Moby Dick

With tears streaming down his face, Patrick descends into the seventh circle of hell, violence. Auden takes his cigarette and wipes Patrick's face with it. With wet ashes mixed with saliva and tears, the duo encounters Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Ahab boils in an ocean of the blood of the whales that he slayed in his lifetime. Patrick asks Ahab of his fate and writes his second story. (Ahab, in my personal opinion, is a hero who raged against the nothingness.)

Canto II

(Patrick speaking)

It was there in the dark depths I did go

into the unknown of what lies below.

My ugly but gracious guide held me up.

With his sleepy-looking face and his eyes,

he looked at me and wiped my little eyes

with a cigarette he had been holding.

"Don't cry, oh good Patrick, there is still time,

to learn and to write great stories with time,"

barked Auden as he turned to the far left.

There in the boiling blood lay great Ahab

who killed his crew along with his own life.

Forever he remained in the whales' blood.

I walked up and asked his deep dark story,

which he told of how it ended gory.

a short story by patrick:

Call me Patrick. Some years ago, while I was mingling at the Spouter Inn, I heard stories of great whaling adventures. I heard stories of great men who caught great whales and of great men who had lost great sons in such journeys. But particularly in this case, I heard one that struck me to the core and now I live to tell this story.

The date and time was April 20th, 1851, at 16:20. I arrived at the Spouter Inn thirsty for adventure. After retiring from my acting career, I decided to go into the whaling industry. Nothing at the time spoke of anything more American and masculine than some good ol' whale catching. I thirst for the thrill of adventure. Up to this point I read amazing stories by authors such as a certain Herman Melville who wrote Typee, a story that reflects his time living among cannibals. That man was such a great story-teller, I wonder what ever happened to that guy. He seemed to have just fallen off of the face of the earth after the release of his last novel. Apparently his latest novel about whales is too weird or something.

Anyways, upon entering the inn I saw a terrific painting of a devil sperm whale being stabbed through the mass of a giant ship. A foreboding image indeed is what that image was. Fast forwarding a few days, I was boarding my first adventure aboard the Pequod, a whaling ship which belonged to a certain Captain Ahab. Up until this point I had only heard rumors of the great accounts of Ahab and his undying attitude to hunt. There was no greater honor than whaling on the brink of certain death and doom.

The story I share is one that brings lightning down my spine. After setting sail in the Pequod, Captain Ahab finally made his appearance. Ahab stepped out of his cabin, looking like a devil or a fallen angel.

"Here is what it is all about!" said Ahab as he revealed his fake leg.

Under Ahab there stood two legs - one fake and one real.

"A certain DICK of a WHALE bit off my leg! And I am here to get it back! In this journey it does not matter where or when we find Moby Dick, but we are all in this together! I don't care if it takes me one year or fourteen years but I will get him!"

The crew cheered but some started bawling.

"WHY ARE WE ON BOARD FOR THIS MAN'S VENGEANCE!" said one crew member.

"I never expected our captain to be such a nut! God help us!" said Starbuck, another crew member.

Being a person of sense, Starbuck went to persuade the senile Ahab.

"What good is it to pursue such whale? Go home take care of your family, Ahab! Can no reason persuade you anymore?"

Ahab looked at the member with glaring eyes.

"Oh please come home, Ahab! We all will surely die for your personal vendetta against a dumb brute!"

"Dumb brute?! That brute is the epitome of what I HATE! I will scout, hunt, and kill all the whales in the world for the rest of my life if it means I can kill that whale! Leave this ship! Your senses need you more than does my senselessness!" barked Ahab

After that RUDE comment, Starbuck started crying. All of a sudden, as if God himself sent him, the white fiend, Moby Dick, burst out from the wet water and knocked Ahab off of the boat with such force that his peg leg fell off right next to me. With Ahab nowhere to be found, I decided to take command of the Pequod.

"WITH THESE FAKE LEGS I WILL LEAD YOU, SHIPMATIES!"

"AYE AYE, PATRICK! AYE AYE, PATRICK!"

Vowing to never return home until Ahab is found or Moby Dick is killed, Patrick led the crew to perilous victory.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's Notes:

In my class Fate and the Individual, we read Moby Dick this week.

The opening sentence is a spoof off of Melville's opening sentence, where the narrator introduces himself with, "Call me Ishmael." It is pretty iconic and I thought it would be funny to have Patrick say the opening line with his name. Also, characters like Ahab, Starbuck, are actual characters from Moby Dick, and the Pequod is Ahab's ship.

The scene is inspired from Bharata's conversation with Rama about who is more fit to rule the Kingdom. After Rama made it clear that he will not come back to rule until he is done with his 14 year hiatus, Bharata said he will only rule for 14 years and while ruling, he will use Rama's sandals as a symbol for when Rama will be back to rule. Although there is no vengeance in this scene, I thought that the theme stubbornness was equally shared by Rama and Ahab. Also, both characters are heroes.

In order to emulate the scene, I took an iconic exchange in Melville's Moby Dick between one of the Nantucketeers, Starbuck, and the Pequod's captain, Ahab. The conversation between the two characters maintained the same exchange of sentiments of Starbuck trying to persuade Ahab to drop his vengeance for the whale just as Bharata wanted Rama to drop his self-imposed exile. In our analysis of Moby Dick, I am convinced that Ahab had to make his journey to hunt the whale mean something. One way to look at Moby Dick is a story about man's quest for meaning. Ahab's rage against the whale, portrays his anger against the void and nothingness. I thought that Rama's exile, looking from western eyes, was his own rage against a certain nothingness. Ahab is to the quest for the whale just as Rama is to his fourteen-year exile. Both characters exhibit voluntary will to do something that only means something to them. Although Rama's father wanted so bad to rescind his promise, Rama chose to make his father's burden mean something. In this comparison, both characters fight against the nothingness.

Anyways, so the comparison I made is Starbuck is to Ahab (the hero), as Bharata is to Rama (the hero).

I replaced Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, with Patrick. And I changed the scene up entirely, allowing Moby Dick to show up and knock Ahab off of the ship so that Patrick could use Ahab's peg leg to lead the crew just as Bharata used Rama's sandals to rule the kingdom. To summarize was happened in Moby Dick, Ahab lost his leg to the whale and his leg is replaced with a whale's jaw bone.

For the Inferno theme, I wanted to allow each part of this journey to go deeper into the inferno. The second sin that is covered in Dante is Violence, and I thought that Ahab belonged here because of all the violence he committed against numerous whales. The punishment is the eternal setting in boiling blood and I thought that this is very fitting for punishment for our good friend, Ahab.

I had a lot of fun with writing this second Canto and thought it would be hilarious to have Auden wipe Patrick's face with his cigarette since all of the pictures of Auden are with a cigarette in hand. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Also, the Spouter-Inn, which is the inn that Ishmael (the narrator of Moby Dick) stays in, has a picture of a whale getting stabbed by the mass of a ship. I added that picture of the whale getting stabbed into my story as well. I think that it adds an element of foreboding doom.

love,

pat

Bibliography:

The Ramayana by R.K. Narayan

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

image of spouter inn painting by Aaron Zlatkin

source Dante seeing the people boiling in blood