Moby Dick

The narrator, who calls himself Ishmael, travels in a December month from Manhattan Island to New Bedford with plans to sign up for a whaling voyage. The inn where he arrives is so crowded, he must share a bed with the tattooed Polynesian Queequeg, a harpooneer whose father was king of the (fictional) island of Rokovoko. The next morning, Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple’s sermon on Jonah, then head for Nantucket. Ishmael signs up with the Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on their whaler Pequod. Peleg describes Captain Ahab: “He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man” who nevertheless “has his humanities”. They hire Queequeg the following morning. A man named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. While provisions are loaded, shadowy figures board the ship. On a cold Christmas Day, the Pequod leaves the harbor.Ishmael discusses cetology (the zoological classification and natural history of the whale), and describes the crew members. The chief mate is 30-year-old Starbuck, a Nantucket Quaker with a realist mentality, whose harpooneer is Queequeg; second mate is Stubb, from Cape Cod, happy-go-lucky and cheerful, whose harpooneer is Tashtego, a proud, pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head, and the third mate is Flask, from Martha’s Vineyard, short, stout, whose harpooneer is Daggoo, a tall African, now a resident of Nantucket.When Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck, he announces he is out for revenge on the white whale which took one leg from the knee down and left him with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale’s jawbone. Ahab will give the first man to sight Moby Dick a doubloon, a gold coin, which he nails to the mast. Starbuck objects that he has not come for vengeance but for profit. Ahab’s purpose exercises a mysterious spell on Ishmael: “Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine”. Instead of rounding Cape Horn, Ahab heads for the equatorial Pacific Ocean via southern Africa. One afternoon, as Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving a mat – “its warp seemed necessity, his hand free will, and Queequeg’s sword chance” – Tashtego sights a sperm whale. Immediately, five hidden figures appear whom Ahab has brought as his own boat crew. Their leader, Fedallah, a Parsee, is Ahab’s harpooneer. The pursuit is unsuccessful.