"The Harpoon Was Darted; The Stricken Whale Flew Forward; With Igniting Velocity The Line Ran Through

"The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone."

Holy shit the way Melville kills Ahab.

Pay me a living wage and give me a couple of red bulls and I'd create a whole moby dick cartoon in a fever

my second favorite thing in Nosferatu (1922) is when it cuts to the "werewolf" and it's a hyena with the saddest gentlest eyes you've ever seen

Tatsuro Yamashita utterly killing it doing backup vocals for his wife, Mariya Takeuchi, at her Souvenir concert in 2000.

Today is the second day of the climactic whale chase in Moby Dick, and I am so strongly on the side of the whale, it's hard to believe anyone ever wasn't.

Up to this point, we can side with the whale in a general sense, mostly on the basis of our modern sensibilities about endangered species and industrial exploitation of the environment, which no one expects either Melville or the average contemporary reader to have. The omens, Ishmael/Melville's dropped hints about the fates of the crew, and Starbuck's common sense awareness that Ahab needs to get over this stupid revenge fantasy and do his capitalist duty to hunt whales for oil instead of personal satisfaction are all enough to make everyone aware of the need to turn back and let the damn whale go, but we can grasp how a 19th century audience, primed to Conquer Nature, can succumb - like the sailors - to the thrill of the hunt and prospect of symbolic destruction of Nemesis.

But now that Moby Dick is actually on stage, his behavior is that of an animal trying to get on with its own business and acting in self-defense. Indeed, his self-defense is reasonable and measured. Smashing up four boats with only one fatality? He had a man in his mouth! He may or may not recognize Ahab, but he is familiar with humans in whaleboats, their vulnerabilities, and their aggressive tendencies. He could probably kill the whole lot of them, and from his point of view it would serve them right!

But he's a predator, humans are not his prey, and if he stays to kill them there's a chance their nasty pointy things will damage him severely. Also he knows that the amount of damage he's dealing out is enough to make whalers back off, like sensible predators, and look for easier prey. So he smashes the boats and keeps swimming, encumbered by those stupid ropes. Whales can't unwind ropes; he'll have to find a place to scrape it off or wait till it rots and falls away.

(We all know the meaning of Fedallah's prophecy here, don't we?)

Nothing this whale does is savage, vicious, cruel, malicious, or vindictive.

What happens tomorrow is all on Ahab.

I don’t know why this part broke me, but this part broke me:

I think that there’s something so stubborn and childlike about it, and in the previous chapter (“the symphony”), Melville describes:

“the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless.”

And the way Starbuck speaks to him is almost like a young father to a child, not trying to reason with him but to appeal to speak to his best self; the self that retains agency and control over inexplicable desires that are so very human of us, and certainly not foreign to him:

Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck’s—wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!—this instant let me alter the course!

I think it is perhaps the desperate outpouring of emotion that arises precisely because this is the point of no return. This confession is not something they will have to live with, or live down.

A childish and stubborn and truthful train of thought, one I think we’ve all experienced to some extent: I want, I want, I want—without knowing how, or why.