Moby Dick
Herman Melville, 1851
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Ishmael, a restless sailor, leaves Manhattan in December and signs aboard the whaling ship Pequod out of Nantucket, after sharing a bed in New Bedford with the harpooneer Queequeg. Captain Ahab, whose leg was taken by the white whale Moby Dick, nails a gold doubloon to the mast and binds the crew to his vengeance. Between the hunts, Ishmael lectures on whales and whaling. After three days of chase, the whale sinks the Pequod, and Ishmael alone survives, floating on Queequeg's coffin until the Rachel picks him up.
Where it happens
- Manhattan Ishmael sets out from here in December.1
- New Bedford Ishmael shares an inn bed with Queequeg and they hear Father Mapple preach on Jonah.1
- Nantucket Home port of the Pequod, whose Quaker owners are Bildad and Peleg.1
- The Azores The Pequod sails here first.1
- Cape of Good Hope The ship crosses to the Indian Ocean this way rather than round Cape Horn.1
- Marquesas Islands Melville jumped ship here from the whaler Acushnet.2
Through time
- 1820The whaleship Essex sinks, the basis of the book's ending.1
- 1841Melville sails on the whaler Acushnet.2
- 1850Melville begins writing in February and meets Hawthorne in August.1
- 1851Published as The Whale in London in October and as Moby-Dick in New York in November.1
- 1891Melville dies; the book is out of print.12
- 1919Centennial of Melville's birth, the start of the revival.12
Who is in it, and behind it
Ishmael narrator
Sailor who tells the story; the only survivor of the Pequod.1
Captain Ahab captain
Commander of the Pequod, bent on revenge against Moby Dick.1
Queequeg harpooneer
Tattooed Polynesian harpooneer and son of a king from the island of Rokovoko.1
Starbuck chief mate
Nantucket Quaker and realist who objects that the voyage should be for profit.1
Stubb second mate
Cheerful second mate from Cape Cod.1
Fedallah harpooner
Parsee leader of Ahab's special crew; he prophesies Ahab's death.1
Pip cabin-boy
Young cabin-boy who is abandoned at sea and goes insane.1
Nathaniel Hawthorne dedicatee
The book is dedicated to him; Melville met him in August 1850.1
What it is about
Obsessive vengeance
Ahab's vow captivates the crew despite Starbuck's objection that the voyage is meant for profit.1
Good and evil, and God
The novel mixes whaling detail with questions of class, good and evil, and the existence of God.1
A culturally diverse crew
Life aboard ship among sailors of many origins is a recurring subject.1
Mixed forms
Melville uses songs, sermons, stage directions, soliloquies and catalogs beside narrative prose.1
Reading the symbol
Ahab reads the doubloon as a sign of his own energy, firmness and victory.1
In its own words
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines.
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; 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. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!
The drama’s done. Why then here does anyone step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck.
The shape of the book
139 chapters, 209,860 words. Point at a bar.
How it came to be here
Herman Melville began writing in February 1850, drawing on his years as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844 and on whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on the hard-to-catch albino Mocha Dick, and the ending on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. A meeting with Nathaniel Hawthorne in August 1850 may have led Melville to deepen the book. It appeared in London in October 1851 as The Whale and in New York in November. Reviews were mixed, it sold poorly, and its status as a Great American Novel came only after 1919.
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Sources
Text: PG 2701. CC0 (Standard Ebooks).