Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the first book of Kings.” “And an idol, indeed, it is or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. When it dies however, the muscles relax, and the penis comes out.”Īs for “ Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg,” Margaret Guroff, a writer and editor who created the online annotation Power Moby Dick, explains, “Yojo is an idol literally made of ebony that the character Queequeg carries with him.” “A foot in diameter at the base is about right too, and it’s cone-shaped,” she says.įurthermore, Reidenberg explains that “a whale’s penis is usually inside of his body thanks to a muscle called the retractor penis, which withdraws the penis into the body to make it streamlined for swimming. She also tells me, “Sperm whale penises can be black.” She confirms that the size described by Melville - “longer than a Kentuckian is tall”- is correct as well, at about five or six feet long.
#WHALE PENIS SERIES#
“That does sound like the penis of a sperm whale,” confirms anatomy professor Joy Reidenberg, who hosted the PBS nature series Sex in the Wild. Here Melville explains, in all its glory, the size and shape of a sperm whale’s dick. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw not the miracle of his symmetrical tail none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone - longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg.” “Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. And so, in celebration of a truly great piece of fiction - both Moby Dick and “The Cassock” - I assembled a panel of experts in history, literature and whale physiology to annotate this masterwork. That’s just one crazy detail from the chapter, which is packed with other jokes about sex and religion.
#WHALE PENIS SKIN#
While the whale’s penis is being stripped apart, the “mincer” of the whale removes its dick skin whole, cuts himself a couple of arm holes and wears the giant penis skin like a priest’s robe, or a cassock. Its title, “The Cassock,” is the name for a clergyman’s robe, and the reason why it’s called that is perhaps the wildest thing in Moby Dick.
After having killed a whale in a previous chapter, “The Cassock” meticulously details the size, shape and removal of the whale’s “grandissimus,” as it’s called, and it continues with the detailed dissection of the member. But every single one of its 438 words is dedicated to a single subject: the enormous dick of a sperm whale. The best and most extensive of these is Chapter 95, entitled “The Cassock.”Īt just a page long, “The Cassock” is short, capable of being read in a few minutes. Ahab, the whale-crazed captain of the Pequod, is incredibly funny, and the book is chock-full of dirty jokes. But if you actually take the time to read it, you’ll find, like I did, that it’s pretty fucking weird and hilarious. Unfortunately, many people never make it past these three words, finding the book to be either intimidating, uninteresting or both. These are the opening words to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
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