Ahab's Wife

I have to admit that at first I just could not get into this book at all. I did not like the plot and actually contemplated not reading the book at all and just looking up information online on Sparknotes or something like that. However, once I got about 50 pages in, it started to get more interesting and then I was able to decide that I liked the book. I won't say that it is a favorite or even one that I would want to read again, but I was able to find it interesting and ultimately read through it all.

I grew to like the character of Una, and like you both have mentioned, I liked how she tells us that she started her story when she did so that she wouldn't get too stressed about knowing they were coming. Una had a difficult life, but I was able to empathize with her many times and liked the way she thought much of the time. I enjoyed the characters of Kit & Giles, though I was ultimately saddened by their fates. Neither handled the way their lives changed very well and they both dealt with it in very different ways than Una. She was able to take the challenging situations that life dealt her and grow stronger and more whole from them, rather than crumbling in the face of difficulty and choosing death or madness like Giles & Kit.

Though the cannibalism and intimate relationship alluded to between Kit & Giles was bothersome, I did not have the same aversion to it that Kelly mentions. I think that both situations make a lot of sense for their settings. Though I in no way condone it, I can see why many sailors would resort to physical relationships when out at sea for often years at a time. It was similar to ways that their women dealt with that loss of physical relationship with the "He's at home".

In regards to the cannibalism, though gruesome, without it Una, Kit & Giles would not have survived...and ultimately, because of this being in her past, Una was able to feel more of a kinship with Ahab and he with her. "It may well be that in the heart of man there is a goodness that is divine...but that is only half. The other hald is the Betrayer, the Liar, the Murderer, the Fornicator, the Cannibal, the Prince of Darkness. And I know, by thunder, that I have kinship there. It's that half of me that wants to be called brother...'Brother' I said. 'Do you call me brother, Una? You do not know me.' 'I have said what I have said...'"
Though she was not pleased that she had resorted to eating her fellow man, Una was able to see it for the necessity that it was and move on with her life. "What had happened was terrible beyond anything I could have imagined, and yet...and yet...I had lived." It bound her together with Kit & Giles in a way that kept them close, and also ultimately drove them apart. She mentions once ""I did not want to see in their eyes the reflection of what we had done together." But later she mentions this - "We three had become...a firm knot...Our loyalty to each other firmed us against the world of other men and nature...Having survived, our spirits demanded that which we granted to the other but could not grant ourselves...We would come to want, entangled again, from each other the love that we could not grant ourselves...that what I am, disgraced or blessed, came from what I was, goes to what I yet may be."
She did feel the need to share it with a few select people which seemed to give her some peace and forgiveness for the choices she had made. When she shared with Charlotte, the response was "I'm glad...whatever it took to bring you here and alive. I'm glad, Una Sparrow. And I will never tell." And when she shared with David "'I am a cannibal...in the strictest sense of the word.' 'How?' "At sea. In an open boat.' 'I forgive you'...'and I you'" She mentions soon after this "How many time, I asked myself, must I tell and be forgiven?...How was it the heart decided whom to tell?...Yet sometimes, as with Charlotte and David, my soul would have shriveled if I had not confessed. And to Ahab? Ah, he knew. He knew without having to be told."

I feel like this story gives more sensitivity and likeability to the character of Ahab. Though I have never read Moby Dick and really do not intend to ever read it, I feel like this side of the story was much more intriguing and well-rounded. After Ahab lost his leg..."how angrily he trod his world!...Anger, it seemed, was his only antidote to despair." Though he loved Una, she could not compete with his need to kill that whale and Una knew this desire would steal Ahab from her at least mentally, if not physically.
The night she stared at the stars and realized Ahab was gone, she says..."And yet I could not weep. This knowing - too quiet for tears...an inland sea...contained...a wide, quiet pool of unverifiable knowing." "In the dark of the moon, the heavens aglitter with stars, I gradually made my peace, lived through and beyond a slow grieving." Later after she knows for certain that Ahab is gone, she "wept into the sand for my Theseus, slain by the beast, because he could not find his way out of the labyrinth of revenge." I also liked how Ishmael became Una's last love and that they mentioned both of them writing their stories, but from different perspectives.

I very much enjoyed Una's time at the lighthouse with her relatives. It helped to know her history and how it shaped her for the future. I also loved her relationship with her mother and was saddened when she died. Her relatives made an impact on who Una became, though she was her own person, regardless of what others thought she should be. She mentions at the beginning, in regard to her aunt and mother "I later came to think that they both knew the foolishness of the world, to which Agatha remained unyielding while my mother, less certain that any view could be absolute, responded with pliant accommodation...I rather regretted that I did not myself have a sister who was a friend and with whom I could compare myself, the better to understand both my singularity and our commonality."

I also want to share a few quotes that I liked which did not necessarily fit into any of the topics that I mentioned above.

"People are always composed of a combination of the real and the abstract...we make each other up." (Kit)

"Is our life determined for us, or do we choose? Some of both. Some of both - the answer came clean and simple to my mind." (Una)

"I have ever feard the weathervane in me. Sometimes I point toward Independence, isolation. Sometimes I rotate - my back to Independence - and I need and want my friends, my family, with a force like a gale...I do not count myself fickle, for I have much loyalty in me, but I am changeable." (Una)

"Sometimes I like the public space...It's where the most private things can be said, confidentially." (Charlotte)

"I was not entirely pure, and to this day I feel some guilt and discomfort over that issue. But human beings are morally complex, women as well as men, and I must live with that." (Una)

"As a girl rebelling against my father's dogma, I had scoffed at Job for accepting God's consolation of a new wife and new children. But I, most Joblike, when Giles was dead, embraced Kit, and when Kit conveyed that he was not coming back, it was the messenger himself, Ahab, whom I immediately loved. If Mother and Liberty were gone, then here was Susan to unburden me of love. Not to be loved but to love lightened my load of grief and gave value and direction to my life." (Una)

"Where we choose to be, where we choose to be - we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being." (Una)