literary-analysis

A two-part webcomic. The main comic opens with a block of equations: S = adult sperm whale mass = ~100,000 pounds; H = adult human mass = ~140 pounds; so S/H is about 700. C = chipmunk weight = ~1/5 pound; so H/C is about 700. It concludes with the proportion: sperm whale mass over human mass is approximately equal to human mass over chipmunk mass. Text then reads: 'Thus, this is what the climax of the book Moby-Dick looked like from the whale's perspective.' The illustrated panel shows a large red-haired man slumped in a green armchair holding a soda can and looking down, dwarfing a tiny chipmunk that stands on the chair brandishing a weapon and shouting, 'From hell's heart I stab at thee!' — casting the man as the whale and the chipmunk as Captain Ahab, since a human is to a chipmunk roughly as a sperm whale is to a human. The votey aftercomic is a handwritten list headed 'Animals I can't draw, updated,' listing: horses, cows, lizards, humans, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks.