Moby-Dick Literature and Writing Quotes Page 4
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #10 Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing, had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. (110.19) |
We’ve gone through the whole novel assuming two things: that by the end we’d figure out what the White Whale means, and that Queequeg himself knows what his tattoos mean. But if a man can be covered all over with symbols that he has no way of interpreting, then maybe a novel can, too.
