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Moby Dick Chapter 66 The Shark Massacre

#106: Mar. - May 2012 (Fiction)
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Robert Tulip

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Moby Dick Chapter 66 The Shark Massacre

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http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/270 ... m#2HCH0066

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in the present case with the Pequod's sharks ... the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.
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And a rather ouroboric image
when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed.
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DWill

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Re: Moby Dick Chapter 66 The Shark Massacre

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"Ouroboric," Robert? That sent me running to the dictionary, for sure. I still use a dictionary, by the way. I believe few are sold anymore to anyone but the superannuated. My daughter, who got a perfect score on her SAT verbals, has no use for one.

I'm still reading MD, by the way. I just haven't done well keeping up with any reading lately or with the discussion. I'm on chapter 86. It's a magnificent book. I've come to see it as occurring almost in real time. A whaling voyage is long; it makes sense that that a scribbler like Ishmael would need to fill in his time with many subjects tangential to the one readers are most interested in finding out about. But the Ahab plot is going to occur on its own leisurely pace, since whaling is a waiting game--especially when it's one certain whale you're hunting!
Last edited by DWill on Mon May 28, 2012 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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heledd
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Re: Moby Dick Chapter 66 The Shark Massacre

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Yes I'm still reading it too. On the penultimate chapter. So will re-read it bearing in mind the comments Robert has written
Life's a glitch and then you die - The Simpsons
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