An Excerpt from Moby Dick: On the Bigness of Whales

It took our editors a long time to shorten down a classic like Moby Dick, while still keeping the prose style as dense and unreadable as Melville fans demand.  We are pleased with our work, it goes without saying. Enjoy this selection from Chapter 384: On the Bigness of Whales.

Whales, as elsewhere noted, have foremost among their many qualities a characteristic which can only be called bigness.  This was accounted by even by the most ancient of seafaring peoples, whose conception of the bigness and smallness of diverse objects was not nearly so refined in degree as our modern sensibilities now permit.  In fact, the bigness of the whale is described in some detail by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History as "exceedingley bigge."

Plate 54: A sperm whale, with a little bitty Abraham Lincoln to demonstrate scale. Abraham Lincoln was a deal when this was written, right?

 Whales are bigger than any animal and most trees.  Their bigness exceeds even that of many buildings, tents, smallish boats, or rail cars.  In my travels, I saw many whales, and while some were bigger than others, all of them left me filled with an understanding, nay a glimpse, of the meaning of bigness.  Even a calf whale, not a few months old, is bigger than five barrels of pickles or a good-sized horse.  Even in smallness, their bigness is apparent.

 The bigness of the whale extends beyond the fish itself, however, into an infinite idea of bigness.  Any one whale can only offer a fleeting glimmer of this bigness beyond size, beyond weight.  The white whale’s bigness, and the bigger bignesses which lay beyond its white and twisted body, perhaps offered the seeds of the madness which plagued our Captain.

From Moby Dick, Modern Illustrated Classics Edition. By Herman Melville, et al.  Ill by Henry "Soupcan" Sanchez.  Preorder your copy today!