User:MackyBeth/Moby-Dick plot summary sandbox
Plot[edit]
Ishmael, the narrator, has decided to sign up for a whaling voyage and travels in December from his hometown New York to Nantucket, Massachusetts. In New Bedford he lodges at the Spouter-Inn, where he has to share a bed with the tattooed Polynesian prince Queequeg, a harpooner whose father was king of the island of Rokovoko. The pair quickly become bosom friends. The next morning Ishmael attends Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah. On Monday, the two head for Nantucket where they stay in the Try Pots, and on Tuesday Ishmael negotiates with the owners of the whaler Pequod, Bildad and Peleg, and signs up for the voyage, while Queequeg stays and conducts a ramadan. Peleg describes Ahab, the captain, to him: "'He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man'" who nevertheless "'has his humanities'" (Ch. 16, "The Ship"). Queequeg is hired the following morning. On the way back a man named Elijah warns them for a dire fate should they join Ahab. While equipment for a voyage of 3 to 4 years is brought aboard on Christmas morning, they see 4 or 5 shadowy figures board ship. On a cold Christmas Day, Peleg and Bildad steer the Pequod out of the harbor.
The narrator now interrupts his story to discuss cetology and to describe the crewmembers. The chief mate is 30-year old Starbuck from Nantucket, a serious, sincere Quaker by descent, with a tall physique and a realist mentality, with Queequeg for his harpooneer; second mate is Stubb from Cape Cod, happy-go-lucky and cheerful and always smoking his pipe, with Tashtego for his harpooneer; the third mate is Flask from Tisbury in Martha's Vineyard, short, stout, with Daggo for his harpooneer. Each mate is responsible for a whaling boat, and each has its own pagan harpooneer assigned to it. Tashtego is is a proud, pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard, and Daggoo a gigantic Negro from Africa, now a resident of Nantucket.
Some time after sailing, Ahab finally appears on the quarter-deck one morning, an imposing, frightening figure whose haunted visage sends shivers over the narrator. One of his legs is missing from the knee down and has been replaced by a prosthesis fashioned from a sperm whale's jawbone. After discussing fat-cutting and dining protocol, Ishmael takes his turn at the mast-head looking for whales, but soon wanders off into meditation. One morning Ahab calls all hands on deck and announces he is out for revenge on a white whale which took his leg. The first man who sights this Moby Dick gets as a reward a gold coin which Ahab hammers to the mast. Hypnotized by his speech, the men confirm their loyalty, yet Starbuck objects that he has gone aboard not for vengeance but for profit. Eventually even Starbuck acquiesces to Ahab's will, though harboring misgivings, after Ahab explained how evil the whale is.
Ishmael's curiosity is aroused by the report of the seemingly consciously malicious whale and its demonic whiteness. Instead of rounding Cape Horn, Ahab heads for the equatorial Pacific Ocean via southern Africa. One afternoon Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving a mat - its warp seemed necessity, his hand free will, and Queequeg's sword chance. Then Tashtego sights a sperm whale, and immediately the five dusky phantoms appear on the deck, tiger-yellow as if they were Aborigines from the Manillas. It turns out that Ahab has brought his own boat crew, and their leader, Fedallah the Parsee, is harpooneer of Ahab in his whaleboat. The pursuit is unsuccessful and at dawn the Pequod picks up all the seamen in their boats. Not long afterward, southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, the ship encounters another ship, the Goney. Its captain tries to answer Ahab's inquiry about Moby Dick, but the trumpet through which he speaks falls into the sea.
The still later, the ship embarks upon a gam with the Town-Ho, the only true gam on the voyage because crews are exchanged, with both captains on one ship and the chief mates on the other. The ship had a curious experience when mate Radney insulted the fierce Steelkilt, who in turn broke his officer's jaw, which lead to a half-hearted mutiny. After Radney flogged Steelkilt, the latter wanted to murder Radney, but then Moby Dick appeared. Radney, who chased it, was chewed to bits. Soon afterward Steelkilt escaped to Tahiti.
The narrator now interrupts his account of events to discuss pictures of whales, brit, squid, and--after four boats lowered in vain because Daggoo took a squid for the white whale--whale-lines. The next day, now in the Indian Ocean, Stubb captures a sperm whale, and that night Fleece, the Pequod's black cook, prepares him a rare whale steak. While Stubb enjoys his meal, numerous sharks feast on the whale's carcass, which lies in the water attached to the ship. Fleece then delivers his sermon to the sharks. The next day 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. Soon after this first success, the Pequod meets the Jerobeam, which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but is now plagued by an epidemic. As Ahab tries to deliver a letter addressed for the deceased mate, Gabriel, a Shaker prophet, shouts dire warnings to him.
Because of the sharks, cutting into the whale--which still lies in the water--is a dangerous business. Queequeg gets on top of the carcass, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siames twins. Then Stubb and Flask manage to kill a right whale. When its head is fastened unto a yardarm with the sperm whale's head on the opposite side of it, Ishmael compares the two heads in a philosophical way: he interprets the right whale as Lockean, stoic, and the sperm whale as Kantean, platonic. Tashtego cuts into the head of the sperm-whale and retrieves buckets of whale oil out of it. Then, as the hole deepens, he falls into the head, and the head falls out of the yardam into the sea. Queequeg dives after him and delivers his mate with his sword.
Some time after this event the Pequod meets the Jungfrau from Bremen, with Derick De Deer for its captain. Both ships compete for whales they sight simultaneously, with the Pequod winning the contest. The three harpooneers dart their harpoons, and Flask delivers the final, mortal strike with a lance. Then the carcass with Queequeg in it sinks, and Queequeg barely manages to escape. Ishmael now essays on the honor and glory of whaling, how to dart lances in a harpooned whale, and the spouts and tails of whales. Meanwhile the Pequod reaches Sunda Strait. Ahab wants to pass through it on his way to the Philippines and the Japanese coast. An armada of whales passe through the strait as well.
Some weeks after this the Pequod meets the French whaler Bouton de Rose, with a crew ignorant enough that they don't know about the ambergris in the head of the diseased whale in their possession. Stubb talks them out of it, but Ahab orders him away. Days later a harpooned whale throws Pip, a little Negro boy from Alabama, out of his whale-boat. The whale must be cut loose, because the line has Pip so entangled in it. Furious, Stubb orders Pip to stick in the whaleboat, but Pip jumps again later, and is then left alone in the immense sea for awhile and has apparently gone insane when picked up.
Cooled sperm oil congeals and must be squeezed back into liquid state; blubber is boiled in the try-pots 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 mainmast 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 Pips declines the verb "look."
Suddenly the Pequod gams with the Samuel Enderby of London, captained by Boomer, a down-to-earth fellow who lost his right arm to Moby Dick. Nevertheless, he carries no ill will toward the whale, which he regards not as malicious but as awkward. Ahab puts an end to the gam by pushing aside the surgeon Dr. Jack Bunger and rushing back to his ship. The narrator now discusses the subjects of 1) whalers supply; 2) a glen in Tranque in the Arsacides islands full of carved whale bones, fossil whales, whale skeleton measurements; 3) the chance that the magnitude of the whal will diminish and that the leviathan might perish.
Just now it is made known that shortly before the Pequod sailed, Ahab fell and his ivory leg almost pierced his groin. Now leaving the Samuel Enderby, he again wrenches the ivory and orders the carpenter to fashion him another. Ahab watches near the vice bench, with Perth the blacksmith at his forge close by. When Ahab is back in his cabin, Starbuck informs him of oil leakage in the hold. Reluctantly, Ahab orders the harpooneers to inspect the casks. Queequeg, sweating all day below decks, develops a chill and soon is almost mortally feverish. The carpenter makes a coffin for Queequeg, who fears an ordinary burial at sea. Queequeg tries it for size, with Pip sobbing and beating his tambourine, standing by and calling himself a coward while he praises Queequeg for his gameness. Yet Queequeg suddenly rallies, briefly convalesces, and leaps up--back in good health. Henceforth he uses his coffin for a spare sea-chest, which is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod's lifebuoy.
The Pequod sails northeast toward Formosa and into the Pacific Ocean. Ahab with one nostril smells the musk from the Bashee isles and with the other the salt of the waters where Moby Dick swims. Carrying a bag of race-horse shoe-nail stubbs, Ahab goes to Perth, the blacksmith, with the plan that these be forged into rods for the shank of a special harpoon. In addition, Ahab comes up with his razors for Perth to melt and fashion into a harpoon barb, which Ahab tempers in the blood from the heathen Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. The Pequod now meets the Bachelor, a ship from Nantucket, heading home full of sperm oil. Every now and then the Pequod lowers for whales with success. On one of those nights in the whaleboat, Fedallah tells Ahab that neither hearse nor coffin can be his, that before he dies he must see two hearses--one not made by mortal hands and the other made of American wood--that Fedallah will precede his captain in death, and finally that only hemp can kill Ahab. Ahab laughs deliriously in response.
As the Pequod approaches the Equator, Ahab scolds his quadrant for telling him only where he is and not where he will be. He dashes it to the deck. That evening an impressive typhoon lashes the ship, leaving the crew in awe. Ahab delivers a speech on the spirit of fire. Starbuck wants to take down the main-topsail yard as the wind loosens it, but Ahab decides otherwise. He orders all things be lashed against the rising tempest. Stubb and Flask have a simpler outlook upon the storm. For a moment, Starbuck feels tempted to shoot the sleeping Ahab with a musket. Next morning it becomes apparent that the lightning somehow turned the compass. Ahab makes a new one out of a lance, a maul, and a sailmaker's needle. Some few hours later he orders the log be heaved, but the weathered line snaps.
The Pequod is now heading southeast toward the grounds where Moby Dick resides, when suddenly a man falls overboard from the mast. The life-buoy is thrown, but both sink. Now Queequeg proposes his superfluous coffin is used as a new life-buoy, ans Starbuck orders the carpenter takes care it is lidded and caulked. Next morning the ship meets the Rachel, commanded by Captain Gardener from Nantucket. Last afternoon, one of her whaleboats went after Moby Dick, who either sank it or threw it out of sight, and now the Rachel is seeking survivors, Among the missing is Gardiner's young son. Ahab has no mercy and refuses to join the Rachel for two days of searching. The Pequod is very near the White Whale now and will not stop to help. Twenty four hours a day Ahab now stands and walks the deck, while Fedallah shadows him. Suddenly a sea hawk manages to grab Ahab's slouched hat and flies off with it. Next the Pequod meets a ninth and last whaler, named the Delight, badly damaged and with five of her crew dead after Moby Dick attacked her. By way of warning, her captain shouts that the harpoon which can kill the white whale has yet to be forged, but Ahab flourishes his special lance and once more orders the ship forward.
Before the Pequod finally sights Moby Dick, Ahab experiences a moment of contemplation with Starbuck. Ahab speaks about his wife and child, calls himself a fool for spending forty years on whaling, and claims he can see his own child in Starbuck's eye. Starbuck seizes the opportunity and tries to persuade Ahab to return to Nantucket to meet both their families, but in reply Ahab crosses the deck and stands near Fedallah.
Next morning Ahab smells the sperm whale and suddenly sight the snow-hill hump of the white whale. He claims the doubloon for himself, and orders all boats except for Starbuck's to go after Moby Dick. The whale bites Ahab's boat in two, tosses the captain out of it, and scatters his crew, Fedallah included. On the second day of the chase, Ahab leaves Starbuck in charge of the Pequod. Moby Dick attacks the three boats that seek him, smashes the boats into splinters, and tangles their lines. Ahab is rescued from the sea, but his ivory leg and Fedallah are lost. Starbuck begs Ahab to desist, but Ahab vows to slay the white whale, even if he would have to dive through the globe itself in order to get his revenge.
On the third day of the chase, at noon Moby Dick is first sighted, but now sharks appear as well. Nevertheless, Ahab lowers his boat for a final time. Fedallah, entangled in the fouled lines, is thus lashed to the back of the whale, and so the whale turns out to be the hearse Fedallah promised prophetically. And so the Parsee goes before his master. Possessed by all the fallen angels, Ahab to the socket plants his special harpoon in the whale's flank. Moby Dick smites the whaleboat and knocks two oarsmen to its side, where they cling, and a third man free and clear. The boat splits and ships water. The whale now attacks the Pequod and fatally damages the starboard bow. At this point Ahab realizes that the ship is the hearse made of American wood from Feadallah's prophesy. The whale returns to Ahab, who stabs at him again. The harpoon line loops around Ahab's neck, and as the stricken whale swims away the captain is bowstrung out of sight. Immediately after that the Pequod sinks.
Only the third man, Ishmael, survives. Queequeg’s coffin emerges to the surface, the sole element that thus does not sink with the ship. For an entire day Ishmael floats on it, and then the Rachel, still looking for its lost seamen, rescues him. Some years after the adventure Ishmael tells his story.