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}} Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a white whale of tremendous size and ferocity. Comparatively few whaleships know of Moby-Dick, and fewer yet have encountered him. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg. Ahab intends to exact revenge.

Often considered the embodiment of American Romanticism, Moby-Dick was first published by Richard Bentley in London on October 18, 1851 in an expurgated three-volume edition titled The Whale, and later as one massive volume, by New York City publisher Harper and Brothers as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale on November 14, 1851. The first line of Chapter One—"Call me Ishmael."—is one of the most famous opening lines in literature. Although the book initially received mixed reviews, Moby-Dick is now considered one of the greatest novels in the English language and has secured Melville's place among America's greatest writers.

Historical background

Moby Dick appeared in 1851, during an important period in American literature. The year before, Melville's good friend and neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne published his bestseller The Scarlet Letter. The year after, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin, which would become the second best-selling book in America in the 19th century after the Bible.

Two actual events inspired Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which foundered in 1820 after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,700 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. Already out-of-print, the book was rare even at the time. Knowing that Melville was looking for it, his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, managed to find a copy and buy it for him. When Melville received it, he fell to it almost immediately, heavily annotating it. Hairy Penis.

The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, who was usually encountered in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Riddled with dozens of harpoons from his numerous escapes from whalers, Mocha Dick often attacked ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker, New York Monthly Magazine. Melville was familiar with the article, which described "an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength... [that] was white as wool". Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a possible symbolism for whales in that, when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them thus: "'Mocha Dick or the d----l [devil],' said I, 'this boat never sheers off from any thing that wears the shape of a whale.'"

Mocha Dick had over 100 battles with whalemen. First noted (because of his color, and later for his wounds) in 1810, he battled whalemen on a regular basis until the late 1830s. He was described as being giant (even for a whale). He was covered in barnacles.

Mocha Dick may not have been the only white whale in the sea. A Swedish whaleship claimed to have taken a very old white whale in 1859,; a retired Nantucket whaleship claimed to have harpooned a white whale in 1902. Nor was he the only whale to attack his hunters. Periodic attacks on whaleboats were recorded until they were replaced by the harpoon gun. In 1850, the bark Parker Cook was rammed in mid-Atlantic; the crew killed and harvested the whale, but had to put into port for repairs. Later that same year, the Pocahontas was almost sunk in the same area. In 1851, not long after publication of the novel, the Ann Alexander was destroyed by a sperm whale near where the Essex was sunk, but the crew were picked up the next day. In 1820 the Essex was alone in mid-Pacific, but by 1851 the area "virtually swarmed with whalers". Other whalers disappeared at sea, perhaps sunk by their prey.

The most important inspiration for the novel was Melville's experiences as a sailor, in particular those during 1841-1842 on the whaleship Acushnet. He had already drawn on his different sailing experiences in previous novels—Mardi the closest to Moby-Dick in its symbolic or allegorical aspirations—but he had never focused specifically on whaling. Melville had read Chase's account before sailing on the Acushnet in 1841; he was excited about sighting Captain Chase himself, who had returned to sea. During a midocean "gam" (rendezvous) he met Chase's son William, who loaned him his father's book.

The novel contains large sections—most of them narrated by Ishmael—that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot but describe aspects of the whaling business. Melville believed that no book up to that time had portrayed the whaling industry in as fascinating or immediate a way as he had experienced it. Since Romantics such as Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley had greatly influenced him from an early age, he hoped to emulate them with a book that was compelling and vivid both emotionally and poetically. Early Romantics also proposed that fiction was the exemplary way to describe and record history (after all, Walter Scott had invented the historical novel, and almost all of Irving's work had the trappings of history), so Melville wanted to craft something educational and definitive. However, despite his own interest in the subject, Melville claimed to struggle with it, writing to Richard Henry Dana on May 1, 1850:

I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — and to cool the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.

Major themes

Moby dick includes many themes entitling clashing of races, Good VS. Evil, and religious context

Symbolism

All of the members of the crew have biblical-sounding, improbable, or descriptive names, and the narrator deliberately avoids specifying the exact time of the events and some other similar details. These together suggest that the narrator—and not just Melville—is deliberately casting his tale in an epic and allegorical mode.

The white whale has also been seen as a symbol for many things, including nature and those elements of life that are out of human control.^{Ch 42} Melville mentions the Matsya Avatar of Lord Vishnu, the first among ten incarnations when Vishnu appears as a giant fish on Earth and saves creation from the flood of destruction. Melville mentions this while discussing the spiritual and mystical aspects of the sailing profession and he calls Lord Vishnu as the first among whales and the God of whalers.

The Pequod's quest to hunt down Moby-Dick itself is also widely viewed as allegorical. To Ahab, killing the whale becomes the ultimate goal in his life, and this observation can also be expanded allegorically so that the whale represents everyone's goals. Furthermore, his vengeance against the whale is analogous to man's struggle against fate. The only escape from Ahab's vision is seen through the Pequod's occasional encounters, called gams, with other ships. Readers could consider what exactly Ahab will do if he, in fact, succeeds in his quest: having accomplished his ultimate goal, what else is there left for him to do? Similarly, Melville may be implying that people in general need something to reach for in life, or that such a goal can destroy one if allowed to overtake all other concerns. Some such things are hinted at early on in the book, when the main character, Ishmael, is sharing a cold bed with his newfound friend, Queequeg:

... truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 11[1]

Ahab's pipe is widely looked upon as the riddance of happiness in Ahab's life. By throwing the pipe overboard, Ahab signifies that he no longer can enjoy simple pleasures in life; instead, he dedicates his entire life to the pursuit of his obsession, the killing of the white whale, Moby-Dick.

A number of biblical themes can also be found in the novel. The book contains multiple implicit and explicit allusions to the story of Jonah, in addition to the use of certain biblical names (see below).

Ishmael's musings also allude to themes common among the American Transcendentalists and parallel certain themes in European Romanticism and the philosophy of Hegel. In the poetry of Whitman and the prose writings of Emerson and Thoreau, a ship at sea is sometimes a metaphor for the soul.

Whale biology and ecology

Sections of the novel depart from the progression of the plot entirely and discuss at great length the biology and ecology of whales and related species. Many of the claims are inaccurate—for example, Ishmael insists that whales are fish, although they had been classified as mammals for almost a century (which he acknowledges dismissively).[2]

Plot summary

Moby-Dick begins with two prefaces: "Etymology" and "Extracts." "Etymology" provides origins for the word whale as well as its spellings in Classical, Romance, and Germanic languages and the usually overlooked "Feegee" (Fijian) and "Erromangoan" (Erromanga). In "Extracts," excerpts on whales are culled from numerous works. Listed mostly chronologically, the quotations come from fiction, poetry, plays, anonymous sea chanties, the Bible and other religious works, legal references, histories, scientific and naturalist treatises, biographies, economic studies, philosophical texts, travelogues, and reading primers. The range shows myriad perspectives on whales and whaling, from materialist to political to mystical.

In Chapter 1, "Loomings", Ishmael introduces himself. With a mixture of chattiness, seriousness, and humor, he speaks of his temperament, the call of the sea, and contends that every man wants at least once in his life to leave the land behind for the ocean.

Aiming to join the crew of a whaleship, Ishmael heads for Nantucket, the older of the two U.S. centers of the whaling industry. Time problems force him to stop for the night in the newer, more powerful whaling center of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Lacking money, he lodges at the Spouter Inn. The innkeeper, Peter Coffin, puts him in a room with the mysterious tattooed cannibal Queequeg, a harpooner. Despite Ishmael's initial reservations, the two become friends. Queequeg tells Ishmael they are "married", which means they are "bosom friends", and shares his pipe with Ishmael. In turn, Ishmael joins Queequeg in worshipping Queequeg's idol god, Yojo.

The two decide to enlist together on the Pequod, a whaleship owned by three captains: Peleg, Bildad, and Ahab. Ishmael and Queequeg have yet to meet their captain when they sign ship's articles, Queequeg drawing a peculiar mark identical to one of his tattoos. Soon enough they discover that Ahab is captain for this voyage, which Peleg and Bildad hope will reap a handsome profit.

As the ship sets sail, other main characters are introduced: the three mates, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask; and the two remaining harpooners, Daggoo and Tashtego, who will later be joined by a mysterious third, Fedallah. For several days, though, Ahab stays below decks, completely out of sight from the common sailors. Ahab finally emerges and plants himself on the quarter-deck, leading Ishmael to ponder his captain's missing leg and the ivory replacing it.

The extremely enigmatic Ahab broods and behaves erratically. He paces the deck, thudding his ivory heel. Stubb suggests that he dampen the sound, but Ahab, furious, calls him a dog. When Stubb objects to the insult, Ahab says, “Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I’ll clear the world of thee!”

Ahab's eccentricities multiply and intensify. He throws his pipe off the ship. He asks his crew to yell more loudly if they spot a white whale. Then he tells the crew that a gold doubloon will go to the crewman who first spots a "white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw."[3] He nails the coin to the ship's mast, saying, "Whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!"[4]

It turns out Tashtego has heard of this white whale, which he says some call "Moby Dick". Starbuck reveals that Moby Dick took Captain Ahab’s leg. With pressure on him mounting, Ahab admits that for him the voyage of the Pequod has no other purpose than to have his vengeance on Moby Dick.

Characters in Moby-Dick

The crew-members of the Pequod are carefully drawn stylizations of human types and habits; critics have often described the crew as a "self-enclosed universe".

Ishmael

Main article: Ishmael (Moby-Dick)

In the novel's first sentence, the narrator famously declares, "Call me Ishmael." Initially, his is the only narrative, but after the Pequod leaves port, he repeatedly fades (including the narration of several scenes he could not possibly have witnessed firsthand) and comes back to full prominence.

The name Ishmael also appears in the Bible as that of the first son of Abraham in the Old Testament. The name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts—in the opening paragraph of Moby-Dick, Ishmael tells the reader that he has turned to the sea out of a feeling of alienation from human society. In the last line of the book, Ishmael also refers to himself symbolically as an orphan. Ishmael has a rich literary background (he has previously been a schoolteacher), which he brings to bear on his shipmates and events that occur while at sea.

Ishmael resembles Melville in several ways (as well as the narrator of Melville's White-Jacket), being well-educated and reflective. Ishmael sees his shipmates as archetypes of human nature and society, and tells his story couched in a vast array of detail, largely occurring during sections in which Ishmael takes an almost-omniscient viewpoint.

Elijah

The character Elijah (named for the Biblical prophet, Elijah, who is also referred to in the King James Bible as Elias), on learning that Ishmael and Queequeg have signed onto Ahab's ship, asks, "Anything down there about your souls?" When Ishmael reacts with surprise, Elijah continues:

"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any – good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."[5]

Later in the conversation, Elijah adds:

"Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye."[6]

The vague and uncertain prophet of the text, ambivalent about religion, is replaced in both the 1956 and 1998 movie adaptations with a prescient Elijah who foretells the fate of the Pequod with confident precision. The 1956 film has Elijah waving his lame arm in pantomime foretelling Ahab's demise, and Ahab (played by Gregory Peck) moves his own arm in fulfillment of Elijah's prophecy.[7] In the 1998 television adaptation, Elijah warns that captain and crew shall all perish except one, and that by signing on they have effectively signed away their souls; Queequeg asks Ishmael what a soul is, to which Ishmael responds by leading Queequeg to a Christian church where Father Mapple (played by Orsen Welles) preaches the story of Jonah.[8] (In the text, the Jonah sermon occurs before Ishmael meets Elijah, and Queequeg leaves the chapel "before the benediction some time."[9])

Ahab

Ahab is the tyrannical captain of the Pequod who is driven by a monomaniacal desire to kill Moby-Dick, the whale that maimed him on his last whaling voyage. A Quaker, he seeks revenge in defiance of his religion's well-known pacifism. Ahab's name comes directly from the Bible (see 1 Kings 16:28).

Little information is provided about Ahab's life prior to meeting Moby-Dick, although it is known that he was orphaned at a young age. When discussing the purpose of his quest with Starbuck it is revealed that he first began whaling at eighteen and has continued in the trade for forty years, having spent less than three on land. He also mentions his "girl-wife" whom he married late in life, and their young son, but does not give their names.

In Ishmael's first encounter with Ahab's name, he responds "When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?" (Moby-Dick, Chapter 16).[10]

Ahab ultimately dooms the crew of the Pequod (save for Ishmael) to death by his obsession with Moby-Dick. During the final chase, Ahab hurls his final harpoon while yelling his now-famous revenge line:

... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

The harpoon becomes lodged into Moby-Dick's flesh and Ahab, caught in his own harpoon's rope and unable to free himself, is dragged into the cold oblivion of the sea with the injured whale. The whale eventually destroys the whaleboats and crew, and sinks the Pequod.

Ahab has the qualities of a tragic hero – a great heart and a fatal flaw – and his deeply philosophical ruminations are expressed in language that is not only deliberately lofty and Shakespearian, but also so heavily iambic as often to read like the Shakespeare's own pentameters.

Ahab's motivation for hunting Moby Dick is perhaps best summed up in the following passage:

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

Moby Dick

Moby Dick is a mottled Sperm Whale with a white hump, of extraordinary ferocity and size, but also possesses ineffable strength, mystery, and power. The color white is explored in the chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale". It calls into question the meaning of the chapters on cetology. The symbolism of the whale is not clear; many things, including nature, providence, and fate have been suggested.

In popular culture, Moby Dick is often depicted as being an albino whale. For example, in the huge whale mural at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, a white sperm whale with a red eye and several harpoons (detached from their boats) stuck in its back is prominently displayed. This seems accurate, since the aforementioned chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale" refers explicitly to "the albino whale". Others however claim that this is inaccurate, and that Moby Dick is colored like an average sperm whale, but with so many scars as to appear white.

Moby Dick also appears to be unusually intelligent, resorting to many clever stratagems to defeat Ahab and crew. He also seems to be capable of using his injuries to great advantage. On the second day of the chase, he allows Ahab and his men to strike him with their harpoons during a head-on charge; he then swims around wildly to entangle the harpoons before yanking Ahab towards him in order to cut him up with the harpoons embedded in his flesh. Moby Dick then smashes Stubb and Flask's boats with his flukes, before sending Ahab's boat flying with a powerful headbutt.

Mates

The three mates of the Pequod are all from New England.

Starbuck

Starbuck, the young first mate of the Pequod, is a thoughtful and intellectual Quaker from Nantucket.

Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organization seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance... [H]is far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend[ed] to bend him ... from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 26

Little is said about Starbuck's early life, except that he is married with a son. Unlike Ahab's wife, who remains nameless, Starbuck gives his wife's name as Mary. Such is his desire to return to them, that when nearly reaching the last leg of their quest for Moby-Dick, he considers arresting or even killing Ahab with a loaded musket, one of several which is kept by Ahab (in a previous chapter Ahab threatening Starbuck with one when disobeying him, despite Starbuck being in the right) and turning the ship back, straight for home.

Starbuck is alone among the crew in objecting to Ahab's quest, declaring it madness to want revenge on an animal, which lacks reason. Starbuck advocates continuing the more mundane pursuit of whales for their oil. But he lacks the support of the crew in his opposition to Ahab, and is unable to persuade them to turn back. Despite his misgivings, he feels himself bound by his obligations to obey the captain.

Starbuck was an important Quaker family name on Nantucket Island, and there were several actual whalemen of this period named "Starbuck," as evidenced by the name of Starbuck Island in the South Pacific whaling grounds. The multinational coffee chain, Starbucks was named after Starbuck, although not for any affinity for coffee but after the name Pequod was rejected by one of the co-founders.

Stubb

Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod, is from Cape Cod, and always seems to have a pipe in his mouth and a smile on his face. "Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests." (Moby-Dick, Ch. 27) Although he is not an educated man, Stubb is remarkably articulate, and during whale hunts keeps up an imaginative patter reminiscent of that of some characters in Shakespeare.

Flask

Flask is the third mate of the Pequod. He is from Martha's Vineyard.

A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered.
— Moby-Dick, Ch. 27

Harpooners

The harpooners of the Pequod are all non-Christians from various parts of the world. All come from Islands. Each serves on a mate's boat.

Queequeg

Main article: Queequeg

Queequeg hails from a fictional island in the South Seas inhabited by a cannibal tribe, and is the son of the chief of his tribe. Since leaving the island, he has become extremely skilled with the harpoon. He befriends Ishmael very early in the novel, when they meet in New Bedford, Massachusetts before leaving for Nantucket. He is described as existing in a state between civilized and savage; for example, Ishmael recounts with amusement how Queequeg feels it necessary to hide himself when pulling on his boots, noting that if he were a savage he wouldn't consider any such modesty necessary, but if he were completely civilized he would realize there was no need to be modest when pulling on his boots.

Queequeg is the harpooner on Starbuck's boat, where Ishmael is also an oarsman. Queequeg is best friends with Ishmael in the story. He is prominent early in the novel, but later fades in significance, as does Ishmael himself.

Tashtego

Tashtego is described as a Native American harpooner. The personification of the hunter, he turns from hunting land animals to hunting whales. Tashtego is the harpooner on Stubb's boat.

Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooners. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers.
— Moby-Dick, Ch.27

Daggoo

Daggoo is a gigantic African harpooner with a noble bearing and grace. He is the harpooner on Flask's boat.

Fedallah

Fedallah is the harpooner on Ahab's boat. He is of Indian Zoroastrian ("Parsi") descent. Due to descriptions of him having lived in China, he might have been among the great wave of Parsi traders that made their way to Hong Kong and the Far East during the mid-19th century. At the time when the Pequod sets sail, Fedallah is hidden on board, and he emerges with Ahab's boat's crew later on, to the surprise of the crew. Fedallah is referred to in the text as Ahab's "Dark Shadow." Ishmael calls him a "fire worshipper" and the crew speculates that he is a devil in man's disguise. He is the source of a variety of prophecies regarding Ahab and his hunt for Moby Dick.

Tall and smart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head.
— Moby-Dick, Ch.48