"Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket?"
For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 38: Dusk)
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Starbuck spends most of the monologue lamenting that he feels fated to help Ahab despite his better sense. Here, however, we have see that empathy underpins duty and fate.
Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 37: Sunset)
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They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one.
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 37: Sunset)
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Ahab may be insane, but he’s also self aware.
Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly!
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 37: Sunset)
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What is this?
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The Moskstraumen, a maelstrom of Norway’s Lofoten Islands.
"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same that some call Moby Dick."
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 36: The Quarter-Deck)
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Moby Dick is based on a real albino whale named Mocha Dick (because he was usually encountered off of Mocha Island near the coast of Chile). Mocha Dick was first pursued by whalers around 1810 and continued to fight off their harpoons until he was finally killed in 1838.
J.N. Reynolds wrote a supposedly first hand account of hunting Mocha Dick, which describes the white whale’s peculiar behavior: unusual friendliness until attacked, tendency to breach fully out of the water, a unique way of spouting.
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An eight escudo doubloon
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A hammer
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In a remarkably meta moment, Ahab explains to Starbuck that he is not after the whale because it is an animal that took his leg, but because it represents the unknown and ungraspable.
“Pasteboard” is a thin board made by pasting together sheets of paper.