July 19, 2019 - Chapters Seventy-two and Seventy-three


In the first of these two chapters, we return to the slaughter of the whale to get a description of the process by which the whale is hooked, in this case by Queequeg. In the second chapter, as the title suggests, Stubb and Flask kill a right whale. It’s an odd chapter indeed, since the hunt in much shorter and the talk that Stubb and Flask have over the whale’s body most of the chapter. It is agreed that the head of the right whale will make a good counterbalance to that of the sperm whale already on board. The narrator says, “So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again.” Kant is obviously set in opposition to Locke’s tabula rasa here.

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