I want to take us back to the passage of the painting when he first arrives at the inn, looking at the painting at first, it made no sense but the more you looked at the painting through the smudge and smoke that one would think the painting is ruined but when you keep coming back to it and stand there for a while, it all makes sense minute by minute.

now to my point, Ishmael seems to very obsessed with Queequeq, he can’t help but sit and stare at him, he is taking him in even though he doesn’t really get it/him.

“With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face-at least to my taste.” (55) then he later says…

“As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after it’s first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me.” (57)

Queequeq is the painting, he is ran through in Ishmael’s eyes but for some reason he can’t get away from standing and staring at him, he keeps coming back like a revolving door. He wants to analyze him and get to know what what doesn’t make sense on the outside to further know what the true meaning is, just like this painting that has been through the ringer but Ishmael still found beauty in it.

I also want to make a second point about how this book is very much the new romantics, this book is fully about romance and the relationship with Ishmael’s soundings, truly everything is romantic to him, he can walk the street and see someone being eaten and still find the words to romanticize it.

“this ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in the fog.” (46)

He truly is gathering this idea to make anything and everything sound beautiful even though what he is describing is boring.