The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: The Symphony "Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspik
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: The Log and the Line "Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor’s!” Musing: Here is where Ahab always gets me. He takes in Pip. Takes poor Pip to his cabin and tries to show him comfort and love. Ahab, though he is the 'villain' of this book, has his humanities and he shows humanity to Pip. In 1851, a white man taking a black person by the hand would have been seen as a scandal. But Ahab tellingly says," had poor Pip but felt
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: The Quadrant "'Well, well; I [Stubb] heard Ahab mutter, ‘Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no others.’ And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!'” Musing: As this chapter starts, Starbuck recognizes that Ahab is leading the ship toward disaster and seems to come to terms with it. Stubb begins to speak of fate. He overhears Ahab saying the cards he has been dealt are the ones
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: Queequeg in His Coffin "And this tattooing [Queequeg's] had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: Ahab and Starbuck in The Cabin "'He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!' murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. 'What’s that he said—Ahab beware of Ahab—there’s something there!' Then unconsciously using the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck. 'Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck.'” M
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin "Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most South-Sea-men’s cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck, exclaimed: “There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.—On deck!” For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
From: Ahab's Leg "The most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like." Musing: It does feel this way sometimes. In this chapter, Ahab has broken his ivory leg. He will need to have a new one made. Ishmael is making the connection between Ahab's tragic loss of limb and the pain he is still in - pain often begets pain. These days, I
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
The Fossil Whale "One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan?" Musing: I like when Melville writes about writers and writing. I also like to imagine this is true - that writers meet the intentions of their words. I have read books with light themes and the writing is fine. But when you have to dig and scrape beneath the skin of the page, here is where the glory of wr
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
The Doubloon: "And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher" Musings: In this chapter, Ahab is wandering the deck, as he often does, when he stops to look at the doubloon. Ahab looks at the coin as if trying to find meaning in its etchings, color, style. Melville tells us that Ahab stands in front of the coin “strangely eyeing” it as he does with most objects. Ahab, we are led to believe, t
The Daily Dick: Musing in a Time of Angst
The Try-Works: "Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true
