APS TOGETHER
Day 11
Moby-Dick by Herman MelvilleChapters 46-49
March 28, 2022 by Yiyun Li
“It seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates.” The moment of lull for Ishmael to philosophize: what joy that he and Queequeg are engaged in a domestic act of weaving.
“The First Lowering” is truly a symphonic chapter. Who conducts? God? Then comes the line: “The whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.” The whale is the true conductor of this movement!
Queequeg: “There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness.” Ishmael: “I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest.” This newly wedded, eternally doomed couple!
