Some vague ramblings, senseless and aimless as a colorless moth
You may not have heard of this game, I certainly hadn’t when it came out. It’s a modest Kickstarter success from a few years back, at first glance merely yet another indie game drowning in labels. It’s a pixel art throwback metroidvania with LGBT characters and time travel! Very easy to overlook, at the end of the day.
Last week, I was told to “find my life’s purpose”. It was in a very well-meaning context, just a sort of generic bit of encouraging life advice. But it really struck me, because I’ve thought before about how the idea of life having a purpose at all is some real bullshit.
So, I’ve been thinking about something lately. It’s a bit hard to explain, having to do with a lot of sort of vague concepts that I am not particularly educated on. But I will endeavor to be as clear as possible.
This has to do with how evil is presented in fiction, and in media in general. Bad guys, acts of cruelty and violence, and those who perpetrate it. The power of aesthetics to shape the way that people view the world around them. The morality of using the finely honed skills of modern artists to push an ideological agenda, and what effect that can have even, and especially, when it’s unintentional. Continue reading “Aesthetics and Evil”
Today we’ve got another nice little chunk of narrative, after those low-key backstory and religious chapters. But, it also finds plenty of time for fun little asides and bits of philosophy here and there, so it ends up being quite long.
I’m trying to get out of the mode of going through the whole chapter point by point. There’s just too much in this book, and its very existence warns against that kind of close analysis as a sisyphean task. So, I will try to restrict myself to the points and observations I find most interesting. Continue reading “Chapter 13: Wheelbarrow”
With this chapter, we briefly move back into one of Melville’s more comfortable, more popular subjects: The south seas, which is to say the islands of the southern Pacific ocean.
As I mentioned before, this chapter isn’t an exact transcript of what Queequeg told Ishmael that night, but rather a sort of reconstructed narrative based on that, information later gleaned from Queequeg, and from other miscellaneous individuals who knew of the story. Continue reading “Chapter 12: Biographical”
So, now that our old pal Ishmael has gotten himself hitched, let us follow him into his marital bedchamber for a bit of intimate action. This is another short one, but contains one of my absolute favorite passages in the whole book!
Now that we’ve got church out of the way, it’s time to get real chummy with some dudes just bein’ bros. Just a real couple o’ old pals, pallin’ around! That’s it and that’s all, certainly no subtext here, no sirree.
These next few chapters make an interesting counterpoint to the harsh, literally sermonizing tone of the last little run. It’s a nice change of pace. Continue reading “Chapter 10: A Bosom Friend”
And here we are, at the climax of the most overtly religious section of Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. Now that the church itself, the pulpit, and Father Mapple have all been introduced, it’s time for the main event! Continue reading “Chapter 9: The Sermon”
Let us continue the Theology lessons, here in this, the most churchy run of chapters in Moby-Dick; or, the Whale.
This chapter contains some real meat in that particular vein, as well as appealing to a particular style of Christian aesthetic that I enjoy a great deal. After the doubts raised in The Chapel, it’s time to get a little more sincere, as the chaplain finally makes his appearance.
Let’s move on to some capital-T Theology in this next run of chapters in Moby-Dick; or, the Whale! I’ll say ahead of time that I am, at best, an amateur theologian, having taken only a few classes on the subject in college, and none of them even remotely relating to 19th century Christianity.
But, having been raised in a denomination that encourages scholarship of the Bible, following @benito-cereno for many years on this site, and listening to his wonderful podcast @apocrypals, I know a thing or three about the following of ol’ Oily Josh.
The Beige Moth 