All 3 Uses of
perplex
in
Moby Dick
- It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.†
Chpt 73-75perplexity = confusion due to complexity
- Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating token that they were now at last under the influence of that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied.†
Chpt 85-87 *
- as that for a time, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity;†
Chpt 127-129
Definition:
to confuse