Moby Dick by Herman Melville

saves his life. Queequeg is important to the theme of friendship and the value of diversity.
 Starbuck - The chief mate aboard the Pequod. He is the only one who attempts to stand up to Ahab's
obsessive direction of the ship's purpose. Even he eventually acquiesces.
 Fedallah - The ancient Asian who is Ahab's harpooner and spiritual guide. His prophecy regarding
Ahab's death ominously foreshadows the end of the novel.
 Pip - The cabin boy, who nearly drowns when he is abandoned during a whale hunt. He discovers
painful insights that allow him an unusual view of reality and temporarily endear him to Ahab.
 Elijah - The cryptic prophet who helps to set an early tone of dark mystery in the novel. He alerts
Ishmael to possible problems with Ahab and secrets aboard the Pequod.
 Stubb - The second mate. He considers himself to be quite the wit, always laughing and telling funny
stories.
 Captain Gardiner - The captain of the Rachel who was looking for his only son, who got lost on a
boat after the Rachel’s encounter with Moby Dick.
 Moby Dick - The great white sperm whale. Moby Dick, also referred to as the White Whale, is an
infamous and dangerous threat to seamen, considered by Ahab the incarnation of evil and a fated
nemesis.

Themes
 Revenge - Moby-Dick is, fundamentally, a revenge tragedy. It’s about one man’s maniacal obsession
with vengeance. It’s about finding an object on which to pin all your anger and fear and rage, not only
about your own suffering, but also about the suffering of all mankind. It’s about the way that the
desire for revenge can eat away at you until it becomes something inhabiting your body, something
separate from your own personality.
 Man and the natural world - In the novel, whalers go out to sea to hunt for whales, and throughout the
novel we bare witness to the viewpoint of certain characters towards nature.
 Religion - The novel uses a great deal of Biblical symbolism, especially in the names and allegorical
roles of characters.
 Fate and free will - The book thrusts questions of free will vs. determinism right into the reader’s face,
starting in the very first chapter. Fate is often mentioned throughout the novel, such as whenever
Fedallah announces his prophecies.
 Madness - The most insane monomaniac in the story is Captain Ahab, who can still behave with cool
rationality as he calculates his ship’s course and manages his crew — it’s only his goal that’s totally
ridiculous. Another kind of madness the novel explores is the effect of desperate depression on an
otherwise normal character, for example Pip.
 Friendship and value of diversity - One of the side plots of the story include the friendship between
Ishmael and Queequeg, who are seen to be extremely close to each other throughout the novel despite
their racial differences.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the ship has its first of many gams, or meetings with other ships.
Ahab’s sole purpose in communicating with these ships is to get news of Moby Dick. Several of the ships
have lost men to the whale. The Rachel has recently chased Moby Dick and is now searching for a lost
boat. The young son of the captain is in that boat, but Ahab refuses to join the search. Starbuck confronts
Ahab and tries to convince him to abandon his mission to get his revenge on Moby Dick but fails.

Stubb’s boat is the first to kill a whale. While Stubb eats his whale steak, Fleece, the cook, delivers a
sermon to the sharks. During the cleaning of another whale, Tashtego falls into the tun, the forehead of the
whale containing the spermaceti. When the head breaks loose from the ship and falls into the water,
Tashtego is rescued by Queegueg. Pip, the timid black boy, is temporarily abandoned in the sea during
another whale chase which drives him to madness. Queequeg, stricken with fever and believing death is
near, has the ship’s carpenter build him a coffin.

Ahab has the blacksmith fashion a special harpoon, tempered in the blood of the heathen harpooners.
During a storm, Ahab holds the harpoon above his head and it is struck by lightning. Later, Ahab has a
dream, which is interpreted by Fedallah. The Parsee predicts that he will die before Ahab, that only hemp
can kill Ahab, and that before he dies, Ahab will see two hearses upon the sea.

At last, Moby Dick is sighted by Ahab. The chase lasts three days. Fedallah dies, lashed by tangled lines to
the body of the great beast. Ahab thrusts his harpoon into Moby Dick, but his line runs afoul and catches
him around the neck; he is pulled down to the depths. Moby Dick smashes into the bow of the Pequod, and
Queequeg’s coffin shoots out of the whirlpool created by the sinking ship. The only survivor, Ishmael,
clings to this strange life buoy and is later rescued.

Background
Autobiographical elements: Moby-Dick is based on Melville's experience on the whaler Acushnet,
however even the book's most factual accounts of whaling are not straight autobiography.

Although 26 men signed up as crew members, two did not show up for the ship's departure and were
replaced by one new crew member. Five of the crew were foreigners, four of them Portuguese, and the
others were American, either at birth or naturalized. Three black men were in the crew, two seamen and
the cook.

Ahab seems to have had no model in real life, though his death may have been based on an actual event.
On May 18, 1843, Melville was aboard The Star, which sailed for Honolulu. Aboard were two sailors from
the Nantucket who could have told him that they had seen their second mate "taken out of a whaleboat by
a foul line and drowned".
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Whaling sources: In addition to his own experience on the whaling ship Acushnet, two actual events
served as the genesis for Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820, after a
sperm whale rammed her 3,200 km from the western coast of South America. The other event was the
alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean
island of Mocha. Mocha Dick was rumored to have 20 or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and
appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity

Whaling: In the days before the discovery of petroleum, whale oil supplied the fuel lamps. In addition, the
whale was the source of a bony substance called baleen used various household products. Voyages would
often last for four years. Life on board a whale ship was hard and killing whales was extremely dangerous.
After the harpooners had speared a whale their boats would be dragged along by the whale trying to
escape. Once it was dead, it would be brought on board and its blubber (layer of fat) would be cut off and
all the valuable parts preserved. A whaling ship would typically kill about 40 whales on a four year
voyage. If you survived the journey, you could make a lot of money.

Setting:
Places: .
 Nantuckets, North America - Port for whaling ships where Ishmael meets Queequeq and finds work on
board the Pequod as a whaler.
 The Pequod - Whaling ship where most of the drama takes place.
 Atlantic Ocean - Where many whales are caught and killed. Moby Dick is spotted here and The
Pequod comes across many ships in this ocean.
 Pacific Ocean - Where Moby Dick battles with Captain Ahab. The Pequod sinks and everyone on
board drowns except Ishmael who is then saved by the Rachel.

Time: 19th century, maritime era. Seamanship was popular as a trade and profession because it offered
exciting opportunities for travel and for earning an income. Electricity was not discovered yet at this time
and people relied on oil lamps for light. Whale oil was the cleanest and the best.

Characters
 Ishmael - The narrator of the novel is a keen observer, a young man with an open mind who is wary of
Ahab but, like most of the crew, swept away by the captain's charisma.
 Captain Ahab - The egomaniacal captain of the Pequod. Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick. He is
single-minded in his pursuit of the whale, using a mixture of charisma and terror to persuade his crew
to join him. As a captain, he is dictatorial but not unfair. At moments he shows a compassionate side,
caring for the insane Pip and musing on his wife and child back in Nantucket.
 Queequeg - The Polynesian harpooner who opens Ishmael's mind and eventually — and indirectly —
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The Author
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance
period. Born in New York City, years as a common sailor were the basis of his early writings, leading him
to write his two magnum opuses; Typee, a romantic account of his experiences of Polynesian life, and
Moby Dick, one of the most well-regarded classics in the world of literature. He only received the
recognition he deserved after his death in 1891 which subdued a reviving interest in his work called the
“Melville Revival”.

Synopsis
Ishmael, the narrator of the story, explains that he goes to sea whenever he is depressed. In the port of New
Bedford, he stays at the Spouter Inn. He is at first frightened by Queequeg, his tattooed, tomahawk-toting
bedmate, who has been out selling shrunken heads. Queequeg soon becomes Ishmael’s bosom friend.

Ishmael attends a service at the Whaleman’s Chapel where Father Mapple gives a sermon about Jonah and
the whale. The next day, Queequeg and Ishmael set out for Nantucket where they sign onto a whaler. On
the ferry ride to the island, a young man mocks Queequeg. Later, this same young man falls overboard and
is saved by Queequeg.

While Queequeg performs his rites of Ramadan in the room at the Try Pots, Ishmael signs onto the whaler
Pequod owned by the Quaker captains, Bildad and Peleg. The heathen Queequeg must prove his skill as a
harpooner before he is accepted.

As the two friends are about to board the Pequod, they are accosted by the crazed Elijah, who utters vague
warnings about Ahab and the voyage. In the mist, they see four or five shadowy figures go aboard. The
ship sets sail on Christmas day. The chief mate, Starbuck, chooses Queequeg for his harpooneer; the
second mate, Stubb, chooses the Indian, Tashtego; and the third mate, Flask, chooses the African, Daggoo.

Several days after the ship sets sail, Ahab finally appears on deck. His appearance sends shivers through
Ishmael. A white scar runs from his hairline, over his face, and down his neck beneath his clothing. He
stands upon an artificial leg made of whale bone.

Ahab calls all men on deck. He hammers a gold doubloon to the mast and tells the men that the first to
spot Moby Dick, the white whale, will win the coin. Ahab admits that it was Moby Dick that took off his
leg.

When the first whale is sighted and the boats are lowered, the sailors are surprised to see Ahab in his own
boat with a mysterious crew who had been hidden below deck. The exotic Fedallah is his harpooner. A
squall comes up during the chase. Ishmael's boat capsizes and is later nearly rammed by the Pequod.