"It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness." When Moby-Dick was first published, one reviewer wrote: The book "takes the shape of narrative or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal—an attempted description of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the reader instead of attracting him." Melville was crushed. He had written th

"On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." Musing: And with these lines, the book is over. The ship, the Rachel, returns. Earlier Ahab refused to help the captain of the Rachel find his two lost sons, but here the Rachel finds Ishmael. In a biblical sense, the names are relevant. Rachel mourned for her lost children and Ishmael

"Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks." Musing: I love digging into the Epilogue. The sharks, that were "rising from out the dark waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the water" for Ahab, are kind to Ishmael. Ahab even asks "'who c

"And now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin like-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main." Musing: Ishmael has been saved by Queequeq's coffin. I like to say this is being saved by love. The coffin, which Queequeq commissioned while he was ill, was salvation for Ishmael

"Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve, till gaining that vital center, the black bubble upward burst" Musing: Here is a puzzling part for the book for me. Melville has Ishmael align himself to Ixion - an odd reference. I can so clearly picture Ishmael spinning toward the middle of the vortex. A wheel metaphor seems appropriate here, but Ixion? Ixion is a c

"It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from out the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So. floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex." Musing: Ishma

"At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armour. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows." Musing: Oh yes, Melville wrote of Christmas in Mo

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." JOB The Drama's Done. Why then here does any one step forth? - Because one did survive the wreck. Musing: Ishmael speaks now and quotes from Job. Like Job, Ishmael has been tested and here he lets us know he has survived and is reconciled, somehow, with God. The drama, Ishmael also tells us, is over. But why say more? Because he is a survivor. When I wonder why this book speaks to me, I go to this ending. Why speak? Because survivor

"Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago." Musing: Here are the last lines of the Chase. I can picture it all so clearly - the screaming birds - the ship sinking - the chaos and confusion and noise and then - nothing. The image of a shroud of the sea is apt since this is a funereal moment. The part that always g

"A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his w