The Nature Pages from OUTRIDER

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	Whale! by K.L. Evans University of Minnesota Press, 2003
	"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."  -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
	This unique work combines literary criticism and philosophy in an attempt to show that Hermann Melville's "Moby Dick" is more than an allegory about man's confrontation with nature, but rather a statement about and perhaps a prescription for connecting with and comprehending the world..		Ahab's whale is not imagined, nor is it strictly discovered, but is found, by him, which suggests that it has an existence separate from his but also that it depends for its coherence on something extra he supplies, some conception of his own, which makes sense of things.
	"The 'meaning' of the whale is not a property of the whale so much as a way for the people who involve themselves with the whale to come to terms with it," Evans explains. "The whale would survive without these terms, but the people wouldn't."
Browse our selection of new, used and out of print  literature.	Evans employs Melville's text and Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" to advance the notion that to truly understand whaling, or any creature or activity for that matter, one must be immersed in the subject and vulnerable to its idiosyncracies.
	"The public aspect of the whale is the concern of Moby Dick," Evans proclaims. Captain Ahab requires the participation of his public, the crew, to find his whale. "Once readers are clear that they, too, should look in the direction of the whale, they can abandon the traffic in explication and put their minds to investigation what manner of creature they imagine themselves.".