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Sexuality and Sexual Identity
(Click the themes infographic to download.)
The Pequod is the ship that launched a thousand jokes... jokes about dudes getting chummy while they're squeezing oozing gobs of spermaceti. Seriously. That happens.
In Moby-Dick sexuality is expressed in the social and homoerotic bonds between men. Frequently, it’s difficult to say where exactly the line between friendship and romance is drawn. There are men who describe their relationships with one another as marriages, and who show so much mutual affection that people stare at them in public. Even hunting and harvesting whales even takes on homoerotic connotations—all that playing with squishy sperm oil.
The Pequod has the potential to become a fraternal paradise in which masculine sexual energy, symbolized by "sperm," is directed harmoniously, providing a positive foil to Captain Ahab’s desire to harness his crew for diabolical purposes.
Moby-Dick can be read as a love story as easily as it can be read as a revenge story.
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