ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal
whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood,
spout his frothed defiance...” (Melville 504).
D.H. Lawrence recognizes whales as warm-blooded mammals related to us with his
poem, “Whales Weep Not.”
They say the sea is cold,
but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.
All the whales in the wider deeps [...]
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of the sea!
Even though whaling fell out of favor for economic reasons (petroleum replaced
sperm whale oil, and the depletion of whales made searching for whales harder and
harder) Philbrick remarks, “By the 1860s whalemen may have reduced the world’s
sperm-whale population by as much as 75 percent” (Philbrick 223). Some people, 100
years later, still harbored an attitude of tormenting whales “for sport.” In A Whale for
the Killing, Farley Mowat describes how people in a small town in Newfoundland
tormented a female whale that had become trapped in an ice pond. Mowat was a wild-
life biologist, who eventually convinced news teams to cover the case. But it was too
late; the whale, even though rescued because of a public outcry, died. She had been
shot, run into by boats, and generally abused by the Burgeo townspeople. Mowat
writes, ‘“We’d a had it kilt by now,’ said one narrow-faced youth, with a sidelong
glance in my direction, ‘only for someone putting the Mountie onto we!’ ‘And that’s
the truth!’ replied on of his companions. ‘Them people from away better ‘tend their
own business. Got no call to interfere with we.’ He spat in the snow to emphasize his
remark. ‘What we standing here for?’ another asked loudly. ‘We’s not afeard of any
goddam whale. Let’s take a run onto the Pond. Might be some sport into it yet”’
(Mowat 142).
Mowat describes how the “sportsmen” wore the whale out, “with the usual two or
three blows after every dive, but barely had time to suck in a single breath before be-
ing driven down again. Her hurried surfacings consequently became more and more
frequent even as the sportsmen, gathering courage because the whale showed no sign
of retaliation, grew brave and braver. Two of the fastest boats began to circle her at
full throttle, like a pair of malevolent water beetles” (Mowat 143).
There is a “Lord of the Flies” type feeling in the book that accelerates with, “Mean-
while, something rather terrible was taking place in the emotions of many of the
watchers ringing the Pond. The mood of passive curiosity had dissipated, to be re-
placed by one of hungry anticipation. Looking into the faces around me, I recognized
the same avid air of expectation which contorts the faces of a prizefight audience into
primal masks” (Mowat 143).
Mowat ponders on the nature of the people of Burgeo, Newfoundland with, “they are
essentially good people. I know that, but what sickens me is their simple failure to
resist the impulse of savagery...they seem to be just as capable of being utterly loath-
some as the bastards from the cities with their high-powered rifles and telescopic
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