554 pages
English language
Published Nov. 5, 2020 by West Margin Press.
"Command the murderous chalices! Drink ye harpooners! Drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow -- Death to Moby Dick!" So Captain Ahab binds his crew to fulfil his obsession -- the destruction of the great white whale. Under his lordly but maniacal command the Pequod's commercial mission is perverted to one of vengeance. To Ahab, the monster that destroyed his body is not a creature, but the symbol of "some unknown but still reasoning thing." Uncowed by natural disasters, ill omens, even death, Ahab urges his ship towards "the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale." Key letters from Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne are printed at the end of this volume. - Back cover.
I'm still confused about how I came to be reading this book. I want to be done. Especially when it comes to the man-on-whale violence. Ugh.
1) ''Then tossing both arms, with measureless implications he shouted out: 'Aye, aye! And I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.'''
2) ''All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.''
3) ''The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden …
1) ''Then tossing both arms, with measureless implications he shouted out: 'Aye, aye! And I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.'''
2) ''All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.''
3) ''The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the amplified fortifications of Quebec.''
4) ''Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.''
Ugh. How long can one person go on about the size of whale bones and teeth.
