Not P but Moby-Dick (41)

[Michael Bailey]

In the Atlantic where the journeys are shorter, you can live with a leak…

Even in the much bigger Pacific, captains may choose to utilize the pump in
lieu of repairs on long voyages, if there’s a reasonably nearby coast to
retreat to in case it gets really bad.

Is there more reason behind “settled and civilized” & “solitary and savage”
than alliteration & parallelism?

In particular, why “settled”?
Settled as in “settlers” like people have made homes there?

Is it setting a tone that the Pacific is wilder than the Atlantic, that one
could almost feel at home in the Atlantic, whereas the Pacific is more
exotic, more unsettled, “water water everywhere” & where there is land, the
people are as yet uncolonized by westernization/globalization, & thus
there’s a whole array of unsettling conditions, up to and including a white
whale?




On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 5:27 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> The solitary and savage seas are not the Atlantic but [the seas] "far from
> you to the westward".
>
> On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 1:35 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > That's certainly a possibility, but "settled and civilized" seems to
> > contrast with "solitary and savage" in the next sentence.
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 4:07 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> quiet,,,,not turbulent, no storms, etc.....
> >>
> >> On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 2:47 PM Mike Jing <
> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> From Chapter 54:
> >>>
> >>> You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic,
> >>> for
> >>> example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across
> >>> it; though
> >>> of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen to
> forget
> >>> his duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and his
> >>> shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all hands gently
> >>> subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from
> you
> >>> to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep
> >>> clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of
> >>> considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible
> >>> coast,
> >>> or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them.
> >>>
> >>> What does "settled" mean here?
> >>> --
> >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>>
> >>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>