Vit Babenco's Reviews > Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Moby-Dick or, The Whale
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The narrator of this flabbergasting marine saga is an impecunious but very erudite young man possessing a sarcastic sense of humour and having a tongue-in-cheek attitude to life…
Often Ishmael tends to speak in a metaphysical vein and somewhat on the agnostic side…
The novel is packed with bizarre personages – even all the secondary characters are weird… Elijah is a gloomy prophet… Three harpooners: Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo are three pagan magi… And the biblical names of the main participants literally seal their fates: Ishmael – an easy rover, Ahab – an evil ruler, who turned a gigantic sperm whale into his sinister deity and deadly antagonist…
And above all there is Moby Dick – an albino leviathan – monstrous Baal – the remorseless instrument of doom…
Gods – even if they are a pure fiction – still reign over human destinies.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation.
Often Ishmael tends to speak in a metaphysical vein and somewhat on the agnostic side…
Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
The novel is packed with bizarre personages – even all the secondary characters are weird… Elijah is a gloomy prophet… Three harpooners: Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo are three pagan magi… And the biblical names of the main participants literally seal their fates: Ishmael – an easy rover, Ahab – an evil ruler, who turned a gigantic sperm whale into his sinister deity and deadly antagonist…
Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance.
And above all there is Moby Dick – an albino leviathan – monstrous Baal – the remorseless instrument of doom…
“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen – Moby Dick – Moby Dick!”
Gods – even if they are a pure fiction – still reign over human destinies.
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Reading Progress
March 4, 2022
–
Started Reading
March 4, 2022
– Shelved
March 12, 2022
–
Finished Reading
January 3, 2023
– Shelved as:
a-hundred-of-the-best-novels
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message 1:
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Jodi
(last edited Mar 12, 2022 02:44PM)
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rated it 4 stars
Mar 12, 2022 02:07PM
![Jodi](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1704155150p1/68929803.jpg)
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![Phrodrick](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1680474106p1/67951314.jpg)
But credit to you for working so hard on those parts that do reach a higher level.
For me the Pequod carried around too many dead weight anchors.
![Marta](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1271458432p1/2168708.jpg)
![Phrodrick](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1680474106p1/67951314.jpg)
Was all that silliness about whales being fish meant as humor or was that a real debate and did Herman truly think they were fish?
![Vit Babenco](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1365604577p1/19283284.jpg)
Misconceptions, peculiarities, tricks of the trade: “The Whale as a Dish”, “The Battering-Ram”, “The Monkey-Rope”, “Heads or Tails” and so on – those chapters are but funny curios, they just make narration more flowery.
“The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: ‘On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,’ and finally, ‘ex lege naturæ jure meritoque.*’ I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.” Chapter XXXII - Cetology.
*“Penis which enters the female, who gives milk from breasts; from the law of nature justly and deservedly” (Latin).
Whales were fish in a whaling cant.
![Dumitru Moraru](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1517940891p1/50319331.jpg)
![Phrodrick](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1680474106p1/67951314.jpg)
As are torpedoes to submariners. I'd hate to bait one.
Bottom line for me, Herman was in serious need of a friendly editor.
![Vit Babenco](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1365604577p1/19283284.jpg)
I’m accustomed to reading complex and eccentric books do I had no special difficulties wit Moby Dick.
![Richard S](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1687019407p1/47322383.jpg)
![Vit Babenco](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1365604577p1/19283284.jpg)
![Phrodrick](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1680474106p1/67951314.jpg)
If your routing for the whale you may In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essexwant to read the "real" story
Or look up what you can find about Mocha Dick
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