All 3 Uses of
peasant
in
Moby Dick
- No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores.†
Chpt 25-27 *
- Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant.†
Chpt 52-54
- If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow?†
Chpt 79-81
Definition:
-
(peasant) used historically or possibly in relation to a very poor country: a person of low income, education, and social standing -- especially one who raises crops or livestock