Chapter 30 of Herman Melville’s classic – Moby Dick. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments. Visit this page for the complete collection to date: Finding Melville’s Whale.
The Pipe
This is the rage of the Captain, the king,
no more can he find solace in smoke,
the serenity of the pipe
no longer his, he toils
forcing the fog that soothes
angry minds and stills
unquiet men.
He casts it
into
the sea.The flame
is gone.
This is sort of the moment that we see what’s going on inside of Ahab.
As a graduate student, I can totally relate to the “I can find no pleasure in life until my task is done” mentality.
This is around the point in the book where I started to get annoyed and realized how dislikable Ahab is. And I started to feel bad for the crew.
I really like your chapter summaries in verse – I’m curious how you’ll handle “Cetology”.