"Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together; as head on, he came churning his tail among the boats; and once more flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from the two mates' boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a scar." Musing: The whale taunts Ahab. What an incredible way to describe a thing - as possessed by all th
"Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and following with his eyes the receding boat- "canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?-lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?-For when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing-be that end what it may." Musing: Starbuck watches as Ahab takes off in a whale boat in search of Moby-Dick. The three's appear again. I can picture Starbuck, leaning over the side of the Pequod, watching Ahab leave for the final time. Critics o
"A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it. "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! " Musing: Make no mistake - this book has religious overtones. Melville loved to use the number three. The book itself begins with three words - 'Call me Ishmael.' Here at the end, we are in the third day. There are three points, three mast-heads, three shrieks, and this is the third time Ahab will meet Moby-Dick. Three is a number that signifi
"How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!-it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a singl
"Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that." Musing: Starbuck is trying to make sense of Ahab again. But look at what he's saying! It's audacity for man to think!! Starbuck seems to represent that old dogmatic religion where man is not to think about God. Let the preachers, and priests, and parsons think about God for us. But it is this lack of thought that will soon doom Starbuck. Let's think about the implicati
"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw-thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand-a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine." Musing: After Starbuck's plea, Ahab responds with a 'speak to the hand' kind of moment. Then we get the fate idea in full color - it's all been decided already, Ahab tells Starbuck. Ahab acts under orders of Fate. A
"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man-In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone-all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:-what more wouldst thou have?-Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,-Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!" Musing: Starbuck tries to reason with Ahab after Ahab claims that, in spite of all the damage to the boats and
"But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter. "Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has." Musing: Oh, these lines from Ahab hurt me. Ahab's ship was not torn to pieces like it was the day before. This day finds the white whale coming from beneath the small boat, hurling it into the air, and letting it hit the sea while all the men spill out into the water. Ahab breaks his leg off
"That instant, the White Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines; by so doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch." Musing: Things are getting grim! Moby-Dick has caused the harpoon lines from all three boats to become entangled. Ahab has already cut his boat free, but Stubb and Flask are headed for disaster. The description of the wr
"The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails
"Omen? omen?-the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.-Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! " Musing: This is one of my favorite passages in the book (have I said that before?!). Stubb laughs when he sees the whale boat bitten in half on board the Pequod. Ahab says it is only a soulless man who can laugh in the face of a wreck. Starbuck agrees and says the broken boat is a bad omen of things t
"Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom for a time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines." Musing: The beautiful character descriptors run consistently throughout the book. Ahab is truly cracked with Melville giving him a scar running from his head to his toes. Ahab's body has also been cracked by pain and his mind cracked from anger and now, finally, he cracks mentally from exhaustion and frustrati
“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” ― John Steinbeck Musing: Today would be my sister's birthday, but she is gone. She was a light that burned me and warmed me and finally went out without my realizing it could. I hated her and loved her with an intensity only survivors can understand. And I ache from being alone with these memories - our memories. I am glad she is finally free from the pain she never wanted. I haven't forgotten, Augie, that I owe the world your story.
"The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,-though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst." Musing: More indications that the whale is acting with thought. Moby-Dick is, apparently, angry and acting on his anger. The other boats are watching this destruction take place. Though Starbuck decides not to engage Moby-Dick, he also decides not to return to t
"Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose-some twenty or more feet out of the water-the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray still higher into the air." Musing: Moby-Dick has snapped Ahab's whale boat in half. There is no doubt that Ishmael, in these chapters, has taken a stance. He feels the whale is "vindictive." There is also little doubt that we now have a final show-down between beast and ma
"Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a biting shark slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab's head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse." Musing: Moby-Dick is beneath the whale boat headed by Ahab. The while whale seems to be toying with the men by rubbing his head beneath the ship. As a wr
"Ahab could discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous apparition." Musing: Here
"So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her moldy soil; but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely." Musing: And here is Starbuck, reading the doubloon Ahab nailed to the mast. Starbuck is as Starbuck is - he sees the darkness of earth and the sun/Son up above. Interesting that he sees the sun
"There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here,-three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. " Musing: We are back to Ahab now and rushing toward the end of the novel. Ahab hangs a gold coin from the mast of the ship. Whoever spots Moby-Dick first will win the coin. But before he nails the coin, Ahab reflects on the meaning behind it. The
"There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath [ . . . ] for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulism, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness." Musing: The Pequod is sailing in the South Sea. I am in deep, deep love with this passage. The idea of "drowned dreams" and a "hidden soul" beneath the sea gives me goosebumps. I love the way Melville uses contrasts in this passage as well: "gently awful stirrings." Read this and think about it as it rocks
