moby-dick Melville episode-notes premium
Symbolic Meaning in Moby-Dick:
See footnote in 001 Moby Full Text In Chapter 35 – The Mast-Head, Melville famously reflects on what it means to be stationed alone at such a height. He writes:
“There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea… And when thou gazest long and long into that deadly blue, the soul slides… Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”
The royal mast-head becomes a metaphor for:
• Mystical isolation
• The sublime detachment of sailors and seekers
• The razor-thin boundary between transcendence and madness