Reading #6

1. MOBY-DICK Reading #6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58WnCtHvyHQ Clip From Reading #5

2. Reading #6 Overview • Whiteness • Ahab – Support vs Mutiny • Sword Mat - - Fate • There she blows! First lowering • Ahab and dusky phantoms – EVIL imagery

3. The Whiteness of the Whale • “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me” (181). • “an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue that strikes more panic of the soul than redness which affrights in blood” (182). • “And of all of these things, the albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt” (189)?

4. The concept of Moby Dick as a symbol will emerge as we move through the text. The whale itself will mean different things to different people, as in the nature of the color white. • 181 – Whiteness (beauty and purity) BUT… • 182 – White Polar Bear • 183 - White Horse • 184 – Albino Man • 185 – White Squall • 189 – WHITE WHALE!!!! ALL QUOTES FROM CH. 42 in case you have different page numbers

5. Reading #6 – Recap • CHAPTER 46 – 2nd Paragraph Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain; still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. Consider this developing foil between Ahab and Starbuck. With what internal feelings and thoughts will Starbuck struggle? Also, read the first sentence of chapter 46; paraphrase what this tells us about Ahab’s mindset and his role as captain of The Pequod.

6. Chapter 46 - -Surmises • “They may scorn cash now, but let some months go by, and no prospective promise of it to them…this same cash would soon cashier Ahab” (205). What does Ahab “surmise” in this chapter? (Paraphrase his thoughts).

7. The Mat-Maker – Ch. 47 “It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over the leaden colored waters” (206). “it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates…free will still free to play her shuttle between given threads” (207). – Ch. 47 What are the thematic implications of this scene?

8. Chapter 48 (217) • “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 unknown 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, churned circle of the hunted Sperm Whale.” In this passage, Ishmael romanticizes the experience of whaling. Is there something in your own life about which you feel similar emotion? Recreate this passage, in your own creative terms, connecting things for you have strong emotion.

9. “There she blows! There she blows!” • “With a start, all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of the air” (209) – Last line of Ch. 47. "All ready there Fedallah?"

10. “The First Lowering”

11. Final two pages of Ch.48 (218-219) Danger Detail Imagery

12. Human Interdependence • Flask and Daggoo Pg. 214 – (Chapter 48): “with one dexterous fling, landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders.” “On his broad back…Flask seemed a snowflake.” (humor and imagery) Explain the thematic connection: