The Moby-Dick Bible
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Themes › Structure

Structure

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

The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:—upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail.

Chapter 86, The Tail · verse 3

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