Moby Dick

Greeting an English ship named the Samuel Enderby with his usual inquiry about the white whale, Ahab is roused to see the ship’s captain, a man named Boomer, reveal a prosthetic arm made of white whalebone to match Ahab’s leg. Ahab is so eager to get to the Enderby that he forgets the Pequod’s special engineering allowance for his peg-leg and remains off-balance for his visit, only able to enter the new ship by way of a hook-and-crane. Captain Boomer and the ship’s alcoholic surgeon Bunger then tell of their experiences with the white whale, and of the gory surgical procedure that had to be performed on the captain’s arm.

When Ahab asks if Boomer has had any other run ins with the whale, Boomer says he has seen him twice since and not lowered for him. “Didn’t want to try to; ain’t one limb enough?” Boomer says (481). The men of the Samuel Enderby are appalled to hear that Ahab intends to hunt Moby Dick and urge him to rethink his quest to no effect.

Ishmael notes that the Samuel Enderby is named after a well-known London whaler, among the first English ships to hunt for sperm whale in the Pacific. Ishmael says that, some years later, he stood on the Enderby, admired its craftsmanship, and drank and ate with its crew. In his exhaustive studies of the whaling trade, Ishmael has read many accounts of a whaler’s larders (thus filling his own “decanter” with knowledge), which go to prove that the English and Dutch whalers are very generous to their crew, and prone to such hospitality as the Samuel Enderby’s.

Ishmael describes the skeleton of the whale from examples taken of a whale cub’s skeleton, as well as a preserved and decorated adult skeleton in the possession of a trader he once knew in the Arsacides (present-day Iran) in a town called Tranque. This adult skeleton formed the framework of a temple in which Ishmael considered the web of life and death. From this example, Ishmael had the measurements of the whale’s skeleton tattooed on his forearm, the better to preserve the rest of his skin for a poem he was then composing.

From his observations, Ishmael puts the largest example of a sperm whale skeleton at ninety feet in length and forty in circumference. A living whale of this size would weigh ninety tons, the weight of a small village. The skull itself is colossal. The Tranque skeleton was seventy-two feet long, and of that, twenty feet belonged to the skull. The rest of the skeleton is deceptive. As previously noted, the skeleton gives very little indication of the bulk of the living whale. There are about forty vertebrae in the whale’s spine, but Ishmael admits that this is a guess, as the children of Tranque were prone to taking away and playing with the smallest parts of the whale’s tailbones.

Ishmael states that it is good to write about whales in a grandiose way, to use big words, and to consult a big dictionary. By contrast, nothing grand could ever be written about small things, such as fleas.

In explaining the archeological history of whales, Ishmael gives his credentials as a stone-mason and a ditch-digger. The first fossilized whales are dated to the Tertiary period of mammalian expansion. Of note was an often mis-identified example found in 1842 on an Alabama plantation. The fin print of the whale has often been found embedded in rock. In Africa, there is a temple made of fossilized whalebone where people say Jonah was first spit out.

In a time of chaos, before man spread across the globe, the world belonged to whales, says Ishmael.

Ishmael speculates as to whether or not the earliest examples of whales were larger than those found today. Though fossilized examples tend to be smaller than the sperm whale, Ishmael cites the ancient Roman scholar and encyclopedist Pliny as recording an eight-hundred foot whale and other scholars as recording other nearly impossible sizes.

The whaleman knows better, Ishmael says. If people of Pliny’s day and before are, on average, the same size as modern people, then it stands to reason that whales should be no larger then as now. A more relevant question is whether or not the whale will be hunted out of existence as the buffalo are now (circa 1850). Ishmael thinks that both whales and buffalo are far too numerous (and people far too scarce) to completely deplete their hunting populations. To bolster his argument, Ishmael notes that the ice-floes to which whales can retreat are impregnable by whaleboats, that whales are long-lived and sire many generations, and that the predating of ancient whales before the first human beings means that they will postdate the last of us, as well.

Leaving the Enderby, Ahab’s whalebone leg receives such a shock in lowering that it nearly splinters. This was not the first time he broke his peg leg. His broken appendage nearly pierced his groin in a mysterious land-based misadventure shortly before setting off on the Pequod. Ahab blames this event, as with all misfortune, on Moby Dick; the source of misery is disguised to most people, thinks Ahab, but not to him. The injuries he received from this last incident are the reason he hid himself at the start of the voyage.

Ahab commands the ship’s carpenter to carve him a new leg by the end of the night, and tells the ship’s blacksmith to fire up the forge.

There is nothing special about the Pequod’s carpenter if viewed from afar, Ishmael says. Looking at him closely, however, one can see an individual like no other. He has everything on the ship he needs to perform any kind of carpentry task. He has versatile skills, except that he tends to view all problems from the point of view of a carpenter on a whale-ship: “Teeth he accounted but bits of ivory; heads he deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans” (509). In spite of his literal-mindedness, Ishmael defines him as a grizzled but good-humored wanderer and admires that his skill comes from manual practice rather than cerebral study.

The carpenter works near Perth, the blacksmith, and narrates his difficulty in carving ivory while he performs his task. All the while, the dust from the ivory makes him sneeze. He complains that he has little time in which to work. He calls up Ahab to size the leg.

Ahab, standing for his fitting, compliments the carpenter on the sturdiness of his vice. Distracted, Ahab begins to imagine an entire man forged from carpentry and smithing but starts when offered a lantern. He notes the phenomenon of the phantom limb, felt in the spot where a limb is missing and extrapolates that feeling to a whole alienated self. This baffles the carpenter. Ahab regrets that a man so great as himself should depend upon a “blockhead” for a leg on which to stand.

The carpenter, unoffended, remarks to himself that, while for most people two legs are enough to last a lifetime, the driven Ahab has blown through leg after leg.

The whale-oil casks spring a considerable leak, and Starbuck goes to tell Ahab. He recommends slowing the ship to repair the leak, or “waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a year” (517). Ahab angrily dismisses the suggestion, as well as the implication that the boats’ owners would be upset. A frustrated Starbuck tries respectfully to remind Ahab of his duties as ship’s captain. Ahab points a loaded musket at Starbuck and tells him to leave. As he leaves, Starbuck tells Ahab that he should not fear his first mate, but rather “let Ahab beware of Ahab” (518). Touched, Ahab relents and orders the ship stalled and the barrels repaired.

As the exhausting task of searching for leaks is performed, Queequeg becomes deathly ill. As he lies in his bunk dying, his face and presence in the face of death becomes awe-inspiring. As a last request, Queequeg askes the carpenter to build him a death canoe of the sort used by whalemen of Nantucket for sea burial. The carpenter fulfills this request with practical care.

As Queequeg’s life fades, a mournful Pip speaks strange words over him, which Starbuck takes for the ancient tongue all people know in death and childhood. However, as soon as Queequeg receives his coffin he quickly recovers, saying he had simply changed his mind about dying. Cheerfully, Queequeg keeps his coffin, using it for a chest in which to keep his things.

Entering the Pacific by way of the South Sea, Ishmael sings its praises. It is an ocean that seems to hold many dreams within its body. It touches California and Asia, and encompasses many mysterious islands charted and uncharted. It is a welcoming place, but not for Ahab, who perpetually dreams only of his revenge.

Perth, the Pequod’s elderly blacksmith, is kept busy at all hours fashioning and repairing cutting and lancing implements for the crew. In spite of a bad back, he toils uncomplainingly. He was once a renowned blacksmith with a home and family. Alcoholism robbed him of all of that and of the will to work while he still had something to lose. Now, elderly, alone, and unloved, the blacksmith toils on the Pequod. Ishmael considers some forms of long life worse than a good death.

Ahab, holding a leather bag, comes to see Perth at his forge. Ahab wonders that Perth has not lost his mental capacities, and declares his impatience with any old man such as himself who remains in woe but isn’t driven forward by it. He wishes Perth could seal the dent in his brow. Presenting the nails from the shoes of race horses, Ahab tells the blacksmith to melt them down and forge a harpoon. Fedallah and his men appear and look on as Ahab takes the bellows.

Knowing this harpoon is meant for the white whale, Perth hesitates, but Ahab drives him forward. When the harpoon is forged, he rejects water for tempering it, demanding the “pagan blood” of his harpooners instead. As the blood cools the steel, Ahab recites a Latin phrase which means “I do not baptize thee in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil" (532). After the harpoon is finished and mounted to a handle, Ahab, returning to his room, hears the mocking and pitiful laughter of Pip.

All is peaceful off the coast of Japan, where the crew fills their boats with plenty of smaller fish for eating. Starbuck, Stubb, and even Ahab are affected by the calm and placid Pacific ocean in this part of the world, which seems as solid and as safe as a rolling meadow. Ahab considers the child-like pleasure that comes from this seascape, but quickly surmises that the secret to our souls is in the certainty of death, which is the birthright of every infant.

By contrast, Stubb believes that, in sight of such beauty, his life has always been a happy one.

The Bachelor is celebrating a hold full of whale oil and a safe voyage home to Nantucket. The mast-head is decorated with bunting, and the men aboard can be heard celebrating, beating the try-pots as if they were drums, and dancing to fiddles. This is in stark contrast to the gloomy Pequod, whose captain asks the same question as usual, concerning the white whale and where to find him. To the Bachelor’s captain, however, Moby Dick is just a rumor. Ahab lets the cheerful ship pass without any further commerce passing between them.

The crew kills four whales the next day. Ahab, on one of the boats, observes one of the dying whales with a carefulness he’s never displayed before. In all whales, the head turns to the sun in death; Ahab sees in this act a sort of a “fire-worship,” a dark impulse that matches his own. He feels his mental illness is justified by this dying whale, who reaches as if for the sun with its dying breath.

Ahab, in his boat far from the Pequod, spends most of the night by the dead whale’s side, conversing with Fedallah, who informs Ahab of a prophetic dream. Ahab will not have a traditional funeral, but rather he will have two hearses “the first not made by mortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in America” (541). Fedallah also prophesies that he will die before Ahab does. The captain takes this to mean that he will survive his ordeal against Moby Dick.

Of the Japanese coast, the search for Moby Dick becomes more intense, with men crowding the deck for a chance to be the first to sight the white whale and win the doubloon.

Ahab’s quadrant, a navigational instrument, is fitted with a shade so that he can look through it directly at the sun. With Fedallah at his side, he uses his instrument to calculate his precise latitude. Ahab despairs that the quadrant can tell him where he is, but not where he needs to go. He begins screaming at his quadrant in a fit of rage and then smashes it under foot, an act which seems to please Fedallah. Ahab calls the crew before him and declares that he will be henceforth guided not by quadrants but by his own inner fire. Starbuck watches in despair, but Stubb congratulates Ahab for trusting his intuition.

A typhoon approaches after days of calm. It does serious damage to the masts and to Ahab’s boat, but Stubb chooses to sing through the tempest. Starbuck bids Stubb to be more serious and to notice that the storm comes from the east, the direction they are heading. Were they to sail homeward, they would reach blue skies to the west.

Three balls of lightning, called corposants, appear on each mast, which throw Ahab into a maniacal fit. Raising himself on Fedallah’s back, he refuses to let Starbuck and Stubb raise the lightning rods to protect the ship. Raising his harpoon in the air, he declares their mission inevitable and driven forward by God. Starbuck and a large portion of the crew disagree, and mutinous ideas begin to spread. Stubb, still filled with frantic and soothing songs, seems more enamored of Ahab than ever.

Starbuck begs Ahab to strike one of the sails before it breaks apart, but Ahab, comparing the sail to his own lofty brain, commands that the sail be lashed more tightly to the mast.

While lashing the anchors to the side of the ship, Flask argues that Ahab is experiencing a mental health crisis, but Stubb takes Ahab’s side. Holding a metal instrument is not absurd if one is standing next to a main-mast, he says. Ever a cheerful fatalist, Stubb does admit that lashing the anchors is a little like tying one’s hands behind one’s back, but that nothing matters in either case within a raging storm. Flask is left to believe that Stubb has caught a bit of Ahab’s "madness."

Tashtego pleads with the storm to stop, and says he prefers rum to thunder.

As the compass of the Pequod violently spins out of control, Starbuck and Stubb finish the work of tying down the sails and righting the ship on its eastward course. The wind begins to die down.

Starbuck approaches Ahab’s cabin when he sees two loaded muskets hanging above the bulkhead. The uninvited thought of killing Ahab and taking command of the ship crosses Starbuck’s mind, and rather than dismiss it, he takes a musket in hand. Finding Ahab asleep in his hammock, Starbuck seriously weighs the murder of Ahab versus the safety of the entire crew. He imagines seeing his wife and child again.

Ahab yells out in his sleep. A conscious-stricken Starbuck places the musket back on the rack and, returning, tells Stubb to inform Ahab about the ship’s corrected course.

Watching the sun as the ship pitches through the rough waters, Ahab realizes that the ship is heading west. Running to the steersman, he checks the compass, which is set in a southeast heading. He realizes that the compass has been broken in the storm, and demands that the ship be righted against the wind, toward the east. Seeing that the superstitious crew fear sailing without a compass, Ahab, bellowing assurances, rigs up a new compass using the head of a harpoon and a linen thread and points it eastward.

Ahab swells with pride at his invention, but his crew distrusts its effectiveness.

With the quadrant and compass intact, the Pequod had little need for its “log and line,” a reel and bob thrown into the sea which records, in a less-than-reliable reliable way, the ship’s speed and direction. The crewman known as the Manxman notes that the log and line has been neglected and weather-beaten for many months, but Ahab demands it be thrown in the water and checked. It instantly breaks when used, robbing the ship of any means of locating itself.

Pip arrives, speaking his usual sing-song blasphemies. Ahab takes a wild interest in Pip’s ramblings, referring to him as a “holiness” (567). He invites Pip to his cabin, as the Manxman takes it upon himself to enlist Starbuck in helping him construct a new log and line.

With an unreliable compass and a new log and line, the ship continues southeast away from known fishing waters. One night, after passing some rocky islets filled with calling seals, the night watchman falls overboard and disappears, along with a life-buoy sent out to rescue him.

The crew sees this, as with so many things, as a bad sign. Starbuck seeks out material for a new buoy, but finding none, demands that Queequeg’s new coffin be sealed up and used as a life-buoy. The carpenter does the work, complaining all the while in an extended soliloquy.

Ahab, followed by Pip, watches the carpenter seal Queequeg’s coffin to use as a life-buoy, and offers a commentary as to his resourcefulness. But with a sudden fit of temper, he departs. He is chilled by the sight of the coffin, and retires to his cabin with Pip to talk over fateful-sounding nonsense.

A whaleship called The Rachel approaches at full sail, but slows on approach. They ran into Moby Dick yesterday, her captain says, and now they are searching the ocean for a lost whaleboat. The white whale appeared before them as three of their boats were hunting another small pod of whales. A fourth lowered after the white whale, attached to him, and was then carried out beyond the horizon.

The Rachel’s captain boards the Pequod and implores Ahab to join with them in helping to find their lost crewmates. This is no ordinary request; the captain’s son was among the lost. He offers to pay to charter the Pequod in the search. Ahab, with icy resolve, turns the grieving captain away, and the Pequod continues its chase.

Ahab and Pip talk in the cabin, each swearing devotion to the other. Ahab tells Pip that he will never abandon him the way Stubb did, and Pip offers himself as a leg to stand on. Both recognize one another as mad.

As Ahab goes, Pip mourns. He still believes himself to be out on the water, “missing,” as he puts it (581). He discovers that Ahab has locked him into his cabin as if it were a tomb.

As the Pequod approaches Moby Dick’s hunting grounds, not even Stubb can remain jovial. A fearful pall envelops the ship. Increasingly, a sleepless Ahab defers to Fedallah and eats his meals scanning the horizon. He never removes his hat (which he keeps over his deeply set eyes) or changes his clothes. Several days pass. Ahab, no longer trusting his crew, obsesses over claiming the doubloon for himself. While hoisted aloft in the mainmast, a seahawk dives and takes Ahab’s hat. This is taken for another bad omen by the crew.

The battered Delight comes into view. When Ahab asks if they’ve seen Moby Dick, they point to the splinters on a whaleboat as an answer. The Delight lost five men pursuing the white whale, says the captain, and with that, he buries the last of these men at sea. The Pequod tries desperately to get ahead of the sound of the dead man splashing into the water. The Delight’s captain yells after them that it’s appropriate they’ve got a sealed coffin dangling off the side of their ship.

The weather clears, and small gulls fly against soft clouds in a gentle breeze. Ishmael compares the sky, with its feminine softness, to the sea, with its masculine dangers. The fiery Ahab is touched by the beauty of the scene. Weeping, he calls Starbuck to him. He recalls being a boy and striking his first whale. He says that, of his forty years as a whaler, he has spent three ashore. His role as a captain has isolated him, leaving his young wife a widow on the day he married her. Ahab says he feels old and used up. Still weeping, he begs Starbuck not to lower for Moby Dick when he does. “That hazard shall not be thine,” he says (591).

Starbuck reminds Ahab of all the good things waiting for them back in Nantucket, and encourages a relenting Ahab to steer the ship around. Suddenly, however, Ahab snaps back. Declaring himself permanently "mad" and “against all natural lovings and longings” he stays his course as a heartbroken Starbuck turns away (592).

During the night mid-watch, an odor of whale wafts across the Pequod’s deck. No sooner has Ahab been hoisted two-thirds of the way to the masthead than he spots his quarry. He and Tashtego call out simultaneously, but Ahab claims the doubloon for himself. Commanding Starbuck and his crew stay aboard, dawn breaks as Ahab and the other two boats set out on the chase. When Moby Dick appears again, he is as large, wrinkled and white as advertised. He seems almost jovial and calm at first glance, but whips into fury when approached, slapping his huge bulk against the water and sounding.

It is an hour before he reemerges near Ahab’s boat, his approach signaled by the wild circling of birds. He comes at the boat from below, grasps it in his mouth and, after toying with it for a time, bites it completely in half. He then churns the water around the submerged crew, holding them hostage and the other boats at bay. Finally, the Pequod itself breaks up the whirlpool and drives Moby Dick off. Ahab and his crew are picked up in Stubb’s boat, and the chase resumes with the two boats and the Pequod all hauling towards Moby Dick’s spout. The whale sounds again for another hour.

Night falls. Ahab once again offers the doubloon for the first man to call out the next sighting.

While the pursuit of Moby Dick is unique, Ishmael establishes the protocols of giving a several-day chase for a particular whale. With the wind and sea on the hunter’s side, they can determine the general direction of a whale. Soon after morning, and after a false start, Moby Dick leaps into view, breaching with his entire body. The crew works closely and feverishly to continue the chase. Ahab takes a new boat, hastily rigged for him, and again leaves Starbuck in command of the ship.

Moby Dick instantly turns and attacks, scattering the boats. As they fling their harpoons at him, the white whale thrashes and ties all the harpoons together. Ahab quickly releases himself from the whale, but Flask’s and Stubb’s boats are smashed to bits in his wake. Soon, Ahab’s boat is damaged as well, and a boat from the Pequod boat is sent out in rescue. When Ahab resurfaces on the Pequod’s deck, leaning against Starbuck, the crew sees that his leg has been smashed to a remaining splinter. Fedallah has been lost to sea.

Starbuck pleads with Ahab to finally see sense and turn back. Yet Ahab’s resolve is firm, and he demands a new leg from the carpenter. The whale is still in sight at dusk.

At dawn, Moby Dick’s wake is visible. Ahab rants about his own fiery mind, screaming, “Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels!” (613). He has the eerie feeling of being chased by Moby Dick, rather than the other way around.

Moby Dick becomes visible an hour past noon. As Ahab lowers for the last time, he speaks to Starbuck of his “soul’s ship.” “Some ships sail from their ports, and are ever afterwards missing, Starbuck,” he says (616).

Once in the water, the remaining whaleboats are beset by snapping sharks, and Moby Dick sounds. Starbuck feels faint as he watches on deck, and each wave against the boat’s hull feel like knives to Ahab. Moby Dick surfaces and attacks, easily overturning Flask’s and Stubb’s boat. The mates return to the Pequod, and attempt to make their ships workable again. Ahab sees, among the rope and iron coiled around Moby Dick’s body, Fedallah’s entangled corpse. Ahab recognizes this as the hearse “not made by human hand” prophesied by Fedallah.

Seeing Moby Dick swim away, an unheard Starbuck yells that the white whale only wants to live in peace; that only Ahab is engaged in the pursuit. Ahab’s boat pursues. Upon receiving a harpoon, Moby Dick bears down on the Pequod itself, endangering Flask, Stubb, Starbuck, and all the crew. Ahab recognizes the American wood of the Pequod itself as “the second hearse” of the prophecy. Seeing a final chance at retribution, Ahab himself hurls his last harpoon at Moby Dick, but catches his neck in the line, killing himself.

Moby Dick smashes the Pequod to splinters, and the diligent Tashtego, on the mast-head, is the last to go down with the ship. Then, all is silence.

Ishmael, grabbing Queequeg’s coffin, circles in the wake of the Pequod’s wreck before being released by its suction to float alone on the ocean. The Rachael, still searching for its missing crew, rescues Ishmael the next day as the Pequod’s sole survivor. The narrator indicates that he alone escaped the Pequod’s wreckage.