Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book centers on the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850 and finished 18 months later, a year after he had anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of sailing, whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God.
The book's literary influences include Shakespeare, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Thomas Browne and the Bible. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides. In August 1850, with the manuscript perhaps half finished, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne and was deeply impressed by his Mosses from an Old Manse, which he compared to Shakespeare in its cosmic ambitions. This encounter may have inspired him to revise and deepen Moby-Dick, which is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius".
The book was first published as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, in a single-volume edition in New York in November. The London publisher, Richard Bentley, censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change of the title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in the text of both editions as "Moby Dick", without the hyphen. Reviewers in Britain were largely favorable, though some objected that the tale seemed to be told by a narrator who perished with the ship, as the British edition lacked the epilogue recounting Ishmael's survival. American reviewers were more hostile.
Plot
narrates his December travels from Manhattan Island to New Bedford, Massachusetts, with plans to sign up for a whaling voyage as a green hand. The inn where he arrives is overcrowded, so he must share a bed with a tattooed Polynesian cannibal named Queequeg, a harpooneer whose father was king of the fictional island of Rokovoko. The next morning, Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah, then head for Nantucket. Ishmael signs up with the Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on their whaler Pequod. Peleg describes Captain Ahab: "He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man" who nevertheless "has his humanities". They hire Queequeg the following morning and a man named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. Shadowy figures board the ship while provisions are loaded, and on a cold Christmas Day, the Pequod departs the harbor.Ishmael begins the journey with an extensive discussion of cetology, his system for the zoological classification and natural history of the whale. He also introduces each of the crew members — the chief mate 30-year-old Starbuck, a Nantucket Quaker and realist; his harpooneer Queequeg; second mate Stubb, a cheerful man from Cape Cod; Stubb's proud harpooneer Tashtego, a pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head; the third mate Flask from Martha's Vineyard; and Flask's harpooneer Daggoo, a tall African.
When Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck, he announces he seeks revenge on the white whale that took his leg from the knee down, leaving him with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's jawbone. Ahab will give the first man to sight Moby Dick a doubloon, which he nails to the mast. Starbuck objects that he has not come for vengeance but for profit, but Ahab's purpose exercises a mysterious spell on Ishmael: "Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine."
Traveling from Nantucket to the Azores, Ahab then turns southwest and sails along the coast of South America. But instead of rounding Cape Horn at its tip, he heads to the Pacific Ocean in the other direction. Heading east towards equatorial Africa, he sails around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and into the Indian Ocean.
As the ship is en route to Africa, Tashtego sights a sperm whale on the horizon. The five shadowy figures from earlier appear on deck and are revealed as a special crew specially selected by Ahab. Their leader is a Parsee named Fedallah who serves as Ahab's harpooneer. A pursuit of the whale ensues but is unsuccessful.
Southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, the Pequod makes the first of nine sea-encounters, or "gams", with other ships: Ahab hails the Goney to ask whether they have seen the White Whale, but the trumpet through which her captain tries to speak falls into the sea before he can answer. Ishmael explains that because of Ahab's absorption with Moby Dick, he sails on without the customary "gam", which Ishmael defines as a "social meeting of two Whale-ships", in which the two captains remain on one ship and the chief mates on the other. In the second gam off the Cape of Good Hope with the Town-Ho, the concealed story of a "judgment of God" is revealed, but only to the crew: a defiant sailor who struck an oppressive officer was flogged, and when the punishing officer later led the chase for Moby Dick, he fell from the boat and was killed by the whale.
Ishmael digresses on pictures of whales, brit, squid and—after four boats are lowered in vain because Daggoo mistook a giant squid for the white whale—whale-lines. The next day, in the Indian Ocean, Stubb kills a sperm whale, and that night Fleece, the Pequods black cook, prepares him a rare whale steak. Fleece, at Stubb's request, delivers a sermon to the sharks that fight each other to feast on the whale's carcass, tied to the ship, saying that their nature is to be voracious, but they must overcome it. The whale is prepared, beheaded, and barrels of oil are tried out. Standing at the head of the whale, Ahab begs it to speak of the depths of the sea. The Pequod next encounters the Jeroboam, which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but also is now plagued by an endemic infection.
The whale carcass still lies in the water. Queequeg mounts it, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siamese twins. Stubb and Flask later kill a right whale whose head is fastened to a yardarm opposite the sperm whale's head. Ishmael compares the two heads in a philosophical way: the right whale is Lockean, stoic, and the sperm whale is Kantean, platonic. Tashtego cuts into the head of the sperm whale and retrieves buckets of spermaceti. He falls into the head, which in turn falls off the yardarm into the sea. Queequeg dives after him and frees Tashtego with his sword.
The Pequod next gams with the Jungfrau from Bremen. Both ships sight whales simultaneously, with the Pequod winning the contest. The three harpooneers dart their harpoons, and Flask delivers the mortal strike with a lance. The carcass sinks, and Queequeg barely manages to escape. The Pequods next gam is with the French whaler Bouton de Rose, whose crew is ignorant of the ambergris in the gut of the diseased whale in their possession. Stubb talks them out of continuing, but Ahab orders him away. Days later, Pip, a little African American cabin-boy, jumps in panic from Stubb's whale boat and the whale must be cut loose because Pip is entangled in the line; a few days later Pip again jumps in panic, is left alone in the sea, and has gone insane by the time they find him.
The crew spends time processing various harvested whale parts — liquifying congealed spermaceti, boiling blubber, decanting warm oil into casks, stowing them in cargo, and scrubbing the decks.
Ishmael discusses the symbolism in the coin hammered to the main mast, which shows three Andes summits: one with a flame, another a tower, the third a crowing cock. Ahab looks at the doubloon and interprets the mountains as his volcanic energy, firmness, and victory; Starbuck takes the high peaks as the Trinity; Stubb focuses on the zodiacal arch over the mountains; and Flask sees no meaning. The Manxman mutters in front of the mast, and Pip declines when he is told to look.
The Pequod next gams with the Samuel Enderby of London, captained by Boomer, who lost his right arm to the whale but still carries it no ill will. His ship's surgeon, Dr. Bunger, describes the animal not as malicious, but awkward. Ahab puts an end to the gam by rushing back to his ship.
Ishmael then discusses the evolution of whales, specifically discussing a glen in Tranque of the Arsacides Islands full of carved whale bones and fossilized whales where one can see the decreasing size of their skeletons over time, and he considers the possibility of whale extinction.
Leaving the Samuel Enderby, Ahab wrenches his ivory leg and orders the carpenter to fashion him another. Meanwhile Queequeg, sweating all day below deck, develops a chill and severe fever. The carpenter makes a coffin for the Polynesian, anticipating a burial at sea. Queequeg tries it for size as Pip sobs and beats his tambourine, standing by and calling himself a coward while he praises his companion. Queequeg suddenly rallies and returns to good health and uses his coffin as a spare seachest.
The Pequod sails northeast toward Formosa and into the Pacific Ocean. Ahab, with one nostril, smells the musk from the Bashee isles, and with the other, the salt of the waters where Moby Dick swims. Ahab goes to Perth, the blacksmith, with a bag of racehorse shoenail stubs to be forged into the shank of a special harpoon, and with his razors for Perth to melt and fashion into a harpoon barb. Ahab tempers the barb in blood from Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo.
The Pequod gams next with the Bachelor, a Nantucket ship heading home full of sperm oil. Every now and then, the Pequod lowers for whales with success. On one of those nights in the whaleboat, Fedallah prophesies that neither hearse nor coffin can be Ahab's, that before he dies, Ahab must see two hearses — one not made by mortal hands and the other made of American wood — that Fedallah will precede his captain in death, and finally that only hemp can kill Ahab.
As the Pequod approaches the equator, Ahab scolds his quadrant for telling him only where he is and not where he will be, and dashes it to the deck. That evening, a typhoon attacks the ship and lightning strikes the mast, setting the doubloon and Ahab's harpoon aglow. Ahab delivers a speech on the fire, seeing the lightning as a portent of Moby Dick. Starbuck sees the lightning as a warning, and feels tempted to shoot the sleeping Ahab with his musket. The next morning, when he finds that the lightning disoriented the compass, Ahab makes a new one out of a lance, a maul, and a sailmaker's needle. He orders the log be heaved, but the weathered line snaps, leaving the ship with no way to fix its location.
The Pequod is now heading southeast toward Moby Dick. A man falls overboard from the mast. The life buoy is thrown, but both sink. Queequeg now proposes that his coffin be used as a new buoy and Starbuck has it sealed and waterproofed. The next morning, the ship meets in another truncated gam with the Rachel, commanded by Captain Gardiner from Nantucket. The Rachel is seeking survivors from one of her whaleboats which had gone after Moby Dick. Among the missing is Gardiner's young son, but Ahab refuses to join the search.
Ahab now spends twenty-four hours a day on deck while Fedallah shadows him. One day, a sea hawk grabs Ahab's slouched hat and flies off with it. Next, the Pequod, in a ninth and final gam, meets the Delight, badly damaged and with five of her crew left dead by Moby Dick. Her captain shouts that the harpoon which can kill the white whale has yet to be forged, to which Ahab flourishes his special lance and once more orders the ship forward. Ahab speaks to Starbuck about his wife and child, calling himself a fool for spending 40 years whaling, and says he can see his own child in Starbuck. Starbuck tries to persuade Ahab to return to Nantucket to meet their families, but Ahab refuses.
On the first day of the chase, Ahab smells the whale, climbs the mast, and sights Moby Dick. He claims the doubloon for himself, and orders all boats to lower except for Starbuck's. The whale bites Ahab's boat in two, tosses the captain into the sea and scatters his crew. On the second day of the chase, Ahab leaves Starbuck in charge of the Pequod. Moby Dick smashes the three boats hunting him to splinters. Ahab is rescued, but his ivory leg and Fedallah are lost. Starbuck begs Ahab to stop, but the captain vows revenge.
On the third and final day of the chase, Ahab sights Moby Dick at noon as sharks appear between the ship and the whale in anticipation of the ensuing carnage. Ahab lowers his boat for the final time, leaving Starbuck again on board. Moby Dick breaches and destroys two boats. Fedallah's corpse, still entangled in the fouled lines, is lashed to the whale's back, making Moby Dick the "hearse not made by human hands" Fedallah had prophesied earlier.
Ahab plants his harpoon in the whale's flank and Moby Dick destroys the Pequod, tossing its men into the sea. Ishmael is unable to return to the boat and is left behind in the water. Ahab then realizes the destroyed ship is the second hearse of American wood from Fedallah's prophecy.
Moby Dick returns within a few yards of Ahab's boat and a harpoon is darted from the ship but its line tangles. As Ahab stoops to free it, the line loops around his neck, ensnaring him against his nemesis and completing Fedallah's augury. As the wounded whale swims away, the captain is drawn with him out of sight. Queequeg's coffin comes to the surface as the only thing to escape the vortex when the Pequod sinks. Ishmael floats on it for a day and a night until the Rachel, still looking for its lost seamen, rescues him.