/lit/ - Literature

I always took him for a whale enthusiast who couldn't help himself.

>>5767514
A lot of his stuff should be taken with a handful of salt. Many are exaggerations/Melville tugging your leg

Just so you guys don't forget

I lived during those times and I can assure not many knew the dimensions and characteristics of whale.

>>5767650
Damn you, I was just posting that when
>Duplicate file exists here

>>5767650
>>5768329

wow u guys r hilarius

>>5767514
I assumed with my pleb mind that all the biology/non narrative related chapters was there to simply build up the biblical awe of the creature along with the profession dedicated to killing them.

Why didn't he just save 500 pages and include a drawing?

I read that Kraken book and basically wanted to hang myself by the end of it, so sure?

>>5767514
Melville is extremely accurate as far as cetacean anatomy and behavior. Trust me I'm a biologist, and maybe one of the few people in America who has actually killed a cetacean. ( I shot a dolphin that had had its pectoral flippers ripped off). Melville knew the first rule of metaphor, which is for something to function as a metaphor it must also function as itself. He let us know exactly what the guys in the Pequod were--and were not--up against.

>>5767521
you are think he wanted to Fuck the Whale?

>>5769880
>you are think

Well, what am I think?
PERMUTATION OF THE ENGLISH

>>5769876
Did he spend any time talking about how superior dolphin pussy is to human pussy?

>>5769899
never came up. male dolphins are a randy lot though, and they will do women given the slightest invitation

>>5769905
Is this actually true? A woman could successfully fuck a wild male dolphin if she wanted?

>>5767650
le corn xD

>>5769920
A tamed one certainly, and a lot of them do. I don't know about a wild one.

>>5769946
There are women who fuck tame dolphins!?!? What the hell? I think you're pulling my leg

the most unexpected thing about moby dick for me was how funny it was. it has some of the funniest sections i've ever read

>>5769951
no, I'm not, though it's not as common as it was back in Dr. Lilly's day. But I'm sure you can find corroboration on the web, though I hope not actual pics. Some girls are really into the the big guys.And they're pretty much into anything they can get into.

>>5767514
>Can anyone weigh in on this?
Not really, it's just bog-standard 'worldbuilding'. AD&D campaigns do the same infodump thing, for example.

>>5769920
Whether she wants to or not, seriously just Google or YouTube dolphin rape.

>>5769876
>one of the few people in America that has killed a cetacean

Aside from the Amerindian tribes like the Makah in the Pacific Northwest and the Inuits, both of whom regularly kill whales. Cetecea and Carnivora hunting are a common thing in my area, otters, harbour porpoises, seals, etc., most guys grew up hunting them on foggy days when the coast guard and marine patrol can't catch you.

What type of biology do you do?

>>5770005
Field Biology, mostly having to do with pollution and invasive species along the Florida, Georgia and Carolina coasts. I work more with turtles than Cetaceans though. I test and diagnose and recommend, but my work in the pacific fishing fleet gets me called in for accidents and poaching sometimes. Once for a guy who had hooked a big nurse shark and thought it was a dolphin. The gills didn't even tip him off.

i read in an introduction to the story (penguin classics?) that there was a literary movement around that time in which writers thought narrative a good method of teaching. some sort of higher ideal type thing. it had become the fashion among people of that mindset to go on great asides and apparently, at least according to that specific intro, melville was quite a big fan of that movement around the time he penned old Moby-D.

i'm sure it's a bit of both though.

anyway, it always cracks me up when people try to justify those chapters on pure literary terms. "melville's really getting us into the mindset of Ishmael and his meticulous perspective, a somewhat odd perspective compared to what is otherwise a very crude, barbaric world; this contrast really accentuates the fact that we, the audience, are experiencing his peers and the whale through a very particular sort of lense. how much of the subject is actually poetry? how much of the poetry is Ishmael? such demonstrations and the questions they invoke really bring to the light the conflict of idealism and reality that pervades all literature." etc, etc. it's all a great example of cognitive dissonance. you like something, so every part's gotta be justified. but nah bro, now that we have google image search those chapters are 70% redundant.

>>5770054
tl;dr cut the fat, melville. cut the fat!

>>5770034
Sounds nice, I used to work in the aquaculture industry for Heritage Salmon Ltd., I have a BS in biology from UMaine Machias.

>>5770060

You mean

>cut the blubber

>>5770065
Never worked salmon. Did some time at a couple freshwater hatcheries though. It's fun if you like wandering the barrier islands hoping not to run into smugglers. I've been as far north as Rockport, which is pretty nice this time of year if you stay out of the water.

am i wrong in supposing (regarding the tone of the novel) that the narrator is always being half in earnest half tongue in cheek

>>5770081
Rockport is great, I'm farther up in the Downeast region.

>>5770054
In other words literary criticism is art of bullshitting, making something out of nothing.
It disgusts me that so many fall for that death of the author shit on here, fucking braindead college undergrads.

>>5770276
Oh yes, so art should follow the is/is not constraints of syllogistic logic. Bravo you western-indoctrinated autist

>>5769880
i am think he was in wanting to be Fuck of the whale

>>5770276
>stemfags posting on lit

>>5769966
Good.

>>5770367
it's not that it HAS to follow such constraints. you're free to do what you wish. but it's just a fact that once you step out of the bounds of the regular framework, you've moved in to a territory that almost no one gives a shit about.