Ah, it's been so long, I bet you thought you'd lost me. Truth to tell, I did take a couple of weeks off, distracted by other projects, but I'm back now, and actually in Ch. LXXIII.Man, this guy is a great storyteller. By that I mean that he sure knows how to stuff a goose. Multiple chapters go by in which Melville abandons the plot to discuss rope, or water, or boots, or something, but I can perceive how it is all intregal to his purpose. Here are some of the chapter titles: Chowder, The Albatross, Squid, and The Line (all about rope). Sometimes these chapters are back-to-back, leaving the story idling while I learn all about hemp fibers, or harpoons, or sails. All very fascinating, but the Story, Man! I vacillate between thoroughly enjoying all the arcana, and wanting the story to go on.
Jack London gives details about ships, weather, sailors, all gleaned from his personal experience on the water himself. Did Melville ever put to sea? He sure knows a lot, and it's almost as if he's compelled to tell me about the all-encompassing world of whaling, down to the last tack. Not in a feverish way, like the narrator in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but he's not going to let me go until he's unburdened himself.
Okay, so after almost four hundred pages, they're still looking for MD. They have hauled in two whales, and the second one was just to set up a superstition: that a ship that hangs a sperm whale's head from one side, and a right whale's head from the other will never capsize. They've met a couple of other ships, and Ahab is always seeking information on the whereabouts of the white whale. There was a prophet character, an insane man, from another ship that warned Ahab would sink to the bottom of the sea, so we have that classic Illiad element. But it's slow, slow, slow, like the ponderous, deliberate movement of the whale himself.
Oh: them sailors are some superstitious guys, taken as a lot. Reminds me again of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Melville has been working hard to make MD a completely mythical character: larger than life, almost not part of this world, in a sense godlike, or as if MD were a metaphysical or psychological reality instead of a physical one. Building, building, bigger and bigger he becomes. By the time Ahab catches up to him, he'll be as big as a mountain in the reader's mind. He's thrown in the yeast, and now is letting the lump grow in our minds. Some sailors believe MD has magical powers, or that he's in more than one place at a time; the insane man, a self-proclaimed prophet, declared Moby-Dick to be his god. Oh, it'll be a Titanic struggle, it will, when at last we hear the cry, "There she blows!"
