What's your favorite chapter?

>I felt just as enchanted by it as the whalers did.

lol sure u did lmao

fucking faggots like you are what has ruined this board

have fun being a normie

Did Melville know what he was doing?

I mean even back then, the homoeroticism seemed obvious; not least to the British censors, who cut those parts out of the book.

Like I said, he was hinting to the fact that men had sex with other men, and that was certainly very normal for a (er...) seaman. It doesn't properly equate to what is "gay" now, because nobody really thought of a lasting relationship between two guys because they didn't see themselves as gay—just straight guys having fun (check out Veeky Forums if you want a somewhat modern equivalent).

Melville's readers could read between the lines, but it wasn't such a big thing. I dare say most people expected it in the same way the Navy now is considered the gayest branch of the military.

People often point to the fact that there were anti-sodomy laws back then, and that's true, but these laws weren't specific and didn't target just men. They outlawed all sexual acts that were "immoral" and that included among even married, heterosexual couples. In that regard, there is a tinge of the modern rhertoric that it is the act that is sinful, but that a person isn't inherently sinful (identifying as gay vs. engaging in gay acts).

>People often point to the fact that there were anti-sodomy laws back then, and that's true, but these laws weren't specific and didn't target just men
The British ones were actually only targeted at men because Queen Elizabeth couldn't be convinced that lesbians were real.

I liked the one about the whiteness of the whale. That was deep!

Honestly I regret the time I put into this book. Some parts were beautiful but Melville needed a fucking editor and I couldn't actually empathize much with one incredibly articulate sailor, a cannibal, and a bunch of assholes running around killing every whale they can find because one dude's got personal beef.

If you haven't already, you should read the work of the New England transcendentalists and then read Moby Dick again

The weaving of the thingie (was it a mat? ) and the reflection about fate that Ishmael had. Also whatever chapter it is featuring the part about "the cannibalism of the sea". I have that stuff marked, but my copy is at my other place.

And the first chapter desu.

I really liked the chapter which is a story about a sailor that was picked on by his overseer for being more manly than him, then causes a mutiny. The sailor tells the overseer and the captain that he will murder them if they punish him. The chapter ends with the overseer getting eaten by a whale.

The one where I think Stubb makes the old black guy deliver a sermon to the sharks
so fucking weird

Loomings is a dope opening chapter as well. Midnight, Forecastle is also worth a mention for being weird af.

That one sentence in chapter 11 that is like three pages long. I mean, it's not even grammatically correct but I'm not even mad.

The chapter where Ishmael ecstatically braids whale semen and gets all caught up in fervor and literally orgasmic bliss over how interesting it feels

"Do not talk me of Blasphemy man, i'd strike the sun if it offended me!"

*moaning* "Yes Herman, oooh yes.. more.. please"

seconded

The chapter where Gabriel shows us on that other, infected ship.

I also really like the whale steak part and the part where Ishmael is orgasmic over whale oil.

Chapter 70 - The Sphynx

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"

Melville is theorized to be lowkey gay. he had the most homo writing correspondence with nathaniel hawthorne for ages. the section pretty clearly is about homolove

i liked that hilarious moment how the innkeeper rasped a bench with a wood-pane and smiled

*wood-plane

I like the one where the whale goes:
>WWWOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOO-OOOUUHH-OOUH-OOOUUHH

First whale hunt, with the men rowing with their backs towards this roaring sound of the waves and the whale breaching. Incredibly intense.