Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the
sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for
vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that crippled him on the ship's previous
voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to
mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891.
Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919
centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book
himself,[1] 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".[2] Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among
world literature's most famous.[3]
Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850 and finished 18 months later, a year after he had
anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including on
whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hardto-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the
whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale
oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration
of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. The book's literary influences
include Shakespeare, Carlyle and the Bible. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles
and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage
directions, soliloquies, and asides. In August 1850, with the manuscript perhaps half finished, he
met Nathaniel Hawthorne and was deeply impressed by his Mosses from an Old Manse, which
he compared to Shakespeare in its cosmic ambitions. This encounter may have inspired him to revise
and deepen Moby-Dick, which is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius".
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.[4] Reviewers in Britain were largely
favorable,[5] 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.[6]
Plot
See also: List of Moby-Dick characters
Ishmael travels in December from Manhattan Island to New Bedford, Massachusetts, with plans to sign
up for a whaling voyage. The inn where he arrives is overcrowded, so he must share a bed with the
tattooed cannibal Polynesian Queequeg, a harpooneer whose father was king of the fictional island
of Rokovoko. The next morning, Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah, then
head for Nantucket. Ishmael signs up with the Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on
their whaler Pequod. Peleg describes Captain Ahab: "He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man" who
nevertheless "has his humanities". They hire Queequeg the following morning. A man
named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. While provisions are
loaded, shadowy figures board the ship. On a cold Christmas Day, the Pequod leaves the harbor.
Ishmael discusses cetology (the zoological classification and natural history of the whale), and describes
the crew members. The chief mate is 30-year-old Starbuck, a Nantucket Quaker with a realist mentality,
whose harpooneer is Queequeg; second mate is Stubb, from Cape Cod, happy-go-lucky and cheerful,
whose harpooneer is Tashtego, a proud, pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head; and the third mate
is Flask, also from Martha's Vineyard, short, stout, whose harpooneer is Daggoo, a tall African, now a
resident of Nantucket.
When Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck, he announces he is out for revenge on the white whale
which took one leg from the knee down and left him with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's
jawbone. Ahab will give the first man to sight Moby Dick a doubloon, a gold coin, which he nails to the
mast. Starbuck objects that he has not come for vengeance but for profit. Ahab's purpose exercises a
mysterious spell on Ishmael: "Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine". Instead of rounding Cape Horn,
Ahab heads for the equatorial Pacific Ocean via southern Africa. One afternoon, as Ishmael and
Queequeg are weaving a mat—"its warp seemed necessity, his hand free will, and Queequeg's sword
chance"—Tashtego sights a sperm whale. Five previously unknown men appear on deck and are
revealed to be a special crew selected by Ahab and explain the shadowy figures seen boarding the ship.
Their leader, Fedallah, a Parsee, is Ahab's harpooneer. The pursuit is unsuccessful.
Moby Dick attacking a whaling boat
Southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, the Pequod makes the first of nine sea-encounters, or "gams",
with other ships: Ahab hails the Goney (Albatross) to ask whether they have seen the White Whale, but
the trumpet through which her captain tries to speak falls into the sea before he can answer. Ishmael
explains that because of Ahab's absorption with Moby Dick, he sails on without the customary "gam",
which Ishmael defines as a "social meeting of two (or more) Whale-ships", in which the two captains
remain on one ship and the chief mates on the other. In the second gam off the Cape of Good Hope,
with the Town-Ho, a Nantucket whaler, the concealed story of a "judgment of God" is revealed, but only
to the crew: a defiant sailor who struck an oppressive officer is flogged, and when that officer led the
chase for Moby Dick, he fell from the boat and was killed by the whale.
Ishmael digresses on pictures of whales, brit (microscopic sea creatures on which whales feed), squid
and—after four boats are lowered in vain because Daggoo mistook a giant squid for the white whale—
whale-lines. The next day, in the Indian Ocean, Stubb kills a sperm whale, and that night Fleece,
the Pequod's black cook, prepares him a rare whale steak. Fleece, at Stubb's request, delivers a sermon
to the sharks that fight each other to feast on the whale's carcass, tied to the ship, saying that their
nature is to be voracious, but they must overcome it. The whale is prepared, beheaded, and barrels of
oil are tried out. Standing at the head of the whale, Ahab begs it to speak of the depths of the sea.
The Pequod next encounters the Jeroboam, which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but also is
now plagued by an epidemic.
The whale carcass still lies in the water. Queequeg mounts it, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as
if they were Siamese twins. Stubb and Flask kill a right whale whose head is fastened to a yardarm
opposite the sperm whale's head. Ishmael compares the two heads in a philosophical way: the right
whale is Lockean, stoic, and the sperm whale is Kantean, platonic. Tashtego cuts into the head of the
sperm whale and retrieves buckets of spermaceti. He falls into the head, which in turn falls off the
yardarm into the sea. Queequeg dives after him and frees his mate with his sword.
The Pequod next gams with the Jungfrau from Bremen. Both ships sight whales simultaneously, with
the Pequod winning the contest. The three harpooneers dart their harpoons, and Flask delivers the
mortal strike with a lance. The carcass sinks, and Queequeg barely manages to escape. The Pequod's
next gam is with the French whaler Bouton de Rose, whose crew is ignorant of the ambergris in the gut
of the diseased whale in their possession. Stubb talks them out of it, but Ahab orders him away before
he can recover more than a few handfuls. Days later, Pip, a little African American cabin-boy, jumps in
panic from Stubb's whale boat and the whale must be cut loose because Pip is entangled in the line; a
few days later Pip jumps in panic again, and is left alone in the sea and has gone insane by the time he is
picked up.
Cooled spermaceti congeals and must be squeezed back into liquid state; blubber is boiled in the trypots on deck; the warm oil is decanted into casks, and then stowed in the ship. After the operation, the
decks are scrubbed. The coin hammered to the main mast shows three Andes summits, one with a
flame, one with a tower, and one a crowing cock. Ahab stops to look at the doubloon and interprets the
coin as signs of his firmness, volcanic energy, and victory; Starbuck takes the high peaks as evidence of
the Trinity; Stubb focuses on the zodiacal arch over the mountains; and Flask sees nothing of any
symbolic value at all. The Manxman mutters in front of the mast, and Pip declines the verb "look".