queequeg – The Beige Moth

Chapter 130: The Hat

February 23, 2025 Robin VanGilder3 Comments

Another week gone by of 2025, and the world continues to fall into madness.

But at least my little slice of it is relatively calm and peaceful. It’s pouring down rain here today, and will be for the next week or so, and I love it. My favorite weather, as a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. Even living in the middle of a city, there’s a certain peaceful coziness that comes from settling down inside on such a day that is utterly unmatched, at least in my personal experience.

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Chapter 126: The Life-Buoy

October 27, 2024 Robin VanGilder4 Comments

Blehh, I’ve got my first cold of the fall season.

Thankfully, it’s not a bad one. Just enough to give me a bit of a snuffle and make me feel more tired than usual. It’s very annoying, honestly. Not bad enough to take time off of work, but I still don’t want to go out except when it’s necessary, and I still feel worse than usual when I am at work. Ah well, could certainly be worse!

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Chapter 110: Queequeg in his Coffin

March 26, 2024 Robin VanGilderLeave a comment

The pieces are starting to fall into place.

It’s funny, so much of this book is either vague and philosophical, blowing out its themes to a vast scope, or extremely mundane and specific, that one quite forgets that there’s an actual plot going on, and certain things must be set up for it to conclude. Not that we’re ever going to fully get away from Ishmael’s philosophical reveries, of course. Yet, this is one such chapter, containing a pivotal development that will resonate with the inevitable end of this tale.

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Chapter 102: A Bower in the Arascides

June 4, 2023 Robin VanGilder1 Comment

Guhh, it’s hot.

The one bad thing about living in this apartment, rather than at my parents’ place in West Seattle, is that it gets hotter and stays hot longer. We always had a nice breeze coming off the water, but now I’m inland! A who two or three miles from the Salish Sea, probably! Merely on a river valley… alas! Anyway, I’ll go turn my fan on and we can get to the business at hand.

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Chapter 99: The Doubloon

March 26, 2023 Robin VanGilder5 Comments

Hoo boy, this is a big one.

I’ve really got my work cut out for me this time ’round. This is a very important and fascinating chapter, and has been the subject of a lot of study and discussion over the years. It’s not hard to see why, there’s obviously a lot going on here, and I will do my level best to untangle it, and perhaps offer a bit of my own commentary on top of all the others.

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Chapter 96: The Try-Works

March 5, 2023March 6, 2023 Robin VanGilder4 Comments

Okay, okay, I had my fun, let’s get back to serious business.

Honestly, I got most of the way into writing a big thoughtful analysis of the last chapter, but it really comes down to that little joke. That’s all ya need to know to unravel everything. I only get to do that once, I think, the inverse of my old post where I spun like 2000 words out of a one-paragraph chapter. Ah, that was a good one.

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Chapter 87: The Grand Armada

February 3, 2022November 6, 2022 Robin VanGilder1 Comment

We’re finally out of the non-narrative chapters! Enough about whale anatomy, lets get back to story, shall we? Or, at any rate, some interesting disconnected incidents which the Pequod had while sailing about the ocean.

This one is pretty lengthy, and pretty thrilling. It’s one that never makes it into the filmed adaptations, which is a shame because it’s so very dramatic. Then again, there hasn’t been one since the advent of CG, you could really do it justice now. Of course, Moby Dick is probably unfilmable, or would require more of a broad TV approach to really do justice.

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Chapter 84: Pitchpoling

November 30, 2020November 6, 2022 Robin VanGilder2 Comments

Ah, after a couple of chapters of non-narrative philosophizing, we get back to a bit of whale hunting.

This one is kind of tricky, I’m not sure if I’m really going to be able to wring a lot of philosophical meaning out of it, but there is a mystery to be solved. Namely: what the heck is pitchpoling, actually? Let’s get into it. Continue reading “Chapter 84: Pitchpoling” →

Chapter 78: Cistern and Buckets

August 24, 2020 Robin VanGilder2 Comments

Ah, here we go, back to action!

Yes, after a few chapters in a row of straight philosophizing, Ishmael has deigned to give us some more Things That Actually Happened on his fateful whaling voyage. I often wonder how much of the initial poor reception of this book would have been mitigated if Melville mixed these two modes of writing together more evenly. I remember hearing that it went narrative and non-narrative every other chapter, but that’s obviously not true.

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Chapter 72: The Monkey-Rope

July 22, 2020 Robin VanGilderLeave a comment

Let’s keep this train rollin’.

monkey1

Today’s chapter is back in more grounded territory, after the high-minded philosophy of the last few. Just some good ol’ fashioned whale butchering shenanigans with Ishmael and Queequeg. Remember them? The ostensible deuteragonists of this book? They’re back! Continue reading “Chapter 72: The Monkey-Rope” →