Moby Dick: Chapters 24-28

Chapter 24: The Advocate

Whale ships have a dirty rep...how is this possible? They provide the world's candles, explore the world's frontiers.

...here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Chapter 25: Postscript

sperm oil = sweetest of all oils = oil to anoint kings

Chapter 26: Knights and Squires

Knights:

• first mate: Starbuck: thinness...no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares; pure tight skin was ... embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian [ha...Death warmed over] thought...courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted

God is democratic.

Chapter 27: Knights and Squires

More Knights:

• second mate: Stubb: happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand
• third mate: Flask: very pugnacious concerning whales; ignorant, unconscious fearlessness...in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it

Squires:

• Queequeg harpooneer to Starbuck
• Tashtego to Stubb: unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men; unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires.
• Daggoo to Flask: a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread; Flask looked like a chess-man beside him

...the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores.

Chapter 28: Ahab

Ahab!

He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze...

Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an Auger: a drill-shaped device used for moving material or liquid along its rotating threads ">auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance.

OK then.

Moby Dick: Chapters 17-23

Chapter 17: The Ramadan

I suppose Melville is showing his prejudices here. He knows enough of exotic religions to know the name of Ramadan, but not that it would not apply to this cannibalistic exotic, tattooed islander who seems to have a mix of 'heathen' religious elements in his repertoire. I can't expect more from the times, I suppose. Even his narrator, Ishmael, who professes

As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical...

can't help but view these non-Christian religions as 'comical'. That's a stature of Yojo in the pop-up, Queequeg's god. I can't help but think of Indonesia, though. I do believe there's quite a mix there of animistic, Islam, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist religious roots. Poor Ishmael couldn't sleep well, thinking of his companion so uncomfortable while sitting in meditation all night. Never mind that Ishmael is the one that is uncomfortable.

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him...

The only one comical or frantic here is Ishmael.

Chapter 18: His Mark

Q demonstrates harpooning, and gets the job even though they only hired Christians. For the record, the pop-up graphic novel took liberties. I didn't think the two owner-captains were frightened of him...just highly impressed at his ability to hit a mark the size of a whale's eye. For them, thrift trumps piety, or rather, thrift has a higher rung within the piety ladder. Also, it was a dab of tar, not a fish, but I can understand the difficulty in conveying a dollop of tar without also using the lengthy words of Melville.

When truly big emergencies happen:

No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of."

Chapter 19: The Prophet

A cryptic stranger quizzes Ishmael and Queequeg:

"Yes," said I, "we have just signed the articles."

"Anything down there about your souls?"

"About what?"

"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,—good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."

I like that, fifth wheel. So true. Life's much easier as a Buddhist that way. What's with the silver calabash? I found an explanation here. There is more in that book's passage about Melville's admiration of Hawthorne as well. Tistig's prophecy? Don't remember...

The nutty doomsayer is named Elijah. I remember that significance. Elijah was the enemy of Ahab and Jezebel, and brought about their death.

Chapter 20: All Astir

Supplies for three years. That will cause a stir. Still no Ahab to be seen, but Ishmael tries not to know it bothers him.

Chapter 21: Going Aboard

Again Elijah appears. In the Bible, he was responsible for dead priests of Baal. Here, for loss of seamen? Funny scene in which Q would use a man for a footstool.

"Holloa! Starbuck's astir," said the rigger. "He's a lively chief mate, that..."

Starbucks eh? Now I must know. [insert Jeopardy tune here.] The business does seem to get its name from this.

Chapter 22: Merry Christmas

I might have been reading this on Christmas if I'd been up to speed on my own schedule.

And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other offices, was one of the licensed pilots of the port—he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in...

Cold Christmas, ice as armor. That must be quite a sight.

The owner-Captains are like mother hens, sending their flock off to school or whatnot.

Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent. within the year. Don't forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don't waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts.

Palavering = such a better word than 'talking' or 'chatting.'

Chapter 23: The Lee Shore

Bulkington? Oh, he was the aloof one.
So...to parse this out...the land seems good, a refuge, but in a tempest it is bad, for a ship. The ship must head out to sea, into the tempest in order to be saved. So it is for Bulkington, Ishmael says.

Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

...For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!

So vain? Is that the same as 'in vain'?
Apotheosis = such a better word than 'glorification' or 'perfection'.

Interesting choice of phrase: slavish shore. There is a certain freedom Ishmael is looking for on the sea. Is it the freedom from thoughts of Death as he must work every moment to live? Is it the freedom from having to think and behave only in certain ways when among normal people, among women? Is it freedom from creditors?

Um. Still no glimpse of Ahab. I cannot yet turn the page of the pop-up book.

Moby Dick: Chapters 9-16

I am so excited: I received the pop-up book for a present. (I got it the day after xmas because the weather delayed delivery.) I think Ishmael peeking out of the bedcovers is just perfect.

Chapter 9: The Sermon

The preacher sermonizes on the book of Jonah, and I find myself wondering, is this all he preaches about? Or are there other spots in the bible handy for seafarers?

Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God... And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

It seems to me the preacher is aware of the peccadilloes of his flock, and flushing out the story of Jonah with that. I felt I had to go look at the original, as no doubt it is relevant to the rest of the book. Again I was reminded of the travails of Odysseus. Odysseus and his men are shipwrecked (often) due to the wrath of Poseidon; Jonah's shipmates are endangered due to the wrath of his God. And it is due to their willfulness. Could this be an essential koan for sailors, that somehow it is in their power to save their lives if only they could fulfill the will of God?

And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.

Woes to them: who slight the living God; who are charmed from Gospel duty (does that mean not seeking religion because life is so good?); who pour oil on God's stormy waters; who seek to please; who worry about a good name in name only; etc. Oh, and Paul is a Pilot. So there's another spot ripe for sermons.

Delights to them: oh I can't list them all. Basically, who let themselves be held by God.

Chapter 10: A Bosom Friend

Oh, I believe Ishmael is falling in love with the Pagan. He can't stop talking about him. He is entranced by the man's hidden nobility. Queequeg is even phrenologically like George Washington. His uncouthness is more like uncouthiness, that is, not exactly (refer to Stephen Colbert's truthiness).

If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be.

Oh my.

Thirty dollars in silver. Uh oh. That can't be good. Which is the Judas here?

Then, oh my. (Do you see my hand over my shocked mouth?) They couldn't sleep...just had to keep talking. Why, it's like, well, Ishmael says it best:

Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.

Chapter 11: Nightgown

Confabulations = such a better word than conversations.
Ishmael = definitely a bottom. 'Teach me everything, oh Socratic heathen, you. Tell me what to do.'

Chapter 12: Biographical

Kokovoko = not on any map.

There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.

vitiated = corrupted morally; debased.

So Queequeg was quite the creative stowaway. How sad that he threw away his royal position in Kokovoko for the Christians, who "had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him."

Ishmael is not so smitten as to realize the skill of the harpooneer can be of use to him.

Chapter 13: Wheelbarrow

It's OK for cannibals to be seen in town, just not OK for him to be on such confidential terms with a white man about town, sharing a wheelbarrow and all. It makes me wonder if the landlord Peter Coffin had a whiff of the matchmaker about him, a wickedly gleeful matchmaker.

I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.

Oh, what a large harpoon you have, my friend. May I.....touch it?

One of the greenhorns mimicked Queequeg a bit too close to get away with it, and Queequeg gave him a little toss. While his is berated, the ship gives the greenhorn a big toss right into the water, and Queequeg single-handedly saves the day.

He only asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe the brine off; that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to himself—"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians."

Chapter 14: Nantucket
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it.

Lotta sand there. Plants must be imported. Nothing to support them but the sea, so Nantucketers became the kings of the sea. Oh, this must be Ishmael's holy grail.

Chapter 15: Chowder

Coffin sent the two to Try Pots in Nantucket. (Good to know from the annotations that this refers to the large pots used on whaling ships to render whale blubber.) The creative sign seems ominous to Ishmael.

The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving.

Argh. Ish keeps sending mixed messages. Does he want a glorious happenstance suicide by sea or not? If only the sea could take the decision out of his hands...

Eat seafood? Got chowder? With some smoked herring for variety?

Chapter 16: The Ship

Queequeg's god Yojo sends Ishmael to find their next job. (Why is Tit-bit obvious?) Of the three ships he sees, it seems he picks the oldest most clabbered-together rickety thing he could find, the Pequod, named after massacred Indians.

She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the Sperm Whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

What a romantic Ishmael is. He sure has a thing for cannibals, doesn't he? And nobility touched by melancholy. Ah. He is touched by melancholy, and he would like to be noble. He seeks that which he would be, if only he had that calm surety he sees in his new bosom friend. It seems from this description the ship is as much a character in the story as the people and the whale.

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen...

I can't help but think of the real live sailors I saw in Newport. It was early afternoon, and for them with their very early work day it was evening and their happy hour. They were brown and sun- and wind-scored like Captain Peleg.

...there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such eye- wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.

Marchant service. hehe. The Nantucket Quakers = sanguinary = bloodthirsty. ...but just about whales, apparently. A long back-and-forth with the other owner, Ishmael is hired...er...shipped. He hasn't yet met Ahab, named for the King who was married to Jezebel.

Moby Dick: Chapters 5-8

I am so behind already this week...but I expected so with the holidays. While I am enjoying the reading, I'm still doing a bit of procrastinating. I haven't felt much like sitting at my desk and typing either. Murasaki wrote in the comments about finding the chapel scenes funny, and I thought I hadn't read carefully, but I just hadn't read that far yet. Naughty Murasaki! No fair giving bits away ahead of time.

Chapter 5: Breakfast

...a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.

The annotated powermobydick explains bosky...forest-like...but not monkey-jackets. I did find my internal image of this scene funny. "Grub, ho!" The narrator sees that too, revealing the illusion of the saying that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. I have a soft spot for "bashful bears."

Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other.

Chapter 6: The Street

Extravagance and uncouthiness mixed...sounds kinda like the gold rush, or backstage with a rock star.

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses.

Is this bloom due to the riches, or the absences of their men?

Chapter 7: The Chapel

Memorial marble tablets are the first things to capture the attention of the congregation.

...how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

I am really taken with the image of faith as a jackal. This sets a tone for me, and I'm not yet finding this humorous. I think a jackal-like Faith has deep roots in this country, and it is not pretty. It is the kind of faith that votes for a president because he is "a man of God." It is the kind of faith that willfully puts others in harm's way to fulfill the beliefs of that faith. It is the kind of faith that will court death due to the fear of death. I wonder how this will play out, how Melville sees it.

Ishmael is merry at the thought of a dramatic valorous death.

Chapter 8: The Pulpit

The famous Father Mapple climbs into the pulpit on a ship's ladder and pulls it up after himself. Ishmael sees the pulpit as "a self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls." Like that fortress (see link for photo), this pulpit is a place to fortify against evil. Maybe I've been reading too much from atheist bloggers, but I find that more ominous than humorous. Ishmael feels more dead than alive, it seems. His bodily substance is nothing compared to who he really is. So is this fake ship's prow more real to him than the real ship's prow?

Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

Moby Dick: Chapters 1-4

I'm so glad several people are reading along. You can find the ebook here at Project Gutenberg. You can get the free audio download at Librivox. Perhaps my buds and I can read some favorite sections at our Sunday lunches. I've been advised reading this aloud is a good thing. I received an email from the author of an online annotation of the entire book. A person could read the book there, and show or hide the notes as needed. No doubt when I'm out and about and need a definition I'll make use of the handy Google text service, using d for 'define'.

A fellow St. John's alumn who befriended me on Facebook (yes I'm now a convert to Facebook) referred me to Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. He says:

Consider the opening line of one of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, "Cat's Cradle," ; "Call me Jonah..." Vonnegut simultaneously points to Moby Dick, and also to the Old Testament account of Jonah and the whale, and ALSO, to Ishmael, son of Hagar, ancestral hero of Islam.

I'll have to put that on my re-read list. He also pointed out Milton's neighbor to whom the book is dedicated...Nathaniel Hawthorne.

A co-worker who is also going to the book group said she got the Modern Library edition. It has great illustrations that help break up the lengthiness of the text. The professor leading the book group says this:

Part Shakespearean tragedy, part Miltonic epic, part homoerotic pastoral idyll: Melville's masterwork blends all kinds of literary styles to consider the position of humanity in a dangerous and threatening universe that bids to annihilate it.

Just a reminder, here is my planned schedule:

Moby Dick

• December 21-27: Chapters 1-34
• Dec 28-January 3: Chapters 35-68
• January 4-10: Chapters 69-100
• January 11-17: Chapter 101 to The End
• January 25: the book group meets
  

The Aeneid

• January 18-24: Books 1-6
• January 25-31: Books 7-12

Extracts
perhaps I'll revisit these later

Chapter 1: Loomings

"Ishmael" gets a certain suicidal itch, and relieves it by going to sea as a sailor. Interesting name this erstwhile teacher would use for his possibly secret double life. He contends everybody is drawn to water. "There is magic in it."

He finds deeper significance in the water in the tale of Narcissus.

But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Hmmm. The human propensity for water is as simple as needing it to live, and collectively, it allows us to connect to each other. I'm not sure this somewhat suicidal impulse to lose our selves in water as Narcissus did can be said to be universal, but Ishmael experiences it so...wants to experience it so. Certainly in a narcissistic way, he appears to take pride in his choice to be a common man, a sailor as opposed to a captain. It is partly the Fates (I wonder how much of Odysseus is to be found in Ishmael?) and partly his cheeky wanderlust that sends him to a whaling ship, when he had previously signed on to merchant ships.

Chapter 2: The Carpet Bag

He's from Manhattan? City boy goes on a junket, but gets paid for it, or so he makes it sound. But then, he gets to New Bedford, and we find out he has little money left and patched shoes. Has he just allowed his money to dwindle, or does a school teacher make little money? Is there more money in the dangerous work of the sea? Which is it, his seagoing wanderlust: a narcissistic death wish, or a need to make more money? He passes by several inns and taverns as too expensive and jolly, until he comes to the cheapest, Spouter-Inn.

It was a queer sort of place--a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling then ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft.

What is this all about?: Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sights, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

Chapter 3: The Spouter-Inn

Ishmael is fascinated by a painting so spoiled with smoke and defacement that you can't tell what it depicts. It sounds like a whaler's rorschach test. He sees in it a whale jumping over a ship and about to be impaled on it's three masts. All would be doomed.

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears.

Again I think of Odysseus and the weapons in his home hall. With him, I wondered how much of his wanderings were really due to fate decreed by the gods, and how much due to wanderlust. It seems Ishmael likes to toy with the idea that the Fates send him on this epic voyage.

I love this little glimpse of a barkeep's pecuniary swindling:

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without--within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom.

There is no room at the Spouter-Inn, so he is offered part of a bed with a "dark-complexioned" harpooner. The fastidious city boy emerges...he really wants his own bed, even tries to sleep on benches and chairs.

When a crew arrives and gets boisterously drunk, Ishmael notices one who holds back. Could this be the notorious Ahab? We shall see.

The potential roommate takes forEVER to show up, so finally the city boy takes the landlord up on the bed. Indeed it is large, as promised. Ishmael snoops, and scares himself when he tries on a mysterious garment that is like a cross between a doormat and a poncho. When the harpooner finally arrives, Ishmael quakes in the bed.

There was no hair on his head--none to speak of at least--nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker then ever I bolted a dinner.

Ishmael cannot speak and alert the man to his presence. The harpooner could kill him as an intruder. Finally he yells for the landlord, who just grins.

Chapter 4: The Counterpane

You know where a shared bed leads, don't you? Ishmael "found Queequeg's arm thrown over [him] in the most loving and affectionate manner." The patchwork tattoos all over the man blend in with the quilt. This brings up a childhood memory, perhaps a sexual one.

Ishmael was sent to bed early by his stepmother. Intense feelings follow, and he finally falls "into a nightmare of a doze."

and slowly waking from it--half steeped in dreams--I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken.

Ah, Ishmael. No wonder you are prone to melancholy which must be remedied by life-threatening work. Of course he can't move Queequeg's arm, and he wakes him up, then brazenly watches the heathen get dressed.

The Big Read IV: Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, finished

Leila got sick around the time it seemed everybody was getting sick, and dropped The Big Read IV on The Lottery back in November. A couple of readers still finished. You can read Patti's posts here. When I realized Leila stopped so did I, but I took the opportunity of a day off due to snow to finish my reading before I start Moby Dick.

Pillar of Salt

A husband and wife have the unusual treat of a two week vacation in New York. I find myself wondering if leaving their home is the leaving of Sodom and Gomorrah, or if it is the leaving of New York that turns her into a pillar of salt, or just what is the leave-taking and looking back? Perhaps it is encased in the very first sentence.

For some reason a tune was running through her head when she and her husband got on the train in New Hampshire for their trip to New York;...the tune...was from the days when she was fifteen or sixteen, and had never seen New York except in movies, when the city was made up, to her, of penthouses filled with Noel Coward people; when the height and speed and luxury and gaiety that made up a city like New York were confused inextricably with the dullness of being fifteen, and beauty unreachable and far in the movies.

The thought that the whole story could be contained in this first long sentence makes me think more about the pillar of salt myth. Just what does it mean that Lot's wife turned to salt? What did she see? What was it about her that makes her turn around? Ummm, I don't think I'll use this for answers. Nor will this bit of geological history give me clues. (Funny that one of the experts is named Mr. Harris...see previous stories about that.) Exploring these questions could flush out the layers in this story. It is definitely one I felt I could read again to find the possible moment in which she turned.

You really begin to notice the wife is doomed when she's the only one who hears people on the street warning of a fire, and no one at the party, perhaps filled with now sinister Noel Coward people, listens to her. She goes to the street, in her panic leaving her husband behind, and it turns out the fire is two buildings away. After that she sees everything disintegrating. Buildings crumble like sand.

Thus begins the more sinister stories, or so I thought after picking the book up after a long break. In the previous stories I looked for the environment as a metaphor of the protagonist. In this one, the protagonist sees the environment around her as what is going on in her broken mind, and she is apparently the only one who sees it that way. Scary story, and it's all in her mind.

Men With Their Big Shoes

Mrs. Hart hired Mrs. Anderson and praised the housekeeper to her New York friends before she knew just what a passive-aggressive scary person she was. She seems to be pressured into letting Mrs. Anderson move in, as Mrs. Anderson's husband is made out to be a dangerous loud drunk. Mrs. Anderson also hints that Mrs. Martin, apparently the store gossip, knows that Mrs. Hart's husband is stepping out on her. So which is it...is Mrs. Anderson to be feared, or is she simply opening Mrs. Hart's eyes to the ways of the men with their big shoes? Either way, "Mrs. Hart realized with a sudden unalterable conviction that she was lost."

The Tooth

Like The Pillar of Salt, this story was an amazing descent into the broken mind of a housewife with a controlling husband. She has a bad tooth, and he sends her on a bus in the middle of the night to a dentist in New York that he trusts. She's taken a sleeping pill, and her loopy journey leaves you wondering if she ever made it to the oral surgeon. While on the bus, she meets an intriguing stranger who tells her a lyrical anecdote about the city of Samarkand.

The way he cocoons her and watches over her, I begin to wonder if he exists at all outside her mind. It seems an awfully long bus trip...could her husband really have sent her on such a long trip just for the New York dentist?

As the bus started up again they slipped back into the darkness and only the thin thread of lights along the ceiling of the bus held them together, brought the back of the bus where she sat along with the front of the bus where the driver sat and the people sitting there so far away from her. The lights tied them together and the strange man next to her was saying, "Nothing to do all day but lie under the trees."

She makes it to the dentist. She's still always falling asleep, at the diner, at the dentist.

Her tooth, which had brought her here unerringly, seemed now the only part of her to have any identity. It seemed to have had its picture taken without her; it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified; she was only its unwilling vehicle, and only as such was she of interest to the dentist and the nurse...

"They'll take that tooth out," the dentist said testily, turning away. "Should have been done years ago."
I've stayed too long, she thought, he's tired of my tooth.

The story ends with the hint that she never made it to the oral surgeon, though there is a long passage of her being taken care of by the nurse. I think she was seduced by her tooth, which makes this a freaky horrifying psychotic break of a story. I bet there's something more going on there with Samarkand. Oh wait. Dim recollection of a fantasy novel...could Samarkand have something to do with the devil? This from World Book Online: Samarqand occupies the site of ancient Maracanda. Alexander the Great destroyed Maracanda in 329 B.C. In the 1300's, the Mongol conqueror Timur (also called Tamerlane) chose the city as his capital. WB doesn't say much because three independent sources must verify their facts. According to this wiki, not much is known about Samarkand, except that it's exotic.

Got a Letter From Jimmy

A quick little glimpse of a possible wife-beater, a possibly crazy wife sustained by fantasies of murder, and all of it held together by an unread letter from a possibly estranged son.

The Lottery

You can read this story here. I'll let it speak for itself. After many of the other stories, this one was pretty straightforward, and is apparently the one most read by kids in school.

Of all the stories, I think I like Pillar of Salt and The Tooth the best. I think there was a certain innocence in the women in these stories as their minds sent one to a bad place, one to a good place. Jackson crafted the stories as very visual at the same time she slowly reeled out the understanding to the reader that this was possibly all in the protagonist's head.