We learn still more about whales in this section of the book, as Melville continues to share all the knowledge he had acquired during his whaling voyages. However, one of the curious aspects of the novel is how he discusses whales in a way that both anthropomorphizes them and transforms them into metaphor or allegory. In other words, at times he describes whales figuratively as if they were various types of human beings, while at others he uses whales as a means of commenting on some aspect of humanity or human society. This is rare. When an author writes figuratively — whether through metaphor, symbolism, synecdoche, or whatever — he or she is usually careful to make the figurative meaning consistently flow in one direction. Otherwise, the result is often confusing for readers. Melville, though, uses whales as both the subject of discussion and the means of discussing something else. Consider how these two approaches work together, contradict each other, or both.
Parts of Moby-Dick are outright burlesque, both in the sense of comic exaggeration and in the more modern sense of a burlesque show, which combined suggestive comedy of the nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind, more physical or clownish comedy involving dance, pratfalls, props, and the like, and sexual titillation (usually through strip-tease, which unlike contemporary equivalents never featured full nudity and emphasized tease more than strip). Examine any example of burlesque in this reading.
The final chapter of this reading is titled “The Doubloon” and is one of the most famous in the book. It is perhaps more often used as evidence to support the the contention that Melville was ahead of his time, that he belongs among twentieth-century authors more than among the writers of his own era. Why do you suppose this is?
Again you have the option to take any passage from this reading and re-lineate it as poetry. The instructions are the same: you must not change anything about it except where the line-breaks occur. You must keep the same words in the same sequence and maintain the same punctuation. If you want to add capitalization at the beginnings of lines, you may, though this is not required. As part of your post, you must also explain why you chose the passage you did (presumably, you found it poetic already, though you should explain why) and how you approached reforming it into a poem.