The Phrenological Journal & Haunted Typebox Blog » or the whale http://www.hauntedtypebox.com/blog Dispatches from the Lost Hat Department Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:55:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Ishmael at sea http://www.hauntedtypebox.com/blog/2009/10/25/ishmael-at-sea/ http://www.hauntedtypebox.com/blog/2009/10/25/ishmael-at-sea/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:44:24 +0000 Haunted Typeboxer http://www.hauntedtypebox.com/blog/2009/10/25/ishmael-at-sea/ As Ishmael takes to the sea, the style of narrative changes. On land a somewhat ecstatic, idiosyncratic narrator, at sea a man of ceremony, classification, strategy, ologies. He takes to the sea to escape a kind of death. On the Pequod he is outside of himself, even omniscient. Here too he brings us his text-within-text, his cetology (whose own form ‘quarto’ and ‘folio’ are noted just as the whales inside).

Ishmael notes the order of the Pequod, describes its society and stratifications at length. Just as the ship has unspoken orders, the ship brings order to our Ishmael.

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