1. At the beginning of chapter 135 Ahab (I think, might be Starbuck) says, "Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has the right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that" (419). Does this quote mean to point out Ahab's passionate madness as well as his lack of rationality? Does it mean that one can't live and think at the same time? Do emotions/feelings like passion and desire and madness forbid humans from thinking clearly?
2. Also at the beginning of chapter 135, Ahab (again I think) says, "Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents" (419-420). Is the whale only a symbol of Ahab's wrath? Does he perhaps seek out something else, something bodiless and abstract?
3. In the Epilogue it says, "Buoyed up by that coffin...I floated on a soft and dirge-like main"(427). What does it mean that the coffin ends up being what saves Ishmael? How does this impact the ending of the book?
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