tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6811719312494990925.post-32565234774459689362007-04-24T21:02:00.000-07:002007-04-24T21:02:00.000-07:00I may have to cite this post in the paper I'm writing on Melville, in which I'm dealing with the very idea you mention: that the "outsized," especially those intent on growing ever larger through acquisition and consumption, ironically devour only themselves. The central image I'm looking at from Moby-Dick, which can easily be applied, for instance, to what they told us in high school was called the "triangle trade," in which human beings were exchanged for distilled sugar cane -- <I>sugar cane which these very people were being sold to produce</I> -- is the image of the wounded shark, who endlessly devours his own disembowelments, in an autocannibalistic re-enactment of this circular process of buying and selling, eating and shitting, and so on.JLBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10987058554014193721noreply@blogger.com