The famous book about the big white whale, and Captain Ahab who wants (nothing but) to kill it.
Moby Dick is considered one of the greatest novels in the English Language, full of rick symbolism and highly-developed characters.
Let’s begin by discussing the beginning of the novel, say the introduction until chapter 20. What are your thoughts about how Melville lays the foundations for this great masterpiece?
I love to find a passage and connect to it:
“Why is almost every robust healty boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a seperate deity, and make him the own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the 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 was 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 to it all.” (from chapter one)
Not being a boy, I can’t speak to the instinctual truth Melville is alluding to here, but I have sought out the tranquility of a body of water as therapy. Whether it is canoeing on a small river or sailing on Lake Ontario, do you find this to be true to yourself? Have you ever been out of sight of land? What did that feel like?
“Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of life and death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on Earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.” (from chapter 7.)
One of the reasons I love this passage is because I have never really had to choose between Death and Glory. (cue The Clash) I can’t even fathom this. But it makes me think!
“I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth – pagans and all included can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! And what is the will of God? – to do my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me – that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world” (from chapter 10.)
What I love about this passage is that Ishmael realizes the need for a true dialogue. In questioning what he thinks he knows and finding a common ground with Queequeg, Ishmael becomes more than just a sender and receiver of messages. What are your thoughts?
Sort of off topic, but has anyone read Bone by Jeff Smith. It’s a really cute comic book and has a great storyline and pencil work along with it.
Bone begins with this character trying to read Moby Dick and then people fall asleep. Happens more than once in the comic :)
