Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG-13
There’s no sex in Moby-Dick. But there are two characters who share a bed, a fate, and all their worldly possessions, who like to snuggle and throw their legs across one another, and who are described as a married couple. Oh, and one of them likes to stare at the other while he gets undressed, paying close attention to every curve of his muscles and every shade of his skin.
So are they just comrades? Or maybe something a little more loving?
There are also chapters where everyone stands around up to their elbows in (tee hee hee) spermaceti, squishing lumps of sperm and squishing each other’s hands and generally having a great ol’ homoerotic time. But these guys are paid to harvest whale spermaceti... so you could argue that it’s just work and not play.
There’s also the bit where they cut off a whale’s penis, skin it, and then make the penis skin into a sort of poncho for one of the guys to wear.
If we were rating on a scale of how intense the homoerotic innuendo of a novel was, we'd give this bad boy an XXX. However, Moby-Dick doesn't really include what could actually be classified as sexytimes... so we'll refrain from giving it a family-unfriendly rating.