I am all in a sea of wonders

Some illustrations for “Moby Dick”

Moby Dick - art by Anton Otto Fischer (1930)

Herman Melville's Moby Dick: or, The Whale. Custom binding designed by Susan Ebanks and bound by Chaim Ebanks of Exeter Bookbinders; white Chieftain Goatskin leather with blind tooling, gilt lettering, and glass prosthetic eye, 2023. [x]

Part of an upcoming exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, "Draw Me Ishmael: The Book Arts of Moby Dick" opening on June 1, 2024.

We deserve a drop of sunshine now and again.

i think i will never be the same after finishing moby dick like what the HELL do you mean ishmael only survives because of queequeg’s coffin…….. LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN

It's foreshadowed during the marriage scene in A Bosom Friend when Queequeg promises to die for Ishmael if necessary.

It's also Queequeg's thing to save people from drowning. First the undeserving racist on the packet in The Wheelbarrow (the same instance where Ishmael announces "From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive" hint, hint, hint), the second is Tashtego in Cisterns and Buckets, and the symbolically important third... well, y'know.

He most likely learns about the predestined future sinking of the Pequod as he is about to die in Queequeg In His Coffin, then changing his mind without giving a decent explanation, soon thereafter has the vacant coffin - made into a symbol of sustained life by his filling it with food, water, and a religious item - made into a life buoy. Additionally, it is now adorned with carvings copied from the patterns of some of his tattoos, the lot of it resulting in him being able to save and accompany Ishmael even after his own unavoidable death.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I honestly was upset that queequeg and ishmael never got that much interaction once the pequod set sail, but the ending recasts that absence into a silence borne out of grief... or into tragedy - a silence they failed to break, due to separate roles or the lack of privacy on board, and that can never be taken back... I don't think I'll ever recover from this book

the other night i realized Melville lived too early to ever learn that whales sing and i haven't been okay since

dropped out of kill myself university to go find a fishing boat crewman apprenticeship cause noose 101 made me realise knot tying comes natural to me

"Unreliable narrator" is woke agenda. Ishmael, who lives on the Pequod and knows 10,000 facts about whales, is an expert and should be believed.

captain n his mates

“we need to talk more about pip” <- guy who doesnt have anything to say about pip but wishes so bad he did

oh my Lord, Pip! he breaks my heart and through his parallels with Ahab (he literally takes Ahab's seat in the captains cabin!) breaks my heart over Ahab even more!! 😭

I have this half-formed idea floating around in my head that Pip is an expression of the terror and cowardice that Ahab won't allow himself. Or Ahab sees himself in Pip, or idk. Pip was so afraid he couldn't stay his path - he couldn't stay in the whale boat. He couldn't hunt the whale. And Ahab has become more like a train than a man (he is always described as iron/metal - at some point he asks stubb if he is a cannonball) hurtling forward on a path he cannot veer from. Pip did something that Ahab cannot do - he fled.

Pip is a boy trapped in this scary dangerous job that Ahab himself grew up in. Ahab WAS Pip at some point in his life. Pip saw god at the treadle and Ahab has convinced himself he sees god's machinations too. They are both the "mad" characters.

When Ahab takes Pip's hand and leads him to his cabin, he is expressing tenderness towards himself and the boy he once was and ahhhhh it breaks my heart for the both of them. And Pip cries to Ahab from inside the cabin not to go on the third day of the chase!! Like an external manifestation of Ahab's own inner child crying out to himself. But Ahab was incapable of not going and thus destroyed them both.

nothing a november rain and a hot cup of chowder and a warm bed with a cute boy and sitting silently alone in a church and running away to the ocean and drinking heavily and singing shanties with strangers and standing at the topmast for hours looking for whales and making buckets of money and sitting in a circle squeezing sperm with your closest friends and finding and engaging in a multi-day thrilling chase after the beast that ate your captains leg and surviving the wreck and floating orphaned on the ocean for a few days can't fix

Ishmael and Quequeg in Moby Dick (2011)

op turned reblogs off :/

is a woman not entitled to peace in her notifications

moby dick summarized without going into any of its loftier themes:

act one: adventure story ft. unexpected queer romance between a quiet teacher and a tattooed butch cannibal via the "only one bed" trope. one quoted sentence to summarize: "better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken christian."

act two: national geographic textbook on the history and biology of whales and all associated subjects, incoherent rambling, in-depth studies of background characters we never see before or after, procrastinating the ending. one quoted sentence to summarize: "nor have i been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed."

act three: greek tragedy ft. queerplatonic romance between a doomed madman and his voice of reason henchman who literally offers to ride off into the sunset with him but who he ultimately betrays for a whale. one quoted sentence to summarize: "here’s food for thought, had ahab time to think; but ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity."

Found last year's The Counterpane illustration, @postmail . 😉

(I hate making beds, both in depiction and real life.)