Karoline’s Reviews > Moby Dick > Status Update

ALSO does our Ishmael have an Isaac? He has a twin - an opposite second self - who's the son of a king - and I'm so curious how their pairing is going to play out.

First half was dominated by the Jonah narrative and images of death, devouring, and swallowing. Everybody is in the belly of the whale & in the shadow of death.

Second half seems to be transitioning away from Jonah and towards Job. As soon as Stubb eats (swallows) the whale, whales become less like monsters and more like Coleridge's beautiful, murdered albatross - revelations of grace and wonder.

I have successfully reached the midpoint of the Book About Things That Swallow Men, namely cannibals, the sea, and whales. Which is to say, Death.

Did Terry Pratchett like Moby Dick because I feel like he would.

is this a novel or is this creatively narrated literary criticism on the symbol of the whale/leviathan across history, science, and literature???

getting some Miltonic vibes here

So the body is a house.

The house is a ship is a whale is death.

The ship is a whale is death.

And a whole sermon on Jonah about how to live in the belly of the whale. Preached from a "ship" that's NOT a whale.

Just met Ahab, but since his leg is also a whale's jawbone, like apparently everything else in this novel ...

I'd say we're supposed to pay attention to the whale's belly.

Just a wild guess.

the male-marriage image must have hit the imaginations of the original readers very differently than it hits mine . . .