so." When Ahab confirms that he intends to hunt the white whale still,

Gabriel points to him, saying, "Think, think of the blasphemer - dead, and

down there! - beware of the blasphemer's end!" Ahab then realizes that the

Pequod is carrying a letter for the dead mate and tries to hand it over to

the captain on the end of a cutting-spade pole. Somehow, Gabriel gets a

hold of it, impales it on the boat-knife, and sends it back to Ahab's feet

as the Jeroboam pulls away.

Ishmael backtracks again in The Monkey-Rope to explain how Queequeg inserts

the blubber hook. Ishmael, as Queequeg's bowsman, ties the monkey-rope

around his waist as Queequeg is on the whale's oating body trying to attach

the hook. (In a footnote, we learn that only on the Pequod were the monkey

and this holder actually tied together, an improvement introduced by

Stubb.) While Ishmael holds him, Tashtego and Daggoo are also ourishing

their whale-spades to keep the sharks away. When Dough-Boy, the steward,

offers Queequeg some tepid ginger and water, the mates frown at the in

uence of pesky Temperance activists and make the steward bring him alcohol.

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

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