, 2002 11:33 AM
I don't know that they disappeared, MAP. Fedallah and his
"tiger yellow" colleagues were Ahab's own crew who
rowed his personal whaling boat. Every time he goes out
it is with this crew. See Chapter 100 and 133 for example.
Having said that though, Melville does seem to have a
penchant for introducing us to interesting characters and
then dropping them. A prime example of this was
Bulkington, whom Candy mentioned some time back. Here
was someone whom I thought an interesting character
worth developing, but we hear nothing further of him after
Chapter 23.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (89 of 93), Read 21
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 29, 2002 03:46 PM
Oh, thanks for correcting me, Steve. I couldn't figure out
who Fedallah was, and did not connect him to the
Manillans. I agree with you about Bulkington. Why bring
him along if he's not going to show up for some of the
action?
Experience is by industry achieved, and perfected by the swift
course of time. - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (90 of 93), Read 18
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Monday, April 29, 2002 04:20 PM
Bulkington is an enigma for certain. His presence and quick
unexplained exit has been taken by many readers and
critics as an illustration of the notion that the writing of the
book got away from Melville somewhat in the process of
writing it.........that the implicative thoroughness and
expansiveness of the work 'unfolded' for Melville in some
of the same ways it unfolds for the reader.
I've thought that from time to time myself, and
Bulkington......a true man of the see who only briefly rests
his restless feet upon shore is in some ways reinforcement
for that notion. I've thought that initially Bulkington was
intended by Melville to play a more prominent role.......and
that he pretty much forgot about him as the writing
developed. Its hard not to think of him though when
contemplating 'The Lee Shore.'
I don't really think that anymore though, or maybe I think
the writing is both in control and out of control at the same
time.
The sorts of connections that Dean's post illustrate that
show consistency and interconnectedness in the narrative
have reinvigorated my reading of the text......which is why
I've not posted.
I really think that Melville, like Ishmael, knew from the
beginning where he was headed, but did not necessarily
know the exact route that wind and current and fate
would cause him to take.
Anyone interested in looking at the first chapter closely in
this regard?
Topic:
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Conf:
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From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 29, 2002 05:26 PM
I shall dig around the first chapter tonight John...I am of
the camp that Melville was very much in control of where
the novel was going, and its style,format and reading
experience, but also he may not have known exactly what
wind and water would he encounter on the way...but he
knew where it end up...
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (92 of 93), Read 12
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 29, 2002 06:10 PM
From Chapter 1, "Loomings"
Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust
healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to
sea?
Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the
meaning of the story of Narcissus, who because he could
not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the
fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same
image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the
image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the
key to it all.
Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the
old sea-captains may order me about-however they may
thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of
knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way
or other served in much the same way-either in a physical
or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal
thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each
others shoulder-blades, and be content.
And,doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed
part of the grand programme of Providence that was
drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief
interlude and solo between more extensive performances.
I take it that this part of the bill must have run something
like this:
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United
States.
"whaling voyage by one ishmael.
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage
managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of
a whaling voyage, when others were set down for
magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy
parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces-though
I cannot tell why this was exactly;yet now that I recall all
the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs
and motives which being cunningly presented to me under
various disguises, induced me to set about performing the
part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was
a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and
discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of
the great whale himself. Such a portentous and
mysterious monster roused my curiousity. Then the wild
and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the
undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale;these, with all
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights
and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other
men, perhpas, such things would not have been
inducements ; but for me, I am tormented with an
everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden
seas and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is
good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be
social with it-would they let me-since it is but well to be on
friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges
in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was
welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world
swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to
my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost
soul, endless processions of the whale, and mid most of
them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in
the air.
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (93 of 93), Read 14
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Monday, April 29, 2002 06:21 PM
The above passages represent, in my mind and reading at
least, some of the very stages the book is about to take.
We are led through the idea that the sea is a temptress,
and will humour our conceits...or reveal them to us. We
will assuredly see ourselves, our egos, our masks and our
own horror.
Then, the last almost whole page of the first chapter could
be looked at as an outline for the story, and the problems
the writer must deal with and cover for the reader. It
starts out, this last passage of first chapter, to me at
least, hilariously. In my version of the novel, there are
different fonts for "the fates" decrees. One, a presidency,
two a whaling voyage, and three a noble warrior...options
for all, but poor old Ishmael gets the least likely to be
noble or honorable...and this is exactly how Melville takes
us and shows us just where honor as man is...or isn't???
The whaling voyage becomes every bit as noble and
exciting a concept as the Presidency or a famous battle
history.
Re-reading the entire section after "Bloody battle in
Affghanistan" is an overview of the issues to follow in the
book. The vast mystery of the whale, freewill versus fate,
exotic locales, ship ranks and status, "the wild conceits
that swayed me to my purpose" is Ishmael being
compared to who we later meet Ahab-whose wild conceits
out do anyones! Is that Ahab, not the whale, perhaps
"the one grand hooded phantom"? Is that death? I love
that last too, 'like a snow hill in the air' reminds me of 'the
chapter on the whiteness of the whale...
thinking out loud,
Candy
"Instead you are encountering an abstraction of the real
world, of the kind you would find in traditional literature
where invention triumphs over realism." Jim Crace
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (94 of 106), Read 58
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Sherry Keller shkell@starband.net
Date:
Saturday, May 04, 2002 07:15 AM
I finished this last night and have a couple of questions.
Even though I read this rather closely, I must have missed
or forgotten the section where Parsee was introduced. He
was such an important figure in the end. Since I hadn't
really registered him, I was a little confused. Can anyone
point out to me his initial section? I've scanned, but
haven't found it.
Even though I've read this before, and seen two movie
representations, I was still a little surprised that the man
lashed to Moby Dick at the end was Parsee, and not Ahab.
If I recall, in both movie versions it was Ahab. Am I
remembering wrong? Did the movie people take the
shadow Ahab, and the real Ahab and make him into one
character?
In my American Literature Learning Company course, I'm
reeling ahead to watch the Moby Dick lectures. I haven't
even finished the first out of four lectures on this book,
but I did learn something. I'm sure this won't come as
news to you Melville scholars out there, but I didn't know
it. Melville was himself pretty obsessed with Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Even though the professor in this series
doesn't usually incorporate biographical details into his
literary discussions, he says this is a very important fact.
Before meeting Hawthorne, Melville wrote much more
lightly. His Typee was a very popular book. Hawthorne
triggered in him some kind of rapid development that
resulted in the deep dark nature of MD. His reading public
was totally confused and abandoned him.
Sherry
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (95 of 106), Read 55
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
john matthews jw3@pobox.alaska.net
Date:
Saturday, May 04, 2002 02:16 PM
The "Parsee" usually referred to is Fedallah, Ahab's
Manilan, Zoroastrian harpooner. Several references
throughout but two particularly interesting occur in the
chapters "The Hat" and "The Symphony."
The Zoroastrian religion at its heart depicts a fundamental
and gigantic struggle between good and evil.......its
difficult to say what Fedallah thought of Ahab's quest, but
its interesting to think about.....especially as he is in some
regards, Ahabs "shadow."
At the end Ahab is pulled overboard entangled in a line.
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Sherry Keller shkell@starband.net
Date:
Saturday, May 04, 2002 07:15 PM
Thanks, John. I somehow missed that connection. Now it
makes sense.
What do people make of the very last scene with the bird?
Sherry
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Joe Barreiro barreiro4@attbi.com
Date:
Sunday, May 05, 2002 08:50 AM
Their friendship didn't last but a couple of years. It started
warmly and sort of petered out, though Melville certainly
continued to admire the famous writer and one-time
neighbor. An interesting comment from Hawthorne's
journal when he was American consul in Liverpool,
England and met with Melville for the last time in 1856:
Melville, as he always does, began to reason of
Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies
beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty
much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he
does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think,
will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is
strange how he persists -- and has persisted ever since I
knew him, and probably long before -- in wondering
to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous
as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can
neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he
is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the
other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the
most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high
and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most
of us."
Joe B
"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."
Heinrich Heine
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (98 of 106), Read 38
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 10:50 AM
Fedallah and his yellow colleagues certainly are strange
presences in this novel. The crew views them with
suspicion and superstition such that they start to seem
demonic to me. And Ishmael encourages this impression:
He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the
temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly;
but the like of whom now and then glide among the
unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles
to the east of the continent- those insulated, immemorial,
unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still
preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal
generations, when the memory of the first man was a
distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing
whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and
asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and
to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels
indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also,
add the uncanonical Robbins, indulged in mundane amours.
Steve
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 11:37 AM
Who, or what, the devil is "the uncanonical Robbins" (or
'Rabbins' as I've also seen it rendered) in that last line?
Dick
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (100 of 106), Read 40
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dean Denis dddenis@telus.net
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 12:14 PM
Ch. 50 (L), p.335 MLC
...when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed
consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add
the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.
Ishmael is saying that, according to Genesis, "the angels
indeed consorted with the daughters of men." The Rabbis
who hold a noncanonical interpretation of Genesis add
that "the devils also... indulged in mundane amours." That
is, that devils also visited the earth and mated with
human females.
Dean
All roads lead to roam.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (101 of 106), Read 33
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 01:02 PM
O.K., all cleared up. Thank you.
Dick
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (102 of 106), Read 33
times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 01:43 PM
Sorry for the typographical error, gentlemen.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (103 of 106), Read 33
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Dick Haggart
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 02:25 PM
Actually, there's an electronic version of MD out there on
the internet that has it as 'uncanonical Robbins' so I
wonder if some editor actually changed it for some
reason.
Dick
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (104 of 106), Read 27
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, May 06, 2002 04:13 PM
Lemme check some other sources, too. Very mysterious.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (105 of 106), Read 25
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Joe Barreiro barreiro4@attbi.com
Date:
Tuesday, May 07, 2002 04:49 AM
My Norton Critical Edition says that this refers to
uncanonical sources such as the Books of Enoch and
Jubilees. Rabbins would refer to rabbis in this case, so I
would think that "Robbins" is not what Melville intended,
though a google search did bring up a couple of instances
of it. But it does sound like a good name for a rock group.
Joe B
"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."
Heinrich Heine
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (106 of 106), Read 23
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Tuesday, May 07, 2002 11:21 AM
Thanks, Joe. That makes sense, whether "rabbins" or
"robbins."
Notice that it is Fedallah who is on watch at the masthead
at midnight and sees the Spirit-Spout repeatedly, which
leads them on around the horn. (Chapter 51.)
There isn't any doubt in Stubb's mind concerning
Fedallah's character. He considers Fedallah to be the
devil, and he has several theories about what his role is
regarding Ahab. At one point he suggests that Fedallah
may be trying to trade Moby Dick to Ahab in return for
Ahab's soul. (Chapter 73.)
There is one thing that I missed. That is the nature of this
prophesy about Ahab not dying until Fedallah has.
Something about two hearses, too. I missed the source of
this prophesy and its precise terms.
Steve
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (107 of 114), Read 52
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Saturday, May 18, 2002 06:10 PM
In the secondhand bookstore here in Morristown I picked
up the biography HERMAN MELVILLE written by Newton
Arvin who was Truman Capote’s mentor lover. According
to critic Alfred Kazan this book, which won the National
Book Award in 1951, is “the wisest and most balanced
single piece of writing on Melville I have ever seen.” So far
I have read HERMAN MELVILLE through the chapter on
MOBY DICK and here is an excerpted passage:
“In the end, as one reflects on the book [MOBY DICK,] one
is aware that one must reckon with the most
comprehensive of all its qualities, the quality that can only
be called mythic……Like a truly myth-making poet’s,
Melville’s imagination was obsessed by the spectacle of a
natural and human scene in which the instinctive need for
order and meaning seems mainly to be confronted by
meaninglessness and disorder; in which the human will
seems sometimes to be sustained but oftener to be
thwarted by the forces of physical nature, and even by
agencies that lie behind it; on which goodness and evil,
beneficence and destructiveness, light and darkness,
seem bafflingly intermixed. In none of the great
formulations that were available to him, neither in
Calvinist Christianity nor in romantic optimism, could
Melville discover a myth that for him was adequate to the
lighting up of these obscurities.”
Robt
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (108 of 114), Read 51
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Lee Clark leilia_c@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, May 18, 2002 10:11 PM
Ch. 68
“It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of
a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick
walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh,
man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou,
too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this
world without being of it.”
I know this whale! He has two feet, wears glasses and
has a moustache. His smooth granite walls, cool to the
touch, concealing the warmth beneath---almost
impervious to my scratching…almost. This particular
whale’s interior spaciousness bewilders and astonishes.
Vast content and complexity undulates with no crowding.
He does not follow the fashions, nor does he lead…but
moves on his own individual voyage. An enigma.
Leilia
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (109 of 114), Read 47
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Lee Clark leilia_c@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, May 18, 2002 10:50 PM
I am about half way through my MP3 file of Moby Dick.
Having read this book in high school and again about 3
years ago, this time I savor my time with the book. Also, I
am gaining an idea of oral traditions. Oral narration has a
focus on the conception underlying a discourse. It is the
story. The oral is the language. Without the effort needed
to actually read the words, I find myself “seeing” the
Pequod and its inhabitants. The movie plays behind my
eyes.
Leilia
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (110 of 114), Read 48
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Sherry Keller shkell@starband.net
Date:
Sunday, May 19, 2002 08:03 AM
That sounds like a wonderful way to experience it, Lee. I
love to hear books, too.
Sherry
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (111 of 114), Read 25
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Ann Davey davey@tconl.com
Date:
Sunday, May 19, 2002 01:29 PM
Those were interesting comments about Melville, Robt.
The author spoke of Melville's inability to find a "myth" to
explain life, and he included religion in that category. To
me, a myth is a false construct, so the author was saying
something about his own beliefs as well as Melville's.
Ann
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (112 of 114), Read 16
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Karen Kasmar doctorsadie@aol.com
Date:
Sunday, May 19, 2002 09:06 PM
To Steve, Robert, etc. The "information" passages in the
novel are sometimes interesting, sometimes a bit of
drudgery, but isn't it wonderful how they eventually lead
to other exciting, wonderfully-written passages?! I find
myself getting wrapped up in the details of whaling in
anticipation of something greater.
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (113 of 114), Read 14
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Monday, May 20, 2002 12:43 AM
Ann,
Myth, to me, is a fictional construct which contains truth.
So, I find it ironic when the word myth is used to connote
a lie, as is often the case in conversational usage. As an
example: “the teaching that there is great reward in the
afterlife for a suicide bomber is a manipulative myth.” Here
myth connotes falsehood. I took Arvin to mean myth in the
sense of being a vessel for truth. In the context of the
biography Arvin was not putting down Calvinist
Christianity but rather explaining that it was incongruous
with Melville’s tragic vision.
Karen,
In the end I thought that the way the information
chapters interrupted the narrative flow constituted a flaw
in the novel. But, the flaw did not outweigh the benefit of
becoming informed about the many aspects of whaling.
The power of the story was immeasurably enhanced by
my awareness of these facts. I agree with you that the
overall effect is wonderful.
Robt
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (114 of 114), Read 15
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Steve Warbasse swarbasse@iowabar.org
Date:
Monday, May 20, 2002 10:30 AM
Clearly you are correct about the use of the word "myth"
here, Robert.
Your Mr. Arvin says:
In none of the great formulations that were available to him,
neither in Calvinist Christianity nor in romantic optimism,
could Melville discover a myth that for him was adequate to
the lighting up of these obscurities.
I suspect that Mr. Arvin does not intend a disparagement
of religion here. Rather, he was referring to such mythic
Christian works as Pilgrim's Progress for example. As for
romantic optimism, I suspect that he was referring in part
to the work of the Transcendentalists, such as Emerson.
His point, as I discern it, is that from Melville's perspective
these myths did not truly illuminate the real truth of our
situation.
Karen, the pace of this novel is a bit disconcerting when
one is in the middle of it for the first time. In the end and
overall though, the pace is perfect, I think. It builds and
builds to a crash bang climax.
Steve
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Saturday, May 25, 2002 09:23 AM
Yesterday I visited the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA
which features early American (pre 1850) furnishings, folk
art and implements with a main focus on tools and trades.
An all together excellent collection housed in a concrete
castle. Has anyone been there?
Lo and behold there was a collection of whaling
implements including a whaling boat, all hailing from New
Bedford, Massachusetts. What fun to see the rough hewn
harpoons, hooks, blubber tools, try pot and especially the
sleek, elegant 30’ x 6’ whaling boat designed for 6 men
with its extra long oars and carefully coiled ropes. Did I
complain about Melville going into too much detail? Shame
on me.
Robt
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Mary Anne Papale mapreads@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, May 25, 2002 01:27 PM
What fun, Robert. I'm sure none of us will ever look at
whaling artifacts the same way we did before MD. We
have been changed and moved by this book.
Experience is by industry achieved, and perfected by the swift
course of time. - W. Shakespeare
MAP
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Candy Minx candyminx@hotmail.com
Date:
Saturday, May 25, 2002 02:32 PM
That makes me think of how Melville was almost building
sculpture in his novel with attention to detail. What is
interesting in your post, is I almost got the sense that you
found this equipment beautiful, and understood maybe
Melville was mesmerized by it in some way....?
"Rock, it's what we're all about. It's what we live for.
Come on shout it out." Sum41
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (118 of 121), Read 14
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Saturday, May 25, 2002 03:22 PM
I finally finished Moby Dick today. I had a huge interruption
when my responsibilities at work interfered so much with
my concentration that I wasn't doing it justice. I need to
go back now and read the discussion from the beginning.
Was there any talk of the whale symbolizing mortality? I
know there are no easy themes here but a multitude of
possibilities. I just kept thinking that Ahab seemed to
place himself above the vulnerability of humanity and that
the whole final scene blazed with the futility of that.
I'm going to be thinking about this novel for a long time. It
was one of the proverbial "I would never have read it
without CC/CR books" and it has, in turns, enthralled and
irritated me. In the end, I understood the reasons for the
digressions. The most basic of these is that I wouldn't
have had a chance of understanding the final scene on a
technical basis without the chapters on whaling.
"The greatest American novel" claim also has me
interested. Which ones do you all think rival Moby Dick?
Barb
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (119 of 121), Read 18
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Edward Houghton eddh@pacbell.net
Date:
Saturday, May 25, 2002 03:45 PM
BARB
I'm not sure how to define The Great American Novel.
Obviously written by an American, but does it have to
have an American theme? If not, then I would say that
BEN HUR by General Lew Wallace(?) would qualify. The
General appears prominently in American history during
and after the Civil War. He was in charge of the
Andersonville and the Lincoln Conspiracy trials in his full
life. Becoming a novelist always seemed out of character.
There are, of course, enough novels to promote discussion
for endless and possibly fruitless hours. THE
LEATHERSTOCKING TALES by Cooper, THE SCARLET
LETTER by Hawthorne, GONE WITH THE WIND by
Mitchell, DUNE by Herbert, EAST OF EDEN or THE GRAPES
OF WRATH by Steinbeck. Maybe we should start a
separate thread just to come up with a list of candidates?
EDD
"I like green eggs and ham," Dr Seuss.
Topic:
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Robert Armstrong rla@nac.net
Date:
Saturday, May 25, 2002 08:32 PM
Candy,
I found the whaling objects beautiful.
The harpoons: hateful instruments, destroyers of the
mighty ones, hand hewn, not a straight line in them, no
two alike, clearly crafted by someone on a tossing ship, a
thousand attempts at geometry amounting to some
organic-like balance, jaded javelins, darkest wood and
crooked metal.
Try pot: the witches of MACBETH couldn’t conjure up a
more suitable vessel, black with a surface like the moon.
The blubber hook: sister witch to the try pot, black and
pockmarked with smoothed worn areas, large and dull.
Everything was used and worn. Of the objects only the
octant and marine compass had any refinement. Most of
the implements had a crudeness that looked more in
keeping with the 18th century although I think they were
from the 19th century.
The whaling boat: looked like it was expertly crafted, a
fish in the water, much sleeker than I expected, I could
easily envision it flying through the waves.
Barb,
MOBY DICK achieved classic status for me. Despite my
irritation with it I don’t think it can be beat. I would say it’s
better than SUTTREE and BLOOD MERIDIAN. I guess those
two Cormac McCarthy novels come closest in my reading
experience as far as American novels go.
Robt
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (121 of 121), Read 5
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Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
Barbara Moors bar647@aol.com
Date:
Sunday, May 26, 2002 09:32 AM
You're right, Edd, I'm going to open a new thread for my
great American novel question to avoid diverting attention
from the Moby Dick discussion.
Ann, can you move Edd's reply and that part of Robt's to
that thread?
Barb
Topic:
Moby cont.POST NEW NOTES HERE (122 of 122), Read 12 times
Conf:
Classics Corner
From:
R Bavetta rbavetta@prodigy.net
Date:
Sunday, May 26, 2002 02:04 PM
There's a long and detailed review of Hershel Parker's
biography of Melville in today's LA Times. "Hershel Parker has
practically reconstructed Melville's DNA and in doing so has
rendered Americann literature a signal service," is the subhead.
Plus there's a sidebar by Susan Salter Reynolds.
Since I haven't indulged myself in a reread of MD, I can't
contribute much to the general discussion, but your mention of
seeing the tools, Robt, was so interesting. I love tools. They are
often such things of beauty in themselves. A well-made tool
certainly speaks to Sullivan's edict that form should follow
function.
Ruth
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Herman Melville
Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea examines the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail.
Share Moby Dick with your favorite pre-teen! In this full-color picture-book adaptation of the classic, Allan Drummond pays homage to one of the greatest sea stories ever told. Staying as true to Herman Melville's language as possible, and taking Ishmael as his narrator, Drummond tells of the adventure of Captain Ahab's relentless quest for revenge.
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