Response Journal Week 12 - Caleb

It was quite an interesting experience, watching a visual representation of what we’ve been reading about for the past 4 months. While, with many of the characters, it was really cool to see in the flesh, many of them, I felt, weren’t good characterizations. Gregory Peck was a great Ahab, giving some eerie rationality to the crazy captain. Stubb, however, was not at all how I pictured him. He seemed more like a college jock than a jovial shipmate. I pictured him as much older, shorter and chubbier. Additionally, the Ishmael of Melville was betrayed in this movie adaptation. The movie Ishmael seemed much more of a simpleton; much too jolly and naïve.
In watching the movie, I noticed how much Melville’s writing style contributes to the novel. When you remove all the non-plot elements, as Bradbury and Huston did for the film, the movie is under 1 hour and 45 minutes, without cutting out much. It even has time for some wacky musical numbers, and extended whale hunting scenes (which, by the way, were very cool to see. The real whales made it very exciting.) However, all this being stripped away, the story becomes more of a simple swashbuckling sea tale (which I think we can all agree the novel is not). I also thought it was interesting that they changed the situations surrounding Queequeg’s coffin: that he made a prophecy of his own death instead of just becoming ill. Also the cutting of Queequeg I believe was omitted from the novel. They cut out much of the thematic material, focusing mainly on Ahab’s obsession with the Great White Whale. All in all, I think Bradbury and Huston did a good job of editing such a hard source material, and I’m even more interested to hear of everyone else’s story.