Moby Dick: Final confrontation

[fanuzzir]

To thine own self be true: remember that Shakespeare put that supposed truism in the mouth of a fool and a dead man, Polonius in Hamlet.

[Laurel]

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fanuzzir wrote:
To thine own self be true: remember that Shakespeare put that supposed truism in the mouth of a fool and a dead man, Polonius in Hamlet.

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I guess we'll never know whether Melville intended Mapple to be a buffoon. I think not, but there's lats of room to wonder.

[ziki]

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holyboy wrote:
Is Ahab a rebel or a fanatic (or both)?

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I think he's both..fanatic because he zooms close up on his idea and rebel against his own fate, destiny, life, situation,god, despair...he just won't deal with it in a way that could change him. A rebel has a big screeeming NO inside.

ziki

[chad]

I have a little more to finish, but I'd like to end it a little later by tying Moby into out involvement in the Mideast. My first thoughts are on large white whales forming, some black, but mostly white- monochromatically dressed arabs in contrast to a glittering Egyptian empire, whose color still astounds...

Chad

Message Edited by chad on 03-01-200708:24 AM

[chad]

I believe that Melville probably believed that belief in God makes sense. God seems to be a central force, like a brain or the sun. God is someone or something that we are connected to, but something that should lead and not mislead man.

I think the best you can do would be to realize you rotate around the sun, like everyone else, except our astronaut contingent which usually maintains an orbit. Maybe you can get into astronomy, Choisya. I sometimes could also kick the churhes and the people that go to them in the ass myself.

Chad

[Choisya]

Ooh Chad - that is a bit rough, especially on churchgoers here I am quite happy in my atheism thanks and don't feel a need to believe in anything 'out of this world'.

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chad wrote:
I believe that Melville probably believed that belief in God makes sense. God seems to be a central force, like a brain or the sun. God is someone or something that we are connected to, but something that should lead and not mislead man.

I think the best you can do would be to realize you rotate around the sun, like everyone else, except our astronaut contingent which usually maintains an orbit. Maybe you can get into astronomy, Choisya. I sometimes could also kick the churhes and the people that go to them in the ass myself.

Chad

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[fanuzzir]

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chad wrote:
I have a little more to finish, but I'd like to end it a little later by tying Moby into out involvement in the Mideast. My first thoughts are on large white whales forming, some black, but mostly white- monochromatically dressed arabs in contrast to a glittering Egyptian empire, whose color still astounds...

Chad

Message Edited by chad on 03-01-200708:24 AM

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Chad, this seems like a promising line of thought. The Arab world played a deceptively large role in nineteenth century American literature, so much of which was concerned with sea travel and cultural encounters. Are you saying that Moby Dick belongs to an "alien" religious world, like Islam?

[chad]

"that is a bit rough"

The U.S. still is, Choisya,

Chad

[chad]

Moby Dick is an amalgamation of tales told around the world and, as such, belongs to the world.

...but I'm not sure where I want to go with that thought. I think it might have something to do with history repeating itself. We're looking at color as something for an "upper class" and used by an "upper class" to control.

The Maltese Falcon by Hammett might be a good book for everyone to read. A gaudy explosion of color takes place in the 1920's. Don't read any further if you haven't read the book, but the story revolves around an artifact, The Maltese Falcon. Supposed to be encrusted with jewels, turns out to be monochromatic, but I think still has something called intrinsic value. Anyway, what we value or prize is now beginning to change in the early 1900's-- control is shifting from aristocracies to other kinds of regimes.

Chad

The American people made a nutsy country!!!! It is the oddest damn thing...

Message Edited by chad on 03-02-200709:13 AM

[fanuzzir]

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chad wrote:
Moby Dick is an amalgamation of tales told around the world and, as such, belongs to the world.

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Yes, the novel is so cosmopolitan, with people of every nationality and lore from the wisdom of every civilization, with the whale common to them all--the lingua franca of a dizzingly disparate humanity. I would say that Melville believes in something common, maybe even spiritual, but that human beings are splintered from each other, even within themselves, in distinct and conflicting characterizations. That's why he's a novelist, first and foremost, not an epic writer: though Moby Dick the whale might be material of epic literature, the pursuit of it, the apprehension of it, is dramatized in the fractured, idiosyncratic language of the everyday, of idiosyncratically unique human beings.

[chad]

It is also about how our concept of death can lead to our own demise. Journies, like the one the Pequod and whaling ships made, sailed on the interface of sea and sky for civilization's own survival, bringing us closer to the interface of life and death, closer to the atom itself.

Chad

Message Edited by chad on 03-04-200711:28 PM

[chad]

"But as if this vast local power in tendinous tail were not enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it." p.438

Catch a whale by the tail and you could wind up in a nuclear war.

Chad

[chad]

The characters, whales, ships and lands, at several points in the story, resemble cells on a large scale, and, I believe the interface of a cell is the membrane, accurately represented by a pod of whales in Moby Dick(see "The Armada"). The membrane is an interface, but there are connections to its outside world that we are still trying to comprehend. That is, we are still trying to discover how cells communicate, both microscopically and macroscopically, or on a scale the size of a whale. Our comprehension of cellular communication may require thinking in the fourth dimension, frequented by the whale, who seems linked to Nature in ways we still don't comprehend. So, let's ride the whale together, to the fourth dimension! Or the twilight zone, if you're at Emory!

Chad

[ziki]

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chad wrote: So, let's ride the whale together, to the fourth dimension! Or the twilight zone, if you're at Emory!

Chad

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Last night I overheard a conversation that two people (man and a pregnant woman) had while sitting aside me in a public place. I couldn't understand a thing, the flow consisted of arbitrary sounds and Iall I could do was to try to pick up on teh feeling. That wasn't easy but a bit more universal. The woman was pregnant and I was thinking what job would await me if I was the baby born to her. (What job we all as babies had to do to start with to elevate ourselves into some verbal communicative mode.) It was also wery clear that imitation of actions was the easier way to learn than trying to understand the spoken sounds. Those were interesting moments.

Finally I couldn't contain my curiosity and chanced it and asked what language they were speaking, the woman replied that it was Mongolian. I replied that I always wanted to go to Ulanbator and she looked at me incredulously, as if I was mad.

Chad, a communication is always about trying to grasp what can't be easily understood.It all about listening and the meaning is always layered. The most important messages ar coded in a anguage and you need to learn to listen on that level. Often just tarined professionals can pick up such meaning out of teh depths.

Usually we just turn our speaches into a propaganda of our own views. Sure, we are cells in a bigger system, connected and who knows how we are wired.

ziki

[chad]

I don't know if you joined us in our Frankenstein discussion, but Shelley would definitely interest you- the monster remembers and describes his awakening or birth into the world.

But think about how many cells are communicating in something the size of a whale. The whale's soul may be something like large-scale intra and intercellular communication. On a small scale, cellular communication is something we try and figure out with a microscope, but on a large scale, cellular communication is something we are unable to comprehend. We might attempt to dissect a whale like a whaleman, but the dissection would destroy the communication we would try and understand. It's something we may never be able to understand. And I think our lack of understanding can lead to a conman or sheister to fool or trick us into concepts of death or an afterlife that may not be accurate-- you decide on who the conmen might be...

Mo Moby,
Chad

Message Edited by chad on 03-10-200710:34 PM

[ziki]

I wasn't in Frankenstein.
I follow your thoughts on the cell communication....micro_macro cosmos....same same but different.....the door to mystery.

ziki