Response Journal Week 3 - Gabriel

I want to start out by saying that I found the Cetology chapter (115) hilarious merely because Melville has no credibility to talk about the classification of whales as if he were an authority. He basically plagiarizes a bunch of books, and texts written by whaling authorities in order to classify a bunch of whales he has probably only heard of through books. At one point he even disagrees with certain whaling authorities at points in this chapter, which I found to be absurd. I did, however, find one of the assertions Linnaeus made to be remarkable because of its precociousness. He claims that whales are mammals, that once lived on land, which is what biologists widely believe today. I also want to acknowledge the hilarity of the chapter in which Melville describes the eating customs of the harpooners: Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg. I found it so funny how they bully the little steward by stabbing him, and trying to skin him, but I did feel a bit bad for him because he’s going to have to deal with this bullying for three years, that are going to pass really slowly for him.
In the section we had to read, Ahab’s encounter with Moby Dick is described in full detail for the first time in the novel. The reader really gets to see the full extent of Ahab’s craziness. On page 140 Ahab says, “That inscrutable thing (Moby Dick) is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him”. Ahab seems to think that Moby Dick is the personification of some sorter of greater power that’s out to get him, and the only way Ahab can get back at all the evil in his level is to get revenge on Moby Dick. It seems as if Ahab wants to strike out against God. Ahab has directed all of the anger he’s ever had inside of him towards Moby Dick, so it seems as if there may be something in his past before his encounter with Moby Dick that fuels his monomania for Moby Dick. (156)
Another thing I found interesting was the effect that Ahab’s monomania has on the crew. Although the members of the crew know that Ahab’s crazy they were still riled up about chasing after Moby Dick. At one point Ishmael says that that the crew adopted Ahab’s monomania and made it their own. He even manages to convince Starbuck, who is very skeptical of chasing Moby Dick at first. Starbuck says, “The ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut” (144). He is basically saying that he feels bound to Ahab and can’t unbind himself. I think that Ahab is able to gain support from his crew members so easily because he himself is so obsessed with Moby Dick. He is so passionate about getting revenge on Moby Dick that it seems like it would be nearly impossible to go against him as a crew mate.