Monomaniac

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...


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Ahab had been bitten, and gathered the crew to be smitten with hatred for the White Whale, as had happened when Moby Dick smited Ahab.

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Once a year there's a bad Hemingway contest...writers vie to parody the great novelist...I looked about the web to see if there is a bad Melville contest...seems his writing would lend itself to such!...above a fanciful beginning for one I might write...:)

Actually, actually, ever since I started going on about biting, (Maya, my dog's, biting, werewolf and vampire biting), I've had in the back of my mind that Ahab in Melville's book Moby Dick had his leg bitten off by the Great White Whale...

It is a wonderful sea yarn...

quote (from me)

Every night we lie awake in our bunks, the thud thud, thud thud, of Ahab's prosthetic whale bone leg pacing on the deck above drowning out the restful creaking cradle rock of the wooden ship on the lullaby of the waves...'Give it a rest, Ahab'...

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I did find a parody, the story told from Moby Dick's viewpoint...

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Oh for crying out loud, here he comes again. I have to say, this gets really tiresome. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a monomaniac, some single-minded bore with an agenda.

If the Whale Wrote ‘Moby Dick’

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/06/if-the-whale-wrote-moby-dick.html

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And the midnight youtube movie last night was Moby Dick 1956...actually it was like the 2am show, and I was up 'till dawn reading quotations from the story...both the movie and the book are marvels...much to think on...Ray Bradbury wrote the screen play, which is partly why the movie is so finely crafted, that, and the director John Huston, and the great acting cast...


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“If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.”

Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury

https://books.google.com/books?id=y3CyRurE7P4C&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=Peace,+Montag.+Give+the+people+contests&source=bl&ots=H6mn2pQ0eM&sig=af4J900ikKrA8d1nX6z8atksZSU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBmoVChMIgYP5roKgyAIVhRKSCh0e5wIp#v=onepage&q=Peace%2C%20Montag.%20Give%20the%20people%20contests&f=false

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The movie The Searchers 1956 has a plot formula similar to Moby Dick...in the Old West, Indians attack a farm, kill all the family, and kidnap two children...Ethan, John Wayne, takes off in search of the kids, and his search has much the same look to it as Ahab's search for Moby Dick...the movie was directed by John Ford, and again the acting is a marvel...both movies are near the top of best movies ever...and both movies, I find, are far enough back in time that they look to really be from the time of the stories' settings in the mid 19th century!...

The plot formula is simple...the hero is wronged, bitten,  and he sets out in revenge...Captain Nemo lost his wife to the arms merchants in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, if I remember right...

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In the initial draft of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo was a Polish noble, a member of the szlachta, resenting the murder of his family during the Russian repression of the January Uprising; but Verne's editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel feared a book ban in the Russian market and offending a French ally, the Russian Empire, and had Verne obscure Nemo's motivation in the first book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Nemo



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Disney's movie had it that Nemo was about clearing the oceans of warships...and it is in that movie I think is the arms merchant reference...Master of the World movie has that theme too...I forget just how it goes in the book...

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Nemo takes Aronnax to the penal colony island of Rura Penthe. Nemo reveals he was once a prisoner there, as were many of his crew. The prisoners are loading an ammunitions ship. The Nautilus rams the ship, destroying its cargo and killing the crew. An anguished Nemo tells Arronax that his actions have saved thousands from death in war; he also discloses that this "hated nation" tortured his wife and son to death while attempting to force him to reveal the secrets of his work. Ned discovers the coordinates of Nemo's secret island base, Vulcania, and releases messages in bottles, hoping somebody will find them and free him from captivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20,000_Leagues_Under_the_Sea_(1954_film)

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They're alike, Ahab, Ethan, Nemo...

Melville expresses why Ahab is so driven...

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The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. [. . .] All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. (41.19)

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Next:..I've found that some of the Ten Lost Tribes are thought to have been found for real!

DavidDavid
mobilis in mobili