Seeking the white whale

I never read Moby Dick in school as the teacher thought it was inappropriate.   Now I wonder what all the fuss was about.

Is it any good?  Or should I borrow the abridged version from the library?

Or perhaps you could recommend a movie version that captures it well?  There seems to be a lot of movies about it.

Time to reveal my MS in English.   It is worth the read.  Quite literally, even the best movie could only capture about 50% of it for reasons that will be apparent when you read the book.  And, even though the book is centered on whaling, it is not about whaling.   I have read it cover to cover several times. The first time was to read it. The second time was to figure out what I had read.

I would not recommend any abridged version.

The closest comparison I can give it would be a James Joyce novel… and even then not so much.

If you are speaking of a high school teacher, I agree. Most high school students would quickly be frustrated with it.

r ranson wrote:I never read Moby Dick in school as the teacher thought it was inappropriate.   Now I wonder what all the fuss was about.

Is it any good?  Or should I borrow the abridged version from the library?

Or perhaps you could recommend a movie version that captures it well?  There seems to be a lot of movies about it.

When you watch a movie, always watch the original. Book first then movie. Maybe the teacher didn't like a word or two in the title.

Yes, read the book first.  I feel you will enjoy it.

Then maybe watch the movie with Gregory Peck.

Reading Wikipedia makes me want to see The Sea Beast, starring John Barrymore, if I ever get the chance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_Moby-Dick

it’s kind of a weird book, but well worth the read, and shouldn’t be abridged. i recall one chapter being just a somewhat erroneous natural history of whales.

Okay.
I'm going to try the audio book version.  The library has two.  One full and one abridged.  I'll try the full.

anyway, this is kind of the reason why I'm looking to learn about this book.  https://permies.com/t/231904/art/book-art

I found a beautiful copy in the second hand shop and need to figure out what to paint on it.  It's got gold edges so I can do a hidden fore-edge painting.  But I'm really shit at composition, so I guess I need to read the book to find out.  

There really is a whale, right?  It's not just a double metaphor?  

Hi r,

There are endless metaphors.  Brush up on your transcendentalism.

I'm having so much trouble with this book.  I'm going to try a "retold by" version.  

This is worse.  Music and sound effects competing with the narrator.

Also, we are fighting the wale in the frst chapter now?..?  Um, and, oh, I see.  The book is 12 min long.  Not 12h like I thought.  But it's unabridged....

I'm just not having luck with this story.

Reading it is on my bucket list, mostly because I saw a documentary about it, you know, about who Herman Melville was and how he wrote the book, and the passages which were read in that documentary had such a profound effect on me, I cried, the way he writes is really profound and beautiful in my opinion.

Another thing to try is to read about The Wreck of the Essex, you know like on wikipedia and then maybe watch a documentary and if you like it you can watch In the Heart of the Sea which is about it.  The true story of the wreck is what inspired the fictional story of Moby Dick, plus Melville's stint as a whaleman.

My favourite movie versions are the one in the 80s with Patrick Stewart, because Patrick Stewart.  And also Scifi did a surprisingly well done made for TV movie that was basically Moby Dick, but with dragons instead of whales, with Danny Glover, yeah its actually good.

I have endless trouble waking up at night and not being able to fall asleep, so I have an 'audible plus' subscription from Amazon for a never-ending supply of audible books which I can set to stop at the end of a chapter. I need a book that interesting enough to stop my mind flying all over the place chasing dragons, but not so interesting that it creates a gazillion more dragons.

Moby Dick seems to fit the bill quite well and generally sends me back off to sleep within one, or at most two, chapters. Then it's easy enough to reset the book to the start of the chapter so I will eventually get through the whole thing.  

I'm loving it so far. Though I do get the feeling it's not about the whale... ;)

This is interesting, and seems to fit with my views of what I've read so far...

Dragons instead of whales might do it.  Do you know the name and I can see if the library has it?

The library has lots of lovely audo books, but the narrator makes a big difference how well I can pay attention.

This is one of the books that I fudged my way through in high school and college (yes, I have an honors degree in English and never read this book), I only read it when I got older. And it is one of my favorite books at this point. Now I read it every year, and I find something new every time.

What I can tell you is the introduction is an absolute slog, and you have permission to skip it. In fact, if you don't skip it, you're not going to read the book, and that would be a shame. Even Chapter 1 ("Call me Ishmael") is a bit rough. You can start with Chapter 2 (the carpet bag) and once the story gets you, go back and read Chapter 1 to see what you missed (it's short). Or don't, it's not critical.
Once you actually see characters that are real people, and it's not a guy talking about the 15 million different kinds of whales, I promise you it gets better.

My wife and I tried reading it last year together and quit about halfway through, having wished we'd never started. I thought it was literally terrible, but I'm glad that other people have something to love in it! I also read David Copperfield last year, which I'd never gotten to previously, but I adored that.

Christopher Weeks wrote:My wife and I tried reading it last year together and quit about halfway through, having wished we'd never started. I thought it was literally terrible, but I'm glad that other people have something to love in it! I also read David Copperfield last year, which I'd never gotten to previously, but I adored that.

Ha!! There is space for this too. I remember reading The Hobbit to my kid when she was little, thinking it was "what I was supposed to do" as a parent, and wanting to throw the darn book out the window. Not sure if we ever finished it. Luckily for us, there are plenty of books out there, and we all have different taste!

I think,  I'm going to move on and do my foreedge painting based on previous art about whaling and the story.

Anyone have a favourite illustration or painting you feel sums up what you love most in the story?

Something ike this, perhaps?

I abandoned it when old mate spent 100 + pages (not sure exactly due to aforementioned abandonment) describing whales and their history. Getting to the point wasn't one of his strong points

In a Star Trek movie, the captain of the starship Enterprise quoted a line from the book concerning Ahab and the whale. "If his chest had been a canon, he would have cast his heart upon it". It was sixty years ago when I read that book, and I didn't research to see if that was an accurate quote, but as I recall it probably is. Based on my recall the book isn't about a whale at all, it was about pure hate, so strong that nothing else matters. Ahab hated that whale so much that he irrationally risked everything to get his revenge but all he got was, dead.

It was too long ago when I read it, but I think it was about whatever your white whale is, if you can't get past it, forget it, forgive it, it will kill you.

One of the best things about reading classic literature is recognizing when those works are quoted in more modern stuff. In our English-speaking culture, I'd say Shakespeare has to give you the best bang for the buck in that regard, but it is great to recognize other classics whether it's Melville or Dostoyevsky.  

As to Star Trek and the white whale, I knew Wrath of Khan very well before I read Moby Dick, and was delighted to find the source that Khan's quote. Here's an article that talks about both of those: https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/7pdzxc/star_trek_is_at_its_best_when_quoting_mobydick/

Mark Reed wrote:In a Star Trek movie, the captain of the starship Enterprise quoted a line from the book concerning Ahab and the whale. "If his chest had been a canon, he would have cast his heart upon it".

Found it, in chapter 41.

"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."

Picard paraphrased it slightly...

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it."

It was too long ago when I read it, but I think it was about whatever your white whale is, if you can't get past it, forget it, forgive it, it will kill you.

It certainly seems to be a big part of what it's about. And reminds me of the way I have a growing collection of plushy dragons which represent different aspects of myself for me to learn to befriend and work with rather than attempt to slay.

I love it because each read I get a good look at different parts of the human condition:
Ahab, who can't stop wallowing in his trauma until it destroys him and everything he loves (and everyone who gets in the way)
Queequeg, literally comfortable in his skin, courageous, loyal and pure of heart
Starbuck, the peacemaker and "domestic engineer" left to sort everything out
and Ishmael, the drifting young man trying to figure out what he wants to be in his life, ultimately the only survivor (sorry for spoiler), floating on a coffin in the middle of an ocean to his own rebirth, incorporating (or avoiding) these elements of character to become himself.

I also lived in that area for a while, so I can see along in my mind's eye the parts of Fall River and Nantucket, and as a quaker it's nice to see a representation of history-- warts and all. Fish chowder, the whaler's church, the freezing rain, it's nostalgia.
But I think my favorite image in this book is of Ishmael in the inn, sent to bunk together with a stranger, Queequeg, the tattooed headhunter everyone is terrified of. He is also scared, but also exhausted and just ultimately says "oh what the hell" and climbs into bed (and into a brother relationship that saves his life many times over). That "what the hell" moment of facing fear and climbing into bed with the unknown, I love it.

I have not read Moby D but may give it a shot in retirement.  Could pull Faulkner's  "The Sound and the Fury"  along with Joyce's "Ulysses" off the shelf to try to re-immerse in the literary style.  Also, could Melville have been playing with words Re: "Great White Whale".... ?  Just like a "fine white whine", could he have been reifying his "great white wail" of pain and grief which drives his murderous obsession with the ersatz Leviathan?

"The past is never dead.  It's not even past" -Wm Faulkner

Free Kindle e-book available via the "You Know Who" company that has everything . . . detective work up to you!  Don't want to advertise for them
Also Most of the "Classics" that were inflicted upon us in school.

Oooh I just reached the bit where he compares whales to dragons!

"Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda—indeed, by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it—is that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. ‘Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea,’ saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the creature encountered by that valiant whale-man of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus’ case, St. George’s whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse’s head and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honourable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are much better entitled to St. George’s decoration than they."

Currently searching for a second-hand plushy sperm whale to add to my dragon collection.

When I find her, I think I'll call her Nemesis...

The version I was describing made for the scifi channel was a movie, I can't remember what its called but if you google Moby Dick with dragons movie Danny Glover you'll find it, you can probably find it somewhere.

I like how Burra is making all these great parelels between the book and dragons, some from the actual text.  That's probably how that film came about haha.  While I don't think St. George's dragon was a whale, its an interesting theory.

I finished listening to the audiobook of Moby Dick yesterday. Rosa, the pink plushy dragon who represents my somewhat undiscovered feminine side, had been listening along with me and was fascinated by it. She got especially keen when she reached this bit, towards the end of the book, and wanted to talk to me about it this morning.

"They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to."

I try to indulge Rosa when she has something she wants to talk about, because I'm not very in touch with the aspects of myself that are considered more feminine, and she represents all those aspects I tend to ignore or hide from. So for the sake of becoming more well-rounded in my outlook I give her a bit of extra time to learn to express herself. This is what she had to say...

She's been learning about traditional story-telling. Apparently the characters in traditional children's stories are like dragons, in that they represent aspects of yourself, allowing you to explore the stories from different points of view. Most end in marriages where everyone gets together to celebrate the union and they live happily ever after. This represents the uniting of all the different aspects of yourself into one harmonious whole, allowing you to move forward in your life to face life's challenges with a more complete but complex mindset.

Rosa thinks this is also an underlying theme in the story of Moby Dick.

Ishmael starts off alone, with a desire to explore and have adventures on the high seas of all that life has to offer.

Then he meets Queequeg, who is at face value very different to him. But they learn to understand each other, respect each other, even love each other and in some ways become one flesh. Then they begin their real adventures together and board the whaling vessel, Pequod, where there are more characters to explore, each having their own role on board the ship to ensure both smooth sailing and the ability to fulfil their mission.

Rosa said this is very much like a set of plates of old painting she had been looking at with me a few months ago. I'm not very arty, and she doesn't like reading very much, but she likes listening and looking at paintings so we'd spent a while studying the pictures.



She says that the flask, or vessel, represents ourselves. Everything that happens within the flask, happens within ourselves. The crown shows that each of us can attain sovereignty over what happens within us. Inside the flask is a newly hatched dragon, who represents our soul. The young dragon needs us to feed him, nurture him, and breathe life into him. If our dragon dies, so does our soul, and we will die along with it.

It reminds me of our new 'dragon' downstairs, the newly-hatched rocket mass heater who we are just starting to get to know and learning how to feed and bring to life.

And then as we begin to mature, as our stories get underway, more aspects of ourselves are uncovered. More characters appear in our stories.



Rosa says that it's important to understand that the squabbling characters in the vessel at the stage of life are still dragons, they are just feathery dragons that tend to get called 'birds'. They come in all different colours and they are constantly fighting. Or at least Rosa seems to think so. She hates conflict and avoids it where she can, but that does tend to mean that she gets left out while all the other dragons get on with their own adventures.

And then as our story develops, the characters within it, the different aspects of our personalities, begin to learn how to pull together as one.



And it is at this point, when we are capable of entertaining many different viewpoints and have many different skills, that we can begin to face the bigger challenges of life. Life on a whaling ship is geared to a very obvious task.  Catching whales! In our own lives, we have our own challenges. Our own missions. And while these may frighten us, we need to choose which ones are our own dragons to face.



Carl Jung once said

"Where your fear is, there lies your task..."

Once we have chosen our task, or our task has chosen us, it is our choice how we face it. Do we befriend our dragons? Learn to work with them? Or battle them to the death? Rosa has some very definite views on what the answer should be here. She's quite a pacifist in her own way.

She says it's like permaculture, choosing to make the world a better place by making everything work in harmony and designing fully functioning systems that support each other instead of being angry at bad guys.

This is not, however, the path that Ahab, the captain of the Pequod, chose.

He chose not only to harvest whales, but to devote his life to finding one particular whale, Moby Dick, the white whale who had taken his leg, and wreaking vengeance upon him. He sure is angry at what he perceives to be the Bad Guy.

And if we choose to battle them head on, there is always the chance of catastrophic failure...



And after such a failure, we need a bit of alone time to reflect on what has happened. Our minds are a mess, torn apart, not fully functioning, distraught as we mourn our loss. We float alone in a sea of despair. And if we are lucky a passing ship will notice us, reach down to us, forgive the fact that we once rejected them, and haul us aboard where we can begin to piece ourselves back together again.



And this time we are a little older, a little wiser. And we more fully incorporate all our aspects into one beautiful, colourful, shimmering, iridescent whole.

Spot, the chameleon, has joined Rosa in her voyage of exploration into personal development and approves mightily of the analogies involving colour. She is a bit older than Rosa and understands that all the colours are important, and also that we need to display different aspects of ourselves at different times, especially as we move through life's stages. Chameleons know about such things...



And then Rosa shuffled awkwardly and admitted that all the dragons had got together and sent off for a new friend for me to help me learn to navigate my vessel appropriately through the next phase of my life, and face my next major challenge. My own 'white whale'.



Except she's not white, though I hardly think that really matters. And I have no idea how to communicate with her. Though the dragons have promised to help me figure it out. I'm sure that between us all we can befriend her and learn from her and have many adventures together.

And that, after all, is probably what the story is all about. Isn't it?