Ease Your Way In, The Water's Fine*

*Apparently I'm saving my posts as drafts instead of actually posting them...

Obligatory picture of a whale

So far I'm really enjoying Moby Dick. Reading the other posts, it looks like the Ishmael/Queequeg relationship has been pretty well covered. I too am interested in and wonder what will come of their friendship in later chapters. Victoria and Cheri have written a great posts, check them out.

I want to focus on the  etymology and extract portion of the book. I will admit to skipping my fair share of prologues when reading for pleasure. I am especially guilty of this when it comes to reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series... When I start a book I am overly eager to get into the story and the characters, I don't need a play-by-play of the last hundred years of history to understand that one group of people is at war with  another and why it's such a big deal that these two people are friends-let's get on with the story. But, seeing as I'm reading this book for a class where the professors specifically told us not to skip the etymology and extracts, I, wishing to receive a passing grade at the end of the semester, complied.

I have to say that I'm glad I did. It is interesting to me how Melville presents things-it sets up the tone of the book and gets you ready for the rambling and tangential nature of what is to come.

The dizzying array of quotes about whales astounds me. Call it a product of growing up with the internet, but I can't imagine how long it took to find all of those quotes without the help of Google or [insert your preferred search engine]. The range of his sources from the Bible to Shakespeare and various books about whaling is impressive. Seeing a sampling of the many times a whale is mentioned throughout literature highlights mankind's fascination with them and, I assume,  provides us with examples of the different perspectives Melville plans to employ.

What was your favorite whale quote?

Mine was " The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet," Baron Cuvier (xlx) - It's short, simple, to the point, and mammiferous is such a great word!