{"id":846,"date":"2010-02-21T19:15:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-21T23:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=846"},"modified":"2010-02-21T19:16:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-21T23:16:44","slug":"the-dead-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=846","title":{"rendered":"The Dead Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One does not often think that a creature still has the power to influence the living after it is already dead. What I have noticed a number of times throughout Moby Dick, is that there are a couple of occasions where creatures, usually the whale, can continue to influence the living after it is already dead. Set aside the fact that many parts of the whale are used by humans (oil, blubber, bones) after it had been killed, the dead whale still has the ability to instil fear in the living.\u00a0 In the chapter <em>The Funeral<\/em>, Ishmael explains how once released back into the sea, the body of the whale still has an impact on those who sail the ocean, when he says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDesecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war, or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fouls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale\u2019s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log\u2014<em>shoals, rocks and breakers hereabouts: beware!<\/em>\u201d (Melville 300)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While this is a more perceived danger that instils fear in sailors, the dead whale can also pose a real danger to those that kill it. In the chapter <em>The Shark Massacre <\/em>we see that numerous sharks surround the whale attached to the ship and attempt to devour the carcass. In an attempt to protect the whale carcass, the crew pokes at the swarming sharks with spades. During this process, Ishmael remarks that \u201cIt was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures.\u201d (Melville 293) Right after he thinks this, Queequeg brings the corpse of a dead shark on board (to be used for its skin) and almost looses his hand on the shark\u2019s sharp teeth. Like the whale, the shark has the power to hurt and to harm the living even after his death.<\/p>\n<p>I find this power and influence over the living world even after death to be an interesting concept and one that seems to be possessed by the whale throughout the novel. As Ishmael says on page 300, \u201cThus while in life the great whale\u2019s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to the world.\u201d (Melville)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One does not often think that a creature still has the power to influence the living after it is already dead. What I have noticed a number of times throughout Moby Dick, is that there are a couple of occasions where creatures, usually the whale, can continue to influence the living after it is already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whaling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":848,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}