Chapters 35-58 WHITE IS EVIL.

So, I think we're nearing the halfway point of the book, and you know what? I thought this was going to be way harder than it turned out to be. Seriously. I started the blog as a mini-support system for myself, but I'm finding that I'm devouring the pages at a far faster rate than I ever thought I would. I thought it would be boring. Instead, it's ridiculously fun and engaging. Seriously one of the best books I've read in a while.

The story has had its bizarre moments. We've switched viewpoints two or three times now, and there are stage directions scattered through the pages. Moby Dick, the infamous white whale, has now been described in detail, and Ishmael has told us of Ahab's fiery and determined revenge on the beast that took off half his leg.

When they spotted their first whale in the story, and Ishmael nearly died after his boat was separated from the rest in pitch-blackness, it was revealed that Ahab had stowed away his own private little crew for whaling. They just popped out of the bowels of the ship at his command, and no one on board knew they existed.

Melville is a huge fan of alliteration and I love that cheesy goodness. Let's take an example: "Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probably, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's voyage..." Oh MAN. Those Ps. Craziness.

Let's do another, this one beautiful as well, but rife with the letter S: "It was while gliding through these latter waves that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver, and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silverly silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow." Man.

Oh, by the way, the English think of the Americans as "sea-peasants." This one little note pretty much confirms that the British have been uptight snobs for quite some time, tea and crumpets, thankyouverymuch.

There are typical Ishmael ramblings, but we get a really special on here: on the attributes of the color white. It was actually a fascinating argument against the color's typical associations with whiteness and purity. For white, juxtaposed against something terrifying, only amplifies the horror. A corpse is made even more horrible by its white skin. And so on and so forth.

Ishmael is the ultimate whaling fanboy. He even bemoans the fact that nobody seems to be able to draw a whale anatomically correct. He refers to Cuvier's attempt: "In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash."

... Yep.

Another sad whale drawing: "As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage, breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint." RICHARD III reference! LOVE.

But perhaps my favorite chapter of all in this latest chunk was Chapter 53, also known as "The Gam." This chapter starts out innocently enough. Ishmael goes into a detailed description of a traditional whaling practice called "gamming." This is when one whaling ship passes another, and the crew visits each other to swap stories, whether they be from home ports, or from seas farther away. The chapter starts by noting that Ahab rarely ever was up for a gam. And this would lead the reader to believe that Ahab is so consumed by his fiery rage for Moby Dick and so impatient for his revenge that he won't even stop to socialize, to chat.

But no, there's a greater reason than that. For we learn towards the end of the chapter that the captain from one ship must board the ship of the other. This requires a rowboat, manned by one of the crew, to cross the watery gap between the two boats. The journey over to the other ship is pretty rough - it's a ROWBOAT, on the Pacific Ocean. Naturally, the captain has to have excellent balance.

Except Ahab doesn't, because of his pegleg. One word: pride. Ahab's lost his masculinity with the bite of that whale. He has been shamed and his zealous, vengeful spirit is fueled by pride mixed with obsession. I just loved the fact that Melville didn't outright ever SAY that Ahab would have trouble standing up properly in such a boat, and would make a fool of himself, falling all over the place. The implications were clearly there, though, and it made the impact of those last paragraphs even greater.

So yeah, whoever said that Moby Dick is boring or long or uninteresting was completely lying. It's not even that difficult to read.