Okay so to be perfectly honest I'm getting a little bored with all this chasing the whale. Although Meville’s writing style is engaging the book does seem to drag on a bit. I can’t help but think that the story could have been just as well told with less chapters or in a shorter story. I’m not going to try and understand why Meville wrote the book this way; I’m sure he had a reason for it. Although the action will probably pick up again; it feels like this part of the book is just dragging on for far too long.
One chapter in particular that I found interesting was ‘The Funeral.’ It’s the first time we really see what the crew is doing in a bad light. It’s almost as if the action is made to seem villainous; we hear the pathetic way in which the whale’s remains are just left for the predators of the sea. In this chapter the death of the whale is seen as something tragic and in a way anti climatic. Ishmael has this idea of what it will be like to kill a whale but the actual moment and the scenes afterwards are a disappointment. I don’t know if anyone else thought this but I felt that the stripping away of the whale’s skin was a representation of how the glamour or mystery of whaling had been stripped away by the first kill. It was almost as if the prize was not worth to battle to win; or couldn’t live up to the thrill of the hunt. I think in this chapter Ishmael becomes disillusioned with the world of whaling; he begins to realise that it is not all glorious and great but that the actual death of the whale is a sad thing.
I can’t help but think that Meville wants to foreshadow the doom that the ship will ultimately face if it continues on this voyage.
David commented on "The Funeral," too, Emma, and the let-down feeling that it gives. You're right about the foreshadowing.
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