All 3 Uses of
whim
in
Moby Dick
- 'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old.†
Chpt 16-18 *whim = a sudden desire that arises without any logical explanation
- A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage.†
Chpt 70-72
- 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 73-75