Tag Archives: Takeaways

Week 16: Final Takeaways

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This semester really flew by, and even though Moby Dick was such a long book, it seems not so long ago that we opened those first pages, ignorant to what would occur between the cover and the back. I really enjoyed getting back into the practice of close reading this semester. There were so many parts of the book I would have skipped over or not found relevant, but the structure of the class and discussion based part of the class allowed for me to see and explore parts of the book that I wouldn’t have on my own. I doubt I would’ve had the patience or motivation to read Moby Dick on my own, so reading it in a class and alongside others was helpful. I also really enjoyed hearing other people’s interpretations, and seeing how different backgrounds influenced people’s interpretations. 

This was an important book for me to read because, like many others, I have heard this novel classified as a great American book, a story of adventure, of hunting animals. And before this class, I accepted that as what the book was about. However, reading this book, and considering the historical and social contexts surrounding it, changed this idea for me. I am not sure what this novel is exactly, but understanding how these ideas of classic, adventure, canon are formed was important to me. It brings up the question of how any idea of anything important is formed and how and why we attribute value to the things we do. I think this is in part due to Dr. Pressman’s teaching style, since I felt the last class I took with her also prompted many questions in myself about how the world is formed and how little understanding we have of the things we think we understand as a society or within scientific domains.

We’re on the home stretch

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

So, I already have a strong idea of what creative project I want to do for my final paper, I’m just solidifying my thesis statement for the paper portion of it. I’m planning to re-read Chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale in the next couple of days so that I can have a solid foundation to build upon.

For the creative project, I found a beautiful set of book ends that are the head and the tail of a sperm whale. I was initially thinking of taking the head and using Paper-Mache to envelop it in every page from Chapter 42, then have the forehead read “It was never about a whale.” It would be set either inside of the book at Chapter 42 or — using both ends — I would have them as the literal book ends on a copy of Moby Dick. This works as a kind of physical manifestation of what people perceive Moby-Dick to be about, wrapped in the chapter that is the most well known of the book.

Through this project, I argue that Melville uses the whale to critique the expectations readers bring to the symbols – showing that the whale is never simply a whale, but a surface onto which meaning is compulsively imposed. The whiteness that terrifies Ishmael arises not from the animal itself but from the human impulse to project significance onto what fundamentally resists understanding. By wrapping the whale in the physical text of Chapter 42, my artwork materializes Melville’s insight that the White Whale’s terror is generated through the very act of interpretation.

As a kind of related aside: I read once that to understand the social commentary of a horror novel, you need to remove the monster from it. Whatever story you have left is really what the story is about. With Moby-Dick, which monster would you have to remove to understand the commentary on — Ahab or Moby-Dick? Or are either of them truly to blame for the events of the novel?

My biggest takeaway from this novel is that there is so much we cannot ever know, but there is so much that we can miss on our first read through. There are so many strands that Melville is weaving here, from the aspect of race, slavery, nation, capitalism, obsession, etc. there’s so much that you can see in this book. I want to try and read the book again with a different focus each time so that I can see what changes in my perception of the book.