Half-way Reading of Moby Dick - Opinions

[Geoffrey]

Half Reading = Around Chapter 69-70
-->Discussion started by Geoffrey Co
- I commend each and every one of you who have read this extraordinary and complex book, since it's morally a book at a college level basis.
-From reading half way through this novel by Herman Melville, what do you think of the book so far? (Look back to your responses on the quarter finished reading discussion)

My opinion: To me, Moby Dick contains one of the longest and least straightforward contexts of American literature, at least to my extent and reading knowledge thus far. It occurred to me that from chapters 1-36, that the writing style of was made to be lengthy. In a sense, Moby Dick goes through a complex descriptive introduction and then leads onto the overall plot. The conflict and plot of the story would be that Ahab wanted his revenge against the infamous Moby dick, in which started to emerge around Chapter 36. Soon afterwards through further chapters, in my opinion, I saw a change into the storyline by the plot and I couldn't put down the book. Even though the introduction vexed me to a tremendous extent, I feel that the chapters which passed the conflict introduction made up for the story. I also felt utterly depressed to hear of Ahab's story, in which he wasn't able to return to the man he used to be. Even I would be traumatized if I was out at sea and got my leg torn off by a giant whale; not to mention the fact that the wound wasn't treated till they reached land. The constant talk of whales honestly vexed me, but as the action turned on when the Pequod first encountered a sperm whale, the excitement rolled on in. The book Moby Dick is clearly for someone who has a great deal of patience and doesn't mind the extreme amount of unnecessary details or long descriptions. What I enjoyed mostly was when the book started talking about capturing whales in forms of art, which got me to imagine it. I kept on asking myself, "How would a whale look on paper? Would it capture the true beauty of the moment?" -This of course was morally unheard of in my opinion, as Ishmael reached me and said that you had to experience the moment yourself. The most sickening part of the story was when the whalers of the Pequod had to peel the skin off the whale while having to worry about the sharks eating it. To me, that peeling scene was like a Scarface film of having a man literally cutting someone to pieces with a chainsaw, which is pure violation and is very gory. Also the fact that Stubb had some of the meat of the Whale for dinner made me think of him as a Cannibalist. However, Who really doesn't eat a form of animal in which resembles a depiction of humanity in a pre-evolutionary sense? In my morals, the story had gone from vexing to horrifically exciting, which makes me press on towards the next chapters to come.

[Kevin]

i Agree with mainly everything Geoffrey just said. I am glad that finally some "action" was finally portrayed within the whale capturing scene. By the way, I didnt exactly find it hard to put the book down once it got interesting around chapter 60, I dont know if that was just a hyperbole or what, but to me it was not that interesting. Also another concept i find interesting thus far is the portrayal of the whales throughout the story. I think that the whales are not used as animals, but maybe used as a symbol something.