“Great God! But for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; never, never wilt thou capture him, old man-In Jesus’ name no more of this, that’s worse than the devil’s madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone-all good angels mobbing theeContinue reading “RKS Literature: A Final Warning to Ahab Against His Frenzied Chase of Moby Dick (Herman Melville)”
Tag Archives: Herman Melville
RKS Literature: The Frenzied Chase of Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
“The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them may have felt before; these were now not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sidesContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Frenzied Chase of Moby Dick (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: Warmest Climes Nurse Cruellest Fangs (Herman Melville)
“Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders. Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is. That in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, theContinue reading “RKS Literature: Warmest Climes Nurse Cruellest Fangs (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: The Fate of a Whale Boat Jumper (Part One): (Herman Melville)
“Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, ‘Stick to the boat Pip, or by the Lord, I won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the like of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would in Alabama. Bear thatContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Fate of a Whale Boat Jumper (Part One): (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: Seagulls as Air Sharks (Herman Melville)
“There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral, they most piously do bounce. OhContinue reading “RKS Literature: Seagulls as Air Sharks (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: The Cannibal and the Gourmand (Herman Melville)
“Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that saltedContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Cannibal and the Gourmand (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: Gay and Jovial Spirited Sharks (Herman Melville)
“…yet there is no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale; moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, andContinue reading “RKS Literature: Gay and Jovial Spirited Sharks (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: Yankee Whalers as Sea Peasants (Herman Melville)
“To be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be sort of a shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself.Continue reading “RKS Literature: Yankee Whalers as Sea Peasants (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: Treating Life as a Practical Joke (Herman Melville)
“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, nothing seems worthContinue reading “RKS Literature: Treating Life as a Practical Joke (Herman Melville)”
RKS Literature: Emotions of the Whale Pursuit (Herman Melville)
“Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man’s ghost encountering the first phantom in the other world;-neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed,Continue reading “RKS Literature: Emotions of the Whale Pursuit (Herman Melville)”
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