For my final project, I will close read my sailing class. I have been taking it all semester alongside Moby Dick and I think it has been a good supplemental thing to do alongside reading this novel because it has given me some (limited) perspective as to what it’s like to be at sea, and the boredom that comes along with staring out at the water.
Thesis: Moby Dick is filled with chapters of seemingly nothing, of boredom, of lack of action. Many consist of in depth descriptions, or abstract commentary on the ocean. Melville uses these chapters to convey the emotional state that sailors found thesmelves in on these boats, where days of boredom seem to float on by, perhaps explaining both Ishmael’s lack of self and Ahab’s madness.
I still like the idea a lot, but a few things need fleshing out.
First, what do you mean by ” I will close read my sailing class.” What form and process will that take? I might consider Steve Mentz’s writing about ocean swimming as scholarly reading, as a place to start to answer this question:
https://www.hypocritereader.com/61/swimming-lessons
or
https://stevementz.com/swimmer-poetics/
or
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/once-upon-dune/ocean-swimming-eco-meditation
Second: Are you presuming that there is a single “the emotional state that sailors found themselves in on these boats”? I would assume not, so what is that state and what do you want to say about it and, more importantly, what do you think the novel says about it? You write, “perhaps explaining both Ishmael’s lack of self and Ahab’s madness” but what does this mean?
On boredom, see Jason Farman’s _Delayed Response_ and this good review of it:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/17/jason-farman-delayed-response/
https://jasonfarman.com/getting-bored-could-be-the-most-productive-thing-you-do-today-published-in-management-today/
A quote from Farman’s book:
“Waiting isn’t an in-between time. Instead, this often-hated and underappreciated time has been a silent force that has shaped our social interactions. Waiting isn’t a hurdle keeping us from intimacy and from living our lives to our fullest. Instead, waiting is essential to how we connect as humans through the messages we send. Waiting shapes our social lives in many ways, and waiting is something that can benefit us. Waiting can be fruitful. If we lose it, we will lose the ways that waiting shapes vital elements of our lives like social intimacy, the production of knowledge, and the creative practices that depend on the gaps formed by waiting.”