Moby Dick online reading group, conclusion of the novel

I particularly liked this image from the Jan. 27 blog post, so I'm going to post it again. 

Chapter 135, "The Chase -- Third Day" and "The Epilogue."

So we conclude the reading group that began on Nov. 4. Of course, if my fellow bloggers, Oz and Eric, want to add something and do another post, I would be happy to run it.

I would suppose that some of the people who might be reading along with us are reading the novel for  the first time, and don't know what happens at the end. So I would prefer to avoid spoilers!

Still, I feel comfortable noting one more time that Melville does well when action is taking place.  

"What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world." A lovely passage about a day that will be filled with horrors.

"Time itself held long breaths with keen suspense." A moment of calm before the action.

And the ending has a couple of nice ironies to it, but I can't explain that without giving away the ending!

The last sentence of the novel is referenced in the title of "Another Orphan," a 1982 novella by John Kessel, a story about a contemporary man who goes to sleep and wakes up to find himself aboard an old-fashioned sailing ship with a diverse crew: "The crew was an odd mixture of types and races: there were white and  black, a group of six Orientals who sat  apart on the rear deck and took no part  in the work, men with British and German accents, and an eclectic collection of others — Polynesians, an Indian, a huge, shaven-headed black African, and a mostly naked man covered from head to toe with purple tattoos, whorls and swirls and vortexes, images and symbols, none of them quite decipherable as a familiar object or person." 

Plus, the ship's captain offers a pretty good clue about the situation: "Fallon looked back with him and saw the black figure there, heavily bearded, tall, in a long coat, steadying himself by a hand in the rigging. The oil lamp above the compass slightly illuminated the dark face — and gleamed deathly white along with the ivory leg that projected from beneath his black coat. Fixed, immovable, the man leaned heavily on it. 'Ahab,' the sailor said."

Kessels story won a Nebula Award, so some of the science fiction fans reading this blog entry may well remember it. Discussion here, the particular issue of F&SF is available on the Internet archive. 

Thank you to Oz and Eric, and to everyone who has followed along with us for weeks!