My review of Philip Hoare's latest book, The Sea Inside, appeared recently in The National, Abu Dhabi's English-language newspaper. It bore the headline "Deep connections: Philip Hoare's seminal encounter with a blue whale," and you can find it here. The book is a...
Last Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of participating in the "The Final Pursuit," a live closing session for the "Moby-Dick Big Read" hosted by Peninsula Arts at Plymouth University. The event was put together by Peninsula Arts director Sarah Chapman and featured a...
And so, finally, we reach the end. When Moby-Dick was published in London by Richard Bentley on October 18, 1851 (using Melville's original title, The Whale), it seemed to end with the haunting final words of Chapter 135: Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet...
And so we reach the climactic confrontation between Ahab and the white whale, Moby Dick. It's a beautiful morning, which prompts Ahab to meditate on the way that feeling often overrules thinking: "What a lovely day again! Were it a new-made world, and made for a...
In "The Tail," Ishmael refers to the phenomenon of breaching, when the whale bounds out of the water and elevates itself into the air before plunging down again: As in the ordinary floating posture of the Leviathan the flukes lie considerably below the level of his...
LIke a dog following a scent, Ahab detects "that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale" as the chapter opens. As he is hoisted to his perch atop the main royal-mast head, he spies his prey: "There she blows! -- there she...
It's the Pequod's final gam, and it's a bleak one. The "most miserably named" whaleship Delight has, like the Rachel, encountered Moby Dick, and the encounter has brought death. Ishmael gives us this striking image of the destroyed whale-boat that the Delight...
Those of you who were inclined to doubt whether Ishmael's depiction of Ahab and Pip is meant to evoke the relationship between King Lear and his fool will be pleased to find that "The Hat" opens with an actual allusion to Shakespeare's great play: And now that at the...
"The Cabin" is another dramatic chapter, and it develops further the relationship between mad Ahab and the mad cabin-boy Pip. Ahab now spends all of his time on deck watching for Moby Dick, but tells Pip to stay in the cabin, "where they shall serve thee, as if thou...