Notes from July Moby Dick Discussions

From the Gallery of Condor Artworks

Stubbs' pipe is like a blowhole

Ishamel and Queequeg  - their intimacy - today the entire focus would be on whether they were gay - in the novel  it's just companionship

Ishmael has no idea what he's getting into

Ishmael - is he always the narrator, or is it occasionally a 3d person omniscient - Ishmael seems to fade away as novel proceeds

The novel is more like a giant magazine

Fedallah - he and the others are called yellow - stereotypical - why did ahab need to hide them?   he needs to have his own men who can go down with him into the fourth boat - the captain is not supposed to go down in the 4th boat, and if Peleg and Bildad had known about Fedallah and the others, they would have realized that Ahab was more interested in Moby Dick than in making money

in the Turner painting - what do the white and the dark mean? Is the white sail safe or dangerous?  The mist is also white and it is dangerous

I liked Ishmael's philosophy about religion - he is open

I thought I would like reading this novel- the basic story is really good, I am skimming the biology, the other stuff - now I think I must have read excerpts in high school, and it left a positive impression on me -now it's different

movie will be like the readers digest condensed version

my brother and his buddies think it's an ode or a paean to homosexuality

There's not a lot of dialogue

For me the fun is in the details - I like history, I love the descriptions,the footnotes (reading a different edition)

It's archaeology, marine biology, all in one

I love the words in here that you don't hear much, such as ineffable

the Extracts (at the beginning):  'this story is bigger than the story'

Is the whaling industry like the Pony Express?   it's a place where a man can be a man and it's dying out - railroads are replacing canals, kerosene is replacing sperm oil

"cetology" chapter - disappointing for me

Melville didn't have that much formal education - it's amazing that he produced this

Chapter 2 - Ishmael peeks into the black church, and backs out quickly; Melville is presenting an exotic, melting pot town

Chapter 42 - even though we want to use whiteness to point to virtue, we're afraid of it - it makes me think of HP Lovecraft, the terror of the chaotic miasma

Or, maybe he's trying to say that color doesn't really mean anything - he says yellow is the color of the sun and cowardice - maybe it means nothing

No sympathetic portrayal of the whale - very different from today

Ahab - what was he like before his encounter with Moby Dick?  Was he better?  Did this bring out the worst in him? - he is a 'swearing good man' - "it's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one" - Ishmael says he never saw Ahab on his knees (does that mean he is irreligious?)

Ahab passes the goblet of whiskey and they all drink - is this like communion?

What about the scar on Ahab's face? - a long white streak down the side of his face - is it in fact a scar or a birthmark?

What does Melville feel for Ahab?  -in general, he describes characters as being interesting rather than good or bad

It is hard to get a read on Melville -what is he really thinking

Has great skill in this slow build of tension, adding layers and layers - the world gets bigger, more complex as you go - the fact that Ishmael sees Fedallah and the others before boarding the ship, many pages before we see them again - lots of layering and anticipation

'monomaniacal' and 'phantom' are words that appear frequently - is the universe a phantom-like - thing?

Everyone is confined by a rope - we're all holding on to it - is this a statement about free will? - end of chapter 60

Melville is mythologizing the whaling industry as it fades away

Why does Ahab keep Fedallah and company hidden so long? is there something especially nefarious about them?

It says Ahab is an Egyptian - is that literal, or does it mean he's pharaoh-like?

Queequeg's mark is the infinity symbol - that means something, but what?  does Queequeg have connections to the infinite?

Melville says the novel is a draft of a draft

Everyone is struggling with themselves and others in the whole book

Reading this book is like the white whale

Melville and the (American) English Language

One of the many thrills in reading Moby Dick is the opportunity to broaden one's vocabulary.  If, like me, you don't know a boatswain from a bowsprit, you might take a look at the Whale Words Dictionary, offered by the Whale Release & Strandings Organization of Newfoundland and Labrador.  I was happy to read there that a 'melon' is:

the bulbous forehead of Odontoceti cetaceans, which contains oil and is thought to be involved in sound projection

Even more fun, to me, was an article published a few years ago in The Week which listed Melville's contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary, including words which first appeared in print in Moby Dick, such as:

cetology

"Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology."

Moby Dick, 1851

Cetology is that branch of zoology which studies cetaceous animals such as whales, porpoises, and dolphins. The word cetology comes from the Latin cetus, "any large sea creature," which comes from the Greek ketos, "a whale, a sea monster."

Cholo

"It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the words above."

Moby Dick, 1851

That's right, Herman Melville was the first, on record at least, to use Cholo in English. However, he doesn't use it with the sense of a derogatory term for someone perceived to be a lower-class Mexican, or a Mexican or Latino gang member, but to refer to "an Indian or mixed-race person of Latin America." This sense of cholo might come from the Nahuatl xolotl, "dog, mutt."

curio

"But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of ‘balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one."

Moby Dick, 1851

A curio is an unusual or odd piece of art or bric-a-brac, and is short for "curiosity." Bric-a-brac are "small, usually ornamental objects valued for their antiquity, rarity, originality, or sentimental associations." The word comes from the French bric-à-brac, "expressive of confusion."

czarship

"It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding."

Moby Dick, 1851

The word czar is, of course, Russian in origin, but ultimately comes from the Latin Caesar, "Emperor." The title czar was first adopted by the Russian emperor Ivan IV in 1547.

The figurative meaning of "person with dictatorial powers" is from 1866, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and initially referred to President Andrew Johnson.

plum-puddinger

"After listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, I went up stairs to go to bed."

Moby Dick, 1851

Plum-puddinger refers to either a whaling ship that goes out on short voyages or a crew member on such a ship. While Melville's is the earliest recorded use of this term, we assume it was common in nautical vernacular before then.

The plum-puddinger is so called because "because the crew has fresh provisions and an abundant supply of plum-pudding," a staple apparently for 19th-century shipmen.

slobgollion

"It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance."

Moby Dick, 1851

Slobgollion is whaling slang for a substance found in sperm whale oil, says the OED. In Moby Dick, Melville describes such a substance as "an ineffably oozy, stringy affair," which is obtained "after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting."

While the origin of slobgollion is unknown, earlier meanings of slob include mud or slime, while the second part of the word could be influenced by gullion, a mean and worthless wretch, or gollin, a kind of fish.

A variation is slumgullion, which in addition to fish offal refers to a cheap and watery drink — first used by Mark Twain in Roughing It — as well as a kind of thin stew.

I challenge you to use 'slobgollion' in a sentence!

Database Joy!

I realize this may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I was excited to discover the Whaling History website, a collaboration between Mystic Seaport Museum and New Bedford Whaling Museum.  The site contains databases of information on American, British, and French offshore whaling expeditions. 

In the American database, I typed the search term 'Essex' and found a list of all the whaling voyages made by a ship of that name.  Scanning the dates, I was able to locate the entry for the voyage of THE Essex, the one sunk by a whale, whose famous story is said to have influenced Melville in writing Moby Dick. 

Here's a glimpse of the database entry for that voyage:

"Stove by a whale and sunk, Nov, 1820" - wow!  The thrill of information!

"Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am" is playing at Plaza Frontenac

https://www.landmarktheatres.com/st-louis/film-info/toni-morrison-the-pieces-i-am