- p.8 - "let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet"
- p.11 - "bench on the Battery"
- p.12 - "arrantest topers" arrant: completely such; thoroughgoing; utter; out-and-out: an arrant fool; the arrant luxury of the ocean liner. toper: a chronic drinker
- "caperings" caper: a playful leap or hop
- "obstreperously" noisily and stubbornly defiant; aggressively boisterous
- "cofferdam" a temporary watertight enclosure that is pumped dry to expose the bottom of a body of water so that construction, as of piers, may be undertaken
- "brawn" solid and well-developed muscles, especially of the arms and legs
- p.17 - "commended myself to the care of heaven"
- p.27 - "patrician" (there are too many different definitions so i'm going to sum it all up and say) bloody rich
- "scraggy scoria" scraggy: jagged, rough. scoria: porous cinderlike fragments of dark lava
- p.30 - "Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say - here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these [the women mourning their husbands and sons who were lost at sea]. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here."
- p.36 - "In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers."
- "...a flight that paves its rear with gold."
- p.37 - "obliquity" axial tilt
- just the way melville describes the lamp in jonah's cabin is great.
- "...and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it."
- alliteration well done makes my heart skip a beat
- p. 36 - "Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance..."
- p.38 - "...not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts"
- p.41 - "Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed"
- p.42 - "enlargen circle of acquaintance"
- "..perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving."
- more alliteration: "...and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it."
- p.44 - "confabulations" confabulate: To talk casually; chat
- "We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal."
- p.46 - "vitiated" vitiate: . To reduce the value or impair the quality of; To corrupt morally; debase.
- p.47 - "nonce" The present or particular occasion
- p.49 - "punctilious" Strictly attentive to minute details of form in action or conduct
- chapter 13 "wheelbarrow" paragraphs 4 and 5
- all of chapter 14 "Nantucket"
- p.54 - "Tophet" hell
- p.55 - "stultifying" stultify: to render useless or ineffectual; cripple; To cause to appear stupid, inconsistent, or ridiculous.
- p.56 - "sagacity" The quality of being discerning, sound in judgment, and farsighted; wisdom
dec 22 2011 ∞
feb 7 2012 +