Moby Dick

Ishmael leaves Manhattan, travelling north with a few of his belongings in a carpet bag. Though he could have chosen other places from which to set sail, Ishmael has his mind set on Nantucket as being the oldest and most storied whaling site in the country. However, he’s missed the boat to Nantucket and sails to New Bedford instead. Upon landing in that city and seeking a room, Ishmael decides upon The Spouter Inn.

Ishmael notes that the chief benefit of shelter is that it, like the human soul, can be improved upon. He notes the many drafts in the Spouter Inn, and that the proprietor’s name is listed as “Peter Coffin,” which he takes as ominous. Yet it is a bitterly cold night, and the place, more than others, seems quiet, clean, and affordable, and so he decides to stay.

Ishmael’s attention is drawn to a large painting in the entry of the Spouter Inn. It is an obscurely rendered ocean landscape, featuring at its center the action of whaling. “A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted” (13). Across the entry are hung a collection of whaling implements, mainly clubs, harpoons, and spears hung on the wall, some with stories attached to them.

Inside, Ishmael finds a common room with a bar shaped like a right whale’s head and with drinks sold by parsimonious inch-measurements. He asks the proprietor about the room and is told that there is one available, but we will have to share a bed with a harpooneer. Ishmael protests a little but agrees to the room. During a substantial meal, Ishmael asks after the harpooneer, and is told only that he’s “dark-complexioned” and that he likes his steaks “rare” (16). Soon, the newly arrived members of a whaling ship named the Grampus burst through the doors looking grizzled from their years-long journey. Of particular note is a tall, rough looking man named Bulkington.

Ishmael observes them for a while, and then begins to consider the downsides of sharing a room, telling the proprietor that he’d prefer to sleep in the common room on a bench. Finding the common room cold and uncomfortable, however, Ishmael eventually reconsiders the room, and asks again after his roommate. The proprietor informs him that his roommate is late on account of his attempts to sell a shrunken human head. Reluctantly, Ishmael retires to the room and sleeps anxiously on a hard mattress.

Late in the evening, a heavily tattooed man with “purplish yellow” skin and a tomahawk comes into the room and prepares himself for bed, lighting a pipe and praying to a small, black wooden idol before Ishmael’s presence startles him. Peter Coffin enters the room and introduces Queequeg. Ishmael decides it is “better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” (26). After telling Queequeg he should not smoke in bed, the two sleep peacefully side by side.

Waking the next morning, Ishmael finds Queequeg’s tattooed arm draped around him, and notes that the pattern of his bedmate’s tattoos combines with the bedspread’s pattern and the light coming through the window in such a way as to abstract his senses. This sensory abstraction reminds him of an episode from his youth when, after having been punished and sent to bed by his mother, he imagined himself the next morning locked in his bed by his own hand, which, in hanging over the bedspread, seemed caught between the world of reality and the world of incorporeal things.

In spite of the presence of a tomahawk in the bed with them, Ishmael mentally commends Queequeg for his considerate manner in the morning and observes his roommate as he dons an odd mixture of western and Pacific island clothing, including a notable beaver hat. Ishmael is impressed by the fact that Queequeg shaves using the head of his harpoon.

Meeting in the barroom, Peter Coffin and Ishmael share a good natured laugh concerning Ishmael’s accommodations. “And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for,” Ishmael notes (33).

Observing the men at breakfast, Ishmael can tell at a glance how long each has been ashore and makes a quick mental note of their diverse nationalities. He finds it curious that such boisterous-looking men become so quiet during breakfast. He notes, too, that Queequeg uses his harpoon as a table implement, spearing several rare beefsteaks from across the table to bring to his plate.

After breakfast, Ishmael leaves to take a stroll.

The streets of New Bedford are filled with people of all classes and nationalities, including many people, like Queequeg, from non-industrialized civilizations. Beside them are untested men from inland America, looking to try their hand at fishing. He notes that many of these untested men are quite vain, dressed in gaudy but impractical clothing. On his stroll, Ishmael notes many well-appointed mansions erected through whaling money. New Bedford is wealthy in whale-oil, which is traded in that town like gold.

Finally, Ishmael notes that, in spring, New Bedford has the finest gardens in all of New England, as well as many beautiful and well-perfumed women.

It is Sunday morning, and, as the sky goes from clear to sleeting rain, Ishmael makes his way to a well-known Whalemen’s Chapel. There, he finds a small congregation of sailors and their wives and widows. He observes a few marble tablets near the pulpit, erected by the friends and families of lost sailors.

Ishmael finds a reverent Queequeg among the congregation, along with many congregants whose emotional wounds appear reopened by witnessing the tablet dedications. Ishmael notes that a loss at sea is felt painfully, as there is no site of death, nor any gravestone to mark the body.

Rather than feel burdened by this knowledge, Ishmael is paradoxically cheerful. Knowing the business of whaling is dangerous, he nonetheless feels that the passage of the spirit into death is simply the welcome unburdening of what is true and substantial about a person from the insubstantiality of their flesh. “Methinks that what they call my shadow here in earth is my true substance,” he observes (42).

The congregation sits, and Father Mapple enters. Father Mapple, a vigorous older man who once worked as a harpooner on a whaleship, enters the chapel without an umbrella, and with his coat and hat drenched in melting sleet.

The Chapel’s pulpit features a ship’s ladder which Mapple climbs and then hoists behind him. Behind the reverend, a dramatic whaling scene is displayed, and it strikes Ishmael that the pulpit has the appearance of the prow of a ship, the better to represent the reverend’s leadership through the ocean-like expanse of the moral world.

Father Mapple’s sermon begins with a psalm relating the biblical story of Jonah, Jonah’s terror and loneliness while inside the belly of the whale, and his final freedom won through an internal journey into Christian faith: “He bowed his ear to my complaints— / No more the whale did me confine” (47).

Hailing his congregants as “shipmates,” Father Mapple retells the story of Jonah in language both poetic and prophetic. He says that Jonah was alienated from God and from himself. A sailor, Jonah travelled to the furthest ends of the known world to escape this alienation. Other sailors noted Jonah’s self-recrimination, imagining him a criminal. In spite of this, a suspicious Captain allows Jonah to pay his passage aboard a ship bound from Joppa to Tarshish. Once the ship is set sail, the rocking of the ship seems to mirror Jonah’s internal state. The weather turns tempestuous as if rebuking Jonah, and as the crew furiously works to keep the ship afloat, Jonah cowers in his bunk. Finally, Jonah admits that he has turned from God, and offers himself to be thrown overboard. When this happens, the sea calms, and Jonah is eaten by the whale. After a spiritual rebirth, Jonah is spit out onto dry land.

Father Mapple concludes his sermon by declaring that he (like the congregation as a whole) is as great a sinner as Jonah. Yet, like Jonah after his ordeal, Mapple has reconciled himself to spreading Christian faith as an extension of inner and unalienated truth. He exhorts his congregation, using the professional language of sailing, to look to this inner guidance rather than to powerful secular figures surrounding them. Comparing the height of the topmast of a ship to its bottom kelson, Mapple declares, “delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth in his inexorable self” (54).

With that, he kneels in silence, and the congregation files out.

Back at the Spouter Inn’s common room, Ishmael observes Queequeg as he first communes with his wooden idol and then picks up a book and begins counting the pages, marveling at their sheer number. Ishmael finds himself admiring the unselfconscious soulfulness of Queequeg. Ishmael becomes conscious of his prejudices melting away from him, and longs to deepen their acquaintance. He explains to Queequeg the purpose of the book, and about printing generally, and then the two converse about New Bedford and share a smoke. With that, Queequeg declares the two men to be “married; meaning in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends” (57).

Back in their shared room, Queequeg makes a gift of his shrunken head and of half of his money. He then motions for Ishmael to share in praying to his wooden idol. Dismissing a pang of reluctance, Ishmael does so. Afterwards, the two comfortably converse in bed for many hours, as Ismael puts it, “in our hearts’ honeymoon” (58).

Laying half-awake, and energized by their new friendship, Queequeg and Ishmael wake well before dawn and continue their conversation. The special condition of their comfort is that it is just slightly chilly in the room, and as “there is no quality in this world that is not what it is by contrast” they find their covered parts all the more “unmistakably warm” (59). Sharing a smoke (and in bed, in spite of Ishmael’s warning against the habit the night before), Queequeg tells his life’s story.

Queequeg is a prince of his native country of Kokovoko, a Polynesian island not marked on any map. At a young age, Queequeg became very curious about the few whalers he saw pass near his island and about the wider world of Christendom. He was rejected passage on a Sag Harbor whaleship but gained access by jumping from his canoe to the larger ship as it set sail, grabbing a ring-bolt on the deck, and vowing not to let go until admitted. The captain admired his commitment and taught him to be a harpooner.

Though Queequeg had the intention of learning from Christian men and bringing back knowledge to his fellow islanders, experience as a whaler taught him that people are essentially the same everywhere. Ishmael asks Queequeg whether or not he’d like to return home and ascend the throne, and Queequeg states that “they had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a scepter now” (62). The two decide to go whaling together, and Ishmael is gratified to be teamed with a partner of such deep experience in whaling.

The two embrace and go back to sleep.

Ishmael settles the Spouter Inn bill for both himself and Queequeg, using Queequeg’s cash gift. Borrowing a wheelbarrow, the two take their belongings to the docks and gain passage on a packet schooner to Nantucket. Queequeg relates his first experience of using a wheelbarrow in which, not understanding its purpose, he lashed it to his chest and bore it as a burden. He then tells a second story of a sea captain invited to a feast among the people of Kokovoko who used a bowl of punch to wash his hands, his point being that cross-cultural misunderstandings are normal.

Queequeg and Ishmael are happy to be on the water as the ship sets sail. However, an ignorant “greenhorn” soon bullies Queequeg. Just as the argument becomes heated, the ship hits rough water and the greenhorn is pitched overboard. Without a thought, Queequeg rights the ship by securing a sail and then jumps into the water to retrieve the drowning man.

Ishmael is newly impressed by both Queequeg's skill and his moral character.

The schooner arrives in Nantucket, an island where little vegetation grows. Ishmael recalls a folktale in which Nantucket was discovered only after an eagle flew away with an infant, necessitating a search into the inhospitable island. From Ishmael’s point of view, it features a starkly impressive landscape.

For all its inhospitableness, Ishmael claims, Nantucket is unrivalled as a seaport. Other countries may claim to own vast swathes of land, but the sea, “two-thirds of this terraqueous globe,” belongs to Nantucket (70). To a Nantucketer, the sea is a natural and comfortable habitat.

Following Peter Coffin's confusing directions, Ishmael and Queequeg eventually find the Try Pots, an inn owned by Coffin’s distant relative Hosea, who is famous for his chowder. They arrive late in the evening.

Ishmael’s first impression, as at the Spouter Inn, is one of foreboding; the two great chowder pots hanging over the front door of the Try Pot remind him of twin gallows.

They find the proprietor’s wife Mrs. Hussey running the Try Pot in her husband’s absence. Soon, they are given a choice of clam or cod chowder and, finding the clam delicious, they order a second meal of cod immediately. The inn is pervaded with fish; there are examples of fish-vertebrae necklaces around necks, and even the dog is fed with fish scraps.

Owing to a previous accident, the proprietor forbids harpoons in the rooms. Ismael and Queequeg give no argument. They order more chowder for breakfast and go to their shared room.

Conferring with his idol named Yojo, Queequeg says that he puts full confidence in Ishmael’s judgement in finding a whaling ship, in spite of the fact that Ishmael is new to the whaling trade. Ishmael reluctantly agrees and, leaving Queequeg to a ceremonial fast, peruses the Nantucket docks. He finds three ships hiring: the Devil-Dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. Ishmael likes the quaint and experienced look of the Pequod (so named after a tribe of eastern-shore Native Americans) and enters the ship to inquire about employment.

In a temporary tent on deck, Ishmael finds one of the ship’s owners, Captain Peleg, who, after a few sharp inquiries as to Ishmael’s experience, explains that the captain is named Ahab; Peleg partially owns the ship and hires her crew. Peleg dismisses a few other myths in a blustering fashion. Whaling, he says, is far more dangerous than the merchant service to which Ishmael is accustomed. Peleg describes the one-legged Ahab. Whaling is not a ticket to see the world, Peleg says, unless looking over the bow of a ship and seeing nothing but water is satisfactory. “Can’t you see the world where you stand?” Peleg inquires (81). Ishmael holds firm, insisting that he’d still like to be employed as a whaler.

Below deck, Ishmael meets the Pequod’s other owner, Captain Bildad. Like many Nantucket seafarers, Bildad is a Quaker. He is a reserved and pragmatic man, with an idiosyncratic way of saying “thee” and “thou,” instead of “you.” Bildad’s reputation is as a taskmaster. Whalers are paid in net proceeds from their voyage in ever-diminishing shares called lays. Ishmael modestly considers himself worth the two-hundred and fiftieth lay of the ship’s bounty but is offered a pitiful lay of the seven-hundred-and-seventy-seventh by the parsimonious Bildad. Peleg charitably insists that Ishmael receive the three-hundredth lay, and they sign on it. Ishmael secures an interview with Queequeg for the next day.

Turning to leave, Ishmael begins to have doubts, having never seen the ship’s captain. Upon Ishmael’s inquiry after the captain, Peleg says that Ahab has a history checkered with unhappiness, but that he’s “a good man—not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man—something like me—only there’s a good deal more of him” (89). Ishmael is satisfied though apprehensive.

As Queequeg is still engaged in his ceremonial fast—or his “Ramadan,” as Ishmael calls it— Ishmael doesn’t return to the Try Pot until nightfall. He says he sees little difference between the worship of pagans for idols, the worship of Christians for Christ, or the worship of businessmen for money, and that he prefers to leave them all to worship in peace.

However, Ishmael is alarmed when Queequeg doesn’t answer his door. He enlists the equally alarmed landlady and eventually breaks through the door to find Queequeg sitting peacefully but uncomfortably, holding Yojo over his head. Ishmael goes to dinner, returns, and prepares for bed, still perplexed by Queequeg’s unchanging behavior. When Ishmael awakens in the morning, he finds Queequeg remains in his position of worship. However, as the sun comes up, he concludes his service and acknowledges Ishmael.

Ishmael argues that such behavior could be hazardous to Queequeg’s health, but Queequeg only slightly acknowledges his friend’s concern. After a hearty breakfast of chowder, the two companions walk toward the Pequod.

Upon seeing Queequeg from the bow, Peleg forbids him to come aboard, citing a prejudice against “cannibals.” Bildad demands that Queequeg show papers showing his conversion to Christianity. Improvising, Ishmael replies that Queequeg is a member of the First Congregational Church. Knowing the local congregation, Bildad expresses his doubt, and so Ishmael improvises further, citing Queequeg as a minister of his own unusual congregation, the “everlasting Congregation of this whole worshipping world” (97). Queequeg quickly demonstrates his skill with a harpoon by striking a dot of tar from a distance, and Peleg, forgetting his prejudice, immediately and generously offers him the ninetieth lay. Queequeg signs on using his “mark,” a cross-shaped image tattooed on his arm.

Bildad presses a bible into Queequeg’s hand, but Peleg argues that piousness “takes the shark out” of a good harpooneer (99). When Bildad argues for consideration of Christian concepts of death and final judgement, Peleg counters that such things do no good in deadly situations where “how to get to the next port” is of utmost concern (99).

Soon after, on the wharf away from the Pequod, a man named Elijah, afflicted by disorder and the outward signs of small-pox, approaches Ishmael and Queequeg and warns them of the Pequod’s history in cryptic terms. He infers that their souls belong to Ahab, and that Ahab is a sort of devil, one with a violent and checkered past, whose leg was lost to a “parmacetti”—that is, a spermaceti whale.

Ishmael dismisses Elijah as a “humbug,” but feels haunted by him, nevertheless.

Preparations for the Pequod’s departure take several days, and Ishmael notes the sheer number of procurements necessary for a three year’s voyage on a single ship with the particular needs of a whaling vessel. Captain Bildad and his sister (called Aunt Charity by the men) see to most of this procurement, while Peleg oversees the crew.

Ishmael and Queequeg visit the ship several times over the course of these preparations but never once catch a glimpse of Captain Ahab.