American Literature books summary 
p>Meanwhile, as the Pequod oats along, they spot a right whale. After killing
him, Stubb asks Flask what Ahab might want with this "lump of foul lard."
Flask responds that Fedallah says that a whaler with a Sperm Whale's head
on her starboard side and a Right Whale's head on her larboard will never
afterwards capsize. They then get into a discussion in which both of them
confess that they do not like Fedallah and think of him as "the devil in
disguise." In this instance and always, Fedallah watches and stands in
Ahab's shadow. Ishmael notes that the Parsee's shadow seemed to blend with
and lengthen Ahab's.
Chapters 74-81
Summary
The paired chapters (74 and 75) do an anatomic comparison of the sperm
whale's head and the right whale's head. In short, the sperm whale has a
great well of sperm, ivory teeth, long lower jaw, and one external spout-
hole; the right whale has bones shaped like Venetian blinds in his mouth,
huge lower lip, a tongue, and one external spout- hole. Ishmael calls the
right whale stoic and the sperm "platonian." The Battering-Ram discusses
the blunt, large, wall-like part of the head that seems to be just a "wad."
In actuality, inside the thin, sturdy casing is a "mass of tremendous
life." He goes on to explain, in The Great Heidelberg Tun (a wine cask in
Heidelberg with a capacity of 49,000 gallons), that there are two
subdivisions of the upper part of a whale's head: the Case and the junk.
The Case is the Great Heidelberg Tun since it contains the highly-prized
spermaceti. Ishmael then dramatizes the tapping of the case by Tashtego. It
goes by bucket from the "cistern" (well) once Tashtego finds the spot. In
this scene, Tashtego accidentally falls in to the case. In panic, Daggoo
fouls the lines and the head falls into the ocean. Queequeg dives in and
manages to save Tashtego.
In The Prairie, Ishmael discusses the nineteenth-century arts of
physiognomy (the art of judging human character from facial features)and
phrenology (the study of the shape of the skull, based on the belief that
it reveals character and mental capacity). By such analyses, the sperm
whale's large, clear brow gives him the dignity of god. The whale's
"pyramidical silence" demonstrates the sperm whale's genius. But later
Ishmael abandons this line of analysis, saying that he isn't a
professional. Besides, the whale wears a "false brow" because it really
doesn't have much in its skull besides the spermy stufi. (The brain is
about 10 inches big.) Ishmael then says that he would rather feel a man's
spine to know him than his skull, throwing out phrenology. Judging by
spines (which, like brains, are a network of nerves) would discount the
smallness of the whale's brain and admire the wonderful comparative
magnitude of his spinal cord. The hump becomes a sign of the whale's
indomitable spirit.
The Jungfrau (meaning Virgin in German) is out of oil and meets the Pequod
to beg for some. Ahab, of course, asks about the White Whale, but the
Jungfrau has no information. Almost immediately after the captain of the
Jungfrau steps off the Pequod's deck, whales are sighted and he goes after
them desperately. The Pequod also gives chase and succeeds in harpooning
the whale before the Germans. But, after bringing the carcass alongside the
ship, they discover that the whale is sinking and dragging the ship along
with it. Ishmael then discusses the frequency of sinking whales.
The Jungfrau starts chasing a fin-back, a whale that resembles a sperm
whale to the unskilled observer.
Chapter 82-92
Summary
Ishmael strays from the main action of the plot again, diving into the
heroic history of whaling. First, he draws from Greek mythology, the Judeo-
Christian Bible, and Hindu mythology. He then discusses the Jonah story in
particular (a story that has been shadowing this entire novel from the
start) through the eyes of an old Sag-Harbor whaleman who is crusty and
questions the Jonah story based on personal experience.
Ishmael then discusses pitchpoling by describing Stubb going through the
motions (throwing a long lance from a jerking boat to secure a running
whale). He then goes into a discursive explanation of how whales spout with
some attempt at scientific precision. But he cannot define exactly what the
spout is, so he has to put forward a hypothesis: the spout is nothing but
mist, like the "semi- visible steam" that proceeds from the head of
ponderous beings such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and
himself! In the next chapter, he celebrates a whale's most famous part: his
tail. He likes its potential power and lists its difierent uses.
When the Pequod sails through the straits of Sunda (near Indonesia) without
pulling into any port, Ishmael takes the opportunity to discuss how
isolated and self- contained a whaleship is. While in the straits, they run
into a great herd of sperm whales swimming in a circle (the "Grand
Armada"){ but as they are chasing the whales, they are being chased by
Malay pirates. They try to "drugg" the whales so that they can kill them on
their own time.
(There are too many to try to kill at once.) They escape the pirates and go
in boats after the whales, somehow ending up inside their circle, a placid
lake.
But one whale, who had been pricked and was oundering in pain, panics the
whole herd. The boats in the middle are in danger but manage to get out of
the center of the chaos. They try to "waif" the whales{that is, mark them
as the Pequod's to be taken later. Ishmael then goes back to explaining
whaling terms, staring with "schools" of whales. The schoolmaster is the
head of the school, or the lord. The all-male schools are like a "mob of
young collegians." Backtracking to a reference in Chapter 87 about waifs,
Ishmael explains how the waif works as a symbol in the whale fishery. He
goes on to talk about historical whaling codes and the present one that a
Fast- Fish belongs to the party fast to it and a Loose-Fish is fair came
for anybody who can soonest catch it. A fish is fast when it is physically
connected (by rope, etc.) to the party after it or it bears a waif, says
Ishmael. Lawyer- like, Ishmael cites precedents and stories, to show how
dificult it is to maintain rules. In Heads or Tails, he mentions the
strange problem with these rules in England because the King and Queen
claim the whale. Some whalemen in Dover (or some port near there, says
Ishmael) lost their whale to the Duke because he claimed the power
delegated him from the sovereign.
Returning to the narrative, Ishmael says they come up on a French ship
Bouton de Rose (Rose-Button or Rose- Bud). This ship has two whales
alongside: one "blasted whale" (one that died unmolested on the sea) that
is going to have nothing useful in it and one whale that died from
indigestion.
Stubb asks a sailor about the White Whale? Never seen him, is the answer.
Crafty Stubb then asks why the man is trying to get oil out of these whales
when clearly there is none in either whale. The sailor on the Rose-Bud says
that his captain, on his first trip, will not believe the sailor's own
statements that the whales are worthless. Stubb goes aboard to tell the
captain that the whales are worthless, although he knows that the second
whale might have ambergris, an even more precious commodity than
spermaceti. Stubb and the sailor make up a little plan in which Stubb says
ridiculous things in English and the sailor says, in French, what he
himself wants to say. The captain dumps the whales. As soon as the Rose-Bud
leaves, Stubb mines and finds the sweet- smelling ambergris.
Ishmael, in the next chapter, explains what ambergris is: though it looks
like mottled cheese and comes from the bowel of whales, ambergris is
actually used for perfumes. He uses dry legal language to describe
ambergris and discuss its history even though he acknowledges that poets
have praised it.
Ishmael then looks at where the idea that whales smell bad comes from. Some
whaling vessels might have skipped cleaning themselves a long time ago, but
the current bunch of South Sea Whalers always scrub themselves clean. The
oil of the whale works as a natural soap.
Chapters 93-101
Summary
These are among the most important chapters in Moby- Dick. In The Castaway,
Pip, who usually watches the ship when the boats go out, becomes a
replacement in Stubb's boat. Having performed passably the first time out,
Pip goes out a second time and this time he jumps from the boat out of
anxiety. When Pip gets foul in the lines, and his boatmates have to let the
whale go free to save him, he makes them angry. Stubb tells him never to
jump out of the boat again because Stubb won't pick him up next time. Pip,
however, does jump again, and is left alone in the middle of the sea's
"heartless immensity." Pip goes mad.
A Squeeze of the Hand, which describes the baling of the case (emptying the
sperm's head), is one of the funniest chapters in the novel. Because the
spermaceti quickly cools into lumps, the sailors have to squeeze it back
into liquid. Here, Ishmael goes overboard with his enthusiasm for the
"sweet and unctuous" sperm. He squeezes all morning long, getting
sentimental about the physical contact with the other sailors, whose hands
he encounters in the sperm. He goes on to describe the other parts of the
whale, including the euphemistically-named "cassock" (the whale's penis).
This chapter is also very funny, blasphemously likening the whale's organ
to the dress of clergymen because it has some pagan mysticism attached to
it. It serves an actual purpose on the ship: the mincer wears the black
"pelt" of skin from the penis to protect himself while he slices the horse-
pieces of blubber for the pots.
Ishmael then tries to explain the try-works, heavy structures made of pots
and furnaces that boil the blubber and derive all the oil from it. He
associates the try-works with darkness and a sense of exotic evil: it has
"an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the
vicinity of funereal pyres." Furthermore, the pagan harpooneers tend it.
Ishmael also associates it with the red fires of Hell that, in combination
with the black sea and the dark night, so disorient him that he loses sense
of himself at the tiller. Everything becomes "inverted," he says, and
suddenly there is "no compass before me to steer by."
In a very short chapter, Ishmael describes in The Lamp how whalemen are
always in the light because their job is to collect oil from the seas. He
then finishes describing how whale's oil is processed: putting the oil in
casks and cleaning up the ship. Here he dismisses another myth about
whaling: whalers are not dirty. Sperm whale's oil is a fine cleaning agent.
But Ishmael admits that whalers are hardly clean for a day when the next
whale is sighted and the cycle begins again.
Ishmael returns to talking about the characters again, showing the
reactions of Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, the Manxman, Queequeg, Fedallah,
and Pip to the golden coin fixed on the mainmast. Ahab looks at the
doubloon from Ecuador and sees himself and the pains of man. Starbuck sees
some Biblical significance about how man can find little solace in times of
trouble. Stubb, first saying he wants to spend it, looks deeper at the
doubloon because he saw his two superiors gazing meaningfully at it. He can
find little but some funny dancing zodiac signs. Then Flask approaches, and
says he sees "nothing here, round thing made of gold and whoever raises a
certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So what's all this staring
been about?" Pip is the last to look at the coin and says, prophetically,
that here's the ship's "navel"{ something at the center of the ship,
holding it together.
Then the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, a whaling ship from London with a
jolly captain and crew. The first thing Ahab asks, of course, is if they
have seen Moby Dick. The captain, named Boomer, has, and is missing an arm
because of it. The story is pretty gory, but Boomer does not dwell too much
on the horrible details, choosing instead to talk about the hot rum toddies
he drank during his recovery. The ship encountered the white whale again
but did not want to try to fasten to it. Although the people on board the
Enderby think he is crazy, Ahab insists on knowing which way the whale went
and returns to his ship to pursue it.
In the next chapter, Ishmael backtracks, to explain why the name Enderby is
significant: this man fitted the first ever English sperm whaling ship.
Ishmael then exuberantly explains the history behind Enderby's before
telling the story of the particular whaler Samuel Enderby. The good food
aboard the Enderby earns the ship the title "Decanter."
Chapter 102-114
Summary
Ishmael now tries another tactic for interpreting the whale. In the chapter
called A Bower in the Arsacides, he discusses how he learned to measure a
whale's bones. When he was visiting his friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, he
lived in a culture in which the whale skeleton was sacred. After telling
how he learned to measure, he goes on to tell the results of the
measurements. He begins with the skull, the biggest part, then the ribs,
and the spine. But these bones, he cautions, give only a partial picture of
the whale since so much esh is wrapped around them. A person cannot still
find good representation of a whale in its entirety.
And Ishmael continues to "manhandle" the whale, self- consciously saying
that he does the best he knows how. So he decides to look at the Fossil
Whale from an "archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of
view." He can't be too grandiloquent with his exaggerated words and diction
because the whale itself is so grand. He ashes credentials again, this time
as a geologist and then discusses his finds. But, again, he is unsatisfied:
"the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his
fully invested body." But this chapter does give a sense of the whale's age
and his pedigree.
Ishmael finally gives up, in awe, deconstructing the whale- -now he wants
to know if such a fabulous monster will remain on the earth. Ishmael says
that though they may not travel in herds anymore, though they may have
changed haunting grounds, they remain. Why? Because they have established a
new home base at the poles, where man cannot penetrate; because they've
been hunted throughout history and still remain; because the whale
population is not in danger for survival since many generations of whales
are alive at the same time.
Ahab asks the carpenter to make him a new leg because the one he uses is
not trustworthy. After hitting it heavily on the boat's wooden oor when he
returned from the Enderby, he does not think it will keep holding. Indeed,
just before the Pequod sailed, Ahab had been found lying on the ground with
the whalebone leg gouging out his thigh. So the carpenter, the do-it-all
man on the ship, has to make Ahab a new prosthetic leg. They discuss the
feeling of a ghost leg. When Ahab leaves, the carpenter thinks he is a
little queer.
A sailor then informs Ahab, in front of Starbuck, that the oil casks are
leaking. The sailor suggests that they stop to fix them, but Ahab refuses
to stop, saying that he doesn't care about the owners or profft. Starbuck
objects and Ahab points a musket at him. Says Starbuck, "I ask thee not to
beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab;
beware of thyself, old man." In cleaning out the stowed oil casks, Queequeg
falls sick. Thinking he is going to die, Queequeg orders a coffn made. He
lies in it and closes the cover, as Pip dances around the coffn. Soon,
Queequeg feels well again and gets out. Ishmael attributes this to his
"savage" nature.
In The Pacific, Ishmael gets caught up in the meditative, serene Pacific
Ocean. At the end of the chapter, he comes back to Ahab, saying that no
such calming thoughts entered the brain of the captain. Ishmael then pans
over to the blacksmith whose life on land disintegrated. With
characteristic panache, Ishmael explains that the sea beckons to broken-
hearted men who long for death but cannot commit suicide. The Forge
dramatizes an exchange between the blacksmith and Ahab in which the captain
asks the blacksmith to make a special harpoon to kill the white whale.
Although Ahab gives the blacksmith directions, he takes over the crafting
of the harpoon himself, hammering the steel on the anvil and tempering it
with the blood of the three harpooneers (instead of water). The scene ends
with Pip's laughter.
In The Gilder, Ishmael considers how the dreaminess of the sea masks a
ferocity. He speaks of the sea as "gilt" because it looks golden in the sun-
set and is falsely calm. The sea even makes Starbuck rhapsodize, making an
apostrophe (direct address of an absent or imaginary person or of a
personified abstraction, especially as a digression in the course of a
speech or composition) to the sea; Stubb answers him by surprise and, as
usual, makes light of the situation.
Chapters 115-125
Summary
These chapters show how badly off the Pequod really is. The somber Pequod,
still on the lookout for Moby Dick, runs into the Bachelor, a festive
Nantucket whaler on its way home with a full cargo. The captain of the
Bachelor, saying that he has only heard stories of the white whale and
doesn't believe them, invites Ahab and the crew to join his party. Ahab
declines. The next day, the Pequod kills several whales and the way that a
dying whale turns towards the sun spurs Ahab to speak out to it in wondrous
tones. While keeping a night vigil over a whale that was too far away to
take back to the ship immediately, Ahab hears from Fedallah the prophecy of
his death. Before Ahab can die, he must see two hearses, one "not made by
mortal hands" and one made of wood from America; and only hemp can kill the
captain. Back on the ship, Ahab holds up a quadrant, an instrument that
gauges the position of the sun, to determine the ship's latitude. Ahab
decides that it does not give him the orienteering information he wants and
tramples it underfoot. He orders the ship to change direction.
The next day, the Pequod is caught in a typhoon. The weird weather makes
white ames appear at the top of the three masts and Ahab refuses to let the
crew put up lightning rods to draw away the danger. While Ahab marvels at
the ship's three masts lit up like three spermaceti candles, hailing them
as good omens and signs of his own power, Starbuck sees them as a warning
against continuing the journey. When Starbuck sees Ahab's harpoon also
ickering with fire, he says that this is a sign that God is against Ahab.
Ahab, however, grasps the harpoon, and says, in front of a frightened crew,
there is nothing to fear in the enterprise that binds them all together. He
blows out the ame to "blow out the last fear. "In the next chapter,
Starbuck questions Ahab's judgment again{this time saying that they should
pull down the main-top-sail yard. Ahab says that they should just lash it
tighter, complaining that his first mate must think him incompetent. On the
bulwarks of the forecastle, Stubb and Flask are having their own
conversation about the storm and Ahab's behavior. Stubb basically dominates
the conversation and says that this journey is no more dangerous than any
other is even though it seems as if Ahab is putting them in extreme danger.
Suspended above them all on the main-top-sail yard, Tashtego says to
himself that sailors don't care that much about the storm, just rum. When
the storm finally dies down, Starbuck goes below to report to Ahab. On the
way to Ahab's cabin, he sees a row of muskets, including the very one that
Ahab had leveled at him earlier. Angry about Ahab's reckless and selfish
behavior, he talks to himself about whether he ought to kill his captain.
He decides he cannot kill Ahab in his sleep and goes up.
When Ahab is on deck the next day, he realizes that the storm has thrown
off the compasses. Ahab then pronounces himself "lord over the level
loadstone yet" and makes his own needle. Here Ishmael comments, "In this
fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride."
With all the other orienteering devices out of order, Ahab decides to pull
out the seldom-used log and line. Because of heat and moisture, the line
breaks and Ahab realizes that he now has none of his original orienteering
devices. He calls for Pip to help him and Pip answers with nonsense. Ahab,
touched by Pip's crazy speeches, says that his cabin will now be Pip's
because they boy "touchest [his] inmost center."
Chapters 126-132
Sailors are very superstitious. As the Pequod approaches the Equatorial
fishing ground, the sailors think that they hear ghosts wailing. The
Manxman (man from the Isle of Man) says that these are the voices of the
newly drowned men in the sea. Ahab says nonsense. When the Pequod's life-
buoy falls overboard and sinks, the sailors think it is a fulfillment of
evil that was foretold. The offcers decide to replace the life-buoy with
Queequeg's coffn.
Though the carpenter grumbles about having to transform the object, Ahab,
who is aware of the irony of the substitution, nevertheless calls the
carpenter "unprincipled as the gods" for going through with the
substitution.
The Pequod encounters the ship Rachel while it is looking for Moby Dick in
these waters. Captain Gardiner of the , after afirming that he has indeed
seen Moby Dick, climbs aboard Ahab's ship and begs Ahab to help him find
his son, whose whaleboat was lost in the chase after the white whale. Ahab
refuses. Now that Ahab knows that the white whale is near, he spends a lot
of time walking the decks. As Ahab goes up one time, Pip wants to follow
him. Ahab tells him to stay in the captain's cabin, lest Pip's insanity
start to cure his own just when he's getting close to the whale and needs
to be a little crazy.
And so Ahab, shadowed everywhere by Fedallah, remains on deck, ever
watchful. This continuous watch sharpens Ahab's obsession and he decides
that he must be the first to sight the whale. He asks Starbuck to help him
get up the main-mast head and watch his rope. When he is there, a black
hawk steals his hat; Ishmael this considers a bad omen. The Pequod then
runs into the miserably misnamed ship Delight. The Delight has indeed
encountered Moby Dick, but the result was a gutted whaleboat and dead men.
As the Pequod goes by, the Delight drops a corpse in the water and
sprinkles the Pequod's hull with a "ghostly baptism."
In the chapter called The Symphony, disparage parts come together for a
crescendo. The pressure finally gets to Ahab and he seems human here,
dropping a tear into the sea. He and Starbuck have a bonding moment as Ahab
sadly talks about his continual, tiring whaling. He calls himself a fool
and thinks himself pathetic. Starbuck suggests giving up the chase, but
Ahab wonders if he can stop because he feels pushed on by Fate. But as Ahab
is asking these grand questions, Starbuck steals away. When Ahab goes to
the other side of the deck to gaze into the water, Fedallah, too, is
looking over the rail.
Chapters 133-Epilogue
Summary
Ahab can sense by smell that Moby Dick is near. Climbing up to the main
royal-mast head, Ahab spots Moby Dick and earns himself the doubloon. All
the boats set off in chase of the whale. When Moby Dick finally surfaces,
he stoves Ahab's boat. The whale is swimming too fast away from them and
they all return to the ship.
Saying that persistent pursuit of one whale has historically happened
before, Ishmael comments that Ahab still desperately wants to chase Moby
Dick though he has lost one boat. They do sight Moby Dick again and the
crewmen, growing increasingly in awe of Ahab and caught up in the thrill of
the chase, lower three boats. Starbuck stays to mind the Pequod. Ahab tries
to attack Moby Dick head on this time, but again, Moby Dick is triumphant.
He stoves Ahab's ship and breaks his false leg. When they return to the
Pequod, Ahab finds out that Fedallah is gone, dragged down by Ahab's own
line. Starbuck tells him to stop, but Ahab, convinced that he is only the
"Fate's lieutenant," says he must keep pursuing the whale.
. Still on the look out, the crew spots the white whale for a third time
but sees nothing until Ahab realizes, "Aye, he's chasing me now; not I,
him{ that's bad." They turn the ship around completely and Ahab mounts the
masthead himself. He sights the spout and lowers again. As he gets into his
boat and leaves Starbuck in charge, the two men exchange a poignant moment
in which Ahab asks to shake hands with his first made and the first mate
tries to tell him not to go. Dangerously, sharks bite at the oars as the
boats pull away.
Starbuck, in a monologue, laments Ahab's sure doom. On the water, Ahab sees
Moby Dick breach. Seeing Fedallah strapped to the whale by turns of rope,
Ahab realizes that this is the first hearse that the Parsee had forecasted.
The whale goes down again and Ahab rows close to the ship. He tells
Tashtego to find another ag and nail it to the main masthead. The boats
soon see the white whale again and go after him. But Moby Dick only turns
around, and heads for the Pequod at full speed. He smashes the ship.
It goes down without its captain. The ship, Ahab realizes, is the second
hearse. Impassioned, Ahab is now determined to strike at Moby Dick with all
of his power: "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 coffns and all
hearses to one common pool and since neither can be mine, let me then tow
to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned
whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" After darting the whale, Ahab is caught
around the neck by the ying line. He is dragged under the sea. Tashtego,
meanwhile, is still trying to nail the ag to the ship's spar as it goes
down. He catches a sky-hawk in mid-hammer and the screaming bird, folded in
the ag, goes down with everything else.
In the Epilogue, Ishmael wraps up the story, saying that he is the only one
who survives the wreck. All the boats and ship were ruined. Ishmael
survives only because Queequeg's coffn bobs up and becomes his life buoy. A
day after the wreck, the Rachel, still cruising for her first lost son,
saves Ishmael.
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