I'm doing it

I haven't been posting, but I am right on track. According to my calendar, reading one chapter a day would put me at Chapter 22. I have finished Chapter 24. I've gotten lucky with some of these super-short chapters but that still works in my favor. I will move up my timetable.

The weird thing is that I am on page 140 and really nothing has happened. Ishmael and Queequeg have finally shipped off on the Pequod. We still have not seen Captain Ahab, although his shadow looms. This would be an awesome star-part, a la Orson Welles in The Third Man.

Melville was trying for the ultimate treatise on whaling. He even says so in one chapter when he argues "The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?" from Chapter 24, "The Advocate." Melville obviously is taking that burden on his pen. This dichotomy is especially interesting to me right now from my background: up in Alaska, whaling is revered; down in the Lower 48, whaling is sneered upon. Barrow's high school team was the "Whalers" where they still do it today--I went to a museum up there and everything. Melville is explaining how important whaling was to 1800s America, and honestly, I don't think early America would have survived without it. Alaska, especially rural Alaska, still needs whaling. For culture and for food and supplies. They use every part of that beast.

So it interests me right now that this book should survive for the understanding of whaling alone.

The picture above is courtesy of The Inupiat Heritage Center, which I have been to, up in Barrow, Alaska. http://www.nps.gov/archive/inup/inupExhibitsAldrich.htm

Up through chapter 14

I was a little behind so I just read a bunch of chapters together. I am going to have to make my vow of one chapter a day into 2-3 chapters a day. There's 135 chapters and I promised myself to finish before school starts again in the fall.

Chapter nine--The Sermon. All about the preacher telling the story about Jonah in the whale. Quite interesting actually, the definition of repentance he gives. Jonah understood and accepted that he was to be punished for his sins, and that is what let him gain salvation.

Chapter ten--A Bosom Friend. All about how Ishmael befriends Queequeg. I truly liked how Melville explains that you can still be a christian if you let others worship in their own way. That is being a true christian.

Chapter eleven--Nightgown. They get so close that they spend the night chatting in bed, compared to the secrets and deep thoughts of married couples.

Chapter twelve--Biographical. So Queequeg is a king's son, to be a king himself someday, but he chose to sail the world first. Interesting. Although I came up with one interesting dilemma: if Queequeg jumped a ship and stowed away at the last moment, capsizing his own canoe in the process, how did he come by those heads he was selling at the beginning of the book?

Chapter thirteen--Wheelbarrow. Ishmael and Queequeg set off to find a whaling ship together. They share a wheelbarrow. Queequeg rescues someone on the commute and earns respect and Ishmael is none happier to have befriended such a great man, cannibal or not.

Chapter fourteen--Nantucket. Just a quick glance at the wondrous importance of Nantucket in the world scheme of things.

Just a few chapters

Read chapter three a couple of days ago--all about Ishmael having to share the bed with Queequeg. It was there for a bit of humor and to introduce his friend, on whose coffin Ishmael floats to safety.

Chapter four was just about Queequeg waking up and getting ready for the day, his "toilet" as the book puts it. Woke up with his arm around Ishmael.

Chapter five, entitled "Breakfast," had the guys come downstairs.

Man, is this book slow.

I will get through it this summer. I vow.

Spouter Inn

Read Chapter Two.

All he did was find an inn!

Leads up to Queequeg though.

Here we go again

I read chapter one last night. Also read the introduction by William Gibson from 1959. I will try to get through that introductory quote section. Melville included a few pages of "whale" allusions to literature and the Bible, I guess to give his subject creedence.

I have to read the intro and quotes so when I finish I won't get laughed at as a technicality.

Summer vacation--One more chance?

Today is the last day of the school year.

I resolve to read Moby Dick cover to cover by the start of school in the fall.

One more chance. Even though my wife says I can't do it. Even though my fellow English teachers ask me why I am bothering, that it is a horrible book...

I will do this.

I couldn't do it

I couldn't even do it.

Here it is January. I started listening to the audio CDs in the car, of which I have two 45-minute drives (to and from work) to get it done.

I couldn't do it.

It bored me to tears. It may have been due to a horrible reading. But I just could not bring myself to put the next CD in. I think I had just met Captain Ahab and I gave up.

I need to try reading it again. A chapter a day, right? I can do a chapter a day.

Right, that's what I've said before.

The really sad part is that I have heard several Moby Dick or white whale references in the past few months that have really gotten my goat. I know the story and the references but have never read it.

Here I go again.

Mrs. Conley, I really despise you.