Moby-Dick or, The Whale

by Melville, Herman; Delbanco, Andrew; Quirk, Tom

• ISBN13: 9780142437247
• ISBN10: 0142437247
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-31
• Publisher: Penguin Classic

Summary

Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. Introduction by Andrew Delbanco Explanatory Commentary by Tom Quirk

Author Biography

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City and became a seaman at a young age. His works include Typee, The Confidence Man, and Pierre.

Andrew Delbanco is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

Tom Quirk is the Catherine Paine Middlebush Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Suggestions for Further Reading	xxix
A Note on the Text	xxxi
Moby-Dick
Etymology	xxxvii
Extracts	xxxix
Loomings	3	(6)
The Carpet Bag	9	(4)
The Spouter-Inn	13	(15)
The Counterpane	28	(5)
Breakfast	33	(3)
The Street	36	(3)
The Chapel	39	(4)
The Pulpit	43	(3)
The Sermon	46	(9)
A Bosom Friend	55	(4)
Nightgown	59	(2)
Biographical	61	(3)
Wheelbarrow	64	(5)
Nantucket	69	(3)
Chowder	72	(4)
The Ship	76	(14)
The Ramadan	90	(6)
His Mark	96	(4)
The Prophet	100	(4)
All Astir	104	(3)
Going Aboard	107	(4)
Merry Christmas	111	(5)
The Lee Shore	116	(2)
The Advocate	118	(5)
Postscript	123	(1)
Knights and Squires	124	(4)
Knights and Squires	128	(5)
Ahab	133	(4)
Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb	137	(4)
The Pipe	141	(1)
Queen Mab	142	(3)
Cetology	145	(13)
The Specksynder	158	(3)
The Cabin Table	161	(6)
The Mast-Head	167	(7)
The Quarter-Deck Ahab and all	174	(8)
Sunset	182	(2)
Dusk	184	(2)
First Night-Watch	186	(1)
Forecastle---Midnight	187	(7)
Moby Dick	194	(10)
The Whiteness of the Whale	204	(9)
Hark!	213	(2)
The Chart	215	(6)
The Affidavit	221	(9)
Surmises	230	(3)
The Mat-Maker	233	(3)
The First Lowering	236	(11)
The Hyena	247	(3)
Ahab's Boat and Crew---Fedallah	250	(3)
The Spirit-Spout	253	(4)
The Pequod meets the Albatross	257	(3)
The Gam	260	(5)
The Town Ho's Story	265	(20)
Monstrous Pictures of Whales	285	(5)
Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales	290	(4)
Of Whales in Paint, in Teeth, & c.	294	(3)
Brit	297	(3)
Squid	300	(3)
The Line	303	(4)
Stubb kills a Whale	307	(6)
The Dart	313	(2)
The Crotch	315	(2)
Stubb's Supper	317	(8)
The Whale as a Dish	325	(3)
The Shark Massacre	328	(2)
Cutting In	330	(2)
The Blanket	332	(4)
The Funeral	336	(2)
The Sphynx	338	(3)
The Pequod meets the Jeroboam Her Story	341	(7)
The Monkey-rope	348	(5)
Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale	353	(6)
The Sperm Whale's Head	359	(5)
The Right Whale's Head	364	(4)
The Battering-Ram	368	(3)
The Great Heidelburgh Tun	371	(2)
Cistern and Buckets	373	(5)
The Prairie	378	(3)
The Nut	381	(3)
The Pequod meets the Virgin	384	(11)
The Honor and Glory of Whaling	395	(4)
Jonah Historically Regarded	399	(3)
Pitchpoling	402	(3)
The Fountain	405	(5)
The Tail	410	(5)
The Grand Armada	415	(13)
Schools & Schoolmasters	428	(4)
Fast Fish and Loose Fish	432	(4)
Heads or Tails	436	(4)
The Pequod meets the Rose Bud	440	(7)
Ambergris	447	(3)
The Castaway	450	(5)
A Squeeze of the Hand	455	(4)
The Cassock	459	(2)
The Try-Works	461	(5)
The Lamp	466	(1)
Stowing Down & Clearing Up	467	(3)
The Doubloon	470	(6)
The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London	476	(7)
The Decanter	483	(1)
A Bower in the Arsacides	483	(10)
Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton	493	(3)
The Fossil Whale	496	(4)
Does the Whale Diminish?	500	(5)
Ahab's Leg	505	(3)
The Carpenter	508	(3)
The Deck Ahab and the Carpenter	511	(5)
The Cabin Ahab and Starbuck	516	(3)
Queequeg in his Coffin	519	(6)
The Pacific	525	(2)
The Blacksmith	527	(3)
The Forge	530	(4)
The Gilder	534	(2)
The Pequod meets the Bachelor	536	(3)
The Dying Whale	539	(2)
The Whale-Watch	541	(2)
The Quadrant	543	(3)
The Candles	546	(7)
The Deck	553	(1)
Midnight, on the Forecastle	554	(2)
Midnight, Aloft	556	(1)
The Musket	557	(4)
The Needle	561	(4)
The Log and Line	565	(4)
The Life-Buoy	569	(4)
Ahab and the Carpenter	573	(3)
The Pequod meets the Rachel	576	(4)
The Cabin Ahab and Pip	580	(2)
The Hat	582	(5)
The Pequod meets the Delight	587	(2)
The Symphony	589	(5)
The Chase First Day	594	(10)
The Chase Second Day	604	(9)
The Chase Third Day	613	(12)
Epilogue	625	(4)
List of Textual Emendations	629	(6)
Explanatory Notes	635	(16)
Glossary of Nautical Terms	651	(4)
Maps and Illustrations	655

Excerpts

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and make him the own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus , who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don't sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever to go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

N o, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tarpot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scale of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I t ake it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Grand Contested Election for the

Presidency of the United States.

WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.

BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was we lcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, midmost of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.