Day Fifty

5/21

The Book: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

ISBN: 978-1-59308-018-1

Suggested By: Patrick Garcia

Where: Home

When: 2:15

Music: None

Company: The Dogs

Pages: 349-404 (55)

The Lead In: Today is the 50th day of 55 pages. The next post will be a recap of what I have read over the last 50 days and a totaling of the pages. Now to the whale!

The 411 on the 55: The whale Stubb killed is tied up to the boat and the sharks are smacking against the boat as they go into a feeding frenzy. So Stubb calls out the cook (who is black) to preach to the sharks. Melville attempts to represent dialect here, but unlike Queequeg and the other more exotic characters of the book, Fleece (the cook), sounds unreal and a little disappointing. Twain’s Jim, another example of African-American dialect, seems more true (and I recently read Huckleberry Finn, hence the comparison). Soon after the preaching is done, they begin killing the sharks to protect the whale carcass.

The removal of the blubber is another section of the book that is grotesque to describe. Melville again balances between fiction and non, telling how it is done. Eventually, the body is picked clean and the remainder is cut loose to the sharks.

A ship passes by, they have lost a man in trying to catch Moby-Dick. They warn against going after the leviathan. Later, the crew wonders if Ahab has made a deal with the Devil. His focus on the whale is beginning to wear on them all.

 

The head of the whale is suspended against the side of the ship as they bail out the spermaceti, when one of the men, Tashtego, falls into the head. In the rush to get him out, the strain of the men climbing onto the head breaks the mast and the head, and Tashtego inside it, hit the water and begin sinking. Queequeg again to the rescue, and the sailor is saved.

Line of the Day: “Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death?” pg 394

The Fact on the Fiction: “For 30 whaling individual terms in Moby-Dick alone, Melville is the only or first citation in many historical dictionaries.” Jstor