The Moby-Dick Bible
< Back to the concordance

Literary Motifs › Ineffectiveness

Ineffectiveness

1 passage in the novel carry this mark, in the order they appear.

Yet are there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose.

Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even more of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil.

Chapter 91, The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud · verse 4

Read in context >