Tag Archives: Sailing

Final Essay Proposal

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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. 

Thanksgiving Week

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What do you need to do/learn for your final project?

For my final project, I am thinking about close reading the bay/boat when I go to my next sailing class, and writing something about that. Whenever I am at that class, I always think about Moby Dick because of how boring it is. We are using the wind to sail as they did back then, and I swear it is the most boring thing ever. We rig the boat, and then sail around Mission Bay for like an hour, and all I think is that everyone on that boat in Moby Dick must’ve been on the border of insanity and I can understand why Ahab lost it. Because staring at the water going by, the sunlight reflecting off of it, and literally nothing happening except just trying to catch wind and steer somewhere, is horribly boring. I think I want to observe this boredom in parallel to the chapters in Moby Dick that are, also, dreadfully boring, dragging on, slowly floating through page after page of nothingness.

I think sailing also gave me a lot of context for this novel. Even though it was just on the bay, it did allow me to imagine how it would be if the water just stretched on and on for miles, as well as how fluid of a state the water is in. I can always reach down and touch it, but it never stays in one place.

Chapter 35: A Life Dedicated to the Sea!

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As I was reading through chapter 35, The Mast-Head, Melville begins to describe the sailors on the ship and how they were so dedicated to their life of sailing. I thought that this section was a great description of how the saliors must have been going through on thier ship!

“In one of those southern whaleman, on a long, three or four years voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the masthead with amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a century box, a pulpit, a coach or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves,”

I can truly believe that the men on these vessels were extremely exhausted from being out in the ocean for so long. They most likely wanted to go back to their town which was dreary and plain similar to what they are currently experiencing on the ship. Traveling very far distances in a boat for months on end in many different ocean conditions must have been a lot on them. Melville even describes how sad the living quality was on the sailing boats as well. These boats must have been very dreary and not full of much color and felt more like a very plain house which they might have been used to. The fact that he describes the place where many men would spend a lot of their time as “destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness” says a lot of how the Pequod must have also been like. I can imagine that it was not very comfortable either and they might not have had their own personal space due to how many people were abord. These men might have grown depressed being on the ship for that long and being surrounded with something that they had to become comfortable in for so long.