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Oh, it's been a while since I picked up Moby Dick. I am going through it so slowly. That's ok, though. I want to savor each chapter. That's why I'm posting a little about each, pointing out some passages that I like.
Ishmael hasn't set sail yet. He visits the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford and finds sailors, their wives, and their widows in attendance. Queequeg is there, which surprises him since he's a heathen.
He notices some memorials to sailors lost at sea, frequently while trying to kill whales who end up getting the upper hand. This gets him to brooding over death and puts him in a gloomy mood. He manages to pull out of it, though. "But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."
Ishmael is a man of faith, and he takes comfort in the thought of an afterlife for his immortal soul, even if he doesn't understand it fully.
"Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot."
Ishmael hasn't set sail yet. He visits the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford and finds sailors, their wives, and their widows in attendance. Queequeg is there, which surprises him since he's a heathen.
He notices some memorials to sailors lost at sea, frequently while trying to kill whales who end up getting the upper hand. This gets him to brooding over death and puts him in a gloomy mood. He manages to pull out of it, though. "But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."
Ishmael is a man of faith, and he takes comfort in the thought of an afterlife for his immortal soul, even if he doesn't understand it fully.
"Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot."
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