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"Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly, this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye."
In this section our introduction to whaling concentrates our attention onto the whale itself, a marvel that engrosses the narrator-Ishmael, whose voice predominates here. We see his respect for his fellow whalers, his excitement at and profound regret for the bloody hunt, and his respect, even awe for the great creatures whom he hunts. The Ishmael who looks back on the hunt becomes, for this part of the book, as central as those whose stories he tells. The Ishmael who tells becomes, for a time, the focus of interest.
In this section our introduction to whaling concentrates our attention onto the whale itself, a marvel that engrosses the narrator-Ishmael, whose voice predominates here. We see his respect for his fellow whalers, his excitement at and profound regret for the bloody hunt, and his respect, even awe for the great creatures whom he hunts. The Ishmael who looks back on the hunt becomes, for this part of the book, as central as those whose stories he tells. The Ishmael who tells becomes, for a time, the focus of interest.
Chapter 60 The Line
Chapter 60 The Line
The complex windings of the whale line give rise to information readers needed—sailing and whaling were immensely complex feats of great interest in the mid nineteenth century. But, as we are accustomed to know by now, our narrator-Ishmael has some observations and opinions he wants to share, including his sense that we need "a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and and simultaneousness of volition and action."
The complex windings of the whale line give rise to information readers needed—sailing and whaling were immensely complex feats of great interest in the mid nineteenth century. But, as we are accustomed to know by now, our narrator-Ishmael has some observations and opinions he wants to share, including his sense that we need "a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and and simultaneousness of volition and action."
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? 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. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
Chapter 61 Stubb Kills a Whale
Chapter 61 Stubb Kills a Whale
Stubb's jollity and imperturbable manner overlie a certain indifferent brutality, as we will see in Chapter 64.
Stubb's jollity and imperturbable manner overlie a certain indifferent brutality, as we will see in Chapter 64.
"Pull up—pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath. "Pull up!—close to!" and the boat ranged along the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, over- wrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.
And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!
"He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.
"Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.
Chapter 62 The Dart
Chapter 62 The Dart
Chapter 63 The Crotch
Chapter 63 The Crotch
Chapter 64 Stubb's Supper
Chapter 64 Stubb's Supper
Interspersed with the comedy of Stubb's supper are contemplations of his cruelty to Fleece the cook and more general ideas about human cruelty in general. Squeamishness about "woraciousness" gets put in its place.
Interspersed with the comedy of Stubb's supper are contemplations of his cruelty to Fleece the cook and more general ideas about human cruelty in general. Squeamishness about "woraciousness" gets put in its place.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formerly indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
Despite the minstrel-show demeaning of the black cook, Fleece has the better of Stubb at the end of the the chapter.
Despite the minstrel-show demeaning of the black cook, Fleece has the better of Stubb at the end of the the chapter.
"Wish, by gor! whale eat him, 'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself," muttered the old man, limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.
Chapter 65 The Whale as a Dish
Chapter 65 The Whale as a Dish
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formerly indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
The equation of pate-de-foi-gras to a salted missionary is another passage that caused great distress in the religious press.
The equation of pate-de-foi-gras to a salted missionary is another passage that caused great distress in the religious press.
Chapter 66 The Shark Massacre
Chapter 66 The Shark Massacre
"'Queequeg no care what god make him shark,' said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down [to kill the sharks devouring the dead whale]; 'wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but the god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."
Chapter 67 Cutting In
Chapter 67 Cutting In
From Moby-Dick, the Norton Critical Edition
Chapter 68 The Blanket
Chapter 68 The Blanket
The complicated and dangerous process described in Chapter 67 evokes here, as we are now accustomed to seeing, musings by Ishmael that end (as in the end of the Cetology chapter) with a joke about erections.
The complicated and dangerous process described in Chapter 67 evokes here, as we are now accustomed to seeing, musings by Ishmael that end (as in the end of the Cetology chapter) with a joke about erections.
A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the north, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then—except after explanation—that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.
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 spaciousness. Oh, 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, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!
Chapter 69 The Funeral
Chapter 69 The Funeral
The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
The sad spectacle of the vast whale remains, floating away with the non-human predators surrounding it, leads to another passage offensive to the authorities of the day.
The sad spectacle of the vast whale remains, floating away with the non-human predators surrounding it, leads to another passage offensive to the authorities of the day.
Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!
Chapter 70 The Sphynx
Chapter 70 The Sphynx
Our return to Ahab's consciousness as he looks at the whale head amplifies and darkens elements of the attitudes Ishmael has evoked in his response to the whale slaughter.
Our return to Ahab's consciousness as he looks at the whale head amplifies and darkens elements of the attitudes Ishmael has evoked in his response to the whale slaughter.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth isballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"
Chapter 71 The Jeroboam's Story
Chapter 71 The Jeroboam's Story
Another version of the Pequod, the Jeroboam is infected with a madness that refracts rather than reflects Ahab's. The strange conversation, interrupted by the waves and by Gabriel's madness seems to me to reintroduce the sense of each ship and person as an isolato—remember that failure of communication in Chapter 52.
Another version of the Pequod, the Jeroboam is infected with a madness that refracts rather than reflects Ahab's. The strange conversation, interrupted by the waves and by Gabriel's madness seems to me to reintroduce the sense of each ship and person as an isolato—remember that failure of communication in Chapter 52.
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between.
Chapter 72 The Monkey Rope
Chapter 72 The Monkey Rope
The working of the monkey-rope, steadying Queequeg on the revolving carcass of the whale, opens another opportunity for Ishmaelite philosophizing.
The working of the monkey-rope, steadying Queequeg on the revolving carcass of the whale, opens another opportunity for Ishmaelite philosophizing.
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down to his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even- handed equity never could have sanctioned so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and the ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would I only had the management of one end of it.
...
[The other harpooners are, like Queegqueg in Chapter 66, using sharp spades to kill the sharks surrounding Queegqueg as he balances on the spinning whale carcass.]
Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it, after all? are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.
Chapter 73 Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him
Chapter 73 Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him
Having seen in vivid detail the misery suffered by whales, Ahab's decision to kill a right whale, not a desirable commodity, seems arbitrary and cruel, even when we hear from Flask that Fedallah has prophesied that a ship with a right whale head on the larboard with a sperm whale head on the starboard cannot sink.
Having seen in vivid detail the misery suffered by whales, Ahab's decision to kill a right whale, not a desirable commodity, seems arbitrary and cruel, even when we hear from Flask that Fedallah has prophesied that a ship with a right whale head on the larboard with a sperm whale head on the starboard cannot sink.
Chapter 74 The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View
Chapter 74 The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View
Our first lesson in detailed whale physiology contrasts the two heads.
Our first lesson in detailed whale physiology contrasts the two heads.
In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt color of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a "grey-headed whale".
The Sperm is a toothed whale, whose feeding seems to involve deep dives in which the vast and powerful jaw opens to close upon prey the huge teeth destroy.
The Sperm is a toothed whale, whose feeding seems to involve deep dives in which the vast and powerful jaw opens to close upon prey the huge teeth destroy.
Chapter 75 The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View
Chapter 75 The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View
The Right is a baleen whale, whose mouth opens to a vast quantity of sea-water in which are the small creatures, animal and vegetable, that are trapped in the fine filtrations system of the baleen.
The Right is a baleen whale, whose mouth opens to a vast quantity of sea-water in which are the small creatures, animal and vegetable, that are trapped in the fine filtrations system of the baleen.
Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes?
Of course, Ishmael has much else to say.
Of course, Ishmael has much else to say.
To sum up, then; in the Right Whale's there is no great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in following.
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.
Chapter 76 The Battering-Ram
Chapter 76 The Battering-Ram
Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befel the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at Sais?
In the unlikely event that you have not read Schiller's poem "The Veiled Statute at Sais," it might be useful to point out that a young man went to the Egyptian site to see the truth of all things, hidden, he was told beneath a veil covering a statue of Isis. He was terrified, never revealed what he saw, and warned all others not to look.
Chapter 77 The Great Heidelburgh Tun
Chapter 77 The Great Heidelburgh Tun
The vast chamber behind the battering-ram contains two parts containing oil in intricate passageways. The upper— containing the precious spermaceti oil that gives the head its buoyancy—is what Ishmael compares to the huge wine vat. Next week we'll see another value of spermaceti.
The vast chamber behind the battering-ram contains two parts containing oil in intricate passageways. The upper— containing the precious spermaceti oil that gives the head its buoyancy—is what Ishmael compares to the huge wine vat. Next week we'll see another value of spermaceti.
In Ahab's Rolling Sea Richard King suggests that the intricate spermaceti-filled passages are crucial chambers for the whale's echolocation abilities, which permit discovery of prey in the deep ocean.
Chapter 78 Cistern and Buckets
Chapter 78 Cistern and Buckets
After the disaster of the tackle breaking, the head falling into the sea beside the ship with Tashtego inside it, Queegqueg's rescue of his fellow harpooneer leads to one more bit of Ishmael's musings on matters philosophical.
After the disaster of the tackle breaking, the head falling into the sea beside the ship with Tashtego inside it, Queegqueg's rescue of his fellow harpooneer leads to one more bit of Ishmael's musings on matters philosophical.
Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?
Chapter 79 The Prairie
Chapter 79 The Prairie
The contemplation of the whale's vast forehead leads to a motif that will become more and more prominent as the book moves to its climax: the whale as a book to be read, but a book that, like the world, seems beyond our comprehension.
The contemplation of the whale's vast forehead leads to a motif that will become more and more prominent as the book moves to its climax: the whale as a book to be read, but a book that, like the world, seems beyond our comprehension.
In thought a fine human brow is like the east when troubled with the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to their decrees. It signifies "God: done this day by my hand". But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed, its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius.
But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or as least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face, in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.
The idea of a text that promises meaning but cannot be read is echoed later in a crucial passage.
The idea of a text that promises meaning but cannot be read is echoed later in a crucial passage.
The Rosetta stone, the "wrinkled granite" that Champollion deciphered. It is in the British Museum.
Chapter 80 The Nut
Chapter 80 The Nut
Information interlarded with continuing fun at the expense of phrenology
Information interlarded with continuing fun at the expense of phrenology
Chapter 81 The Pequod Meets the Virgin
Chapter 81 The Pequod Meets the Virgin
The half-comedic competition with the incompetent crew of the JungfrauI comes to a moment in which Ishmael records the side of whaling that emerges more and more as the book moves on.
The half-comedic competition with the incompetent crew of the JungfrauI comes to a moment in which Ishmael records the side of whaling that emerges more and more as the book moves on.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said—"Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod's fish-spears!
In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
Flask's indifference to the whale's suffering makes itself known.
Flask's indifference to the whale's suffering makes itself known.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely discolored bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.
"A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there once."
"Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"
But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and marring the bows. It was his death stroke.
Chapter 82 The Honor and Glory of Whaling. Chapter 83 Jonah Historically Regarded
Chapter 82 The Honor and Glory of Whaling. Chapter 83 Jonah Historically Regarded
- History, myth, and Scripture are commandeered on behalf of whaling, and in Chapter 83 Ishmael uses the Sag Harbor whaleman's skepticism in another roundabout attack on Bible-centered orthodoxy. Aside from arguments from physiology and the chemistry of whale stomachs, the transfer from what is now Cadiz, Spain to what is now Iraq in a three-day swim by a whale is the crowning argument.
But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his foolish pride of reason—a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of the general miracle. And so it was.
Chapter 84 Pitchpoling
Chapter 84 Pitchpoling
Another look at Stubb.
Another look at Stubb.
Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance full before his waistband's middle, he levels it at the whale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
"That drove the spigot out of him!" cries Stubb. "'Tis July's immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine to-day! Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we'd drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff!"
Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the monster die.
Chapter 85 The Fountain
Chapter 85 The Fountain
The description, analysis, and speculation about the whale's breathing through the spout triggers a picture of the whale that moves Ishamel toward a balanced picture of thought and belief, perhaps what he learned on his several whaling voyages. It is as if the whale healed Ishmael into the equilibrium he presents at the end of the chapter.
The description, analysis, and speculation about the whale's breathing through the spout triggers a picture of the whale that moves Ishamel toward a balanced picture of thought and belief, perhaps what he learned on his several whaling voyages. It is as if the whale healed Ishmael into the equilibrium he presents at the end of the chapter.
My hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for the above supposition.
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see it—glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.
Chapter 86 The Tail
Chapter 86 The Tail
The extended description and appreciation of the beauty and power ot the mighty tail opens out into another celebration of the sights that enoble those who see them. Two passages extend the comments about orthodox religion that embody the attitude presented at the end of the last chapter.
The extended description and appreciation of the beauty and power ot the mighty tail opens out into another celebration of the sights that enoble those who see them. Two passages extend the comments about orthodox religion that embody the attitude presented at the end of the last chapter.
Nor does this—its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.
The end of this chapter hints at something that haunts the book as a whole.
The end of this chapter hints at something that haunts the book as a whole.
[W]hen he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime breach—somewhere else to be described—this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire worshippers.
. . .
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting other motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.
Like Yahweh in Exodus 33:23, the whale is ultimately unkowable—"Thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen."
Like Yahweh in Exodus 33:23, the whale is ultimately unkowable—"Thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen."
Chapter 87 The Grand Armada
Chapter 87 The Grand Armada
This complicated chapter presents whale behavior, a meditation on panic in whales and people, an adventure, and a strange juxtaposition of a sort that becomes more prominent as the book moves toward its conclusion. Starbuck's boat is towed to the center of panicked mass of whales, to the calm center where mothers and babies swim:
This complicated chapter presents whale behavior, a meditation on panic in whales and people, an adventure, and a strange juxtaposition of a sort that becomes more prominent as the book moves toward its conclusion. Starbuck's boat is towed to the center of panicked mass of whales, to the calm center where mothers and babies swim:
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulf-weed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts.
"Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him fast! him fast!—Who line him! Who struck? Two whale; one big, one little!"
"What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.
"Look-e here," said Queequeg pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours in the deep.
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
Chapter 88 Schools and Schoolmasters
Chapter 88 Schools and Schoolmasters
Here we see the continuing treatment of whales in terms that humanize them.
Here we see the continuing treatment of whales in terms that humanize them.
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