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I am going to recap what's happened up to page 248 in my copy of mobi dick, and I want people to tell me if there's some big themes that I've missed. I mean, I get what's happening in the story, but it seems like a lot of the deeper overarching themes are pretty much going over my head. If you could help tell me what some of the themes leading up to the part I'm at right now are, that'd be great.
ishmael introduces himself. he decides that he doesn't want to sail out of new hampture, but instead wants to sail out of nantucket because it has more history and was where whailing started. in an inn called coffin or something, after wandering around the city, he goes inside and stares at an ominous picture, then he talks to the owner about sharing a room with someone. He thought he was going to share a room with one of the guys at the end of the bar, but he went out again and didn't seem to come back.
He didn't like the idea of sharing a bed with another guy, so instead he decided that would go and sleep on a bench, but there was a terrible freezing draft, so instead he decided that he would sleep with another guy anyways. The guy he was sleeping with was quequeg, who at first freaked out when he saw him sleeping in his bed and ishmael had to call up the landlord to keep quequeg from killing him with a hatchet (quequeg is also a severed head sailsmen), but in the end quequeg and him were buddies and sort of shared a semi gay loving friendship with each other.
They went to church and the preacher said all this shit about god which was pretty evangelical and conservative in nature (as opposed to ishmael's more liberal nature) and he also shared in a ritual with quequeg which was a pagan ritual with the small wooden negro statue. Ishmael figured that he would simply respect quequeg's religious practices because he respects people's beliefs, and since they were friends he didn't want to be rude. They decided that they would sail out on the ship with each other, and it was ishmael's job to go and pick out the ship they were sailing on, quequeg's wooden statue told quequeg he must do it.
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On the nights leading up to shipping out, they stayed in a small inn somewhere that was recommended by the owner of the coffin inn, and while there they had to tear down a door, because quequeg was meditating and fasting all day in one position, and they thought that he had committed suicide because someone who had stayed in that inn before committed suicide and quequeg's speer was missing from downstairs, but it turned out that he was just fasting. Before they left for the ship, a strange man came up and warned ishmael and quequeg about the journey, and the prophecy that was fulfilled when ahab had his leg severed off by the whale. Thus proceeds the journey, where it takes a while for ahab to come out of the cabin.
Then, after a while ahab decides that not even smoking or looking out the back window of the boat brought him and comfort or love of the beauty around him, because all he could think about was how fucking mobi dick bit his leg off. So he goes up on deck and nails a piece of gold to the wall and tells everyone that they're on a hunt for mobi dick, and everyone is really happy about the hunt and excited, except for starbuck who's like "bitch I'm here to make money, not carry out your 'payback' to some stupid mindless whale". Then they have a party down below and ahab talks about how unhappy he is again, and a squall hits. Then ishmael talks about how dangerous moby dick is.
That's how far I am into the story for now.
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>>8519241
>mobi
is this a meme or what?
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>>8519958
Oh shit, mobi is a book file format. It's moby isn't it.
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>going to the extent of recapping the entire plot so far just to get comments from strangers who may or may not be idiots
Just read a version with commentary, yo. Mine is by Harold Beaver and it's pretty terse and cryptic in its own right, which adds to the fun. Would definitely suggest things you're missing, though.
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>>8520051
Typing is very easy for me, it's okay.
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