July 31, 2019 - Chapters Eighty-eight and Eighty-nine


Two more chapters on whaling and cetology are presented today. The first regards, essentially, the love life of whales, with male whales compared to sultans and females to their harems. The second chapter, covering the law of possession as applied to who “owns” a hunted whale, is more interesting. It ends with this observation: “What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of the law?” Here, Melville or his narrator realizes that the U.S. annexation of Texas following the Mexican War is no different in kind from that of Ireland by the English. It is not a question or right or wrong; it is merely a question of who controls what.

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