Tag: rhetoric

Chapter 121: Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks

Robin VanGilder2 Comments

Alright, enough! Let’s get back to it.

I apologize for missing last week, I had a good ol’ fashioned case of writer’s block. Ther weather was fine, I wasn’t too tired, just sat down and… no words came out. It happens to the best of us. I know that forcing it is futile, you might get a couple piddling paragraphs, but they won’t be any good. Of course, some of those times I’ve been most disappointed in my own work was when I would end up receiving very good grades from teachers, so perhaps I’m not the best judge after all.

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Chapter 90: Heads or Tails

Robin VanGilderLeave a comment

The more I reread this book, the more I find that old advice about skipping every other chapter baffling.

The idea was that the book switched back and forth between narrative and non-narrative chapters, so if you want a “normal” book you could just skip them, but as we’ve seen that is not at all the case. Instead, what happens is that Ishmael will give us a chunk of the story, and then go off on a bunch of tangents related to that narrative, and then those tangents themselves. Moby Dick is a weird book, and you just kinda have to deal with it.

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