Free to follow every thread. No paywall, no dead ends.
Moby-Dick: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Moby-Dick
The opening sentence of Moby-Dick, 'Call me Ishmael', is one of the most recognizable lines in all of world literature, yet it conceals a complex narrative strategy that has puzzled scholars for over a century. Herman Melville began writing this epic novel in February 1850, completing it eighteen months later, a year longer than he had originally anticipated. The story centers on Ishmael, a sailor who narrates the maniacal quest of Captain Ahab, commander of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, a giant white sperm whale that had bitten off Ahab's leg on a previous voyage. While the book is now celebrated as a Great American Novel, it was published to mixed reviews in 1851, became a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of Melville's death in 1891. Its reputation was only established in the 20th century, following the 1919 centennial of the author's birth. William Faulkner famously 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'. Melville drew heavily on his own experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including time on whalers, and combined this with wide reading in whaling literature to create a work that mixes detailed, realistic descriptions of sailing and whale hunting with profound explorations of class, social status, good and evil, and the existence of God.
The Shadowy Crew And The White Whale
The narrative begins in December when Ishmael 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, forcing him to share a bed with Queequeg, a tattooed Polynesian cannibal and harpooneer whose father was king of the fictional island of Rokovoko. The next morning, Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah before heading for Nantucket, where they sign up with Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on their whaler, the Pequod. Peleg describes Captain Ahab as 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. Ahab, who has a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's jawbone, announces he seeks revenge on the white whale that took his leg from the knee down. He 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.' The ship sails from Nantucket to the Azores, then turns southwest and heads to the Pacific Ocean, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and into the Indian Ocean. When Tashtego sights a sperm whale, five shadowy figures appear on deck, revealed as a special crew selected by Ahab, led by a Parsee named Fedallah who serves as Ahab's harpooneer.
Herman Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850 and completed it eighteen months later. The book was first published in London as The Whale in October 1851 and in New York as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale in November 1851.
Who are the main characters in Moby-Dick?
The story centers on Ishmael, a sailor who narrates the maniacal quest of Captain Ahab, commander of the whaling ship Pequod. The crew includes Queequeg, a tattooed Polynesian harpooneer, and Fedallah, a Parsee who serves as Ahab's harpooneer.
What is the plot of Moby-Dick?
Captain Ahab seeks revenge against Moby Dick, a giant white sperm whale that had bitten off Ahab's leg on a previous voyage. The Pequod pursues the whale across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans until Moby Dick destroys the ship and kills Ahab.
What inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick?
Melville drew heavily on his own experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including time on whalers. The novel also draws on actual events such as the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820 and the killing of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick in the late 1830s.
How did Moby-Dick perform upon its release?
Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews in 1851 and became a commercial failure. The book was out of print at the time of Melville's death in 1891, and its reputation was only established in the 20th century following the 1919 centennial of the author's birth.
The Pequod engages in nine sea-encounters, or 'gams', with other ships, each serving as a structural device that foreshadows the Pequod's own fate. The first meeting is with the Goney, or Albatross, where Ahab hails the captain to ask if they have seen the White Whale, but the trumpet through which the captain tries to speak falls into the sea before he can answer. In the second gam off the Cape of Good Hope with the Town-Ho, a concealed story of a 'judgment of God' is revealed 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. The ship encounters the Jeroboam, which lost its chief mate to Moby Dick and is now plagued by an endemic infection. Queequeg mounts the whale carcass, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siamese twins. The Pequod gams with the Jungfrau from Bremen, where both ships sight whales simultaneously, and the three harpooneers dart their harpoons, but the carcass sinks and Queequeg barely escapes. The encounter with the French whaler Bouton de Rose reveals a crew ignorant of the ambergris in the gut of the diseased whale in their possession. Ahab orders Stubb away, and days later, Pip, a little African American cabin-boy, jumps in panic from Stubb's whale boat and is left alone in the sea, going insane by the time they find him. The Pequod 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. Ahab puts an end to the gam by rushing back to his ship. The final gam is with the Delight, badly damaged with five of her crew left dead by Moby Dick, whose captain shouts that the harpoon which can kill the white whale has yet to be forged.
The Prophet And The Coffin
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, while 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. A man falls overboard from the mast, and 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 ship meets the Rachel, commanded by Captain Gardiner from Nantucket, who 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 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. 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, using his coffin as a spare seachest. 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. 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.
The Chase And The Final Day
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, 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.
The Literary Alchemy Of Melville
Moby-Dick is a literary alchemy that blends nautical, biblical, Homeric, Shakespearean, Miltonic, cetological, alliterative, fanciful, colloquial, archaic, and unceasingly allusive language. Melville stretched grammar, quoted well-known or obscure sources, and swung from calm prose to high rhetoric, technical exposition, seaman's slang, mystic speculation, or wild prophetic archaism. He coined words, such as allurings, coincidings, and leewardings, and created unfamiliar adjectives and adverbs like officered, omnitooled, and uncatastrophied. The prose is not based on anybody else's verse but on 'a sense of speech rhythm'. Melville's three most important sources, in order, are the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. The creation of Ahab followed an observation by Coleridge in his lecture on Hamlet: 'one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself.' Ahab seems to have 'what seems a half-wilful over-ruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature', and 'all men tragically great', Melville added, 'are made so through a certain morbidness'. The prose is not based on anybody else's verse but on 'a sense of speech rhythm'. The novel uses several levels of rhetoric, from straightforward expository style to poetic blank verse, idiomatic speech, and a composite blending of all elements. The elaborate use of the Homeric simile emphasizes Ahab's hubris through a succession of land-images, and a paragraph-long simile describes how the 30 men of the crew became a single unit. The final phrase fuses the two halves of the comparison, the men becoming identical with the ship, which follows Ahab's direction. The concentration only gives way to more imagery, the 'mastheads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs'. All these images contribute their 'startling energy' to the advance of the narrative.
The Sources Of The Whale
Moby-Dick draws on Melville's experience on the whaler Acushnet, but is not autobiographical. On the 30th of December 1840, Melville signed on as a green hand for the maiden voyage of the Acushnet, planned to last for 52 months. Its owner, Melvin O. Bradford, like Bildad, was a Quaker. The model for the Whaleman's Chapel of chapter 7 is the Seamen's Bethel on Johnny Cake Hill. Melville attended a service there shortly before he shipped out on the Acushnet, and he heard a sermon by Reverend Enoch Mudge, who is at least in part the inspiration for Father Mapple. The crew was not as heterogenous or exotic as the crew of the Pequod. Five were foreigners, four of them Portuguese, and the others were American either at birth or naturalized. Three black men were in the crew, two seamen and the cook. Fleece, the black cook of the Pequod, was probably modeled on this Philadelphia-born William Maiden. A first mate, actually called Edward C. Starbuck, was discharged at Tahiti under mysterious circumstances. The second mate, John Hall, is identified as Stubb in an annotation in the book's copy of crew member Henry Hubbard, who also identified the model for Pip: John Backus, a little black man added to the crew during the voyage. Ahab seems to have had no model, though his death may have been based on an actual event. Melville was aboard The Star in May 1843 with two sailors from the Nantucket who could have told him that they had seen their second mate 'taken out of a whaleboat by a foul line and drowned'. Two actual events served as the genesis for Melville's tale: the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820, after a sperm whale rammed her 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America, and the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick was rumored to have 20 or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. Mocha Dick had over 100 encounters with whalers in the decades between 1810 and the 1830s. He was described as being gigantic and covered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, Mocha Dick was not the only white whale in the sea, nor the only whale to attack hunters.
The Publishing And The Silence
Melville first proposed the British publication in a the 27th of June 1850, letter to Richard Bentley, London publisher of his earlier works. In the case of Moby-Dick, Melville had taken almost a year longer than promised, and could not rely on Harpers to prepare the proofs as they had done for the earlier books. Indeed, Harpers had denied him an advance, and since he was already in debt to them for almost $700, he was forced to borrow money and to arrange for the typesetting and plating himself. The final stages of composition overlapped with the early stages of publication. At the end of May 1851, Melville delivered the bulk of his manuscript to Harper's for plating and printing of proof sheets. In June, he wrote to Hawthorne that he was in New York to 'work and slave on my 'Whale' while it is driving through the press'. He was staying with Allan and Sophia in a small room to correct proofs, and to (re)write the closing pages. By the end of the month, 'wearied with the long delay of printers', Melville came back to finish work on the book in Pittsfield. Three weeks later, the typesetting was almost done, as he announced to Bentley on July 20: 'I am now passing thro' the press, the closing sheets of my new work'. On the 3rd of July 1851, Bentley offered Melville £150 and 'half profits', that is, half the profits that remained after the expenses of production and advertising. On July 20, Melville accepted, after which Bentley drew up a contract on August 13. Melville signed and returned the contract in early September, and then went to New York with the proof sheets, made from the finished plates, which he sent to London by his brother. The book was first published (in three volumes) 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. The book was a commercial failure, and Melville died in 1891, out of print, with his reputation as a great writer only established in the 20th century.