/lit/ - Literature

yeah just started reading it. cant get through a chapter without getting a boner hearing ishmael gawk over queequeg's perfect chocolate body.

>>17390830
yeah there are some pretty homo passages. One *could* interpret these non-sexually, just emotional bonding between men, but it's hard to not get an impression of faggotry. It's not all that relevant to the larger themes of the book though.

>>17390830
I too felt that it had homosexual undertones but i also was molested so i see homosexuality in everything and everyone.

>>17390843
I read it 12 years ago and didn't notice any homosexual undertones. After browsing /lit/ for a few days, I'm starting to wonder how gay this book really is. They are sailors after all. The main character doesn't want anyone to know his real name. "Call me Ishmael" he says. Is he hiding something? Is there a dirty secret that he's ashamed of?

>>17390830
Was dick a slang word for penis when that book was written?

>>17390830
“There’s hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that’s what ye came for. (Pull my boys!) Sperm, sperm’s the play!”

“We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we…”

“How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg – a cosy, loving pair.”

The savage stood erect there” (Kindle 3540)

“erecting himself” (Kindle 3548)

“an erect posture” (Kindle 3554)

“erect attitude” (Kindle 3565)

“erected crests of enraged serpents” (Kindle 3609)

“the body was erect” (Kindle 3763)

“Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter’s!” (Kindle 4854)

“horses only show their erected ears” (Kindle 7502)

“her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised” (Kindle 7626)

“he stood erect” (Kindle 7700)

“the erect spar” (Kindle 8665)

Here’s a few more phrases:

“Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo” (Kindle 3556)

“Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper” (Kindle 5336)

“Don’t ye love sperm?” (Kindle 5509)

“Jerk him off” (Kindle 7896)

“for bettor or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded” (Kindle 8822)

“Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, – Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!”

this shit is GAY though i did enjoy the book otherwise

>>17390899
/thread
It's over. My favorite book: ruined.

Yes, I think so. Look at the symbols and images in this book. The whale, the Pequod, harpoons. Notice anything about the dimensions of these? That they are a good bit longer than they are wide? Remind you of anything? In short, the homosexual undertones are so blatant, using the word "undertone" would be a bald-faced lie.

>>17390940
Was he supposed to replace whales with big circles and squares? The story is based off and inspired by the true story of the whaleship Essex.

>>17390899
Yes, the word erect is used to mean upright.

>>17390830
after the little black cabin boy gets injured, ahab makes him stay in his quarters and wear dresses

>>17390961
He was supposed to not conspicuously adorn his fiction with homosexual preference and big big DICK

>>17390972
Reading the whale as just a dick really takes away from the mystery, horror, and awe it is supposed to inspire.

read Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!

It's all about how the main character is jealous of a local peasant who has a magnificent cock. The short story is impressive even outside of juvenile sniggering, but some of the phrases are impossible not to be a teenager about.

>>17390830
At this point, I think we need to be asking if Moby Dick has heterosexual undertones.

>>17390871
>read it 12 years ago and didn't notice any homosexual undertones
>all the shipmates rubbing their hands together in what they think is whale sperm

Really anon... you didn't pick up on any?

>>17391117
There is a single woman in it somewhere, that implies that heterosexuality exists in the Moby Dick universe

>>17391133
And she's a disgusting fat lunchlady dishing out chowder.

>>17391132
It was a simpler time.

Didn't Melville had a boner for Hawthorne?

>Me and my boy from high school in library
>Both get up from our desk same time to jerk it in the bathroom, after some good studying
>Boy gets to handicap stall first, so I have to go upstairs
>Go in third floor handicap stall
>Start jerking hard to some cuck porn
>Guy walks in, goes to the stall next to me, as I'm moaning
>He immediately starts farting very loudly. A challenge.
>I start heaving all my might, seeing black lines, finally something comes out
>Keep at it, blood starts to come out and some of my intestine
>damn dude, I pass on the floor and start seizing, the fucker is still farting like a steamboat
>I wake up the next morning, see my boat walking down the stairs in a new pair of clothes
>Tough night huh,
>Yeah
>We go back to my place and fuck the rest of the day, and fall asleep in the same bed by mistake.
>He sneaks a kiss on the lips in.
>Holds it against me to this day.

>>17390830
My father borrowed it and like the 60 year old homophobe he is, tried to tell me that ishmael and queequeg sleeping in the same bed and holding their heads together/declaring themselves married was not homo behaviour. Talk about cope. Thats not even getting into the other stuff. Before one argues, would you do that with a buddy?

>>17391497
Also the squeezing sperm scene where they squeeze eachothers hands can be interpreted as a massive circlejerk over the whale's load. I dont think thats the case but it is interesting.

actually, are his other novels full of these "gay" allusions? I wouldn't be surprised if Melville was a homosexual but there should be more if it was a genuine undercurrent in his work

>>17390830
Am I gay if I skip the chapters that talk about whales and ships and shit. They have nothing to do with the story.

>>17390830
" SUCK MY DICK SAILOR, ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!"
what did the author meant by this?

>>17390899
the problem was all this, is that Moby Dick was written towards the end of the 19th century; not all of these "gay" sentences carried the connotations that arose decades later - long after Melville died

>>17391554
hell, not even "decades" later; more like a hundred years later

>>17391497
It's clearly homo behavior on some level, the question is whether it is sexual or not. Did they have sex or want to have sex.

This sort of relationship is way more common among women than men, they will cuddle with each other and be very intimate and stuff, but they never do anything sexual.

>>17391588
the whole point of the encounter was to show that ishmael came from another alien culture; melville had written two fairly popular adventure novels prior to Moby Dick; the savage with different ideas of friendship and sex was a theme that obviously carried over and might not have implicated full on homosexuality

>>17390871
/lit/ is full of homos so clearly they're going to read into it

>>17391612
the entire literary academic world is currently full of queer theory bozos trying to find gay shit in everything

>>17391588
Well what about the scene where starbuck gives a triple penetration to ahab, ishmael, and queequeg with the flaming harpoon while ahab ishmael and queequeg are layinf on top of eachother spread eagle??

>>17391160
Those are the kind of women that you either dont do anything sexual with or you fuck them and summon a demon

>>17391497
Bro there weren't sufficient lodgings dude

>>17391612
I think the novel is just gay as HELL and you're hanging onto a petty, weepy nostalgia
I think it's still a good book. you just have to.. not think about all the all-but explicit homosexual anomalies

>>17391648
Sufficient lodgings in queequegs asshoel do amirite?

>>17390964
Yeah right idiot

>>17390830
I don't know about undertones but it's pretty gay.

>>17390899
>“We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we…”

>>17390830
To our modern day brainlets sure but back then people weren’t queezy about having a genuine relationship with another man, one that was full of appreciation and brotherly love. Y’all are blinded by our modern day degeneracy to understand that you can be affectionate with your brothers and not be gay.

>>17390830
I’m about to never come back here y’all just sunk to new levels of degeneracy.

>>17391530
He wasn’t homosexual. Affection between men is natural human being socialization that has deteriorated over time. It does not mean that they want to fuck each other. Jesus this entire thread has made me realize how fucking stupid you people are.

>>17391661
Okay homo

>>17390871
>I read it 12 years ago and didn't notice any homosexual undertones.
It's a meme, you dip.

>>17392069
Melville was gay, there are letters between him and Nathaniel Hawthorne that prove it. Volumes have been written on the subject, smartiepanties.

>>17391530
In Billy Budd, it's rather ambiguous, but the narrative seems to suggest or hint that Claggart is physically attracted to the young sailor Budd, with his hatred of Budd seemingly rooted in that same attraction.

Billy Budd is great, btw.

>>17392055
>>17392069
Broooo if anything, back then men were more worried about homosexuality. Wasnt it straight up illegal? Why don't you just love the homo sex in that book? Its okay man

>>17394157
they thought of it worse than we do today, but men could also do stuff that we would consider gay today openly and in public, there's no chance anyone gay would reveal and flaunt it like that so they didn't have to worry about people thinking they were gay for holding hands or whatever, which straight men still do in KSA and india

>>17390899
>“Jerk him off” (Kindle 7896)
ok im sold

>>17394184
Cope

>>17390899
ok, I've no argument, you win sir.

>"erected crests of enraged serpents"
>"Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper"
>"Don't ye love sperm?"
goddamint i'm laughing like a retard

>>17392673

No there weren’t.