Moby-Dick | Herman Melville #Classic

Well, I did it!
My seven-month #slowread of Moby-Dick is officially done and dusted.
If you've ever wondered if you should make the time to read this classic chunkster, then I say yea!
And I cannot recommend highly enough the #slowread approach.
Moby-Dick is improved and enhanced by taking your time.

The Atlantic | Aug 20, 2013 | David Gilbert

You cannot read this book for speed. It is designed for the long haul, the chapters never too long, naps seemingly built into the text. It is, dare I say, a voyage.

My journey through Moby-Dick has been one of various obsessions.
Early on, I got caught up in articles written to celebrate the 200th birthday of Melville. Why is this book so beloved and so reviled at the same time? Why is it considered so great by so many?

After I started reading, I went off on a Herman Melville obsession. I needed to know as much about the man himself. His life, his purpose, his influences. Biographies and articles were scoured. Who was this man and what were his obsessions? What was he trying to achieve in writing Moby-Dick? What were his demons? Was he Ishmael or Ahab? What was his legacy?

“Melville died in New York on September 28, 1891, blissfully unaware that, in the years to come, so many people would leave the hyphen out of 'Moby-Dick.”
― Richard Armour, The Classics Reclassified.

Then I got caught up in the religious symbolism.
I had read a lot about his religious background and the number of biblical references through-out Moby-Dick, but I became more and more surprised (and curious) about the growing number of negative comments about Christianity in the book. What was going on here? Was this a personal tug-o-war between faith and how it was practised? What did Melville believe? Was this a crisis of faith? Or was this someone abandoning his strict childhood doctrine for a more modern, scientific, humanist approach to life?

And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Themes became my next obsession as I researched all those allusions and metaphors about lines, threads and weaving. The repetition of life, from unknown beginning to unknown end. The Loom of Time. Who was controlling or designing the fabric of life? Which led to digging deeper into fate and destiny and free-will.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

Shakespearean influences captured my imagination next. From the mad fools to the prideful tyrants. Amusing ditties and stunning word-play. The influence on Melville was obvious.

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep.

And, it's funny.
That's something they don't always tell you about Moby-Dick.
So many of the stories and set-pieces are designed to be ridiculous, amusing or ironic. Ishmael is often (unknowingly) hilarious. Pip plays the fool. Stubb and Flask are funny.

Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

However, by the time I reached the end of this epic journey, where we only had 3-4 chapters that actually featured Moby Dick in action, I realised that this was a book all about the journey. It's about all the stuff we learn about ourselves and the world as we travel through it. It's about working out our purpose in life. It's about obsession.

Moby-Dick is full of all that marvellous big picture stuff that you can really mull over, often hidden amongst all the details. And there were LOTS of details. One of Ishmael/Melville's purposes in life was to gain and show off share knowledge!

Although by the end, we come to understand that Moby-Dick is actually Ishmael's grief memoir. It was his way to honour the memory of his friends and colleagues who went down with the Pequod.

The advantages of the #slowread were numerous.

It gave me ample time for research, it made the 'tricky' chapters easier to digest, and I was able to read other books in and around it.

But the main benefit was how it created a richer, deeper, more immersive reading experience - one that I will never forget. Within that, was those 'tricky' chapters. I came to realise that all those tedious-seeming chapters on whale facts were actually a chance for Ishmael/Melville to offer up a bit of life wisdom/philosophy. If I had been doing my usual #fastread I would have missed most of these moments and therefore missed a huge part of the beauty and fascination of this story.

For instance the chapter we were all warned about - Chapter 32: Cetology - finishes (eventually!) with Ishmael/Melville comparing his book on whales to the grandeur of Cologne Cathedral that took centuries to complete,

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draft—nay, but the draft of a draft.

What an undertaking! What a vision! What a colossal insight into the mind of Melville!

Chapter 60: The Line - a chapter seemingly all about rope - finishes with,

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.

Deep, huh? And one of Melville's favourite themes - are our lives dictated by fate, destiny or chaos? Do we have free-will or choice or is everything pre-determined?

These little zingers sneak into almost every chapter. If I'd been skimming, I might have missed them. And it's all these little zingers that are at the heart of this story. They give us a peek into Melville's mind - all his doubts, insecurities and foibles are on show. It feels like he threw everything that he had into this book. Mind, body and spirit - he gave us everything - all his flaws and his magnificence. To take as we will.

Writing this book was an act of courage.

It takes another act of courage to read it.

A big thank you to Reese, Rick, Denise, Laurie, Katherine, Ruth, Deb, Lisbeth, Chris, Meredith, Silvia, Fanda, Marian, Sharon and Lisette for your company over the past 7 months. It's easier to be brave in a crowd.

The linky will stay open until the weekend for any final Moby-Dick posts.

Good-bye, and good luck to ye all - and this day three years I'll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!

Moby-Dick Chapters 131 - Epilogue

Here we are folks.
The end. Finis!

This is my final Moby-Dick chapter post. There will also be, in the next few days, my final book response post, when I can work out how on earth to sum up this extraordinary reading experience.

For now, let me say just how much I've enjoyed this #slowread journey.
To Reese, Rick, Denise, Laurie, Katherine and Ruth for staying the course, you earn the Golden Salty Tar Doubloon! Your regular tweets, photos and comments made this cruise a pleasure and kept me going when times got tough.
To Deb, Chris, Meredith, Silvia, Fanda, Marian, Sharon and Lisette for coming along for part of the journey - a silver doubloon for your top-notch efforts. Whether you abandoned ship, #fastread or took the extra long cruise, your company and comments were always appreciated.

Ch 131: The Pequod Meets the Delight 

• The Captain and the crew of the Delight have seen Moby-Dick.
• In fact, they are about to bury the fifth member of their crew who was killed in their encounter with the white whale.
• More Shakespearean moments as Ahab declares:
• "here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the white whale most feels his accursed life!"
• The Delight believe the Pequod is doomed 'you sail upon their tomb'.
• Ahab hurries them away so that they are not splashed by the flying bubbles from this burial at sea, their ghostly baptism.
• The crew of the Delight take great delight at the sight of the coffin life-buoy on the Pequod's stern.

Ch 132: The Symphony

• A beautiful day at sea 'that glad, happy air, that winsome sky.'
• Even Ahab is touched by the moment and 'dropped a tear into the sea.'
• He talks to Starbuck about his whaling life 
• 'forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore.'
• the loneliness of a captain's life, his poor wife left at home.
• 'Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.'
• Ahab insists that Starbuck should stay on board the Pequod when it's time for Ahab to give chase to Moby-Dick.
• Starbuck tries one last time to convince Ahab to turn towards home.
• But Ahab looks away.
• 'Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.'
• Starbuck leaves him alone.
• Ahab moves to the other side of the ship, where Fedallah is waiting for him.
• The choice is clear.

Ch 134: The Chase - First Day

• That night, Ahab smells that peculiar odour given off by a nearby living whale.
• At daybreak, Ahab calls all hands on deck.
• Ahab is again hoisted into the royal mast-head, but two thirds of the way aloft, he cries out "There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"
• Finally! After 133 chapters and 630 pages, we finally sight Moby-Dick.
• Ahab claims the doubloon as his.
• Finally we have lots of action.
• Ahab gives chase in his boat, leaving Starbuck to captain the ship. Flask and Stubb also give chase.
• There's a dramatic face off as Ahab attempts to throw his blood forged harpoon.
• But Moby Dick bites the boat in two. 
• Moby Dick swam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him.
• Stubb's boat rescues Ahab and his harpoon from the wreckage.
• They all return to the Pequod to give chase again.
• Stubb cracks a bad joke over the wrecked boat, while Starbuck claims it as a solemn sight, an omen. Ahab is annoyed by both.
• 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!
• As night approaches, they slow their pace so as not to run over Moby Dick in the dark.

Ch 135: The Chase - Second Day

• As day breaks, the lookout for Moby Dick is raised once again. Before long he is spotted and Ahab, Stubb and Flask put to sea for the chase.
• The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.
• A beautiful, majestic description of a whale breaching -
• Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.
• Moby Dick appears to hunting the three crews.
• They hurl harpoons, a number of them stick. 
• The lines get tangled.
• Moby crushes two of the boats together - 'cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch.' - before disappearing.
• He reappears underneath Ahab's boat -
• Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires,—as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell again—gunwale downwards—and Ahab and his men struggled out from under it, like seals from a seaside cave.
• Ahab looses his harpoon, boat and splinters his stump.
• Starbuck rounds up the survivors.
• Fedallah is missing.
• But Ahab is determined to continue the chase.
• Starbuck is beyond frustration at this fool of a man. He calls to God, Jesus, angels and reason, to no avail -
• "Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:—what more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"
• But Ahab is Ahab 'this whole act's immutably decreed...I am the fates' lieutenant; I act under orders.' Ahab does not have free will or choice. He believes his destiny is preordained. He is engaged in an age-old battle of man against nature, man against god.
• Another prophecy 'The Parsee! gone, gone? and he was to go before: - but still was to be seen again ere I could perish - How's that? - There's a riddle now might baffle.'

Ch 136: The case - Third Day

• Another day slips by, waiting for Moby Dick to reappear 'time itself now held long breaths with keen suspense.'
• Ahab reflects on his life; it's meaning and purpose, before being lowered into his boat again.
• The sharks have arrived adding more danger and bad omens to the third day of the chase.
• Moby Dick reappears. 
• He swims around them, dashing the two mates' boats, but leaving Ahab's 'almost without a scar.'
• He turns and exposes his flank.
• Daggoo and Tashtego cry out - 
• Lashed round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.
• Fedallah drowned, tied to Moby Dick's side.
• Ahab - Parsee! I see thee again.
• Where is the second hearse?
• Starbuck appeals one more time to reason - 'Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!'
• But Ahab rows on, passing the ship, battling the sharks and chasing Moby Dick, until...
• At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance—as the whale sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea.
• An enraged Moby attacks the Pequod 'the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled.'
• Ahab sees the final prophecy come true - the hearse made of American wood is the Pequod.
• He throws one last harpoon at the white whale, but the line runs foul, Ahab stoops to clear it, but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and pulls him overboard - hung, then drowned.
• The boat's crew call out for the ship, only to see it slowly sink, as it pulls the boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, into it's spinning vortex.
• As the last mast sinks into the Pacific Ocean, Tashtego maintains his watch atop the mast-head.
• He attempts to hammer a flag to the top of the mast. 
• A sky-hawk flies down and gets between his hammer and the wood and is impaled there 'so that a bird of heaven...went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her.'
• All that is left is the sea rolling on as it has rolled on for thousands of years before.

Epilogue: 'And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.' Job.

• One survivor - Ishmael!
• It was Ishmael who fell from Ahab's boat, left to float 'on the margin of the ensuing scene.'
• The vortex of the sinking ship sucked him in, but slowly, so that it had subsided to a creamy pool by the time he reached the centre.
• A black bubble appeared, bursting to reveal the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side.
• After one whole day and night, floating on the buoyant coffin, orphaned Ishmael is rescued by the crew of the Rachel, still searching for her missing children.
• Ishmael's story allows his shipmates to live on in our collective memories.
• Is Moby-Dick one of the first grief memoirs?

Afterword | Alfred Kazin

• An exuberant love letter to Moby-Dick.
• 'The book is written with a personal force of style, a passionate learning, a steady insight into our forgotten connections with the primitive.'
• He sees it not just as a quest story but as an experience of a quest.
• More like a long heroic epic poem that is 'being meditated and unravelled through a single mind.'
• 'a single mind, from whose endlessly turning spool of thought the whole story is unwound.'
• 'Ishmael is not merely an orphan; he is an exile, searching alone in the wilderness....He suffers from doubt and uncertainty far more than he does from homelessness. Indeed, this agony of disbelief is his homelessness. For him nothing is ever finally settled and decided; he is man, or as we like to think, modern man, cut off from the certainty that was once his inner world.'
• Ishmael is the thinker; Ahab the doer.
• 'the world that tortures Ishmael by its horrid vacancy has tempted Ahab into thinking that he can make it over.'
• Man's struggle to find meaning in a purposeless existence, in a world where nature dominates and overwhelms.
• 'man tumbling over before the magnitude of the universe.'

What next?

• What does it all mean?
• How on earth do I sum up this extraordinary reading journey?
• Hunt down a copy of Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson - not only the best book of 1947 according to Chris Power of Granta, but the best book of literary criticism ever! 
• And recently reviewed by Reese.

I'd love to hear about your progress through Moby-Dick and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80
Chapters 81 - 90
Chapters 91 - 100

Chapters 101 - 110
Chapters 111 - 120
Chapters 121 - 130
Chapters 131 - Epilogue

Moby-Dick Chapters 121 - 130

It's hard to believe, but after 6 months and 3 weeks, we are now into the final week of our #slowread #MobyDickReadalong. I'm going to miss this book. A lot.

Before I get all nostalgic and sentimental, I will jump into the next lot of chapters. Surely, this is the week we will finally confront Moby-Dick face-to-face!

Ch 121: Midnight - The Forecastle Bulwarks (Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over the anchors there hanging.)

• The storm continues.
• It would seem that Stubb is disconcerted with the thought that they could be tying up the anchors, never to be used again.
• Flask is philosophical and berates Stubb to 'be sensible.'
• He, in turns becomes philosophical 'I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.'

Ch 122: Midnight Aloft - Thunder and Lightning (The main-top-sail yard - Tashtego passing new lashings around it.)

• In contrast to the philosophising Stubb and Flask, we have rhyming, sing-song Tashtego who simply wants the storm to stop and a glass of rum, 'um, um, um!'
• The shortest chapter in the book?

Ch 123: The Musket

• Starbuck's reckoning.
• A loaded musket tempts him to kill the sleeping Ahab 'shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?'
• He thinks about his wife and child waiting at home, the consequences of mutiny and how this action would make him a murderer. After 'wrestling with an angel' he replaces the musket and asks Stubb to wake Ahab instead.

Ch 124: The Needle

• The morning sees the storm easing and the sun trying to come out. However the electrical energy of the storm has affected the magnetic force of the compass needles. 
• The Pequod now has no quadrant, no compass and the anchors have been tied up. 
• Their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate.

Ch 125: The Log and Line

• Another tool to help a ship measure it's progress at sea.
• Ahab spontaneously decides to test it, even though he has barely used it during the entire cruise.
• The Manxman is concerned that the line has deteriorated from heat and moisture.
• Ahab is unconcerned.
• The line snaps.
• 'I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log-line.'
• Science is broken.
• Ahab turns to more madness and prophecy.
• He calls Pip to him and claims the abandoned child as his own 'Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth.'
• 'Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings.'
• A human touch amongst the madness.

Ch 126: The Life-Buoy

• The crew are 'startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly - like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts.'
• Is it the 'voices of newly drowned men in the sea' as suggested by the Manxman?
• Ahab laughs at the superstitious talk and tells everyone it's only the seals who inhabit the nearby rocky islands.
• Although, of course, sailors also have superstitions about seals!
• Their human look, their peculiar tones, 'seals have more than once been mistaken for men'.
• Another reminder that mankind is not that far removed from the animal world.
• But then we lose our first man.
• Up 'til now, the crew of the Pequod have survived intact, if you can call Pip's mental state after his accident, intact.
• The first watch in Moby-Dick territory falls from his perch, perhaps he was not fully awake?
• The life-buoy is flung out, but the man is gone. And so is the buoy.
• they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.
• The life-buoy needs to be replaced.
• Queequeg volunteers the use of his coffin.
• Starbuck calls the carpenter to make the coffin water-tight.
• Life and death go hand in hand.

Ch 127: Ahab and the Carpenter (The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open hatchway; the Carpenter calking its seams; the string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.—Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him.)

• The carpenter gets annoyed at Pip and Ahab's mad ramblings and philosophising.
• Ahab sees the coffin as an immortality-preserver for the soul into the next world.

Ch 128: The Pequod Meets the Rachel

• The Rachel has seen the white whale, but they have lost a boat crew in the hunt. On board the boat is the Captain's young son. He is desperate to find his son and appeals to Ahab as a father, to help him search for the missing boat.
• The Manxman claims that the wailing sounds from last night were the cries of the drowned crew.
• But Ahab is undeterred, 'Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time.'
• The Pequod presses on. 
• The Rachel is last seen yawing 'hither and thither at every dark spot.'
• You plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.

Ch 129: The Cabin (Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)

• Ahab now also abandons Pip, for fear that Pip's madness will somehow cure his own. 
• Ahab acknowledges that he needs his madness to continue this quest.
• Pip is confined to Ahab's cabin.
• Pip's madness is about loss of self 'Who's seen Pip?'
• Ahab's is about too mush self.

Ch 130: The Hat

• The crew are feeling the strain. Silence, fear and misgivings. The worked like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck.
• Fedallah does not appear to sleep and Ahab stands in his pivot-hole.
• He eats in the open air and has stopped shaving. They stand side by side, but do not talk.
• After 3 or 4 days with no sightings of the whale, Ahab begins to be distrustful of his crew's fidelity.
• He decides to be the first to spot the white whale himself and has himself hoisted up to the royal mast.
• He has only been aloft ten minutes when a red-billed savage sea-hawk makes off with his hat.
• Another bad omen.

Still no Moby!
Talk about making an eleventh hour appearance!
The suspense is killing me!

I'd love to hear about your progress through Moby-Dick and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80
Chapters 81 - 90
Chapters 91 - 100

Chapters 101 - 110
Chapters 111 - 120

Chapters 121 - 130

Moby-Dick Chapters 111 - 120

Ch 111: The Pacific

• A quick chapter for Ishmael to wax lyrical about the 'serene Pacific'.
• Everyone else may be feeling serene and meditative, but Ahab is 'purpose intensified' - where's that whale?!

Ch 112: The Blacksmith

• This is one of those diversionary chapters that Melville loves so much.
• The tragic back story of Perth, the blacksmith.
• A man ruined by drinking. 
• He lost his job, his family, his home and almost his life. 
• But he went to sea instead, in a whaling ship.

Ch 113: The Forge

• A rather Shakespearean chapter as Ahab asks Perth to make him a harpoon for killing the white whale.
• They bond over their mental health issues.
• Ahab then calls on Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo to give him some of their blood so that he baptise his new harpoon in the name of the Devil.
• Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!
• I baptize thee not in the name of the Father, but in the name of the Devil!
• 'pole, iron, and rope—like the Three Fates—remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank.'
• Melville leaves us with the wretched laugh of Pip ringing out, mocking this melancholy ship.

Ch 114: The Gilder

• Melville has us see-sawing between peaceful chapters about the ocean to manic ones featuring Ahab preparing for battle.
• After forging a new weapon, we return to dreamy quietude, tranquil beauty and the brilliancy of the ocean's skin.
• And another weaving metaphor.
• But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause.

Ch 115: The Pequod Meets the Bachelor

• No red roses, or the promise of date night here. This Bachelor is a date with destiny.
• A happy ship. A lucky ship. A complete contrast to the Pequod.
• one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings as to things to come.
• Ahab asks if they have seen the white whale and they reply, "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all."
• In Ch 100 Captain Boomer sees Moby-Dick as just another whale. 
• The unnamed Captain of the Bachelor sees Moby-Dick as myth.
• The party boat continues on it's merry way home.
• Ahab pulls, from his pocket, a vial of sand from Nantucket. He has been carrying it this whole time. Perhaps this bit of home is meant to ground him or remind him of the family waiting for him back home. As he watches the Bachelor sail off, the distance between home and his mission only widens further.

Ch 116: The Dying Whale

• Some of the good luck of the Bachelor appears to have rubbed off on the Pequod as whales were seen and four were slain.
• Even Ahab killed a whale that wasn't Moby-Dick!
• But then we get to watch one of the whales slowly die in front of Ahab.
• The whale turns and rolls towards the sun, his homage-rendering and invoking brow, taking in one last sight of the sun before dying.
• He too worships fire.

Ch 117: The Whale Watch

• Ahab dreams and more prophecies by Fedallah.
• "Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor coffin can be thine?"
• "But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by mortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in America."
• "Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot."
• "Hemp only can kill thee."
• Ahab assumes this means he will be hanged.

Ch 118: The Quadrant

• Ahab smashes his quadrant.
• "Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven."
• He has given up on science (rational thought), the heavens (faith) and any idea of returning home.
• More images and metaphors around the sun, fire and light.

Ch 119: The Candles

• Another stormy night at sea and Stubb breaks into song!
• "But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits."
• Starbuck craves the comforts of home.
• And an editing curiosity.
• The online Power Moby-Dick says "Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The St. Elmo's Lights (corpus sancti) corpusants! the corpusants!"
• My 2012 Penguin edition simply says "Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! the corpusants!"
• Which one is correct?
• Margaret Guroff in her Notes on the Text of Power Moby-Dick clarified a few issues -

Moby-Dick is what is called a "fluid text": there are several different versions of the book. The first American edition, published in November of 1851, contained typographical errors, along with other errors that Herman Melville later corrected himself. The first British edition, published that same year, included some of Melville's corrections and some valid ones of its own, but was also edited to remove bawdy and anti-monarchical passages, among other material thought objectionable. The first British edition also accidentally omitted the book's epilogue.

There is no known surviving manuscript of the book, and editors through the years have worked to reconstruct what Melville's original intentions for it may have been—and made their own corrections and abridgements along the way.

For this online version, I began with the text of the first American edition. As I was annotating it, I came across a few passages that were unclear because of known typos or errors. These, I altered to align with later editions that made more sense to me. 

• So, why remove the reference to St Elmo's Fire? Very curious.
• Starbuck tells Ahab that the voyage is now "ill begun, ill continued' and that "God is against thee, old man".
• Ahab reminds the crew that they all swore an oath that binds them to him and his quest, "heart, soul and body". 

Ch 120: The Deck towards the End of the First Night Watch (Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him).

• A brief chapter that shows Starbuck concerned about the safety of the ship and the crew during the storm.
• Ahab ignores all his suggestions, "strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything."
• Once again we see Ahab so focused on his mission that his crew and ship mean nothing to him.
• This is not going to end well.

We now have only one more week left of our slow read of Moby-Dick. How are you going?

I'd love to hear about your progress through Moby-Dick and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80
Chapters 81 - 90
Chapters 91 - 100

Chapters 101 - 110
Chapters 111 - 120

Moby-Dick Chapters 101 - 110

I only have 35 more Moby-Dick chapters to write up and a handful of chapters left to read.
I'm going to miss these posts and my time with Ishmael. But the end is in sight. Soon Ishmael and I will part company, and I will have to find a new obsession!

Perhaps this is the post we will finally meet the White Whale?

Ch 101: The Decanter

• Ishmael loves a good aside!
• After our brief gam with the Samuel Enderby in chapter 100, Ishmael decides to give us a potted history of Enderby & Sons, 'the famous whaling house' of London, who have been in the business since 1775.
• As it turns out, Ishmael spends some time on board the Sammy 'long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivory heel.' A reminder that whatever happens in this mad quest for Moby-Dick, Ishmael at least lives to tell the tale.
• Ishmael philosophy - if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

Ch 102: A Bower in the Arsacides

• The Arsacides are what we now call the Solomon Islands.
• Ishmael tells us that his intimate knowledge of the internal world of sperm whales came about thanks to his ability to dissect cub Sperm Whales and also thanks to the (fictional) king Tranque of the Arsacides.
• A whale once washed up on the beach, dead. 
• After it had been skinned and the bones dried and bleached in the sun, they were 'transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.' 
• Ishmael returns to his weaving analogy - 
• the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof.
• Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single word with thee! Nay—the shuttle flies—the figures float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it.
• Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.
• He takes this opportunity to measure the dimensions of the whale and its bones. 
• He then commits these measurements to a tattoo on his right arm, 'as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.'

Ch 103: Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton

• The chapter where Ishmael reveals the measurements that he had tattooed on his arm!
• And where he discovers that no matter how much he measures, researches and gathers facts about the whale, he will never really understand it.
• How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton.
• No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.

Ch 104: The Fossil Whale

• Turns out Ishmael is also a dab hand at geology and fossils!
• Is there nothing this man cannot do?

Ch 105: Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? - Will He Perish?

• Two questions that Ishmael is unable to answer.
• Has the whale increased or decreased in size over time?
• Will the whale be hunted into extinction?

Ch 106: Ahab's Leg

• Back to the story.
• When Ahab returned on board the Pequod after his visit to the Sammy, he splintered his ivory leg. 
• Which brings to mind an earlier accident that Ahab had with his leg, falling over one night, causing the ivory bone to pierce his groin.
• Ahab calls the carpenter to fix the leg from the supplies of Sperm Whale jaw-ivory that they had accumulated on the voyage.

Ch 107: The Carpenter

• The carpenter remains unnamed. 
• He was his job - he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct.

Ch 108: Ahab and the Carpenter

• Another chapter that reads like a play.
• The carpenter opens with a soliloquy, followed by dialogue with Ahab.
• Another reference to Prometheus.
• The carpenter finds Ahab's talk about fire gods and Greek gods 'queer.'
• He's just a carpenter, plain and simple, doing his job and not fussed with all these interpretations and literary references.

Ch 109: Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin

• Starbuck discovers that some of the oil casks are leaking.
• Ahab, initially refuses to do anything about it.
• Starbuck insists as much as he is capable of doing and leaves Ahab with,
• let Ahab beware Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.
• Ahab realises that to maintain the respect of the crew, he needs to attend to this problem, after all the oil is the reason for going out on a whaling ship in the first place.

Ch 110: Queequeg in his Coffin

• Queequeg helps to empty the hold of the leaking oil casks and develops a bad fever.
• He languishes on his hammock for several days and everyone fears the worst.
• So much so, that Queequeg calls the carpenter to him and requests a coffin be made.
• he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes.
• But then he suddenly recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
• Another moment of rebirth or resurrection.

I'd love to hear about your progress through Moby-Dick and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80
Chapters 81 - 90
Chapters 91 - 100

Chapters 101 - 110

Moby-Dick - Chapters 91 - 100

Biography:

Since my last post I've read a biography called Herman Melville - Mariner and Mystic by Raymond Melbourne Weaver. 

It was a fairly lacklustre, uninspiring bio in the end. It was a straight down the line linear look at Melville's life, as one might expect from a book first published in 1921. There was a lot of back story about his parents and grandparents and LOTS of discussion and quotes from his most well-known books. In fact, most of the information about Melville's life seemed to come from his South Sea books and his letters. A few letters that he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne were included as well.

Curiously almost nothing was said about his children, not even the suicide of his son, which obviously had a huge impact on the ageing Melville. There were also gaps about his father's financial and mental health problems, his strict Calvanistic upbringing, Melville existential and religious angst as he matured and the fact that he did actually keep on writing right up to his death, especially poetry. 

Perhaps a 1921 biographer didn't have the research techniques to hand that more modern ones do. Either way, it seems that Weaver did not dig very deep to write this particular bio. He was also very happy to insert his own opinions into the book. He judged the value of each Melville's books and completely dismissed anything that Melville wrote in his later life. This is what happened to Melville at the time - Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852) were not well received at all. However, modern researchers have now ascertained that the negative reviews were written and published by religious organisations unhappy with Melville's stance on Christian missionaries. They ridiculed his writing and claimed he was going mad. No-one questioned or challenged them, and no doubt, Melville felt that his concerns about Christianity in action, were confirmed by this smear campaign.

Weaver was a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University from 1916-1948. His book is credited with the Melville revival that began at this time, for which we (lovers of Moby-Dick) will always be grateful.

Apparently this was the first ever in-depth look at Melville's life, coming as it did after the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1919. Weaver had been asked to write a magazine piece to celebrate this milestone, which then developed into this book two years later.

Wikipedia sums up the book by saying,

Weaver presents Melville as a disappointed and disillusioned genius who rebelled against social convention and paid the price: "His whole history is the record of an attempt to escape from an inexorable and intolerable world of reality." Weaver praises Melville for establishing the South Seas as a suitable topic for literature and for his depictions of a sailor's sea-life, but saved his highest praise for Moby-Dick, Melville's "undoubted masterpiece." But Weaver saw the cold reception from critics as leading to the "Long Quietus," that is, Melville's withdrawal from engagement with literature. He characterized Melville's work after 1851 as inferior, sometimes even unacceptable.

It was an interesting read, but frustrating thanks to the obvious gaps and overt judgements. If anyone could recommend a more modern bio for me to try next, I would appreciate it.

But now, onto our chapters.

Ch 91: The Pequod Meets the Rose-bud

• "In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying that inquiry." Sir T. Browne, V. E.
• I was wondering when we'd get to the ambergris. Having read Perfume a number of years, where I learnt something about the importance of ambergris to the perfume industry, I knew it had to turn up eventually, like all bad smells do!
• Naughty Stubb! Even though the Rose-bud has two fast-fish, seeing the potential for ambergris in one of them, Stubb scams convinces the unknowing French crew that the whales are poisonous and to let them go.
• Stubb gathers six handfuls 'worth a gold guinea an ounce'.

Ch 92: Ambergris

• More thoughts about the nature of ambergris and what it might mean for mankind.
• that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing?
• St Paul in Corinthians: we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory.
• Ishmael defends the honour of whalemen and the cleanliness of whales.

Ch 93: The Castaway

• Back to the action.
• Young Pip the 'unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight' has an accident.
• Not a comfortable chapter for a modern reader to read. Pip is an African-American and Melville uses the terminology of his times to describe Pip, who never really gets a chance to rise above the stereotype.
• Before the accident, Pip is brilliant. He 'loved life, and all life's peaceable securities.' But after being lost at sea for a period of time, he is rescued 
• but from that hour...went about the deck an idiot....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....Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent....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.
• Ishmael also gives us a hint of what's to come 'in the sequel of this narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself.'

Ch 94: A Squeeze of the Hand

• Probably the most famous chapter in Moby-Dick!
• Squeezing lumps out of the spermaceti - 'it was our business to squeeze these lumps black into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty!'
• I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
• It's easy to see how modern readers can find this section to be homoerotic. But I doubt very much that that is how Melville, or other readers of that time, viewed it. Melville, via Ishmael is simply revelling in the joyous part of whaling. For Ishmael, those parts are the ones where he can go into a bit of a meditative state - whether it's up in the crows nest on a balmy sunny day or engaged in a repetitive task with his co-workers, that also happens to smell rather nice.
• Ishmael finishes with the various cuts of whale.
• White-horse - a wad of muscle - oily oblongs of flesh that go to the mincer.
• Plum-pudding - part of the whale flesh
• Slobgollion - an ineffable oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting.
• Gurry - a dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of whales.
• Nippers - a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of a Leviathan's tail.
• Ishmael also warns us about the dangers to toes when working in the blubber-room - very sharp spades!

Ch 95: The Cassock

• a very strange, enigmatical object...lying lengthwise in the lee scuppers - a whale penis!
• the grandissimus is skinned like the pelt of a boa, turned inside out and stretched to dry in the rigging.
• The top three feet of this pelt is then cut off, two slits for arm-holes are cut into before the mincer slips himself bodily into it.
• Apparently this cassock, affords the mincer some form of protection as he works.
• Melville compares the mincing bulwarks to a pulpit - perhaps one of the reasons many Christian groups were unhappy with this book. He also reminded them/us that penis icons were worshipped in ancient Judea.
• Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishoprick, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!
• The reference to bible leaves, was a whaling term used to encourage the mincer to slice the blubber is thin as possible.
• Google 'whale penis' if you'd like to see a more accurate depiction than the one below!

Ch 96: The Try-Works

• The area of the ship designed to distil the whale blubber into oil. 
• The furnace is compared to Ahab's heart.
• the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
• I read this chapter during one of the worst weeks of the recent bushfire season. The smell of smoke was very real!
• once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time.
• Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

Ch 97: The Lamp

• Ishmael loves the whaling life & here he reminds us just how wonderful and lucky they are thanks to the amount of oil they have on board to light their lamps.
• But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light.
• A far more noble trade than a merchantman, who has to dress in the dark and eat in the dark, and stumble in the darkness to his pallet.

Ch 98: Stowing Down and Clearing Up

• Fairly self-explanatory - once the oil has been casked and stowed, the ship is thoroughly cleaned in preparation for the next whale.
• Ishmael compares this to life  - as we go through young life's old routine again. No sooner is one job completed, then the next one starts up.

Ch 99: The Doubloon

• This is the gold doubloon that Ahab nailed to the mast when he challenged the crew to join him in his hunt for the white whale.
• In this chapter the doubloon, and it's engraved images, are symbols seen differently through different eyes.
• Ahab - sees all things Ahab - the firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab.
• Starbuck finds a more religious significance in the coin - So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope.
• Stubb would prefer to spend the coin than see it nailed to a mast! He uses an almanac to read the signs but decides that you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts. In the end, Stubb's nuts out that the doubloon represents the life of man.
• Flask sees nothing but a round thing made of gold.
• The Manxman (the oldest man on the ship) uses the doubloon and the nearby horseshoe to predict when they will sight the white whale.
• Queequeg takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.
• Fedallah makes a sign to the sign and bows himself.
• Pip recites nothing but "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."

Ch 100: Leg and Arm ⦁ The Pequod, of Nantucket, meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.

• The Captain of the Samuel Enderby is missing an arm, all thanks to Moby-Dick.
• Ahab and the English Captain Boomer compare notes. 
• He sees Moby-Dick as a noble great whale...the noblest and biggest I ever saw, is quite philosophical about the loss of his arm, and has no intention of trying to catch Moby-Dick again, 'ain't one limb enough?' Whaling is a dangerous business; no need to place oneself in the way of undue or unnecessary danger.
• No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?"
• Ahab agrees but 'What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all a magnet!'
• The contrast between the two is evident.

Only 35 chapters to go - we're on the home stretch now!

I'd love to hear about your progress through Moby-Dick and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80
Chapters 81 - 90

Chapters 91 - 100

Moby-Dick Chapters 81 - 90

Three more of these posts, and I will have caught up to my reading schedule! I had really hoped to read an authoritative bio about Melville during this time, but I can see the days, weeks and months slipping by...and here we are, suddenly, on the brink of February, with only 17 chapters to go.

Ch 81: The Pequod Meets the Virgin

• Hmmmm, more religious symbolism to unpack here, Herman?
• Back in chapter 78, Tashtego was reborn through the whale's head - a kind of virgin birth - and now we have a virgin ship. A ship with no oil and a ship full of inexperienced sailors.
• The crew of the Jungfrau from Bremen, are shown to be naive about the rules of the sea and to be no match for the seasoned men of the Pequod when it comes time to chase down a pod of whales.
• The death of this whale is a long and drawn out process, with success finally going to the crew of the Pequod.
• 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 merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.
• What seems like good luck though, turns bad, when the whale starts to sink, rather than float. It eventually snaps the chains they had been using to hold it and disappears beneath the surface.
• Meanwhile, those foolish young men from the Jungfrau head off to chase down another pod of whales, mistaking a pod of Fin-Back's for Sperm Whales - losers!
• Ishmael enjoys mocking those more inexperienced than him a little too much sometimes.

Ch 82: The Honor and Glory of Whaling

• Whalers as heroes once again. This time a mythological lens.
• Perseus, St George, Hercules, Jonah and Vishnoo.
• Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St George, a Coffin [a Nantuckateer], have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Ch 83: Jonah Historically Regarded

• Melville treats the story of Jonah as fact, just like the 'orthodox pagans' of ancient Greece and Rome accepted the stories about Hercules and Arion as fact.
• Ishmael attempts to view the story of Jonah through a modern, scientific lens.
• Knowledge or truth can be viewed in different ways (lens). It can also be seen differently from the viewpoint of different eras.
• Melville's ability to switch perspectives is quite impressive - Father Mapple gave us the religious point of view about Jonah and now we get the pragmatic view.

Ch 84: Pitchpoling

• Yet another way to kill a whale - javelin style, or pitchpoling - a skill that Stubb has refined.

Ch 85: The Fountain

• Finally, we get to the most recognisable feature of a whale - his spout.
• Like much of our knowledge about the whale, there is uncertainty and speculation. No-one knows for sure, people believe lots of different things and declare that their's is the correct way of thinking about whale spouts. Ishmael urges us to keep an open mind.
• And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Ch 86: The Tail

• Guess what this chapter is about?
• Ishmael is obviously a tail man. He waxes lyrical about the beauty, grace and power of the whale's tail.
• Excepting the sublime breach—somewhere else to be described—this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature.
• Yet, still, he laments how little he really knows about the whale.
• Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will.

Ch 87: The Grand Armada

• Another pod of whales, much bigger than previous ones, and therefore, called a grand armada by Ishmael.
• The Pequod is sailing off the Javanese coast. They suddenly find themselves being chased/hunted by a Malay pirate ship.
• Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck; in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him.
• The chase has all the usual adventure heroics about it, until Ishmael reveals that the pod has a large number of mothers and calves.
• The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulf-weed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.
• Ishmael is still full of the excitement of the chase, but now, this reader in particular, was rooting for the whales.

Ch 88: Schools and Schoolmasters

• According to Ishmael, whales travel around in two types of pods or schools.
• One features an older male whale and his harem.
• The other, is a group of boisterous young bucks prone to violence.

Ch 89: Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

• Time for a lesson in law on the high-seas - who owns what fish?
• A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
• A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
• Fair enough!
• But it wouldn't be Melville if this simple piece of law didn't turn into a chance to philosophise about the state of man and animal.
• What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish...? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last mite but a Fast-Fish...? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? 
• What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?

Ch 90: Heads or Tails

• De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam. Bracton, 1.3, C.3.
• Concerning the whale, it really suffices that the king should have the head and the queen the tail.
• Ishmael provides as with a rather farcical example of this Fast-Fish law in action.
• It seems that perhaps, the law is an ass instead!

I'd love to hear from you and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80
Chapters 81 - 90

Moby-Dick Chapters 71 - 80

It's time to climb aboard the SS Pequod once again to catch up on my Moby-Dick (mis)adventures. Despite a week of watery mishaps and visitors on the bridge, I've managed to stay abreast of my 4-5 chapters each week, however the blogging schedule is woefully aground.

Time to grasp the tiller firmly and head out into deep waters to see (sea) what we can see (sea). No more nautical puns I promise.

Chapter 71: The Pequod Meets the Jeroboam ● Her Story

• I learnt something new in this chapter - every ship has it's own private signal by which other vessels can recognise it. I wonder if the Pequod's was a white whale?
• Another prophet in the guise of (Archangel) Gabriel.
• 'originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna Shakers' (refers to the original Shaker community in north Albany who became known by the Native American name for the area. They believed in the second coming of Christ. They practised celibacy, communal living, confession of sin, egalitarianism, pacifism and charismatic worship (which is how they got their name apparently - Shaking Quakers!). New recruits were found by conversion and adoption of orphans. They were a Utopian gospel and preachers within their community could be of any gender, class or educational background.)
• Another example of Melville fascination/suspicion/obsession with evangelical, prophetic religious sects (his strict Calvinistic childhood really messed with his head!)
• And yet more discussions around fate and destiny, with Moby Dick as 'the Shaker God incarnated'.
• 'Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity.'
• His prophecy came to pass, with Macey's death by Moby Dick' tail, yet of these 'fatal accidents in the Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.'
• Is it prophetic or just the most likely thing to have happened in the circumstances?
• 'his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed.'
• Ahab's letter from Macey's wife "Nay, keep it thyself," cried Gabriel to Ahab; "thou art soon going that way."
• Prophecy or the most likely outcome of this chase?

Chapter 72: The Monkey-Rope

• More lines and ropes and the things that bind us together, for good and bad.
• And more information about 'cutting-in' a whale (see chapter 67).
• The harpooner (in this case, Queequeg) is 'half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him.'
• To keep him from drowning, he is tied, by a monkey-rope that 'was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or worse, we two, for the time, were wedded.'
• Stubb sends Aunt Charity's gift of 'ginger-gub' to the bottom of the sea.

Chapter 73: Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him

• An unusual event - the Pequod is commissioned to catch Sperm whales not Right whales.
• the crew considered the Right whale 'inferior creatures'.
• they had passed others schools of Right whales 'without lowering a boat.'
• 'yet now that a Sperm Whale had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the announcement was made that a Right Whale should be captured.'
• What follows is a fairly graphic depiction of whale hunting - not for the faint-hearted.
• An old sailing lore? - Flask informs Stubb -
• 'that the ship which but once has a Sperm Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale's on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never afterwards capsize?'
• But it turns out he only overhead Fedallah saying so and 'he seems to know all about ships' charms.'
• Fedallah - 'the devil in disguise.'
• 'the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then he'll surrender Moby Dick.'
• The philosopher analogy - Locke on one side (the tabula rasa/blank slate idea) and Kant on the other (the world cannot by understood until we understand the limits of man's understanding!)
• Mule analogy - the lowest of the low - beast of burden used by others - a symbol of victimisation?
• Fedallah appears to have no shadow 'Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parees's shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's'. 
• The crew speculate about witchcraft.

Chapter 74: The Sperm Whale's Head - Contrasted View

• A curious chapter all about the head of the whale.
• Ishmael has a LOT to say about it's eyes and ears, jaws and teeth, in particular.

Chapter 75: The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View

• The Right whale gets an up close and personal, in particular, the spout-holes, his sulky, pouty lower lip, the hogs' bristles in his mouth, and his tongue.
• Melville/Ishmael saves the best idea to the very last though as he compares these two whale heads with ancient philosophy.
• The Right Whale as Stoic - earthly suffering is the reality to be submitted to with patience 'does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death?'
• The Sperm Whale as Spinoza/Plato - 'I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death.' (Spinoza practised tolerance and benevolence. He viewed God and Nature as the same thing.)

Chapter 76: The Battering-Ram

• A whole chapter devoted to showing us how it is possible for a whale to use it's head as a battering ram. Various sites suggest that this is something we should remember for later on down the track.

The head this envelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.

• The chapter finishes with a warning tale about a 'weakling youth' who travels to Sais in Egypt in search of the Truth. Based on a poem called The Veiled Statue at Sais by Friedrich Schiller, the youth in question is utterly stricken by what he learns and never reveals it to anyone.
• The lesson learnt is not to seek out the Godhead's truth; you have to wait for it to be revealed 'Let none/ Venture to raise the veil till raised by me.'
• Another reference to Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick as a search for God/Truth.

What had been seen and heard by him when there
He never would disclose, but from that hourHis happiness in life had fled forever,And his deep sorrow soon conducted himTo an untimely grave....

'Woe to that man who wins the truth by guilt.'

Chapter 77: The Great Heidelburgh Tun

• A chapter about whale oil.
• A Heidelburgh tun refers to the vats in which wine is stored in Heidelburgh Castle.

Chapter 78: Cistern and Buckets

• On the surface this is a chapter about how to extract oil from a sperm whale's head.
• It's a dangerous business and Ishmael describes in detail 'a queer accident' that happened to Tashtego who had the misfortune to fall into the oil vat within the whale head - 'heedless and reckless' OR 'whether the place he stood was so treacherous and oozy' OR 'the Evil One himself' - fate, destiny or chance?
• To make matters worse, the suspended whale head then tore free of it's hooks and fell into the sea with Daggoo 'clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea!'
• Thankfully Queequeg is around to save the day.
• As the head slowly sinks, Queequeg cuts a hole in the side of the head, reaches in a pulls Tashtego out.
• Melville gives us lots of death and rebirth images to unpack here. 
• It's telling that this story of rescue and rebirth is given into the hand of the Pagan or non-Christian members of the ship. 
• Did the Christians fall short here or are we meant to see that courage, renewal, rebirth and fellowship are not concepts unique to Christians, but universal acts that then have religious significance attached to them by the various religions?

Chapter 79: The Prairie

• A lesson on phrenology as Ishmael tries to get inside the head of a whale.
• He realises that this is an impossible undertaking - we can decipher hieroglyphs but not 'the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings.'
• Human and animal consciousness is a mystery.

Chapter 80: The Nut

• More whale anatomy with a discussion on the brain and spine.
• For I believe that much of man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are.
• The sperm whale may have a small brain but it is 'compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord.'
• Brawn over brain; might over mind.
• Foreshadowing - 'And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to know.'

Phew! I hope that means we're done with the anatomy of the whale.
What I enjoy is how Melville is obviously preparing us thoroughly and intimately with the capacity and capabilities of a whale, so that whatever happens, we the reader, have realistic and plausible expectations and are fully prepared.

A surface reading about whale anatomy could be quite tedious, but my slow read is allowing me to see all the philosophy that Melville has packed into each chapter. It's not just an adventure story, but one that allows Melville to unpack his thinking about Christianity, politics and that state of the world.

Melville is a big picture guy who often gets bogged down by the details. He can also get sucked into the wormhole of his own thinking. His desire to know everything it's possible to know about his topic - his research, the spent uncovering all the information and facts to hand, reveal a man desperate to find the Truth. A truth that would not only give his life meaning and purpose, but a truth that could allow all of us around the world to live more peacefully and kindly and thoughtfully. Religion, as he knew it, was unable to provide that solace. Science and story telling became his way. He couldn't buy into the magic and miracles, but he was in search of a personal spirituality.

A complicated, complex man indeed.

I'd love to hear from you and please remember to add any new posts about the book or Melville to the linky in the original post.

Extracts - Chapter 7
Chapters 12 - 16
Chapters 17 - 20
Chapters 21 - 25
Chapters 26 - 30
Chapters 31 - 34
Chapters 35 - 40
Chapters 41 - 44
Chapters 45 - 49
Chapters 50 - 60
Chapters 61 - 70
Chapters 71 - 80