Aren't they all? The fifth consecutive person recently warned me about these so-called whaling chapters, but I can't figure out what might distinguish these from the rest of the chapters in the book. EVERY SINGLE chapter talks about whaling. By the way, I am now completely hooked on this book. No more need for laps around the living room after finishing a chapter. Despite my zeal, I've fallen behind on reading after having attended a lovely wedding at Sewanee and a teaching/technology conference in Memphis, both of which were wonderful in different respects. I was absolutely blown away by the technology conference, where I realized that I could not have started this blog a moment too soon. See Will Richardson's www.weblogg-ed.com.
Back to Melville:
My new favorite chapter is "The Try-Works," Chapter 66, although a close second is Chapter 64's "A Squeeze of the Hand," in which Ishmael describes the Lethe-like experience of preparing the whale sperm for the try-works. Whalers have to sit by tubs of this sweet-smelling whale sperm (aka blubber) and squeeze it through their hands to keep it from hardening. As he drifts off into euphoria he gets downright silly about his newfound love of whale sperm. In his own words: "Would that I could keep squeezing sperm forever!...In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermacetti" (273). I guess our 20/21st century equivalent would be getting slimed on Nickelodeon, or, less interestingly, getting a parafin treatment at the nail salon. I am sure someone out there has written about similarities between Whitman's "Song of Myself" and Chapter 64 of Moby Dick. Both seem to be a celebration of the body/soul/universe, albeit Melville's description is, well, humorous.
Anyway, back to the try-works. The prose just catapults here. I was surfing around for criticism on Melville while I was in Memphis, and I found out from another blogger that Melville first started reading Shakespeare while in the middle of drafting Moby Dick. If this is true, it is absolutely apparent in his prose. Stubbs even later seems to taken on the drunken porter role from Macbeth. And who will the fool be? I had to stop myself from reading the full blog review that I found because I didn't want to get ahead of my own reading, but for those of you who have in fact finished Moby Dick, check out the recent review on www.fictionmonkeys.com: http://fictionmonkeys.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/moby-dick-by-herman-melville/
I am sure there is a way to imbed these links...still learning! I appreciate the patience. Okay, enough of me. Listen to this glorious prose as Melville describes the try-works blazing at night:
"Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. as they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bones in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul (281).
Does it get any better than this?! Read aloud for best affect.
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3 comments:
i know. i know. it's funny that you should pair the "Try-works" with the Squeezing of the sperm. The latter being Melville's moment of racial unification (granted its nearly unbeknown to the sailors themselves) and the former being the moment of pure terror in the face of Ahab. As Kurtz would later echo in Heart of Darkness, "The horror! The horror!" (that was Kurtz, right?).
I can't wait until you get to the chapter “Schools and Schoolmasters.” It should force reflection on single-sex education. Some truly random thoughts about that section...
For Melville, there are two types of schools: “those composed entirely of females, and those mustering none but young vigorous males, or bulls..” (328).
The school of females has a male of “gallantry” ready to back them up if need be. The harem “indolently rambles.” They are concerned with fashion and clothes. The schoolmaster chases away any other males who descend -- those pesky suitors. Like human women, the female whales draw male whales into battle over them (as i've been trying and failing to do).
The schoolmaster whale as the lord and protector who occasionally seduces one of his students: “…it is therefore not in strict character, however admirably satirical, that after going to school himself, he should then go abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the man who first thus entitled this of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils” (330).
The all male schools are contrasted to the harem schools. They are marked by their strength and vigor.
“the forty-barrel-bull schools arte larger than the harem schools. Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such wreckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence thou, and when about three fourths grown, break up, and separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.” Woodbury Forest??
The males all protect themselves but no others and the harem schools are community-oriented... Sound like Harpeth Hall?
The females in the harem school are there to worry about appearance and refinement (their waists) until the males come --- might this be the perils of the finishing school. Has anything really changed?
But alas, all silly speculation. I haven't thought about Moby Dick for awhile now...
AB - Hilarious! Had actually read this chapter and laughed inwardly, but it is even better with your annotations.
So, I confess I'm coming from the Sena Jeter Naslund school of thought, but is Ahab so absolutely evil? Maybe she characterized him as evil, too - foggy memory. But for some reason I came to this novel having already formed some sort of sympathy for Ahab. So far it seems the worst thing he's done (aside from being OCD about the white whale) is spring the Chinese sailors out of hiding while in pursuit of Moby Dick. Admittedly bizarre and totally suspect/racist behavior (this is the 19th century), and - even weirder - these guys disappeared from the narrative as quickly as they first appeared.
Also, thanks for pointing out the nod to racial unification in the sperm-squeezing chapter. I think I got about as far as brotherly love there, but it makes sense considering his stance on race in earlier chapters in the book, and Ishmael's unbridled affection for Queequeg.
Love the new look -- very sleek! I added you as a link from my blog. I hope that's okay....
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