Week 5: Etymology & Extracts

I’ve been sitting re-reading the entire introduction, etymology, and extracts to fully comprehend on the whole deal about what makes Moby Dick special ( in some ways) and what caught my attention right away wasn’t even the actually story, if not the etymology section of the book. Melville starts with words, finding “whale” through dictionaries, Latin, and other languages. It kind of reminded me of the ocean because we are navigating and discovering these words before we dive into the book. Then he dives into the extracts, so many quotes from poems, stories and some I can’t even recognize, but were super interesting to read. The way he pulled those quotes it created an arrange of voices all trying to define or capture the whale. I saw a references to the Bible, “And God created great whales”( Genesis), “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah,” (Jonah), “There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.” (Psalms) and etc, so it made me question on to, why the Bible would reference so much the word “whale” in their verses? It just makes me more excited to read the book now! Wanting to uncover more and who Ishmael is!

12 thoughts on “Week 5: Etymology & Extracts”

I would like to see you practice close reading here– diving into interpretation to show us WHAT you see, WHERE you see it, and WHY it matters. Please see the WRITERLY ADVICE pages….

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Hi Darian! I believe that the importance of these quotes, whether biblical or not, comes from the fact that there are several interpretations, definitions, and meanings behind the significance of the whale. Stemming from different cultures, languages, religions, and so on comes a different meaning for a single figure, or lack of meaning entirely. Some uphold an animal or being more so than others, and I believe that Melville is trying to incorporate this into his text so that we can fully grasp the importance of the whale from a global perspective instead of a close-minded one.

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I’m so glad that you pointed out the Latin and biblical sections of the etymology! I have a fascination with origin stories–particularly Native American interpretations in contrast with the biblical interpretation of man and nature. The terms that they used to describe the creature, such as “Leviathan” invoke so much power through the language they’re using of its description. When I think of Leviathan, I imagine a mythical Kraken or some other ungodly beast lurking in the deep sea. Knowing that the whale itself is included in the bible [in such a way] was fascinating. These distinct choices of diction transform the whale from an ordinary animal to a mythical legend.

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That was what I was wondering too. Melville likely included these extracts to tell us that we are not alone, since the exploration of whales isn’t new. If you think about it, Moby-Dick was published in 1851, while the extracts date all the way back to when the Bible was written. It just goes to show how people were already trying to find significance in not just the colossal creatures of the deep, but the vast oceans in which they reside, long before Melville did.

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I like how you expressed reading the extracts and etymology as uncovering a big clue or trying to capture the whale. To add to that, I do think that by capturing the whale, we really are seeing the essence of the whale and what it stands for in the nation at that time. About the bible, God also sent a great whale to swallow Jonah alive because he did not want to go up to Nineveh and disobeyed God’s commands to spread the gospel there. With that, its very interesting how the medium of the whale is used as a sort of pinpoint displacement, or a change of trajectory in one’s life. Thank you for sharing!

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