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/lit/ - Literature

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12434705 No.12434705 [Reply] [Original]

What the fuck did the whale represent?

>> No.12434714

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines.

>> No.12434715

>>12434705
muh dikkkkkkkk

>> No.12434719

>>12434705
His unrequited love for Nathaniel Hawthorne.

>> No.12434720

Obsession

>> No.12434736

>>12434705
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

>> No.12434744 [SPOILER] 
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12434744

>>12434736

>> No.12434852

A very large fish

>> No.12434936

A whale.

>> No.12434941

>>12434705
Ahab represents Joaquin Pheonix and the whale represents the N-word. Queequeg represents Michelle Obama

>> No.12434976

>>12434744
I too frequent /tv/ for the super hero movies.

>> No.12435217

>>12434705
God, nature etc.

Basically an unknowable force whose power exceeds human understanding.

>> No.12435247

>>12434705
a whale u dumbass

>> No.12435277

>>12434705
There's literally a whole chapter about it.

>> No.12435304

>>12434715
my man

>> No.12435311

>>12434936
This

>> No.12435458

Consumerism. There has been recent writings suggesting that moby dick represented white privilege. I will say the term "white whale" that oppresses the crew is pretty telling. Makes you think.

>> No.12435463

It represented people looking for hidden symbolism when there really is none.

>> No.12435466

>>12435463
Pleb

>> No.12435468

>>12434705
slavery, capitalism, God, and the American dream

>> No.12435469

>>12434714
fpbp

>> No.12435489

>>12434705
Yo mama's fat ass


Desu

>> No.12435984

>>12434714
Why is it every time I read any passage to Moby Dick I feel compelled to pick it up and reread it again? Is it because what I am reading currently inevitably pales in comparison?

>> No.12436011

>>12435984
I get the same thing. Moby Dick is almost unbelievably great

>> No.12436039

>>12434705
God/a higher power
It seems obvious so I think people try to search for other meanings, but I'm pretty sure this is actually it.

>> No.12436064
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12436064

>According to Dreyfus it symbolises the incomprehensible nature of the world
>There exists no grand answers but only subjective experiences
W-was Melville post-modern before modernism even existed?

>> No.12436114

>>12434705
> What the fuck did the whale represent?
This right here..

>*unzips pants*

>> No.12436196

it represents the Herman Melville's dad's penis. If you think otherwise, you are wrong.

>> No.12436736

>>12436114
Based.

>> No.12436946

>>12436064
It's more transcendentalist rather than post-modernist, but Melville definitely was lightyears ahead of his time. The fact that a novel from 1850 promotes ideas of racial equity, cultural acceptance and subjectivism is something I still can't quite believe to this day.

>> No.12436970
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12436970

>>12436946
None of those things are that strange for a New England Transcendentalist. Read up on Hawthorne and Emerson and Thoreau and the Jameses and Brook Farm and so on. And that's just me citing intellectual types in American Transcendentalism; the other face of the movement, mostly forgotten now, was basically early social progressivism (see pic related)

>> No.12437522

>>12435463
Just a good, straightforward story about a man who hated an animal

>> No.12437976

>>12434705
Me

>> No.12438008

>>12434705
race war