GEM > Recent Status Updates

Stark tone shift in the book. Was previously very conversational and somewhat silly. Now that they’ve boarded the ship, there seems to be an interlude of thought with lofty and grandiose musings of democracy, what makes a man, etc. Wondering if this tone will be used to distinguish Melville’s voice from Ishmael’s? I miss Queequeg.

I’m having fun reading this book.

It is a good pun to ship Queequeg and Ishmael.

What compels one to sea? The endless processions of the idea of the whale himself, and the grand hooded phantom of life. How to go into the sea? Not a passenger who pays, a Captain who commands, or a Cook who feeds, but as a sailor who obeys/breathes the first air/is paid. Why else? We are drawn to the sea. And delusion of choice from unbiased free will and discriminating judgement. Be on friendly terms with horror.

Why did the Greeks government it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still the deeper meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key

Thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.