So, Moby Dick represented God right?
Nah, mate
Nah Ahab was fighting racism
Why do you think the whale is white?
So Rust was shooting at a whale?
>>7745873
God's Dick
It's obviously about sexual repression.
>>7745948
This.
Why do you think he's hunting a "sperm whale"?
It's white too, you really couldn't make it any more obvious
>>7745938
beat me to it friend
I suspect it's an elaborate homosexual ruse.
Test
>>7745910
lol'd
>>7745948
It's obviously about free speech.
>>7745873
Melville said himself in this book that "dont treat it like some stupid alegory" or something like that
Whale seems like cold merciless fate that cant be resisted
Moby Dick doesn't represent any one particular thing, it's not a simple allegory. It's a broadly applicable story about certain modes of life.
>>7745910
Does Ahab mean ARAB?
no wonder the middle east hates great WHITE america
>>7745972
oh ill beat you to it all right ;)
>>7745873
>the whale represented like GOD or something!!!
get fokkin real m8
it was just a story about a big whale
>>7746313
for you
I think he represented a whale.
Moby-Dick represented the same thing everything else does
>>7746326
God?
>>7746085
>So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.
That's in chapter 45.
>>7746315
whales are not for you, sorry but they are for the water
I have no idea how you'd even come to this conclusion. It seems like you're trying hard to see depth in the hard story bits when there really is none. The chapters that focus on actual action are nothing more than that, just story. Moby Dick is based off of an actual event that happened, you should check it out.
Now that being said, the story is used as a vehicle for all of the asides that Melville has, which are the meat of the book. The chapter about the color white is a good example, if you remember it. Basically, Melville goes off on these little rants throughout the book that have little or nothing to do with the actual story about the whale, but are just thoughts, views, bits of his philosophy, etc., and that's where the true beauty of Moby Dick can be found. These parts are often confusing and dense, and during your first read when you finally get back to the story bits, it feels like a relief. Just trust me on this, if you take the time to try and enjoy his asides instead of asking what it has to do with the story at hand, you'll get infinitely more joy out of the book.
>>7746293
notice how the US looks like a whale on the map
or how it's inhabited by whales
>>7746371
> inhabited by whales
Had a little giggle at that.
Actually it's about ethics in gaming journalism.
http://thelectern.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/moby-dick-herman-melville.html
>>7745873
I dunno about the whale but the whole book is objectively about Ishmael realizing he's gay as hell
>says explicitly not to read to far into it, the story is what it is
>pseudo intellectuals search for hidden meaning anyway
Its about a fucking whale.
>>7745873
Moby Dick is a fuckin whale.
reading it right now, and I can't quite figure out why people can't just take this at face value.
>>7747214
>dat hivemind
>>7747222
The hivemind is easily memed apparently
>>7747388
memed?
>>7747390
Yes
As in "lol nigga u got memed"
>>7747414
memed how?
>>7747417
like a fool
>>7747422
ok. then explain to me how i was memed, i'm too foolish to understand.
Its about his desire to be a whale, as well as a critique on anti-trans-species bigots.
>>7747434
O.P. used the lazy school essay symbolism meme and u and the other anon fell for it. hence u got memed nigga
>>7747464
I didn't read the thread before I commented.
>>7747207
>yfw Melville's statement about not being an allegory is clearly an elaborate ruse to make people look even deeper into the book
It's like saying 'don't think about elephants'.
>>7747471
Uh, why? Because reading is for faggots? Am I being memed now? This must be what postmodernism feels like
>>7747476
>not trusting the author
>>7747487
I trust the dialectical involved in work of art even more.
>>7746730
kek
>>7745873
No it's about MY PENIS
>>7745873
Moby dick is a metaphor for trying to read moby dick.
>>7746730
dismantling le patriarchy
>>7745873
It's about destroying fat white women, using black men as scapegoats.
>>7747207
It's not that finding a silly allegory is reading too far into, it's actually not reading into it all, not far enough.
Ahab suffered a horrendous workplace injury and because his society could not into modern psychology he was unable to process it. Hence the maniacal obsession and lashing out.
Nowadays he would undergo counseling and be prescribed a shitload of meds.
>>7745915
He was shooting at Dusty Mason
actually, moby dick doesn't reepresent god beceause it is god. Melville was a whalist and in his verses prophetize the coming of the Great White Whale of LIght on the earth fighting the evil and bringing us a new golden age killing all the bad humans. This is just a very semplified whalism but actually is really complex and developed.
>>7747487
Believing in ‘the author’.
>>7749166
>Cap'n
>not Keppin
You think you're clever, but you fail at life.
So, Peqoud was the name of the whaling ship. Not a person. Fuck.
>>7751141
If it's good enough for the Cap'n, it's good enough for me.
>>7749166
>Ahab on drugs
And now..now I'm imagining an alternate story wherein Ahab is sailing the seven seas high as balls off the dankest shit:
>AHAB:
>the sea is beautiful
>the sky is beautiful
>the whales are beautiful
>everything's beautiful!
>WHEEEEEEEEE
>ISHMAEL:
>It's 'puff-puff-pass', goddammit!
>>7752346
How did you think Pequod was a person?
If you got it from TPP, even in that it was the codename for the helicopter, not the pilot. You moron.
>>7745873
It represents the eternal will of Allah. Conqueror of Europe and the entire world with ficki ficki tactics.
as this cover illustrates perfectly, the whale, to Ahab at least, represented literally EVERYTHING. Everything in the entire whole of existence came back to that fuckin whale
>>7745873
Why do people always say Moby Dick is a slog and boring? Are they trying to meme me? I'm currently reading Moby Dick and I love it so far: it's dense but it's atmospheric with beautiful prose, fascinating commentary on religion and race and I'm just on the edge of my seat even for the smallest of details.
So why do people call this book boring?
>>7748777
yeah, this. allegory isn't really interesting or intelligent.
>>7753816
Did you honestly find the cetology chapter captivating?
>>7753816
i'm reading it right now too. i can see why people might find it boring, some moments are a bit slow, but i think that's part of the effect. what i'm finding interesting more than anything else is the sense that Ishmael is more obsessed with fucking whales than Ahab ever was. It's a pretty funny book in some places, and in others, I have a hard time with the whales being slaughtered. he gives them so much character, then coldly hacks them down, as though honor is some sort of consolation in the description of their painful deaths. I really like it and I'm glad I have been pushing through it even when there are some sloggy moments. the prose is brilliant to boot. I can see why it's an essential for teaching yutes as well as a classic in general.
>>7753816
I mean, there's literally entire chapters that are plotless encyclopedias of whales/whaling. Really not hard to imagine why people think it's a bit of a slog at times. The "plot" chapters are not what get the "slog" criticism, typically.
>>7754067
>the cetology chapter
dude, that was easily one of the most interesting parts of the book if you contrast it with our current knowledge of whales, along with the witty porpoise comment.
>>7745873
why is moby dick called the great american novel?
>>7754086
because in the end it's all about money.
>>7754084
your ether nerdy geek or gay)))get some life bro
>>7754116
i had a life, i really did. they told me to stop having it, so i did.
>>7746121
only one who gets it
>>7754068
I audibly chortled during the chowder chapter when Ishmael sneaks into the kitchen and gets a second serving. Just the way it was phrased in the book seemed a little cheeky.
>>7754505
another great part was the meeting of Queequeg and Ishmael. so lewd. i got all misty eyed when they got married.
>>7754505
i don't remember him sneaking back into the kitchen.
>>7747219
Because coming to conclusions that feel deep, no matter how thinly those conclusions are drawn from the text, make people feel more intelligent. I know because I am a genius with a huge dick.
>>7754534
>a savage man will never press his forehead to yours and cuddle with you bed
Why even live senpai
CRACK
>>7745873
Yes and No.
>>7746315
If I ram the pequod, will it sink?
>>7754067
Honestly, yes, but I have aspergers.
Moby dick represented metaphor itself.
A meta-metaphor
>>7753136
It's like you're not even trying to hide your redditness
>>7753136
Unfunny twat
It's a book, appreciate the writing and the author spilling his perspective onto the paper. . Appreciate the work as a whole, if it took him that much writing to create the "meaning" than you probably can't regurgitate it in a tidy paragraph. This is why we tell stories in the first place.
>>7747487
>trusting anyone
>>7745873
The whale is just a whale.
A whale just happens to implicitly represents all the disinterested universe and therefore "God". This is why you can read so much into it a la thread.
>>7756052
>not trusting anyone
>>7746319
>Allegory of OP's status: Conversion to the TOLD Standard.
>>7756166
>trusting people's souls
>>7745956
>squeezing chapter
so, what's the conclusion here, moby dick is allegorical or moby dick isn't allegorical?
It's about repressed homosexuality, c'mon!
Moby DICK, a SPERM whale, c'mon!
>>7756799
Homosexuality is just repressed heterosexuality. Totally meaningless as a theme.
>>7747219
Because it's like the most discursive story in the English language just about, including meditations on the nature of man, nature, existence, and pretty much everything else.
If the story about the whale is just supposed to be light relief from that shit, and doesn't illustrate anything, then it's pretty fuckin dumb innit
>>7756799
Literally a scene where the crew are elbow-deep in sperm, touching hands under the surface
The more I read, the more I share Tolkien's/Melville's hate of allegory/metaphor.
A story is never good enough FOR ITS OWN SAKE, among those who always look for them.
Both concepts actually do more harm than good; because they shrink your literary scope. Everything is always 'relative' to something else you know, or have read.
>>7759013
I think you're misunderstanding the nature of a writer's hatred for allegory. A rejection of hermeneutics isn't the same thing as 'it's just a whale' sophomoric rejection of all interpretation.
Like if you don't think it's significant that Ahab has an artificial limb, and that Melville goes into great detail about how he bends his crew to his will until they're like a machine functioning at his command, and how ultimately his misguided obsession drives them all to their doom, I mean... to refuse to see any symbolism in all that is just obtuse.
>>7758929
why would it be dumb? because you have false expectations?
>>7745873
>spem whale
>huge
>"Dick"
It's evidently a metaphor for my huge penis
What if, oh I don't know.... IT WAS JUST ABOUT A FUCKING CAPTAIN AGAINST A HUGE FUCKING WALE!
what I took got out of moby dick is that there's certain levels of meaning - not ambiguous but all certain and immediately understood depending on where you're at in life
>>7753816
because most people, including people who read, don't actually like reading
>>7760219
Because if we're not supposed to read in anything into this story, if it's just 'hey guys I heard about this thing' then it's replaceable with any other adventure story. Moby Dick could have been about the Spanish conquest of the Incas or the Battle of Agincourt and apparently it would have been the same shit, since all the themes that Melville ties in to the idea of the whale and man's destructive quest to master nature are apparently just filler in between the action and we should avert our eyes and pretend they don't exist, like someone is taking a shit in the road, lest somebody think we're pseuds.
>>7760722
so, because it would be replaceable otherwise, it must be a deeply allegorical work. sounds like you're the follower there, instead of enjoying the novel as you would please. If you want to find read it as an allegory, it's fine, however, don't pretend that you know what the author intended.
>>7760749
Man I'm not the one arguing I know what the author intended. All the authorial intent bullshit is coming from the other side of this argument with the whole 'Melville hated allegory' line.
I don't know where you extracted the idea that I'm following some idea of how the book 'should' be read. I read it and I found it full of meaning, some of which is fucking transparent and some of which is subtler. I'm not denying anybody's right to read it as a simple adventure story, although I do feel like if you've managed to do that then perhaps you read the abridged version or something. But I want people to get the fuck out of /lit/ with this childish 'why are you trying to read into the book, why can't it just be a story reductionism. If you have an actual critique of how somebody's interpretation isn't grounded in the text then please make free with it, but if you're just here to take a shit in the thread by claiming that textual interpretation itself is a vain enterprise then I wish you'd fuck off to another board.
quick reminder that if you haven't read Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson, you have absolutely no chance of understanding Moby Dick
>>7760774
you seem to have come under the misapprehension that i have implied that the book is a simple adventure novel. my only position was that Moby Dick is a whale, and I asked why people insisted on reading further than what was face value. Even the subtle themes throughout the book I would still consider face value. That does not mean that the work in its entirety is to be taken as an allegory. One can appreciate themes and subtlety without needlessly complicating the book with questions like "what did the whale represent?". I'm merely saying that the whale didn't represent anything. It was a whale.
>>7760786
we're done with the days of "well the whale REPRESENTED my insatiable lust for penis" like every novel is a fucking sherlock holmes diary but the question is still "what is a whale?" The whale meant something to herman melville, saying "oh it's just a whale stop overcomplicating it" is somewhat naïve. Why do people read further into what the whale is? Because we still need a definition of what a whale is to Melville. The whale isn't a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be pieced together and then we finally see that, oh, gee, it was actually something else it was all along. The trouble with Moby Dick isn't that it says something else, the trouble with Moby Dick is that it says exactly what it says. The difficulty is in understanding what it says, which, yes, warrants further research. Why did Melville choose a whale as the primary antagonist of the novel? I dunno, maybe cuz it's in the book of Job--the one animal used by God to illustrate the whole point of that story? Among other things, that is.
>>7760780
and yes.
I literally just finished this novel.
all i have to ask
>was it autism?
>Ahab's singleminded focus on the whale
>Melville's encyclopedic descriptions of whaling in the 1800's
>My struggling through the novel, even though I disliked it in the first 100 pages.
>>7761633
> disliking it in the first 100 pages
Why did you even bother then? If you're not hooked at that point, the tone and pacing of the book isn't going to change.
>>7754067
Actually just finished that chapter and not that anon but yes, I thought that was interesting, especially when reading about the Narwhals and nobody really know what the horn/tusk is for.
It's also interesting to see what they didn't know back then that we now know (i.e. the sub-chapter on the killer whale: we now know it's not a whale but a dolphin and that they're immensely intelligent and malicious [go Google how they kill seals when the seals are on ice, or watch Blackfish]).
I guess it helps if you have any actual interest in whales (not even an academic interest, but a simple interest kinda helps).
>>7747207
Pseudo-intellectuals just do what the author tells them. Intellectuals can't help but make meaningful connections when they're apparent.
>>7761857
that's what i felt like.
I'm about 100 pages from finishing, and I have to say that the Try-Works is one of the greatest chapters I've ever read of any book. Just the sheer writing itself, I feel like me trying to interpret something beyond what was said would be sullying it somehow.
>>7761357
the question most specifically is not "what is a whale", people are asking what the whale represents. I think Ishmael does his very best to explicitly say what he thinks a whale IS. what these people are asking is what it represents. and I feel that would only result in a panoply of possibilities, "oh, it could represent his mother" or "it could represent JAY-sus" or any number of things mainly contingent upon the mind of the interpreter, any allegorical analysis of the representation of the whale seems like it would only serve as a mirror image of the psyche of the person analyzing it.
>>7746293
Ishmael is the Biblical father of the Arabs
>the more you know
>>7762099
There's a lot of textual evidence for the whale having some sort of symbolism though. It's not just people projecting onto a blank slate, it arises from the text itself. Like the other guy said, this isn't about 'oh the whale was my dad all along' or something, it's subtler than that. But the book is filled with explicit explorations of the whale's symbolism, like 'The Whiteness of the Whale', or like Melville's rhapsodies over how the Sperm Whale is the noblest and the worthiest prey, or like the chapter where the 'great, white, worshipped skeleton' of a whale in the Arsacides is compared to both a loom and a weaver, tying in with the recurrent metaphors of the whole world as a loom. The whale is a symbol in microcosm or macrocosm for all kinds of themes that Melville chooses to explore.
> you will never have a friend for life like Ishmael has Queequeg
>>7762441Had Queequeg.
> 100+ pages in, Ahab is introduced
> 200+ pages in, Moby Dick is introduced
> most people only know about the final three chapters of the book
Although I do enjoy the casual pacing of this book, I'm surprised that they teach this book to children - wouldn't they get bored or impatient with it?
>>7762562
I had it assigned Junior year of college. First time I'd ever read it too. I'm kinda glad I got to read it in an academic setting, honestly. It's fun to discuss the book.
This really is one of the greatest books ever written.
>>7761845
I only finished it because it's seen as one of the greatest american novels.
It had its moments of brilliance, but they were too few and far between.
This is one of the best books ever written. I don't know how people can get bored, I really enjoyed it. I love how everything is based on a single topic - whales. It's fascinating how Melville managed to fit so many topics related to them, from whales in painting and literature to techniques (like how to extract the sperm etc).
A literal masterpiece. Only certain books like Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov can come close.
>>7762727
I guess that's fair, at least you read it and made your own opinion on it. Although I must politely disagree with you, at least you read it.
