haj7’s Blog

     In chapter 48, we finally get to see some real whaling action happen and we finally get to see how Queequeg is doing since the voyage began. It seemed kind of sad that Ishmael and Queequeg’s marrige was strained since the beggining of the trip. We are also introduced to the phantoms that have been living in the bottom of the boat for weeks. They were actually natives of the Manillas who are feared greatly by the other crewmembers. Many on the Pequod see them as “secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere.” To be seen as an agent of the devil is quite a reputation, just the kind that would be needed to hunt down the legendary Moby Dick.

     We pretty much get to see Starbuck just shouting orders on the whaling boat and Queequeg get to action harpoon whales. This chapter really illustraits the dangers of whaling. Ishmael’s boat even capsizes and this was his first time out there. Whalers must have been full of crazy stories to tell about their various hunts.

    In chapter 52, I found a really cool quote from Ishmael after they were talking to the other ship, asking if they had seen a white whale. In the last paragraph, he said, “But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.” This was a really powerful quote about when people persue their desire for the world’s mysteries. It seems that Ishmael thinks that when someone tries to do this, they either end up puzzled in a maze that they cannot get out of, or give up midway.

One of the things that had stood out to me from this nights reading was in chapter 44 when Ishmael was talking about how Ahab was determined to find Moby Dick and he just has all of these different charts. In the third paragraph, Ishmael said, “But it was not this night in particular, that in the solitude of his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.”

This quote really seemed to stand out to me because night time is almost associative with rest and relaxation and here you have this guy just spending his nights mapping out where the mighty Moby Dick might be on his charts. He seems overly obsessive about this and this passage really shows it.

The rest of the reading seemed to be the Melville avoiding the plot and Ishmael ranting on about whales and being philosophical.

    In the first Emerson reading titled “I Become a Transparent Eyeball”, it’s short but very very deep. From the reading it seems that metaphorically, he is removing himself from his physical being and is observing the universe from the outside. The lines that seem to summarize Emerson’s point is ” I become a transparetn eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universial Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.” From looking at this quote it seems that Emerson thinks very highly of himself. He seems to have the whole attitude that Ishmael has in thinking highly of themselves. Ishmael goes off on random rants about leviathans and how biblical they are. Emerson is just thinking highly of himself and trying to make himself look smart.

      For the second reading “The American Scholar” it seems that Emerson is only feeding into his own ego and sense of self righteousness. He seems to think that he knows all about persuing knowledge and how to do it in a correct manor. He should seriously get over himself. I can see why Herman Meleville can pick this guy to make a parody of.

When I was reading chapter 41 I think I might have found one of the funniest lines in the book.  Ishmael said “And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists-Olafsen and Povelsen-declaring the Sperm Whate not only to be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but aslo to be so incrediby ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood.” The reason why I loved this line was that, Ishmael was trying to make himself sound all smart and cultured by saying that according to some bunch of naturalists who have scandanavian sounding last names that say that sperm whales are these vicious and blood thirsty creatures that have a liking towards human flesh. Not only does he he just throw two random names but he also doesn’t even mention the book where he found this information (”we find some book”). I actually took time to try to look through search engines such as google to try to find out if these two were really naturalists and I didn’t even get any revelvent results. This line just makes me laugh out loud and it really shows what kind of a compulsive (and not to mention bad) liar Ishmael is.

The next chapter really discussed the significance in (terms of symbolism) the color white has. It seems that many cultures have seen the color white as being a sign of good such as christianity with the white tunic that is worn by priests. In many cultures the color white is seen in a good sense. However, in other cultures such as the Incas the color white is somewhat dreaded because it means snowy mountian peaks for them. The color white seems to have taken on a darker meaning with Moby Dick. It seems that this whale is a symbol itself of danger and death.

These last few chapters were very strange for the style of writing that Melville turned Moby Dick to. It really seemed to slowly evolve into a play format from chapters 36-40. It seemed pretty strange that it would all of a sudden just turn into a play, but I kind of like it. The play and the random passages about whaling in general  makes it have greater variety. If someone wanted an example of what a writer with a short attention span is like, I think this book would be a prime example.

In chapter 36, I thought it was very strange how Captain Ahab was just rallying up the sailors for killing Moby Dick. What kind of person gets excited for taking revenge upon a simple creature? Ahab lost his leg to the whale but is it really worth it? One line that stood out to me was when Ahab said “Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” He almost personifies Moby Dick as some kind of villianous entity. If I were a crew member of the Pequod I wouldn’t know what is scarier, this white whale that is vicious from having harpoons in him from other whalers or a crazed captain who takes a his injury from a whale personal

In the passage of Whaling and Whalecraft, the readers got a bit more of a sense of what exactly Ishmael, Queequeg and others are actually doing on their voyage. It seems to be a very tough and stomach churning job to have. When John B. Putnam was talking about “getting fast” this procedure seemed so brutal and dangerous at the same time. Nobody in their right mind would ever go up with a wooden row boat and just start harpooning one of the largest predators to live on this planet. It just seems so brutal to just harpoon the poor thing and then keep on stabbing it with lancing it and “churning it about.”

After this creature is dead,  they just cut it up and make use of the scraps. The description of when they extract the blubber and any other substances from the whale that can be used for oil just sounds disgusting. To have this huge dead animal besides your boat and having it’s blood and blubber all over the deck of where you are spending the next few years of your life must have required a lot of gettting used to. Whaling must have been an exciting job for its time (pretty much the hunting and harpooning part), but it really seems quite nauseating.

During this reading, when I read chapter 24 I couldn’t help but think why would Herman Melville just stall the plot and talk about the whaling industry? If Ishmael’s claims about the whaling industry are true then it really did seem like the biggest thing going for its time. Unlike today, where many modern countries see whaling as archaic and unnecessary, back then, it really seemed to be a big buissness. One quote that shows this is when Ishmael said” Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of E 1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it was that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000; and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all of this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?” Just these huge numbers really show the importance of whaling back then. One million dollars must have been worth ten times more than it does now. Some readers might complain about this “interuption” but I think it’s interesting as some kind of “semi-primary source.”

In chapter 28, one aspect that really stood out to me about Ahab was his whale bone leg. “It had previusly come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of a sperm whale’s jaw.” It seems like just having a leg made out of whale bone shows that this guy is crazed about whaling. It also stood out to me on how Ahab didn’t really talk and how his officers “showed the uneasy, if nnot painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye.”

Just from reading the description of Captain Ahab in chapter 16, part of me couldn’t wait for Ishmael to finally meet this character face to face. It seems that this character is  quite conflicted on the inside. Just his origin of being a son of a widowed mother who died when he was only “a twelvemonth old” shows that he didn’t have that good of a start as most people do.

     A passage that I thought that was important to include in this entry was in chapter 16 when Peleg said “I know Captain Ahab well; I’ve sailed with him as mate years ago; I know what he is -a good man- something like me- only there’s a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he’s been kind of moody- desperatley moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off.” I thought this quote was really important because it really gives a good character background of Captain Ahab and what kind of a person he is. All I can imagine of this guy is some kind of scary one legged man who is always in constant mood swings.

One quote that I thought that was important was right after the previous passage and it was “And once for all, let me tell tell thee and assure thee, young man, it’s better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. ” This quote really stood out to me because it seems to hold significance in everyday life. For example, in work places, it would seem to be better to have a boss that knows what they are doing but is a bit grouchy than one who doesn’t know what they are doing but is friendly. With the grouchy good boss the job is guerenteed to get done people will get paid and this kind of analogy can go for any kind of position that requires leadership from politics, to ships, to work, etc.

In chapter 10, it really seems that Queequeg and Ishmael are best friends on pg. 53 at the bottom of the page “He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against me,  clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should . In a country man, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply.” Pretty much this paragraph is saying how much of a friend Ishmael is to Queequeg and that in our western society, such a new friendship would seem very suspicious but, Queequeg doesn’t know these kind of cultural rules.

I also thought it was interesting how Queequeg’s origin was in chapter 12 and how it explains that he’s really here to learn more about “Christendom” when all he had to learn about it was “a specimen whaler or two.”

The quote “A Coffin my Inn-keeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too!” really shows that the theme of death is following Ishmael and this upcoming voyage is going to be full of it.

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