Aike’s Reviews > Moby-Dick > Status Update

call me pretentious or whatever but that stupid whiteness chapter almost made me cry. what do you mean "Nor even in our superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantel round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog." Ishmael What Do YOU MEAN "a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and splintered crosses." I know how your story ends Ishmael stop pls

anyways we don't talk enough about the random part of moby dick that's a musical

Ishmael, after doing some cetology and concluding : 1) the whale is a fish, 2) the best way to classify whales is in books and chapters, 3) the narwhal should use its horn to read pamphlets, 4) killer whales should not be called killer whales because "we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartas and sharks included,": "Oh, Time, Strength, Cash and Patience!"

Ishmael is the only mansplainer I accept. Its the fact that this man starts out wanting to argue for the dignity of whaling, and ends up reflecting on if anointing the head with oil is in any way similar to oiling a machine when it comes to making it work

""Anything down there about your souls?"
"About what?"
"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said, quickly, "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any, - good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A souls's a sort of fifth wheel to a wagon."

"Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. (...) Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling"

Ishmael: me and the cannibal? Oohhh just platonic besties!!!!
Also Ishmael: "No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it."
Also Ishmael: "he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waste, and said that henceforth we were married"
Also Ishmael: "Thus then, in our hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queeqeg - a cosy, loving pair."

'Moby-Dick is an important American classic yadayada yada' Moby Dick is a book that starts with a 'There's only one bed' trope. Ishmael tries & fails to sleep on a bench so Oh No he has to share his blanket with a cannibal! Lo and behold they wake up hugging like man and wife. (I'm not paraprhasing btw.)

Ishmael is such an absolute menace and I missed him badly. Im weak Im sorry I caved X-files made me reread this

"Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better."