The Moby-Dick Bible
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Literary Motifs › Nature As A Nurturing Force

Nature As A Nurturing Force

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

Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.

“Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!”

Chapter 116, The Dying Whale · verse 7

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