Ishmael on the Great Lakes
As a longtime superfan of all things Great Lakes and someone who lives in the region, I was delighted to come across Ishmael's impression of the Lakes, in Chapter 54, "The Town-Ho's Story," when I read Moby Dick for the first time earlier this year. I wrote a short post about it a couple months ago here, quoting the relevant passage in full: https://open.substack.com/pub/mbilleauxmartinez/p/steelkilt-the-ocean-born?r=7mqde&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer .
One difference in the way the Lakes loom in our imagination, maybe, as compared to the seas, is that while the seas are full of monsters, there are none in the Lakes. There is the ancient and estimable sturgeon, of course, but this is no Leviathan. It is the water itself that holds all the mystique. Stand on a cliff overlooking Superior; the sublime there has nothing to do with what strange, inaccessible alien intelligence lurks under the surface, which Melville raises to cosmic proportions, but with the lake's own independent power.
I've just started reading Moby Dick for a second time, and will be on the lookout for passages about water, and about the water as symbol. Does anyone have favorite passages about the sea and the water as a force? Anyone else come to this book as a Great Lakes head?