Petergiaquinta’s Reviews > Moby-Dick > Status Update

Ahab to the Carpenter: “the gravedigger in the play sings, spade in hand. dost thou never?”

What would an epic tale be without an epic simile?
Here’s Ishmael attending to the shirt-cockin’ Queequeg on the dead whale’s back:
“You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.”

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

“Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable.”

“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.”