The Moby-Dick Bible
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Themes › Existential Dread

Existential Dread

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

I am the architect, not the builder.

But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee?

Chapter 32, Cetology · verse 12

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