[continued from previous message]   
      
   pages by occasionally thrusts against revealed religion which add   
   nothing to the interest of his story, and cannot but shock readers   
   accustomed to a reverent treatment of whatever is associated with   
   sacred subjects." Well, that's the point!)   
      
   And Ishmael regrets his hasty judgment of Queequeg based on   
   religion: "'You gettee in,' he added, motioning to me with his   
   tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this   
   in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood   
   looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the   
   whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I   
   have been making about, thought I to myself--the man's a human   
   being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I   
   have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than   
   a drunken Christian."   
      
   This brings up another topic: the representation of pidgin in   
   MOBY-DICK (and in literature in general). Pidgin is often   
   represented by to suffix '-ee' attached to just about everything:   
   nouns, verbs, adjectives, ... (The famous "No tickee, no washee"   
   hits the nouns, but in "You gettee in" it is the verbs, and words   
   like "biggee" abound for the adjectives.) But is this an accurate   
   representation? Daniel Defoe used it (in ROBINSON CRUSOE and other   
   works), and Benjamin Franklin referenced it. Yet it is not clear   
   that this suffix is at least typical of pidgins. Nevertheless, by   
   Melville's time it had become standard in literature. (Similarly,   
   dialect is often represented by strict phonetic spelling, even   
   when that phonetic spelling represented the standard accepted   
   pronunciation.)  [-ecl]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
                                        Evelyn C. Leeper   
                                        evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
      
      
              You have to believe in free will.  You have no choice.   
                                                --Isaac Bashevis Singer   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)