By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
This week: Chapters 43-48, "Hark" through "The First Lowering."
I had forgotten that Ahab’s father died before Ahab’s birth and his mother died around his first birthday.
This novel seems ahead of its time with its truly multi-cultural cast of characters, although the power resides with white men from New England. Of course, the book contains few women.
The film Jaws comes to mind reading about this sea hunt. I also think about a scene from Citizen Kane. When preparing his declaration of principles, Kane says he wants his newspaper to become as important to the city as the oil in the lamp that lights the room. I suspect at that time in history this meant whale oil.
I wonder how long after the end of the novel Ishmael began to write the story of this voyage. I think he took other whaling voyages after the one recounted in the novel.
The novel gives a snapshot of the nature of early nineteenth century capitalism in the contrast between Starbuck’s sense of the economic purpose of the voyage and Ahab’s quest for revenge. I find it interesting how Ishmael reflects on how he joined in the enthusiasm for the reward Ahab offered for the sighting of Moby Dick.
Once again I ask, is Moby Dick a yacht rock novel?
Next week: Please read Chapters 49-54, "The Hyena" through "The Town-Ho's Story."
8 comments:
I've gotten some feedback that the pace has been pretty fast for some readers. So from next week on, I've slowed things down a bit, from about 35 pages a week in my paperback copy of "Moby Dick," to about 25 pages a week.
I love this passage on Ahab's quest to kill Moby Dick: "Ah, God! What trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms."
Chapter 47 "The Mat-Maker" starts with a scene of Ishmael and Queequeeg weaving mats. Ishmael serves as the assistant in this task. Weaving has been used as a metaphor by Sufis for their work. It illustrates the interconnectedness of all things and its construction into something whole. Melville uses this weaving as a metaphor to show how free will can enter into a mechanical process.
There's a line in Finnegans Wake on p. 13 about "blubbery wares" for Dublin that recalls Kane's line that Eric mentions above. Blubbery wares = oil for lamps. Joyce uses an archaic name for Dublin (I'm guessing) because whale oil stopped being used to fuel lamps sometime around 1860 when they switched to petroleum products. I'm hoping to publish a blog today, in time for Maybe Night, comparing Moby Dick and Finnegans Wake where I elaborate a bit about this.
Thank you for slowing down the reading. Perhaps we will catch more whales. When Ishmael fears that he missed seeing whales when on watch because his mind wandered, it reminded me of all the quarters I missed when looking for quarters because my mind wandered.
I don't know about all of the yarns in the "Affidavit" chapter but the anecdotes about the whaleship Essex are true. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it's a really horrible saga, so read at your own risk:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)
I also appreciate a slower reading pace. Some chapters happen to be pretty dense and information-rich, so I often only pick up on details when skimming through them a second time before commenting here.
I do not think Moby Dick particularly ‘yacht rockish’, I find it too deep in terms of philosophical musings, and not polished or bland enough. Some of the more mystical digressions reminds me more of a band such as the Grateful Dead playing on a boat for months on end, totally lost in intricate lysergic nautical guitars improvisations. White Whale/Dark Star.
Like Eric, I also thought of Jaws while reading this book.
Tom Jackson, I found fascinating the paragraph directly after the one you quote. Hell as an inward place that not only Ahab inhabit, but in fact has created for himself. He appears to have dissociated mind and spirit (or soul), leaving him discombobulated and not in touch with his senses (“a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of light, to be sure, but without an object to colour”). Ahab is now more ‘whale’ than ‘whole’. There is even a reference to Prometheus, but that would be Prometheus bound, not Prometheus rising.
Although Ahab is physically on the boat, he could be seen as being in a similar Chapel Perilous than Jonah inside the whale.
I recently thought that Pinocchio, like Jonah, is a character that get swallowed by a whale as the climax of his journey of transformation, and comes out on the other side a different person.
I wonder how many whales or quarters one misses on an average day, when the mind wanders. We might think whales easier to spot than a quarter, but alas… Sometimes what’s right before our eyes still remains invisible to us.
Moby Dick seems to me full of whales, or quarters, that can give you an 'aha!' moment, if your focus on seeing them is good enough.
In episode two of the original "Yacht Rock" web series, a record company executive has a lucky harpoon. This, along with the nautical theme, made me think of "Moby Dick".
We get indications later on in chapter 101 that Ishmael went on other whaling voyages after Moby Dick. Chapter 102 explores the Sufi weaving metaphor in more depth.
The wildest story I heard about Jaws concerns a well known musician. Around the time Jaws came out he and his band flew to Europe for gigs. Some of them thought it would be a good idea to drop acid for the flight. They showed Jaws for the film. The people tripping entered a reality where they believed the plane was going down and would crash into the ocean where they would then confront he Jaws shark who would eat them. That never happened, but since then, my friend quit doing all drugs and hasn't done any to this day. Also, for many years, he refused to fly . If he had to play Europe or Japan, he would take a boat. Within the last 10 - 15 years, he has flown to Japan, but he'll never fly domestically, to my knowledge. This wasn't told to me by the person it happened and I've heard stories I later found out to be exaggerated or embellished, but I know his drug abstinence and flying avoidance to be factual. Maybe there were other factors, but with the craziness of the band and the times, it could have happened like this.
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