Response Journal Week 7- Gabriel

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I have now read through page 319 in Moby Dick and I have read parts of the Mathiesen handout. I want to start out by talking about the first chapter in the Mathiesen handout, ‘out of unhandselled savage nature’. I really liked reading this chapter because it gave me a lot of insight about Herman Melville’s background as well as background information about other writers of Melville’s time. Mathiesen starts out by writing about how the American became a writer by accident. He then specifically writes about how Melville’s background wasn’t in writing and that he in fact started his writing career when he started recording experiences in his life. This struck me because I’ve read some of the early literary criticisms in the back of Moby Dick, and most of the criticisms basically say that the book has no structure and that Melville’s writing style doesn’t follow the rules that writers are supposed to stick by. I always assumed that Melville was just a free spirit, who purposely broke the rules of writing because he felt like it, and this could very well be true; however, after reading about Melville’s lack of a literary background, I started to wonder if Melville’s writing style was so untraditional because he didn’t know how to write traditionally.

I also found the last paragraph on page 375, which continues onto page 376 to be interesting because Mathiesen writes about Melville’s scrutiny of the difference between savages and civilized people. This theme constantly comes up in Moby Dick, and Melville seems to be as much of a champion of savagery as anyone in the 1860’s was, because he finds fault in western civilization and religion, and he seems to be tolerant and accepting of “savages” such as Queequeg and Daggoo.

I also wanted to talk about the laws concerning fast-fish and loose-fish because I wasn’t aware that whalemen had concrete laws that they abided by at sea. I also wasn’t aware that whalemen went to court over disputes at sea. I really enjoyed reading the court room scene and I thought Melville’s comparison of disputes over fast-fish and loose-fish to lots of other disputes found throughout the world to be interesting.