August 3, 2019 - Chapters Ninety-two and Ninety-three

Two more chapters discuss, first, ambergris and its value and, second, an incident in which Pip, one of the black crewmen, learns his value. I found particular humor in the scatology of the following line from the first chapter: “How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.” In the second chapter, racism returns with a vengeance in Stubb’s admonition to Pipe that “a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama.” Nevertheless, before this statement, our narrator says, “ For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days.” Whether this is Ishmael’s (or other narrator’s) personal view of what life is like for most black Americans or what the narrator believes it should be like is unclear. Nevertheless, it’s troubling. While Pip survives the chapter, we are told before it closes that more misfortunate is coming.