The Moby-Dick Bible
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Literary Motifs › Irony Of Refuge

Irony Of Refuge

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

But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Chapter 23, The Lee Shore · verse 3

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