Moby Dick read-along discussion
Chapters 21 - 40
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A bizarre chapter, and one of the first of numerous “playlets” that dot the novel. Melville uses these plays as a way to fully capture the diversity of people and thoughts on the ship without having to filter them through he consciousness of a narrator. It is interesting that in a novel so concerned about omens and prophecies and the impossibility of interpreting such things, that Melville sometimes feels the need to eliminate the interpretive force of an interpreting narrator from his book. It is interesting to note that, in this chapter, it is unclear where Ishmael has gone, or if he is even the narrator of the “playlet” at all.
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Source: http://www.litcharts.com/lit/moby-dic...
So yeah I think that's a good explanation because even though Ishamel is our narrator I truly feel like Melville wants to incorporate more views than just his and this little playlet successfully portrays a lot of diverse thoughts. :)
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Yeah, I totally agree that sometimes Melville's fact-heavy writing seems like bragging about his extensive knowledge and can get quite too much but since I've read some negative reviews before jumping into this novel I had the chance to brace myself... :D and I'm just trying to project myself onto Melville and let his passion become mine...
I totally agree with what you say about Ahab's (re)presentation. When I talked about being disappointed I didn't necessarily mean his character traits and actions just the general fact that all of a sudden he was just on deck giving orders even though in beforehand he was made out to be such a mystery because no one knew where he was exactly and I was just hoping for a bigger entrance. :D
I am honestly so impressed with how well versed in the Bible you are because this gives me a great insight into some of those terms as well. You must be getting so much more out of that novel than I do because most of the time I have basically no idea who Melville is referencing to and I can't look everything up. And overall the language he uses is honestly veeery challenging for me because he uses so many different and unusual words that I sometimes have no idea what I'm reading... That might be a reason why you are much more critcial of this novel (which is great btw!) because I honestly couldn't fathom understanding every singe friggin' word of this novel... I think it would get the last of me because the sheer flood of information must be so overwhelming!
I have two exams, one this Friday and the other one this Saturday, so I will probably not be able to post/ reply since Saturday evening! I plan on at least pushing past chapter 60, hopefully 70-80 this week though.
HAPPY READING! :)
---- OKAY LET'S DO THIS ----
General
So first off a few general things that I've forgot to mention yesterday.
- I really like how "meta" Melville is in his writing, by that I mean that he breaks the fourth wall quite a lot and let's the reader know that it's actually just a book by saying things like "Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of ..." or all of the footnotes in which he is revising some of his statements on a factual level.
Chapters 21 - 40
- So chapter 21 "Going Aboard" is for me the start of the Rising Action, finally something exciting happens. I'm not saying chapters 1 - 20 were boring (because they weren't!) - it was actually nice to get to know our narrator a little better before starting off with the adventure - but I thought it was duly time for our protagonist to get on that damn ship already :D
- what I hinted before in my last entry was the set up for Ahab's character, I was honestly sooo intrigued; I feel like Melville isn't really good at writing suspense (because he is just too detailed in his descriptions and background infos to create a good arc of suspense) but Ahab's set up was top notch;
-I really liked the heart-warming scene right before take off where Bildad und Peleg were left behind (because their task was just to prepare the ship for its voyage which was also an interesting fact that I didn't know about that whole sailor business) and Bildad couldn't stop palavering and just blessed the crew non-stop... I really liked that!
- I also appreciated chapter 24 "The Advocate" because in this Melville really shone through Ishmael. In general I have the feeling that Melville might have projected himself on Ishmael and used him as a mouthpiece to express his beliefs; so chapter 24 starts off with: "As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales." - I feel like this might have been also one of Melville's intentions because he's been a whaler himself and apparently very interested in that topic and might have wanted the public to gain a better understanding of that whole business and I really appreciate the insights he gives us (e.g. how much money is put into the whaling industry each year etc.).
And it was also really cool that he stated that there's nothing wrong with craftsmanship (aka "for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.") because often times people confuse education with intelligence.
- so the Rising Action has actually a bit of an Exposition because Melville presents us the important members of the crew, naming them Knights and Squires which I deem fitting because there seems to be an apparent hierarchy on those whale-ships and since the crew is spending so much time on the ship and has to defend it from whale attacks and such it is like a home/ a castle...
THE CREW
The knights:
1. The chief mate Starbuck: "'I will have no man in my boat', said Starbuck, 'who is not afraid of a whale.'"
2. The second mate Stubb: "A happy-go-lucky", always smoking
3. The third mate Flask: A "young fellow [...] who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him."
One of my favorite quotes (so far) is actually about Stubb: "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."
The squires: (the harpooners who assist the mates)
1. Queequeg: our beloved Washington-cannibal :D
2. Tashtego: "an unmixed Indian"
3. Daggoo: "black negro-savage"
I also liked Ishmael's/Melville's snarky commentary about the whole situation: "because in all the cases the American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the whole generously supplying the muscles." which I read in a sarcastic way and still holds true up to this day.
The captain:
- Ahab; in chapter 28 we meet him in flesh for the first time and I was honestly disappointed, in my head I made him out to be this badass Zeus-like man but he's (so far) just an old bitter maniac. I also really didn't like how he treated the crew (especially Stubb) as if he were above them because so far he hasn't done anything that would progress their journey...
- Chapter 32 (Cetology) was awesome, I really don't know why I liked the little excursion into how Melville classifies whales so much; well, I think it might have been due to the fact that whilst reading I could just feel Melville's passion for that subject and felt like he included it because he really really really wanted the reader to know; It's hard to put into words but it seemed like he wanted to educate the reader so that the reader gained a better understanding of how much goes into the business of whaling and why certain whales are more valuable than others etc. I also really liked the funny comments he integrated into that factual chapter, e.g. when he talks about pig-fish: "and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology." Nowadays you would call that nerdy and I find it adorable!
Also what really hit me in that chapter is that whales really are the largest inhabitans of the globe, how friggin' crazy is that? :D
I also had the feeling that he was in parts humanizing/ personifying certain aspects of the whales calling them in a funny fashion "gentlemen", talking about their "grins" etc.
The most important is probably that he calls the whales "Leviathans". When I first read it I had just a vague idea of what that meant. I knew that Thomas Hobbes had written a philosophical work with that title in which the Leviathan is basically the sole ruler/ absolute dictator of the state. If you transfer that to the sea the metaphor actually works because the whales are the dominant and most dangerous creatures in the sea. But after doing more research the Leviathan is actually a mythological creature (a sea monster to be precise) who stands for almightiness. Wohoo, that fits even better if you take that Moby Dick = Christian God interpretation into consideration as well.
- overall not much happens in these chapters because they havn't found Moby yet but I really like how the everyday life of the ship is being described, how they have a specific order in which they are allowed to dine and how the mates (who have to dine with Ahab) can't really enjoy their meals and the harpooners are just much more chill and don't give a damn about etiquette. Those scenes can also be read in a much more social commentary way: "In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free licence and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers."
- starting with chapter 36 a weird phenomenon begins which actually stirred my attempt to structure the novel in an Aristotelean way; every chapter begins with a little stage direction just like plays, e.g. "(Enter Ahab: Then, all)." OR "(The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out)"
I have theory why that might be so but it could be a little far-fetched, so here we go: Chapter 36 is also the chapter in which Moby Dick appears (implicitly, his name is said by members of the crew) for the first time in this novel and it is also the chapter in which Ahab expresses his desire for revenge for the creature who maimed it. Whilst reading I had the feeling that right now the DRAMA (literally) starts. I mean we now know the purpose and that shit will probably get real in the near future because Ahab is obsessing so much over this whale, it had a very dramatic theatralic feel and maybe that's why he used the dramaturgical structure (BUT WHO KNOWS :D).
→ In this chapter I was also really rooting for Starbuck because he was literally the only one who spoke up against Ahab ("I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance.") which I thought was really brave and important.
- I also liked the little songs/ verses:
"We'll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim,
And break on the lips while meeting."
→ because that's something that I totally associate with sailors: being drunk and singing about loved-ones far away. :D
- And lastly chapter 40; that was honestly so weird in its structure that I have no idea what to do with it. It was interesting to see all the different sailors who are aboard because they were from so many different parts of the world but I can't analyze it properly... You might have and idea. :)
My review for chapters 41 - 60 will def be posted this weekeend! :)