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Voyage ofThe Pequod

Contents

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The White Whale, defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Story as it relates to history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A Brief description of Moby Dick’s Characters . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Ishmael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Queequeg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Ahab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Elijah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Voyage ofThe Pequod

CHAPTER 1

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Source: Wikipedia entry of Moby Dick; Redirected from The Voyage of The Pequod

Introduction

Moby-Dick, also known as The Whale, is a novel first published in 1851by American author Herman Melville. Moby-Dick is widely considered tobe a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The storytells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on thewhaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns thatAhab seeks one specific whale: Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic whitesperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab’s boat andbit off his leg. Ahab intends to take revenge.In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, andmetaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the maincharacter’s journey, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil,and the existence of gods are all examined as Ishmael speculates upon hispersonal beliefs and his place in the universe. The narrator’s reflections,along with his descriptions of a sailor’s life aboard a whaling ship, arewoven into the narrative along with Shakespearean literary devices suchas stage directions, extended soliloquies, and asides. The book portraysinsecurity that is still seen today when it comes to non-human beings alongwith the belief that these beings understand and act like humans. Thestory is based on the actual events around the whaleship Essex, which wasattacked by a sperm whale while at sea and sank.Moby-Dick has been classified as American Romanticism. It was firstpublished by Richard Bentley in London on October 18, 1851, in anexpurgated three-volume edition titled The Whale, and weeks later as asingle volume, by New York City publisher Harper and Brothers as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale on November 14, 1851. Although the book initiallyreceived mixed reviews, Moby-Dick is now considered part of the Westerncanon.

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Background

Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851 during a productive timein American literature, which also produced novels such asNathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Harriet BeecherStowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Two actual events inspired Melville’stale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820,after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,200km) from the western coast of South America. First mate OwenChase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreckof the Whale-Ship Essex. Already out-of-print, the book wasrare even in 1851. Knowing that Melville was looking for it, hisfather-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, managed to find a copy and buy it forhim. When Melville received it, he fell to it almost immediately,heavily annotating it.

THE WHITE WHALE, DEFINED

The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of thealbino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chileanisland of Mocha. Mocha Dick had dozens of harpoons fromattacks by other whalers, and appeared to attack ships withpremeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler servedas subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds inthe May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker, New York MonthlyMagazine. Melville was familiar with the article, which described“an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength... [that] waswhite as wool” Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-personnarration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captainhe meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a possiblesymbolism for whales in that, when his crew first encountersMocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them thus:

“’Mocha Dick or the d----l [devil],’ said I, ‘this boatnever sheers off from any thing that wears the shape of awhale.’”

Mocha Dick had over 100 encounters with whalers between the1810s and the 1830s. He was described as being gigantic andcovered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, MochaDick was not the only white whale in the sea, nor the only whaleto attack hunters, examples being the Union in 1807 and the

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Kathleen in 1902. Also inspirational for the novel were Melville’sexperiences as a sailor, in particular during 1841–1842 on thewhaleship Acushnet. He had already drawn on his differentsailing experiences in previous novels such as Mardi but he hadnever focused specifically on whaling. Melville had read Chase’saccount of the Essex’s sinking before sailing on the Acushnet in1841 and was excited about the possibility of sighting CaptainChase himself who had returned to sea. During a mid-ocean“gam” (rendezvous) he met Chase’s son William, who loanedhim his father’s book. There had also been a successful earliernovel about Nantucket whalers, which influenced elements ofMelville’s work, Miriam Coffin or The Whale-Fisherman (1835)by Joseph C. Hart.

THE STORY AS IT RELATES TO HISTORY

Moby-Dick contains large sections—most of them narrated byIshmael—that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot butdescribe aspects of the whaling business. Melville believed thatno book up to that time had portrayed the whaling industry in asfascinating or immediate a way as he had experienced it. EarlyRomantics also proposed that fiction was the exemplary way todescribe and record history, so Melville wanted to craft somethingeducational and definitive. Despite his own interest in the subject,Melville struggled with composition, writing to Richard HenryDana, Jr. on May 1, 1850:

“I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort ofbook, tho’, I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho’ youmight get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap froma frozen maple tree; — and to cook the thing up, one mustneeds throw in a little fancy, which from the nature ofthe thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whalesthemselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spiteof this.”

There are scholarly theories that purport a literary legend oftwo Moby-Dick tales, one being a whaling tale as was Melville’sexperience and affinity, and another deeper tale, inspired by hisliterary friendship with and respect for Nathaniel Hawthorne.These merged into the latter, the morality tale. Hawthorne andhis family had moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox,Massachusetts, at the end of March 1850. He became friends

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with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Herman Melville beginningon August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hostedby a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne’s shortstory collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsignedreview of the collection, titled “Hawthorne and His Mosses”,was printed in the Literary World on August 17 and August 24.Melville, who was composing Moby-Dick at the time, wrote thatthese stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, “shrouded inblackness, ten times black”. Melville dedicated Moby-Dick (1851)to Hawthorne: “In token of my admiration for his genius, thisbook is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

Themes

Moby-Dick is a symbolic work, but also includes chapterson natural history. Major themes include obsession, religion,idealism, courage versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, sanity,hierarchical relationships, and politics. All of the members of thecrew have biblical-sounding, improbable, or descriptive names,and the narrator deliberately avoids specifying the exact time ofthe events (such as the giant whale disappearing into the darkabyss of the ocean) and some other similar details. These togethersuggest that the narrator — and not just Melville — is deliberatelycasting 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 humancontrol.Ch 42 The character Gabriel,

“in his gibbering insanity, pronounc[ed] the White Whaleto be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated; theShakers receiving the Bible.”

Melville mentions the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu, the first amongten incarnations when Vishnu appears as a giant fish on Earthand saves creation from the flood of destruction. Melvillementions this while discussing the spiritual and mystical aspectsof the sailing profession and he calls Lord Vishnu as the firstamong whales and the God of whalers.The Pequod’s quest to hunt down Moby Dick itself is alsowidely viewed as allegorical. To Ahab, killing the whale becomesthe ultimate goal in his life, and this observation can also beexpanded allegorically so that the whale represents everyone’s

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goals. Furthermore, his vengeance against the whale is analogousto man’s struggle against fate. The only escape from Ahab’s visionis seen through the Pequod’s occasional encounters, called gams,with other ships. Readers could consider what exactly Ahab willdo if he, in fact, succeeds in his quest: having accomplished hisultimate goal, what else is there left for him to do? Similarly,Melville may be implying that people in general need somethingto reach for in life, or that such a goal can destroy one if allowedto overtake all other concerns. Some such things are hinted atearly on in the book, when the main character, Ishmael, is sharinga cold bed with his newfound friend, Queequeg:

“...truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of youmust be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is notwhat it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If youflatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and havebeen so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfort-able any more.”

Ahab’s pipe is widely looked upon as the riddance of happinessin Ahab’s life. By throwing the pipe overboard, Ahab signifiesthat he no longer can enjoy simple pleasures in life; instead, hededicates his entire life to the pursuit of his obsession, the killingof the white whale, Moby Dick. A number of biblical themes canalso be found in the novel. The book contains multiple implicitand explicit allusions to the story of Jonah, in addition to the useof certain biblical names.Ishmael’s musings also allude to themes common among theAmerican Transcendentalists and parallel certain themes inEuropean Romanticism and the philosophy of Hegel. In thepoetry of Whitman and the prose writings of Emerson andThoreau, a ship at sea is sometimes a metaphor for the soul.

A Brief description of Moby Dick’s Characters

ISHMAEL

“Call me Ishmael,” Moby-Dick begins, in one of the mostrecognizable opening lines in English-language literature. Thenarrator, an observant young man setting out from Manhattan,has experience in the merchant marine but has recently decided

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his next voyage will be on a whaling ship. On a cold, gloomynight in December, he arrives at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford,Massachusetts, and agrees to share a bed with a then-absentstranger.

QUEEQUEG

When his bunk mate, a heavily tattooed Polynesian harpoonernamed Queequeg, returns very late and discovers Ishmaelbeneath his covers, both men are alarmed, but the two quicklybecome close friends and decide to sail together from Nantucket,Massachusetts on a whaling voyage.

AHAB

In Nantucket, the pair signs on with the Pequod, a whaling shipthat is soon to leave port. The ship’s captain, Ahab, is nowhere tobe seen; nevertheless, they are told of him — a “grand, ungodly,godlike man,” who has “been in colleges as well as ‘mong thecannibals,” according to one of the owners.

ELIJAH

The two friends encounter a mysterious man named Elijah on thedock after they sign their papers and he hints at troubles to comewith Ahab. The mystery grows on Christmas morning whenIshmael spots dark figures in the mist, apparently boarding thePequod shortly before it sets sail that day. The ship’s officers directthe early voyage while Ahab stays in his cabin. The chief mateis Starbuck, a serious, sincere Quaker and fine leader; secondmate is Stubb, happy-go-lucky and cheerful and always smokinghis pipe; the third mate is Flask, short and stout but thoroughlyreliable. Each mate is responsible for a whaling boat, and eachwhaling boat of the Pequod has its own pagan harpooneerassigned to it.Some time after sailing, Ahab finally appears on thequarter-deck one morning, an imposing, frightening figure whosehaunted visage sends shivers over the narrator.

“He looked like a man cut away from the stake, whenthe fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs withoutconsuming them, or taking away one particle from theircompacted aged robustness... Threading its way out fromamong his grey hairs, and continuing right down one sideof his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared inhis clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whit-

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ish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes madein the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upperlightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenchinga single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top tobottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree stillgreenly alive, but branded.”

One of his legs is missing from the knee down and has beenreplaced by a prosthesis fashioned from a sperm whale’s jawbone.Soon gathering the crewmen together, with a rousing speechAhab secures their support for his single, secret purpose for thisvoyage: hunting down and killing Moby Dick, an old, very largesperm whale, with a snow-white hump and mottled skin, thatcrippled Ahab on his last whaling voyage. Only Starbuck showsany sign of resistance to the charismatic but monomaniacalcaptain. The first mate argues repeatedly that the ship’s purposeshould be to hunt whales for their oil, with luck returning homeprofitably, safely, and quickly, but not to seek out and kill MobyDick in particular — and especially not for revenge. Eventuallyeven Starbuck acquiesces to Ahab’s will, though harboringmisgivings.The mystery of the dark figures seen before the Pequod set sail isexplained during the voyage’s first lowering for whales. Ahab hassecretly brought along his own boat crew, including a mysteriousharpooneer named Fedallah (also referred to as ‘the Parsee’), aninscrutable figure with a sinister influence over Ahab. Later, whilewatching one night over a captured whale carcass, Fedallah givesdark prophecies to Ahab regarding their twin deaths.The novel describes numerous “gams,” social meetings of twoships on the open sea. Crews normally visit each other during agam, captains on one vessel and chief mates on the other. Mailmay be exchanged and the men talk of whale sightings or othernews. For Ahab, however, there is but one relevant question toask of another ship: “Hast seen the White Whale?” After meetingseveral other whaling ships, which have their own peculiarstories, the Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean. Queequeg becomesdeathly ill and requests that a coffin be built for him by the ship’scarpenter. Just as everyone has given up hope, Queequeg changeshis mind, deciding to live after all, and recovers quickly.

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His coffin becomes his sea chest, and is later caulked and pitchedto replace the Pequod’s life buoy.Soon word is heard from other whalers of Moby Dick. The jollyCaptain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost an arm to thewhale, and is stunned at Ahab’s burning need for revenge. Nextthey meet the Rachel, which has seen Moby Dick very recently.As a result of the encounter, one of its boats is missing; thecaptain’s youngest son had been aboard. The Rachel’s captainbegs Ahab to aid in the search for the missing boat, but Ahab isresolute; the Pequod is very near the White Whale now and willnot stop to help. Finally the Delight is met, even as its captainburies a sailor who had been killed by Moby Dick. Starbuck begsAhab one final time to reconsider his thirst for vengeance, but tono avail.The next day, the Pequod meets Moby Dick. For two days, thePequod’s crew pursues the whale, which wreaks widespreaddestruction, including the disappearance of Fedallah. On thethird day, Moby Dick rises up to reveal Fedallah tied to him byharpoon ropes, clearly dead. Even after the initial battle on thethird day, as Moby Dick swims away from the Pequod, Starbuckexhorts Ahab one last time to desist, observing that

“Moby-Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madlyseekest him!”

Ahab ignores this voice of reason and continues with his ill-fated chase. As the three boats sail out to hunt him, Moby Dickdamages two of them, forcing them to go back to the ship andleaving only Ahab’s vessel intact. Ahab harpoons the whale,but the harpoon-line breaks. Moby Dick then rams the Pequoditself, which begins to sink. As Ahab harpoons the whale again,the unfolding harpoon-line catches him around his neck and heis dragged into the depths of the sea by the diving Moby Dick.The boat is caught up in the whirlpool of the sinking ship, whichtakes almost all the crew to their deaths. Only Ishmael survives,clinging to Queequeg’s coffin-turned-life buoy for an entire dayand night before the Rachel rescues him.

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Index

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AAhab 1–8

BBentley, Richard 1

CCaptain Ahab 1

DRichard Henry Dana, Jr. 3

EElijah 6Essex 1

GGabriel 4

HNathaniel Hawthorne 3

IIshmael 1

KKathleen 3

MHerman Melville 1Moby-Dick 1Mocha Dick 2

PPequod 4

QQueequeg 6

RJeremiah N. Reynolds 2

UUnion 2

VVishnu 4

WOliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 4