Moby Dick is Fun!


or

Damn, This Book is Heavy


Summary and observations by Kelli



Ready for some chapter-by-chapter (Yes, I'm dedicated, and also crazy.) observations made by a college girl who's a fan of Melville, but is a first-time reader of the Great American Novel? All right! Off we go, then. Wait! Have you smelled your book yet? Humor me, here. As a book lover, I always take a whiff of a book before reading it. Go on, take a sniff. Mmmmm; Paper, glue, and words. Ok, now we can start.


*****


Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Rineheart Editions, 1957
Introduction by Newton Arvin


*****


The introduction starts us off. First impressions? Scholarly, dry, but not without humor. Well worth reading, if you have the same edition I do. The "Typographical Note" is much more interesting, in my opinion. I've been wondering about the spellings and whatnot for quite a while. It says here that some "obvious typographical errors, including plain misspellings, have been silently corrected." Great. Somehow, I like to think that even Melville had to have an editor to keep him from looking like a goof. It also says that, in the first edition, on the title page, Moby Dick had a hyphen in the name (Moby-Dick), but that the hyphen didn't appear anywhere else. Both are technically correct, but Moby Dick is just better, apparently.


*****


Next up is the dedication.

IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE


Hmm. I�ve read that Hawthorne and Melville were great friends at one time, but that Melville was more attached to his friend than his friend was to him. It cooled off eventually, and Melville was a tad bitter. In any case, it�s pretty interesting to think that these two literary greats wrote to each other often.


*****


Skipping right through the contents, we come to Etymology. (SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO A GRAMMAR SCHOOL.) Webster�s defines etymology as �the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since is earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found��

May I just state right now that Melville was a genius? �He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.� Fantastic. Anyway, more etymology focusing on the Great Whale. The emphasis is on the whale, people. Remember the whale! It�s important! As for all of this stuff before the actual novel, it�s kinda neat, if you ask me. How often do you get to see how the word �whale� sounds in �Erromangoan�?


*****


Extracts. (SUPPLIED BY A SUB-SUB-LIBRARIAN.)

The humor in this book is almost shocking in its frequency. It�s subtle humor all right, but great nonetheless; �random allusions to whales,� my left butt cheek. The �sub-sub librarian� is just an excuse for Melville to put more emphasis on the bloody whaling industry and the Great Whale itself. It�s also a reminder to the reader that, in literature, whales have been used both literally and as symbols since Biblical times.


*****


Loomings

Woohoo! Chapter one! Finally!
�Call me Ishmael.�
Ok, I will. Damn, that's a good opener. Hello, Biblical reference, as well. If you don't know, Google it, for God's sake. Ha! I'm funny like Melville! (Hey, cool, I've got a new slogan.) Ahem. In this chapter, Ishmael makes it clear that he doesn't sail to get rich; he sails for the freedom of it, to (wait for it...) help his spleen, and to keep himself from "methodically knocking people's hats off..." Damn, that's funny. Also, he makes the point that "There is a magic in it." The 'it' in question being the ocean (water!), of course.


*****


The Carpet-Bag

Ishmael gets to New Bedford on a wintery weekend. He misses the last boat to Nantucket, so he has to find a place to eat and sleep. He has to get it on the cheap, naturally, which is of concern to him. To him, jolly=expensive, so the gloomier, the better. At last, The Spouter-Inn, run by Peter Coffin. Spouter is obviously an allusion to a whale, and Coffin (as the text explains) is far from a good omen. There are a few paragraphs musing on Lazarus, which, again, you must Google if unfamiliar with.


*****


The Spouter-Inn

So the Spouter-Inn is essentially a shack that looks like a shipwreck. In it, there is a puzzling painting. Ishmael is certain (though the painting is rather like a Rorschach inkblot) that it depicts a floundering ship, with a whale ready to impale itself upon its masts. Hmmmmmmm.
More weird relics exist in the Inn. Ishamel inspects them before inquiring about a room. He's informed by the landlord that there's no room, but that he may share a bed with a certain "harpooneer." Ishmael reluctantly agrees. Sitting down to eat, he finds that the dining room is ice-cold, but that he food is surprisingly hearty. Some men enter, fresh off a boat, and Bulkington is mentioned. Remember him!

Anyway, Ishmael watches the men drink, then starts to get paranoid about the man he's to sleep with. (Ha!) He starts looking around for an alternate bed, which leads to a hilarious scene fit for a sitcom. Finally, Ishmael decides he'd rather take his chances with the harpooneer. The landlord informs him that the man in question is off peddling embalmed human heads. (Heh.) Ishmael is scandalized, yet heads up to the room he paid for, thinking that the harpooneer won't be around at such a late hour. After snooping around and generally being a nosy bastard, Ishmael strips (Strip, baby, strip!) and hops into bed.

Of course, here comes the harpooneer, scaring poor Ishmael out of his head with his tattoos and his tomahawk. Subsequently, there are more descriptions of this "savage" (who doesn't know that Ishmael is waiting for him, by the way) and how he worships a small black idol. Naturally, after Ishmael relates how afraid he is, the "savage" jumps into bed alongside him and begins to feel him up in surprise. Reaction:

"Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"

Sheesh. What a wuss. At any rate, in comes the landlord to save the day, and to reveal that the harpooneer's name is Queequeg. Seeing the harpooneer in the light, Ishmael realizes that he *is* a wuss, and that "Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." Queequeg proves to be quite the gentleman, despite his initial shock, and offers up the other half of the bed to Ishmael.

Ishmael gets the best sleep of his life.


*****


The Counterpane

Ishmael and Queequeg get gay! Ok, not really, but it reads like it. Ishmael wakes to Queequeg's arm around him, hugging him tight. Ishmael muses about how his companion's tattooed arm looks like a patchwork quilt, and goes on to tell about how his stepmother once, when he was naughty, made him go to bed on the longest day of the year. Anyway:

"At length, by dint of much wiggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm..."

Still the gentleman, Queequeg gets dressed first, so that his bedfellow can have the room to himself. Ishmael comments on his strange mixture of civilized and savage, and manages to (rudely) watch Queequeg wash up. My favorite quote?

"I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible."

ASAP!!! (*snicker*)


*****


Breakfast

After laughing with the landlord about what happened the night before, Ishmael goes on about the men at breakfast. The darkness of their complexions tell how long they've been ashore. They're also silent as the tomb. No one speaks, which Ishmael finds strange. Amidst all of the bashfulness, Queequeg sits at the head of the table, delicately drawing beefsteaks towards him with his razor-sharp harpoon. After breakfast, Ishmael goes for a walk.


*****


The Street

There are many strange and interesting people on the street, according to Ishmael. He bitches about "bumpkin" fashion for awhile, then goes on to explain how New Bedford is the most expensive place to live in all of New England, for all of its wealth and splendor has been brought by the whaling industry. He mentions that New Bedford is best in summer, then waxes poetic about the women of the town. The imagery is pretty strong here, since the narrator is, after all, on a stroll.


*****


The Chapel

Our narrator comes upon the Whaleman's Chapel and goes in, noting the change in weather from clear to stormy. He sees the widows of sailors and stone tablets put up in memory of those lost at sea.

A morbidly funny tablet:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNEY,
SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
FORMING ONE OF THE BOATS' CREWS OF
THE SHIP ELIZA
WHO WERE TOWED OUT OF SIGHT BY A WHALE,
ON THE OFF-SHORE GROUND OF THE PACIFIC,
DECEMBER 31ST, 1839.
THIS MARBLE IS HERE PLACED BY THEIR SURVIVING
SHIPMATES.


"Towed out of sight by a whale"? Holy crap, that's kind of amusing. Foreshadowing, too, but mainly just amusing.

At any rate, Ishmael is surprised to notice that Queequeg is already there. (He really gets around, doesn't he?) He looks both curious and solemn, and is the only one of the many people assembled who notices that Ishmael is there. Ishmael then begins to think about how horrible it is for the widows of sailors, because they do not know where their loved ones' final resting places are. Melville also uses some really great alliteration in this chapter:

"What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes!"

Ishmael then questions why, when a body dies, if the soul is in, presumably, a better place, do we here on eath mourn so? He also makes the point that, through thinking of death, we also contemplate our greatest hopes.


*****


The Pulpit

Old Father Mapple (Suggestive of sturdy 'maple', perhaps?), a former sailor/harpooner, arrives at the chapel, dripping wet. He is a robust man, and prefers not to carry an umbrella. He climbs into the "lofty" pulpit, which is fashioned to look like the stern of a ship, complete with retractable stairs. Ishmael considers how symbolic Father Mapple's isolation is, and notices a painting of a ship at sea, which is on the wall behind the pulpit, where a religious symbol should probably be. Ishmael considers the meaning of this as well, finally coming to the conclusion that all the world is a great ship at sea, with religion its prow.


*****


The Sermon

Using a lot of sailor-speak, Father Mapple begins the sermon with a sea-themed hymn and the tale of Jonah and the whale. (Again, Google.)


*****





*****TO BE CONTINUED*****
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