MDDM Ch. 6 Questions

[jbor]

1) Why is "Philadelphia Soap" a "Byword ... of low Quality" (47.19)? Is
there anything beyond the literal explanation of this reference?

2) What does Wicks mean when he describes his unpleasant shipboard
incarceration as being "the very given conditions of the 'ordinary World'"
(48.19)?

3) Why is the age ("36" - is it his age? why not his name as well?) of the
captain of the *Brilliant* reported like this in the text? (49.1)

4) The Admiral's envoy makes a veiled reference to the "Winds of Diplomacy".
(51.22) What is he hinting about the undisclosed "Destination", and, how
does he know that it will probably be a "British" one by the time the
*Seahorse* arrives in Tenerife?

5) What other literary protagonist does Captain Grant "*pretending to be
insane*" remind us of?

6) Why are the "Madmen" aboard ship regarded as "security against the Forces
of Night" (52.14)?

7) What to make of the story of the decimation of the ship's "Military Band"
until only the lone fifer, Slowcombe, remains? The key of B-Flat major being
"the most martial of Scales"? The allusion to the "Hanoverian Fifer Johann
Ulrich"? (52-3)

8) What is the insinuation regarding "Soldiers' sorts of Lasses" as opposed
to "Sailors' sorts" (53.21)? What are "the reasons we all know" for the
latter lasses being "left ... unattended" (53.23)?

9) Any comments on Pat O'Brian, the "best Yarn-Spinner in all the Fleets",
who is spied momentarily on the deck?

        "Scribblin' again, are ye? More Sea Stories?" (54.23)

10) Wicks' (is it?) analogy of a board game seems to take on wider
significance: what to make of the idea of a "spoken map" (57.14), which has
been italicised in the text in the final paragraph of the chapter?

best