Monday, July 9, 2012
The First Lowering
Just a quick post about this week's reading (yes, I am up to date!). Nothing to deep about the meaning of it all, but I want to comment on Melville's writing. There is quite a variety of styles in MD. The straight ahead narrative of the first chapters, the relatively dry, but never boring, technical descriptions of whales and whaling, the story-within-the-story of The Town-Ho (in today's language, that has quite a different meaning!), to mention a few. But the Chapter "The First Lowering", in my opinion, is a tour de force of some of the best writing so far. Packed with action and consequence, it's quite a page turner.
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I have to agree with you on The First Lowering--it's filled with rip-roaringly good storytelling. But my favorite part of the chapter is quiet and poignant. After the failed attempt to spear the whale, after the storm, and being capsized, with no sign of the Pequod, Starbuck lit the lamp in the lantern, "then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair."
ReplyDeleteThat is powerful indeed.