Tuesday, August 18, 2015

According to Ishmael & Father Mapple

"Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shown certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom - the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow."

(Ishmael, sitting in church, describing Father Mapple as he is about to start his sermon; 
"Moby Dick," Chapter 8: The Pulpit, p. 38)

Toward the end of Father Mapple's sermon that day, as recalled by Ishmael: "…Now Jonah's captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers."

"Moby Dick," p. 44

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home