enna24’s Blog

Chapter 37 stood out to me tonight. Ahab was sitting in his cabin, looking out the windows at the sunset and to a bystander would have appeared to be normal and calm. But inside him there’s a fire, a prophecy that says he’ll get Moby-Dick back for taking his leg. I liked the line, “What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad- Starbuck doesl but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened!” (147). Here, he basically confirmed that he is crazy, only to a higher degree than anyone knows. I don’t know why, but I felt comforted by the fact that he knows he’s eccentric, to put it nicely. It almost makes him more sane knowing there’s something wrong than if he was in denial. And the fact that he has a purpose, to kill Moby-Dick and “dismember my dismemberer” (147) lets the reader know that.. oh wait is it true?… there’s a plot! We found one! I’m sure that going into this book, many know that the object is going to be to find Moby-Dick, but here we have proof that Melville did have a plan. Whether the plan is followed, though, is yet to be determined. Will Melville and the crew get all of their ducks (er, whales!) in a row? We have about a hundred more chapters to find out.

I also liked how chapter 40 was written as a screenplay, and the content in general. The sailors were so funny and whitty, and we finally got to meet the infamous Pip! In wonder if Melville realized that this book was getting long, and was getting bored of writing so he decided to write in a different format? Oh, of course not, all he thought about was how good this book was going too be, regardless of size.

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