enna24’s Blog

I think we have officially entered the Twilight Zone, or rather Melville’s Zone. In this night’s reading, I felt that Melville’s thoughts became a little more random and disconnected, and made the reader think (or puzzle!) more. First, I thought it funny how right at the beginning of chapter 29 a beautiful scene of the ocean is described. “The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet heaped up- flaked up, with rose-water snow” (112) wrote Melville. The people who have been described to us on the ship are very burly, gruff, and hard men, who I would never associate “perfumed” or “rose-water” scenery. If I were writing this book, I probably would have used darker words to describe their settings, and maybe described the rough crashing of the waves or the bad weather that is more commonly associated with rough sea life. Then again, I think Melville’s writing is anything but normal, to say the least.

What also stood out to me was Stubb’s dream in chapter 31. On the ship one day he tells Flask about a dream he had where he was kicked by Ahab, then saw a merman who told him it was an “honor” to be kicked by such a great man with an ivory leg. This indeed taught Stubb to be careful about how he acted around Ahab in future situations, but what else? Why did he see a merman, and not just a regular person? And why is the chapter called “Queen Mab”?

Note: I just looked Queen Mab up on the ever-helpful Wikipedia and learned that she is a fairy from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, and she haunted people’s dreams while they were sleeping. This would make sense for the chapter because Stubb was haunted by the very real dream of being kicked by Ahab, and what came after.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS