Reposted by Brandy Schillace
Brandy Schillace
@bschillace.brandyschillace.com
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Author, Historian, Novelist. New mystery: THE DEAD COME TO STAY; New nonfic: THE INTERMEDIARIES🏳️⚧️. As seen on THE UNBELIEVABLE & SECRETS DECLASSIFIED. Bylines @SciAm @WSJ @wired 🧪🗃️Social justice & equity (she/her) #Autistic #NB brandyschillace.com
![gender is to differentiate him. Ish-mael's quest for the white whale is also a quest for self, and his status as "orphan" is part of the process of defining him against the mooring terms [page 100] of acculturation.
The existence of masculine and feminine within each character-and the competing representations of gigantic and miniature in the text-reveal an inability to fix the individual self permanently "adrift." Though the Pequod is life miniaturized, it is nevertheless a dramatic exemplification of the American ideal as Melville envisioned it. Here is a masculine world; here is a spiritual quest; here is man pitted against the elements and ready to democratize and civilize the world beyond. However, the tale does not unfold in that valorized direction. The Pequod is not on a mission for democ-racy-in fact it is ruled by a "despot."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:l5lyjtzvlwmnyhi2bn4cxiyk/bafkreifl7xx3gxb2inpxa7vir4swkftmqukkr5t7wiaddyhqazxkv7ncye)
!["In me divine maganimities (sic) are spontaneous and instantaneous […] I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God’s. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb."
—Herman Melville, Letter to Hawthorne, November 1851](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:l5lyjtzvlwmnyhi2bn4cxiyk/bafkreihbkjx6wyjqmgjsides3qwlgs7zbsz5mslicsjzw4xqpbsivlrs7m)
