There was a passage that struck me a while back.

In "The Mast-Head," chapter 35 (p. 133), Ishmael observes:

"In one of those southern whalemen, on a long three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves."

Things to look at:

- Melville wedges his reference to "hearse" in the middle of his litany of "small and snug contrivances," making the "hearse" seem simultaneously commonplace and strange. We imagine Ishmael gaining morbid comfort in the quietude of recent death, riding with the corpse in the hearse, gaining closure on the person's demise. When I first read the selected sentences, I thought that Ishmael was referring to a man's own death and his eventual hearse ride. I then realized that death would not lend itself to a place of "temporary isolation." Ishmael presents the hearse not as a vehicle of one's own death, but for access to feelings of calm and solitude.

-Ishmael's mention of "pulpit" invokes instant religious imagery. Apparently, he recognizes that a preacher can find a "localness of feeling" in his work, even though it involves metaphysics (far from "local"). The preacher shares his fervor with a crowd, thereby creating a very public experience, but his own immersion in his message is remarkable - the absorption akin to a "comfortable localness of feeling" (through