#moby dick humor

[saranilssonbooks]

[a-solitary-sea-rover-backup]

This was our risk assessment activity during training today.

[itsawritblr]

Me editing.

[toruandmidori]

[the-rad-menace]

So I knew Moby Dick featured a veeery close male friendship, but this is much closer than I'd expected. It reads like a tacky (and racist) romance novel, albeit with nice prose. They don't even set sail on a whaling ship until a quarter of the way through.

Extremely heterosexual quotes below 👇

"Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils."

...

"I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me."

...

"He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be."

...

"How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair."

...

"We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we..."

I had a hunch that Herman Melville may not have been entirely straight. I decided to read a bit about his life and it seems he had something going on with Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author best known for The Scarlet Letter. Possibly unrequited on Hawthorne's side, but Melville was quite evidently enamored.

Here are excerpts from a letter from Melville to Hawthorne:

"Your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s… It is a strange feeling — no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

"Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips — lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces.

...

"... I should write a thousand — a million — billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question — they are One."

Just (straight) guys being dudes (heterosexually).

[singull]

finally reading january 13’s moby dick chapter, and ishmael is just absolutely lost in the sperm sauce. just going to town squeezing out that sweet sweet whale sperm.

[cheshirelibrary]

[huethemudluff]

yes, we are all in the belly of the whale

the sermon, dave malloy / belly of the whale, the newsboys / moyers & campbell interview / mariners revenge song, the decemberists / pinnocchio, disney / The Belly of the Whale and Positive Disintegrations, recio / stay young, go dancing, death cab for cutie

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

"Chapter 119: The Candles" is one of the best in the entirety of moby dick. there's the impeccable drama of a violent, life threatening storm. ahab emerges from the shadows and introduces himself as old thunder as lightning strikes. there's an attempted mutiny that is put down singlehandedly with a flaming harpoon. the masts fucking catch fire. starbuck tells a man to kill himself for being annoying. nobody else is doing it like her

[alltingfinns]

The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.

[calcichel]

Signed up for Whale Weekly! We’ll see how it goes. In an effort to stay engaged with this one, I thought I’d start a habit of collecting notes and annotations for each entry, mostly for any references to things that I find obscure or antiquated or otherwise not terribly familiar to modern audiences.

Week 1

driving off the spleen

This phrase is related to the concept of the Four Humors, which was a model of the body’s functions that dominated the medical profession from Ancient Greek times until the 1850′s. Under this model, in order for the body to work correctly, it had to have the right balance of four types of fluid: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Black bile was the fluid known to cause sadness or depression if its levels got too high, and the spleen was known to be the organ that produced this black bile. (Modern medicine now recognizes the spleen to be an organ involved in supporting the body’s immune system, and has a lot of cool properties unrelated to mental health.)

whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me

“hypos” here is short for the archaic use of the term “hypochondria,” according to the American Heritage dictionary - an affliction of depression or anxiety regarding one’s life and health.

With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword

Referring to a historical figure in the time of Julius Caesar, who resisted Caesar’s military invasion, and then took his own life when it became clear that Caesar was going to win, unwilling to live under the rule of Caesar as an emperor.

Seneca and the Stoics

Stoicism is a philosophy that was popular among the ancient Greeks and Romans, largely centered around the concepts of accepting one’s life and one’s world as it is, and adapting one’s self to one’s environment instead of living in resistance to it. Seneca was a very prolific Stoic essayist and playwright.

[saranilssonbooks]

So, in "Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin" the two of them bicker and the dear captain points a musket at Starbuck for not leaving him alone, upon which follows:

Now, the thing is that nowhere up until this moment has it been suggested that Starbuck ever sat down in the first place. I have chosen to assume that rather than rising from a seated position, he straightens. Why do I find this definition important? Because we're in Ahab's very small, very sparsely furnished, very private cabin and so where could he have placed his unwelcomed butt?

[onlandandonsea]

Moby Dick is so funny because Melville is so obsessed with whales that he claims that the dragon that St. George slayed was actually a whale

[reniadeb]

🐋@reniadeb🐋

[cheshirelibrary]

[annakxrenina]

my favorite footnote in moby dick so far