Chapter 94--A Squeeze of the Hand

I just couldn't help but laugh all throughout this chapter. I felt like Beavis & Butthead in the back of the classroom. He said, "sperm." I couldn't help but feel like those South Park kids, laughing at all the little phrases and sentences that just DO NOT mean today what they used to mean.

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...

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!

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.

I just can't help but laugh. I know it is childish of me.

However, this is just an example of what these chapters are about and how they do absolutely nothing to the narrative structure.

Ishmael and everybody squeezes the spermaceti back into a liquid. They also mash it with a kind of spade and he "jokes" about how some men have fewer toes.

What does this do to the structure of the book? Nothing. Delete it.

By the way, don't even get me started on Chapter 95 "The Cassock" wherein Melville tells us all about the whale penis, even how some wear the skin of it to protect themselves.