August 16, 2019 -- Chapters One Hundred Fifteen, One Hundred Sixteen, and One Hundred Seveteen


Today’s reading consists of three short chapters – the first another meeting with a whaling ship; the second, an account of the Pequod killing four more whales; and the last a prophesy from Fedallah that Ahab will see two “hearses” before he dies and be killed “only by hemp.”

I wanted to focus here on the first chapter and this brief exchange between Ahab (speaking first) and the captain of the other whaling ship:

"Thou are too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"
"Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that's all.”

This captain views the men from the islands as poor enough stock that their deaths are not worth mentioning. The lines remind me of ones from Huckleberry Finn. After a riverboat explosion, a woman on the banks of the Mississippi asks Huck whether anyone was killed. Huck responds, “No’m. Killed a nigger.”

The same sentiment appears here, albeit in a different racial context. That Huck utters the line in Twain’s novel denotes his own embedded racism despite his love for Jim. Here, the racism is not ironic or unexpected.

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