Day Fifty-Two

5/23

The Book: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

ISBN: 978-1-59308-018-1

Suggested By: Patrick Garcia

Where: Home

When: 1:30-2P

Music: Dark was the Night

Company: The Family

Pages: 461-516 (55)

The Lead In: There is a pretty horrible comparison in today’s reading between women and whale carcasses. Read it and weep. (461)

The 411 on the 55: The Pequod sails upon another ship, the Rosebud. The French ship has a whale tied up to the side of the ship. It was dead when they found it, so it stinks. Stubb talks them into cutting the whale loose, by claiming they will get sick from the smell. Once they sail off, Stubb digs into the carcass and gets a load of ambergris.

Soon after, Pip, a black deckhand, is put onto one of the whaleboats after an injury to one of its crewman. So scared is Pip, that when a whale is harpooned, he jumps from the boat, gets tangled in the line and, to save his life, they cut the rope. Stubb warns him that if it happens again, they won’t save him. Next whale, he does it again, leaping from the boat, and is left to the waves. There is a bit of racism, as Pip is one of the few black sailors.

The last important part of today’s reading was encountering an English ship with a captain who’s arm had been lost during an attack by Moby-Dick. Unlike Ahab, he seems to have adjusted well and irritates Ahab by not immediately telling him where he saw the whale. Ahab is a tad on the nutty side.

Line of the Day: “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.” pg 492

The Fact on the Fiction: Ahab’s namesake was an ancient Hebrew king, husband of the infamous Jezebel. Wikipedia