The Moby-Dick Bible
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Symbolism › Spermaceti As Richness

Spermaceti As Richness

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

He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the buffalo’s (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter.

Chapter 65, The Whale as a Dish · verse 6

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