The Moby-Dick Bible
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Symbolism › Carpenter's Countersink

Carpenter's Countersink

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

This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous. How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.

Chapter 64, Stubb’s Supper · verse 8

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