Kayse’s Reviews > Moby-Dick; or, the Whale > Status Update

Obviously I know how this ends. I think everybody knows how this ends. But my stomach is still churning and my heart is still racing as I read about the Pequod meeting its fate.

I didn’t even remember the character Pip from the first time I read this, and now I’m crying over this poor little cabin boy. 😭

I refused to stop reading tonight until I finally finished Chapter 100: Leg and Arm, where Captain Ahab meets Captain Boomer, his foil with whalebone prosthetic arm and a wooden mallet on the end, used to knock his sailors on the head 😭

Why is Starbuck the first mate? I don’t think he’s caught a single whale by this point, and Stubb, the second mate, is on like his third or fourth.

Thoroughly enjoying this bit where the second mate, Stubb, is insulting a French-speaking captain to his face, while the interpreter is pretending that Stubb is providing helpful whaling advice.

While expounding on the glories of whaling, Ishmael factchecks the story of St. George and the dragon, claiming that he actually slew a whale, and rather than the horse he’s portrayed as riding, St. George might have instead been riding “a large seal, or a sea-horse,” and, just, the visuals this conjures is nothing short of spectacular.

“A nose to the whale would have been impertinent.”

Definitely grosser at parts than I remember. I remember being fascinated by the description of harvesting the whale in high school; this time around I was more repulsed. I wonder when I got more squeamish?

So I’m on the chapter where Ishmael just describes all the different ways you can eat a whale, which is pretty fucking gross to read about. However, this one line had me rolling: “And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf’s head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an ‘et tu Brute!’ expression.”