{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1612",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1612,
    "subject": "Moby Dick",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-03T16:48:14+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-03T16:48:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0084@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jim Jordan",
        "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-03T16:48:14+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Moby Dick",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "\tPerhaps it has been discussed here already, but if not, some might want to\nlook into this: The end of Urth resembles the end of Moby Dick. To some\nextent at least, Severian appears to be a new \"Ishmael,\" writing a memoir\nof his experience of witnessing the destruction of an old, sinful, world in\na flood. To what extent are Abaia and those like him Moby Dick?\n\tMelville's novel is certainly ambiguous. A lapsed Calvinist, he stands\nwith Ahab in raging against a truly sovereign God who oversees human\naffairs and who appears, to man, capricious. But Melville is also Ishmael,\nthe Jonah who trusts a kinder God than that symbolized by Moby Dick. \n\tTo be sure, Wolfe is not retelling the narrative of Moby Dick, nor does he\nshare Melville's doubt and rage. But the allusions seem to be there.\nPerhaps Severian is a \"good Ahab,\" killing the wicked gods of Urth, unlike\nMelville's Ahab, who sought to kill God. (The many chapters on how to kill\nthe White Whale -- always capitalized -- are Melville's inversion of the\nBook of Leviticus, which deals with how to kill one's own \"flesh\" in order\nto serve God.)\n\tGrist for the old mill and all that.\n\tI found an interesting discussion of Moby Dick at\n\nhttp://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbair/mobydick.htm\n\n\tSomebody's term paper on Wolfe and Melville could start here.\n\nJim Jordan"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}