Moby-Dick discussion

Hi all -
This past week included chapters 81 to 89, as follows:

Ch. 81: The Pequod Meets the Virgin
Ch. 82: The Honor and Glory of Whaling
Ch. 83: Jonah Historically Regarded
Ch. 84: Pitchpoling
Ch. 85: The Fountain
Ch. 86: The Tail
Ch. 87 The Grand Armada
Ch. 88: Schools and Schoolmasters
Ch. 89: Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

For those of us who are behind (hand up!), next week offers a catch-up respite!

Hi Judy -
I also thought the fast and loose fish legal distinction was interesting. Nearly this whole section was about whales and whaling and very little related to the action of the story. To be honest I found much of it slow-going, and it's Melville's beautiful prose that saved it for me. His writing is exquisite and imaginative.

One chapter about the whale's spout. Another about its tail and flukes. Then the "fast" and "loose" legalities, and the schools - "harems" and "bulls!" It is easy to see why this book didn't win over readers when it was written - those who came looking for a bracing whaling yarn got a lot of technicalities.

So does the expression about something being a "fluke" come from the whale's fluke?

I've learned more about Melville's obsession with the whale and "the watery world" than about Ahab's obsession with Moby. At least so far.

I looked up fluke as an "accidental stroke of good fortune" and its origin is "unknown." But it appears to come from billiards, where I could imagine a poorly manned pool cue flapping up like a whale's tail... if I really strain my imagination, that is.
smile

...or take what you will from this....
http://www.wordswarm.net/dictionary/f...

Ch. 87 "The Grand Armada"

I was taken by Melville's description of the fleeing whales, how they moved as one, and how the Pequod was about to give up the chase.

Then he describes the term "gallied" and how it denotes the "strange perplexity of inert resolution." Next comes a comparison to King Porus' (a name that's definitely somewhere in the "Who-the-Hell's-Who in History? book) elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander. Mice, apparently.

"This occasional timidity," HM writes, "is characteristic of almost all herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman."

Here comes the good part:

"Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in the sheep-fold of a theatre's pit, they will at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, without any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."

This I marked and this I liked. Animals chasing animals. Only the animals in pursuit score lower than their prey in this case (and, one can infer, in ALL cases).

Here Melville echoes Twain, who loved to rant and rave at "the damned human race" and how this animal (or that) was vastly superior. Looked at a certain way, it's hard to disagree....

I think, Sarah, that Moby-Dick, is not about Ahab's chase for the whale but Melville's use of the that to explore the nature of existence, to understand man and God. And to do it using a rich extraordinary Shakespearian at times -- or at least poetic -- prose.

What follows is not the best writing -- although it's not without its points -- "his vast mild head overhung by a vapours" is excellent -- but it reveals I think WHY there's been so much space devoted to the whale, both in fact and poetry, and why it's part of the book and why it's so terribly important to read, carefully and slowly, to let it seep in.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea, his vast mild head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapour -- as you will sometimes see it -- as if Heaven itself had put his seal upon its thoughts. For d'ye see rainbows don't inhabit the clear air, they only irradiate vapour. And so through all the dim doubts in the thick mists of my mind divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for I thank God: for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials; few among them have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly; and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but a man who regards all things with equal eye.

What all this detail, scientific, practical, poetic, etc., these descriptions are the build up of Melville's only vision of heaven, through the whale as a heavenly creature.

For in looking at Christians and cannibals, Christians come out the worse, and while still better, cannibals and certainly humans in general don't come out well when compared to whales, which reflect heaven in their enormous majesty -- and of course here a rainbow in the spouting.

A long time ago (that is, in these posts) NE talked of being of not knowing where Melville came out, and I think in the passage above it's clear where he comes out. This is where we learn unequivocally he's with the whales -- and not with man, the money-making animal.

But it's not just that.

He's certainly in his ironic humorous self with the Twain of "the better I know people, the more I like my dog".

But he's really after something deeper. Yes he lets us see our good Christian businessman, Peleg and Bildad paying as little as possible for life-risking labour, the brutality of flogging on the Town-Ho, the frequent comparisons of Christians and cannibals where the cannibals always come out better, the constant mortal danger the crew is put in while just cleaning the whale, Queegueg's saving of Tashtego, the incident shortly to come up with Pip.

But Melville is also the man caught between being Christian and infidel, who sees both, and having vouchsafed us voyagers with him a vision of man which might be considered hellish, he also offers a vision -- and intuition -- of Heaven, an intuition for which he is grateful.

And he does it through the detailed verbal pictures of the whale -- and this part of Moby-Dick that isn't about the "story", about the chase of the whale or Ahab's madness -- is about this balancing vision of heaven. The vision of heaven is as much what this book is about it as a potential alternative, of what me might learn of heaven in the whale.

It is perhaps this vision that is redemptive in the book, that redeems the Ishmael who follows funerals and stares at coffin warehouses, who finds himself in the seaman's chapel listening to preacher, a former seaman, who like Jonah must go and preach the word of God.

And this is Melville's contribution, I think, his sermon, even if one by an only half-convinced penitent, it's the carefully, and methodically built up vision of the whale.

This is Melville on his knees in his own church.

Ah... I like that image.

Bill wrote:This is Melville on his knees in his own church.


Very well said Bill.

I think the writing is mostly marvelous, just clunky in places. But in other places, it's a thrill. That's why we set up the lines & passages folder.
Anyway, Moby Dick appears to be about everything, man vs. nature, and man, like any creature, as part of nature. God. Human relationships. Quests.
I'm almost finished!

Yes, but it's not just about it. Melville has a particular perspective.

I've gotten behind again and am just now trying to catch up...

I've yet to see any discussion about how religous people of the time took this book. It was bad enough with throw aways like Better a sober cannibal than a drunken christian but now, Chapter 83 Jonah Historically Regarded. Didn't HM suggesting that "the Whale" that swallowed Jonah being a ship of that name drive folks of that era into book-burning (if not author burning) If they were anything like the creationists or even the Intelligent Design Proponents, it's no wonder that his books fell from favor.

The Chapter 87 The Grand Armada had a few oddities I'd like to discuss...

Melville makes a big to do about the Pequod not needing to put in for water because they are carrying a large supply of Nantucket Spring Water. While it's not described exactly HOW that's packaged, every other sea story that I've read suggests that the problem with fresh water was that it got brackish and mossy and was full of organisms after just a few months. I was curious why Melville made such a point of this. It seems unlikely and not at all important to the story. Also James A. Michener in his book Hawaii makes much of the whalers that put in there to get fresh fruits and veggies and most important of all fresh water.

Also Melville talks about "the circus running sun racing within its fiery ring" Is HM suggesting that the sun orbits the Earth? I've always thought that that bruhaha was well sorted by Melville's time. Copernicus and Kepler were both a couple of centuries before Melville. I suppose that he could just be "being poetic"...

I was delighted to see that Melville wasn't above a little alliteration (if restricted to a footnote) "sinewy Saxonisms of this sort..."

Chapter 88 Schools and Schoolmasters. It was interesting to see Melville draw a distinction between the harem schools and the bull schools. Even more interesting to see him refrain from drawing a parallel betwee the behavior of males and females of the cetacean variety with the behavior of males and females of the human variety.

It was also interesting to learn of Vidocq. I'd never heard of this famous French womanizer until reading this chapter. It was also interesting to learn that Vidocq was the Sam Spade of his day. From white whale to black bird in one fell swoop.

I managed to get a little behind because a few "must read nows" intervened. Just finished "The Tail" and
"The Grand Armada" and they are my favorites to date. I loved the image of the Elephant's trunk delivering flowers to, then groping a maid at the marketplace.I also liked in "The Grand Armada" where he describes the Straits of Sundra, as being "guarded from the all-grasping western world." His strength of fast paced exciting narrative really shines through here. If the pace continues I should be able to catch up quickly. Would love to be a fly on the wall watching Hawthorne reading all this!