:Valerie’s Blog

“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm?…No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?” (Chapter 100),

Do I really need to expand upon how stupid Ahab is here? He’s had so many signs tell him to not go on with this monomaniacal attitude, and give up on Moby Dick. He finds a ship that knows anything, well everything about Moby Dick, and has even engountered the great leviathian twice, but they tell him to chill just the tensyiest bit. The Captain of the Samuel Enderby had his arm caught in the harpoon line, a serious danger, and had to have it amputated. The second time he saw Moby Dick they left the whale alone, as it should be. Why lose another arm? or in Ahab’s case, another Leg. That would make things difficult. It’s just another sign that they’re doomed when Moby Dick comes into the picture.

“But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet!” (Chapter 100).

I also thought it was hilarious and just so Ishmael to hop in the whale and start measuring (Chapter 102). Then to get it tattooed, what a man he is. I had no idea. Another just Ishmael thing was when he claims to “present my credentials as a geologist” and was a “stone-mason, and also a great digger or ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sores” (Chapter 104). One last thing, “for time began with man” he just throws that in there (Chapter 104). I feel like even quirky Ishmael is getting too predictable, I’m ready for some more whaling adventure, as entertaining as this section was.

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The first section of these chapters really show how dishonest and tricky the sailors could be. We learn about the fast-fish, who belong to any that have claimed them, and the free loose-fish. The fast-fish are unfairly restricted to those who may be undeserving. We also read about the principals of England, where anything caught on the shores is required to be distributed to the royalty; the head to the king and the tail to the queen, so the one who caught the fish gets nothing!

I’m left after these chapters just thinking how horrible and cruel that it is for sailors to do this when Stubb goes and tricks the Rose-Bud. The ship smells horrible and has two dead carcasses that appear to be useless to all the sailors on the other ship, but this is not the case. One of them has ambergris in it. Stubb convinces the new captain that the whales are useless and need to be thrown away and even volunteers to take the dead whale. Then he basically steals the ambergris. How nice of him.

Ishmael finds it funny(!) that people use “an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale” to smell glorious (Chapter 92). I feel bad for poor Pip for his first chance out in the sea catching a whale to jump out of fear and then to make it even worse, a caught whale must be sacrificed to save him. And when he does it again, they leave Pip out in the sea. Ishmael also loves squeezing that sperm and describes it just as much as he does anything else. Ishmael becomes a little kid again, just when i thought he was growing up and explores the ship inside and out.

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Ishmael seems to go beyond explaining the structure, location, and history of the parts of the whale. He talks about the spout as a fountain and wonders if it is pure water coming out or some sort of a vapor. He also contemplates if it were possible for humans to take one giant breath and then not take another for a period of time. He believes that we would if we could.

Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone (Chapter 86).

The tail of Moby Dick is the strongest part of him, the part that propels the whale towards its destination, but also hurts and kills the most people. The tail also is a mace in battle and is used for sweeping as well as lobtailing and peaking flukes. Ishmael anthropomorphizes these attributes of the whale and personifies it.

Could Ishmael possibly be pondering life and getting deeper as this journey progresses? Does he crave (normal) people around him?

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Like Shan, I will skip the beginning of most of my blogs where I say how Ishmael focused on one thing, like the body of a whale. But even by me skipping it, it just shows that Ishmael, as well as Ahab is single minded. He focuses on the whale and its body parts for endless amounts of time until there’s more excitement. The most interesting part to this section were the references to Plato and psychology.

Ishmael claims that “The whale like all things mighty, wears a false brow to the common world” (Chapter 80). It is portrayed as being a harsh animal that will attack if unprovoked, but its skull looks somewhat like a human skull. According to my psychology textbook, phrenology is “an ill fated theory that claimed bumps on the skull could revel our mental abilities and out character traits” (Myers, 57). This was not a practical method of telling anything about a being and at most showed that the brain has different functions in different areas. This was not a method that could possibly show anything about life to anyone. Ishmael also attempts to be deep and talking about Platonism and Stoic. I’m not quite sure what this connection means, but it was not something I would expect a whaler to talk about.

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Whales are gross. How could you possible eat one after reading these chapters, never mind seeing how it’s ripped apart and discarded. Oh well the blubber is the whales skin, not the thing on top of the skin, that would be just a layer above the skin even though the skin is on the outside. Ishmael is getting as crazy as the other guys on the ship. We know he’s obsessive compulsive about the details of everything but some of it is just gross. And the beheading of the whale to get the spermicide, that’s not so great either. You cut it at the thickest point and then keep the head. Then you’ve got the funeral, when the whale carcass is let go and marked on the log so all ships to pass by there in the future will know of this.  Is this a trophy of sorts for the whalers, or is it saddening to see what they have really done to the world? As Ishmael says, “while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to the world” (Chapter 69). He seems to feel that in killing the whale, he is doing a service to all its prey, but he is not because the prey under the whales pray are now growing in number and consuming more.

Gabriel, the archangel, seems to only be another incident that should scare the men away from hunting Moby Dick. He saw a mate get thrown off the ship while hunting whales and die in the sea. This is not a good sign, and yet again the whalers blatently ignore it.

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