“A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.” It was thoughts like this that plagued Ahab when he realized how hard it was to articulate where exactly the line between camaraderie and romance was drawn. The social and homoerotic bonds between men were never more confusing to him until the season had come to an end. After realizing his single-minded obsession with the white whale was only a metaphor or sexual symbol for something completely different than what he had thought, was he able to realize the valuable lesson that sanity can only consist of moderation and the relinquishing of guilt. This could not have been more poignant than when he came to blows with Ishmael over their mutual man crush for Queequeg.
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