Great White Whale (Pt 1)

Hunting the great white whale

You might have heard this phrase before… hunting the great white whale. It’s from Moby Dick, a book oft analyzed by high school students on the cusp of intellectual discourse, who think it’s cool or mature to discuss the “Great Themes” of the book. But just because you can talk about the symbolism of the dumb whale and his broadly-written obsessed captain without sounding stupid, doesn’t mean you’re ready to discuss the finer details of “Tropic of Capricorn”. It’s like saying just because you can trace your hand on a piece of paper it doesn’t mean you’re ready to paint a classic like “Dogs playing poker”. Likewise, I hate poetry classes. Not poetry writing classes, of course. But those inane freshman required courses like “Introduction to Poetry.” I want to know, how the reader can guess as to what the poet is really trying to say, without the poet telling you what he’s trying to say. Maybe he’s using a ABBA scheme because he happens to like Abba, and wants to use his poems to reflect that. Or maybe the reason the poet uses the word “banana” instead of “fruit” is because he likes to type the word, and it has a lot of a’s.

What I hate is when a class is analyzing a poem, and then start randomly BSing about how the poet uses this rhyming scheme because it represents her childhood when in France, she probably tread grapes as a girl. The worst thing is when I hand in poems, and along the border, the college TA (pretty much a senior that managed to get an “A” in the course 4 years ago) writes about how he likes the word choice I use, because it evokes the feeling of summer. When in reality, I used the word “verdant” because I was tired of writing “green”, and that’s what the Word Thesaurus suggested. Sometimes a rose really is a rose!

Sorry about the rant. Let’s get back on topic, shall we? (C’mon readers, you need to let me know when I start rambling. This is a two-way street.) “Hunting the great whale” means that we’re all searching for something we can’t have. Either because it’s impossible, or because it’s rare and elusive. So, for me, hunting the great white whale might mean, that I’m searching for a supermodel when the best I can hope for is “a girl who occasionally washes herself once a month”. But it’s human nature to always want things we can’t get. It’s called ambition, and it’s what drives us humans to discover, invent, and analyze. God gave Adam ambition, otherwise, Adam would have been bored in the Garden of Eden. Instead, he went around naming things. (I mean, how cool is that job? I would love to be in charge of naming things. If I had that power, I would give things names similar to banana. So instead of watermelon, it would be called, “watamala”. And pumpkin would be called pamapaka. I mean, would you rather eat broccoli, that’s hard to spell because who knows if it has one c or two l’s, or would you like to eat a bracala? It just sounds so much more festive!)

In general, a little ambition is a good thing. But this quote actually has a negative connotation. It’s when ambition consumes a person, that’s when this quote is applied. When all the person can think about is getting that object, and is willing to sacrifice everything to get it, that’s when it becomes bad. Most often in this case, the person’s philosophy changes to “ends justify the means”. Someone so consumed with ambition, will often do anything (most often illegally) to obtain the object. Going back to the supermodel idea, it might start innocently enough, googling her, and finding out her interests. You know, so you can strike up a conversation with her. But that can easily slide into “stalking” where you follow her around all the time, so you can see her secret desires. And this can deteriorate rapidly into calling her at odd times of the night and hanging up on her. But what does it matter, as long as she’s mine! Mwuahaha. Umm… not that I would do such a thing. I’m just saying ...