Moby-Dick (1851) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Captain Ahab: Ahab is the insane captain of the whaling ship the Pequod. One of his legs was bitten off by the whale Moby Dick, so he has devoted the whole whaling trip to seeking his revenge, forcing the crew to support him with threats and incentives. He is forceful and crazy, yet shows his kindness when it comes to the young Pip and his wife and child.
• Ishmael: Ishmael is the narrator of this story. He joins the Pequod's crew because he needs money and wants to gain the knowledge and experience that comes from the whale fishery. He is not a major character in the main events of the voyage, yet he supplies a lot of philosophy and information on whales.
• Queequeg: Ishamel's friend, viewed as savage by many, Queegqueg is the son of a king of a south seas island. He had been a member of many ships' crews before joining the Pequod; an excellent harpooner.
• Starbuck: Starbuck is the cautious, quiet, religious first mate of the Pequod. He argues with Ahab on his judgment concerning Moby Dick, worrying of the lives of the crew and of Ahab. He is a soft-spoken Christian that counterbalances Ahab's insanity. The character after whom the famous and ubiquitous coffee company is named. A New Englander.
• Stubb: Jolly second mate on the Pequod who likes to laugh in the face of fear. A New Englander.
• Flask: Third mate on the Pequod; a small, fierce, practical man who doesn’t think too deeply about anything and butchers whales with great enthusiasm. A New Englander.
• Tashtego: Native-American harpooner on Stubb's whaling boat.
• Daggoo: Enormous and strong African tribesman who serves as harpooner on Flask's whaling boat.
• Fedallah: A Parsee, or Persian fire-worshiper; kidnapped by Ahab to serve as the harpooner on his personal whaling boat.
• Pip: A young African-American boy, one of the lowest-ranking sailors on board the Pequod. After being left at sea then rescued, he becomes the object of Ahab's rare compassion.
• Moby Dick: Moby Dick is the gigantic white whale that bit off Ahab's leg. He is legendary with whalers; many legends circulate of his violence and almost immortality. Ahab sees him as a symbol of all the world's evils and devote the rest of his life to killing this mysterious and ominous foe.
• Captain Bildad: With Captain Peleg, one of the two owners of the Pequod.
• Captain Peleg: With Captain Bildad, one of the two owners of the Pequod.
• Father Mapple: Clergyman at the New Bedford Whaleman’s Chapel that Ishmael and Queequeg attend before setting out for Nantucket and their whaling voyage.
• Captain Boomer: Commander of the English whaling ship the Samuel Enderby; antithesis of Ahab, Boomer also lost a limb to Moby-Dick, but has able to preserve his sanity and put the incident behind him.
• Dr. Bunger: Doctor on the Samuel Enderby.
• Don Sebastian: Captain of a Spanish ship who visits with Ahab before the fateful voyage.
• Yojo: Queequeg's little wooden idol.
• Captain Derick de Deer: Captain of another whaling ship
• Captain Mayhew: Captain of the whaling ship Jeroboam; relates his encounter with the white whale to Ahab.
• Gabriel: First mate of the Jeroboam whose crew believes him to an archangel.
• Macey: Ship's mate on the Jeroboam; killed by Moby Dick.
• Steelkilt: Sailor on the Town-Ho who leads a mutiny attempt.
• Radney: Ship's mate on the whaling ship Town-Ho; devoured by Moby Dick.
• Mrs. Hussey: Wife of Hosea Hussey who owns the Ramadan inn; Mrs. Hussey runs the inn in her husband's absence.
• Elijah: A minor character who warns Ishmael and Queegqueg of the imminent doom of their voyage. An allusion to the biblical prophet of the same name.
• Bulkington: Upon setting sail, Ishmael offers a brief portrait of Bulkington, a sailor on the Pequod; Ishmael thinks of him as a restless pioneer, fated to die at sea. Ishmael considers this kind of death infinitely preferable to fading away through cowardice, and, in an imaginary address to Bulkington, declares that the death at sea will transform Bulkington into a god.
• Archy and Cabaco: Rowers in Stubb's whaling boat.

Quotes edit see section history

show spoilers

• “Call me Ishmael.”

  Ishmael

• “What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad – Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I would be dismembered, and – Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye… I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies, - Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden… Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!”

  Ahab

• “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken christian”

  Ishmael

• “All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever present perils of life.”

• “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! 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!”

• “How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.”

  Ishamael

• “Ignorance is the parent of fear . .”

• “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

  Ishmael

• “There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”

• “I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.”

• “(...)For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.”

  Ishmael

• “It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be thinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.”

  Ishmael

• “It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciusness. Of, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale retaing , O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.”

  Ishmael

• “They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance”

  Ishmael

• “Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up”

  Ahab

• “It is our task in life to kill whales, to furnish oil for the lamps of the world. If we perform that task well and faithfully, we do a service to mankind that pleases Almighty God. Ahab would deny all that. He has taken us from the rich harvest we were reaping to satisfy his lust for vengeance. He is twisting that which is holy into something dark and purposeless. He is a Champion of Darkness. Ahab's red flag challenges the heavens.”

  Starbuck

• “Who ain't a slave? tell me that.”

  Ishmael

• “But as in all landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God- so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be inglriously dashed upon the lee, even it were safety!”

• “Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”

  Ishmael

• “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.”

  Ishmael

• “"...for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• New England: Nantucket, New Bedford
• The Pequod on the Atlantic Ocean: Captain Ahab's whaling vessel.
• The Spouter Inn: An inn in New Bedford where Ishmael meets Queequeg.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Bilge-pump: A device used to remove water that collects in the very bottom of a ship
• Carrol Ground: A whale-hunting area off the coast of Angola, Africa
• Jove: Jupiter, the chief god of Roman mythology
• Leviathan: Whale; also a biblical term for whales.
• Manxman: Native of the Isle of Man.
• Parsee: Persian fire-worshiper

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Obsession and megalomania: Describe this theme.
• Religion: Many of the characters are allusions to biblical characters; Quakers, Parsees, and Christian priests are included.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The House of the Seven Gables, and followed by The Scarlet Letter.

Preceded by The Brothers Karamazov, and followed by Madame Bovary.

Preceded by Outlander, and followed by River God.

Preceded by Hamlet, and followed by The Metamorphosis.

Preceded by The Federalist Papers, and followed by Essential Manners for Men.

Preceded by Midnight's Children, and followed by Oliver Twist.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Herman Melville (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Will Eisner
2. Nathaniel Philbrick
3. Frank Muller (Reader)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #161)
• Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS2384 .M6 1851
• Dewey: 813.3

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Though there is nothing inappropriate for readers over age 12, the themes and complexity of the novel are better suited for older readers.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics › Melville, Herman
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( M ) › Melville, Herman
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › 19th Century
• Books › Literature & Fiction › History & Criticism › Criticism & Theory
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia: Learn more about this book at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Wikisource: Read this book online for free at Wikisource, the free library.

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Moby Dick (IMDb): 1956
• Moby Dick (IMDb): 1998 (TV)
• Moby Dick (IMDb): 2010 (TV series)

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Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history