Moby Dick (1851)
Full Title: Moby Dick; or, The Whale
Genre: Novel of the sea; whaling novel; episodic novel; novel of ideas; precursor to the modernist novel
Setting: Primarily on the Pequod, a whaling vessel, throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, in the late 1840s
Climax: On the third day of the chase, Moby Dick causes Ahab to kill himself, by snagging himself in his own harpoon-line; Moby Dick then smashes into the Pequod, drowning all aboard except Ishmael, who lives to report the story of the whale.
Antagonist: Moby Dick, the White Whale
Point of View: Mostly first person from Ishmael’s point of view, although a number of sections appear to be narrated by a third-person-like presence, since Ishmael cannot have seen the events being reported in the narrative
Historical and Literary Context
When Written: 1850-1851
Where Written: Pittsfield, Massachusetts
When Published: 1851
Literary Period: Pre-Civil War American fiction; the “transcendentalist” and “post-transcendentalist” eras
Related Literary Works: Melville’s Moby Dick might be compared, most immediately, to the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom Melville struck up a friendship during the composition of the novel. Hawthorne was perhaps the most famous prose writer in the United States at the time, the author of poems and short stories like “Young Goodman Brown,” and his The Scarlet Letter came out in 1850, not long before Moby Dick. The Scarlet Letter—a fixture on many American high school literature syllabi—tells the story of Hester Prynne, and the “shame” resulting from a pregnancy occurring outside the bounds of marriage. Hawthorne’s examination of Prynne’s psychological response to these events, as well as the feelings of those in her small New England town, show a complex understanding of the interaction of doubt, grief, and contentment. In some sense, then, the psychological inquiries made by Melville and by Hawthorne are a broad response to the primary literary currents in American life in the generation preceding them. That period, in the early 1800s, was dominated by the “transcendentalist” writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson, drawing widely from the religious traditions of the East and West, wrote poems and essays investigating the particular American spirit he had encountered during his life in the “new world.” And Thoreau, whose Walden is one of the most famous collections of memoir and philosophical reflection ever published, seeks to determine man’s relation to nature, to his fellow man, and to friendship, all during a period of relative seclusion near the now-famous Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Thus Melville and Hawthorne wrote on similar themes—man’s relationship to God, fate, and nature—but from the perspective of a more industrialized, more populous society in the middle of the 1800s. Melville, in particular, set several of his writings in New York City, which was emerging at that time as one of the great urban centers in the new world.
Related Historical Events: The 1850s were a time of political upheaval in the United States, which led, ultimately, to the breakout of the American Civil War in 1861. They were also a period of rapid industrialization, or the transition from a local, “cottage” economy of artisanal production, to large-scale production of goods in urban centers, like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore. Industrialization took place largely in the more densely-populated north, and resulted in the linking of northern cities with efficient rail lines, used to transport goods, and, later, materiel for the Civil War. In addition, the 1850s reflected a high point in the sailing and whaling industries, as large sailing vessels were used to transport items across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, and across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to reach parts of Asia. These voyages were dangerous, but American sailing fleets—located in port towns along the northeast of the US, including New Bedford, Massachusetts, as described in Moby Dick—were large, and many boats offered positions to young men who wished to leave home. Thus Moby Dick treats many of the scientific advances being made at this time—advances in biology that allowed for a more detailed understanding of whale anatomy, for example—without abandoning the philosophical and religious investigations so prominent in a country that, 80 years after its founding, was still dominated by Protestant Christian denominations in New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. In this sense, Moby Dick uses the trappings of a whaling and adventure novel as an excuse, or a platform, for a much broader-ranging examination of American life in the middle of the 19th century.
Extra Credit
Short chapters: Although Moby Dick is often regarded, in the popular imagination, as a novel of interminable length, it is actually divided into 136 rather short chapters—some of which are no longer than a couple paragraphs. This style of writing, in which a larger narrative is broken into much smaller chunks, is known as “episodic” writing.
Alternate title: Perhaps as a way of emphasizing the novel’s concern with whales and whaling, Moby Dick was initially titled The Whale when it was released in England in 1851.
Genre: Novel of the sea; whaling novel; episodic novel; novel of ideas; precursor to the modernist novel
Setting: Primarily on the Pequod, a whaling vessel, throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, in the late 1840s
Climax: On the third day of the chase, Moby Dick causes Ahab to kill himself, by snagging himself in his own harpoon-line; Moby Dick then smashes into the Pequod, drowning all aboard except Ishmael, who lives to report the story of the whale.
Antagonist: Moby Dick, the White Whale
Point of View: Mostly first person from Ishmael’s point of view, although a number of sections appear to be narrated by a third-person-like presence, since Ishmael cannot have seen the events being reported in the narrative
Historical and Literary Context
When Written: 1850-1851
Where Written: Pittsfield, Massachusetts
When Published: 1851
Literary Period: Pre-Civil War American fiction; the “transcendentalist” and “post-transcendentalist” eras
Related Literary Works: Melville’s Moby Dick might be compared, most immediately, to the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom Melville struck up a friendship during the composition of the novel. Hawthorne was perhaps the most famous prose writer in the United States at the time, the author of poems and short stories like “Young Goodman Brown,” and his The Scarlet Letter came out in 1850, not long before Moby Dick. The Scarlet Letter—a fixture on many American high school literature syllabi—tells the story of Hester Prynne, and the “shame” resulting from a pregnancy occurring outside the bounds of marriage. Hawthorne’s examination of Prynne’s psychological response to these events, as well as the feelings of those in her small New England town, show a complex understanding of the interaction of doubt, grief, and contentment. In some sense, then, the psychological inquiries made by Melville and by Hawthorne are a broad response to the primary literary currents in American life in the generation preceding them. That period, in the early 1800s, was dominated by the “transcendentalist” writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson, drawing widely from the religious traditions of the East and West, wrote poems and essays investigating the particular American spirit he had encountered during his life in the “new world.” And Thoreau, whose Walden is one of the most famous collections of memoir and philosophical reflection ever published, seeks to determine man’s relation to nature, to his fellow man, and to friendship, all during a period of relative seclusion near the now-famous Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Thus Melville and Hawthorne wrote on similar themes—man’s relationship to God, fate, and nature—but from the perspective of a more industrialized, more populous society in the middle of the 1800s. Melville, in particular, set several of his writings in New York City, which was emerging at that time as one of the great urban centers in the new world.
Related Historical Events: The 1850s were a time of political upheaval in the United States, which led, ultimately, to the breakout of the American Civil War in 1861. They were also a period of rapid industrialization, or the transition from a local, “cottage” economy of artisanal production, to large-scale production of goods in urban centers, like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore. Industrialization took place largely in the more densely-populated north, and resulted in the linking of northern cities with efficient rail lines, used to transport goods, and, later, materiel for the Civil War. In addition, the 1850s reflected a high point in the sailing and whaling industries, as large sailing vessels were used to transport items across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, and across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to reach parts of Asia. These voyages were dangerous, but American sailing fleets—located in port towns along the northeast of the US, including New Bedford, Massachusetts, as described in Moby Dick—were large, and many boats offered positions to young men who wished to leave home. Thus Moby Dick treats many of the scientific advances being made at this time—advances in biology that allowed for a more detailed understanding of whale anatomy, for example—without abandoning the philosophical and religious investigations so prominent in a country that, 80 years after its founding, was still dominated by Protestant Christian denominations in New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. In this sense, Moby Dick uses the trappings of a whaling and adventure novel as an excuse, or a platform, for a much broader-ranging examination of American life in the middle of the 19th century.
Extra Credit
Short chapters: Although Moby Dick is often regarded, in the popular imagination, as a novel of interminable length, it is actually divided into 136 rather short chapters—some of which are no longer than a couple paragraphs. This style of writing, in which a larger narrative is broken into much smaller chunks, is known as “episodic” writing.
Alternate title: Perhaps as a way of emphasizing the novel’s concern with whales and whaling, Moby Dick was initially titled The Whale when it was released in England in 1851.
Themes
Limits of Knowledge
One of the novel’s primary themes is that neither nature nor human life can be understood perfectly. At times during the voyage, the Pequod’s crewmembers reflect, with feelings ranging from cheerful resignation to despair, on the uncertainty of their fate. This uncertainty parallels the doubts of religious faith. Ishmael notably remarks that “our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” The implication is that complete knowledge of oneself and of God comes only in death. Ignorance is a condition of human life. Human ignorance is also represented by a lack of knowledge, among the Pequod’s crew at sea, about the world beyond its sight: the vessel must rely on encounters with other ships to gather news and information, as well as to gather clues about where Moby Dick might be.
In this way, the Pequod’s doomed pursuit of Moby Dick symbolizes man’s futile pursuit of complete knowledge. In explaining life at sea and the nature of whales, Ishmael’s narrative teems with detailed references to scientific, religious, historical, and literary texts relating to the whale and whaling history. However, Ishmael also emphasizes that the whale is “the one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last,” and that the only way to know what a whale is really like is to go whaling oneself—a dangerous, often fatal enterprise. The whale, in its ultimate mystery, represents the limits of human knowledge.
Fate and Free Will
Despite their awareness of the limits of human knowledge, Ishmael and other characters are often trying to interpret signs of the world around them in order to determine their fates. At the beginning of the book, Ishmael intimates that it was fate that led him to decide, after many merchant voyages, to sign up for a whaling ship—although at the time it felt like he was doing so of his own free will. Over the course of the novel, it remains a question whether fate is a real force driving the book’s events or whether it is something that exists primarily in characters’ minds.
As Ishmael and Queequeg head towards the Pequod to set sail, a mysterious and intimidating stranger named Elijah (like the Biblical prophet) drops ominous hints about the voyage they have ahead. Prophecies, portents, and superstitions are a major part of life on board the Pequod. No one believes more strongly in fate than Ahab, whose monomaniacal pursuit of Moby Dick is based, not just on the desire for revenge, but a belief that it is his destiny to slay the whale. This belief, combined with his egotism, actually leads him to ignore three major omens which suggest the voyage is doomed: the breaking of his quadrant, the compass needles going haywire after a storm, and the snapping of the ship’s log-line. It remains unclear whether it is fate or Ahab’s own free will that leads to his ruin.
Nature and Man
The novel centers on man's multi-faceted interaction with nature, whether by trying to control or tame it; understand it; profit from it; or, in Ahab’s case, defeat it. The book implies that nature, much like the whale, is an impersonal and inscrutable phenomenon. Man tends to treat nature as an entity with motives or emotions, when in fact nature is ultimately indifferent to man. The cautious and pragmatic Starbuck is one character who sees the whale as just an animal; he admonishes Ahab for seeking revenge on Moby Dick, saying, “To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” Ahab gives a long reply that suggests he sees the whale, not just as an animal, but as the mask for a higher entity, “some unknown but still reasoning thing… That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” The novel portrays this defiance as both insane and blasphemous, contrasting it with the attitude of Starbuck, who avoids foolish risks and remains aware that he is there to kill whales for a living “and not to be killed by them for theirs.”
Race, Fellowship, and Enslavement
The book explores many different forms of equality, fellowship, and enslavement in human relations. A notable example of fellowship and racial tolerance is Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg. Although Ishmael is initially repulsed and terrified by Queequeg’s appearance and background, he soon perceives Queequeg to be principled, loyal, affectionate, and talented. The two men become “married,” in Queequeg’s parlance, meaning that they vow to join their fates and lay down their lives for each other.
The organization of the Pequod is portrayed as more meritocratic and less racist than society at large. The crew is racially diverse, with rank and pay dependent on skill; meanwhile, the men are financially interdependent, since none of them are paid upfront and any profit will arise from collective success. This interdependence also takes a physical form: Ishmael notes that the Pequod is distinct among whaling boats in that a harpooner and the crew member in charge of holding onto him with a rope are tied together, so that if the harpooner is dragged into the sea, the corresponding crew member will be dragged down too.
The Pequod does parallel conventional society in that the captain and mates are all white, while all the harpooners working under them (as well as many lower-order crew members) are non-white. However, all members of the Pequod’s crew are subject to Ahab’s whims and bouts of frenzy; in this sense, they are all equally enslaved. Early in the novel, Ishmael asks rhetorically, “Who ain’t a slave?” He is referring to the fact that most people, and not just sailors like him, live at the beck and call of others; everybody follows orders, and everybody is subjugated in some way. Notably, Ishmael’s chosen name (“Call me Ishmael,” he says in the opening chapter, making it unclear whether it is his real or assumed name) is Biblical in origin, and refers to the prophet Abraham’s son with the slave woman Hagar.
Madness
Through the contrasting characters of Ahab and Pip, the novel presents two very different portraits of madness and its consequences. Throughout the voyage, Ahab’s madness holds sway over the sanity of other characters, most notably his reasonable and prudent first mate Starbuck. Insanity of a different kind is seen in Pip who, like Ahab, goes mad after a traumatic experience at sea. However, while Ahab’s madness propels him to action, Pip’s madness effectively paralyzes him and leaves his mind empty. Perhaps fittingly, then, Pip is the only person on board with whom Ahab develops an affectionate and protective relationship.
One of the interesting implications of madness aboard the Pequod, however, is the willingness of the members of the crew to go along with Ahab’s strange quest, even when they recognize how difficult, perhaps impossible, it would be to find a single whale in all the oceans of the world. But the crew of the Pequod does sign on for the whale-hunt, motivated not simply by the presence of the gold doubloon (which eventually goes down with the ship), but by the mania Ahab has encouraged, the “monomaniacal” pursuit for one whale.
Religion
Religion is a major point of reference for Ishmael. In New Bedford, before the voyage, he visits a “Whaleman’s Chapel” and hears a long and heated sermon, delivered by the stern Father Mapple, that centers on the story of Jonah and the whale. The sermon recounts Jonah’s futile attempt to flee God, and suggests that the harder Jonah tries to escape, the harsher becomes his punishment. Father Mapple emphasizes that, after being swallowed by the whale, Jonah does not pray for deliverance, but accepts his punishment. Only then does God relent and bring Jonah to safety. After being saved from the whale and the sea, Jonah goes on, in Father Mapple’s words, “[t]o preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood.” Jonah’s preaching parallels Ishmael’s eventual telling of his own whaling story, when he becomes (whether through luck, fate, or divine intervention) the lone survivor of the Pequod’s wreck.
Although heavy with references to the Bible and Christianity, the book does not espouse one religion, instead suggesting that goodness can be found in people of any faith. After striking up a friendship with Queequeg, Ishmael quickly becomes tolerant of his new friend’s religion, even going so far as to participate in Queequeg’s ritual homage to a carven idol—a practice explicitly forbidden by Christianity. Religious tolerance is also a notable part of life on board the ship, with so-called heathens and Christians working side by side.
One of the novel’s primary themes is that neither nature nor human life can be understood perfectly. At times during the voyage, the Pequod’s crewmembers reflect, with feelings ranging from cheerful resignation to despair, on the uncertainty of their fate. This uncertainty parallels the doubts of religious faith. Ishmael notably remarks that “our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” The implication is that complete knowledge of oneself and of God comes only in death. Ignorance is a condition of human life. Human ignorance is also represented by a lack of knowledge, among the Pequod’s crew at sea, about the world beyond its sight: the vessel must rely on encounters with other ships to gather news and information, as well as to gather clues about where Moby Dick might be.
In this way, the Pequod’s doomed pursuit of Moby Dick symbolizes man’s futile pursuit of complete knowledge. In explaining life at sea and the nature of whales, Ishmael’s narrative teems with detailed references to scientific, religious, historical, and literary texts relating to the whale and whaling history. However, Ishmael also emphasizes that the whale is “the one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last,” and that the only way to know what a whale is really like is to go whaling oneself—a dangerous, often fatal enterprise. The whale, in its ultimate mystery, represents the limits of human knowledge.
Fate and Free Will
Despite their awareness of the limits of human knowledge, Ishmael and other characters are often trying to interpret signs of the world around them in order to determine their fates. At the beginning of the book, Ishmael intimates that it was fate that led him to decide, after many merchant voyages, to sign up for a whaling ship—although at the time it felt like he was doing so of his own free will. Over the course of the novel, it remains a question whether fate is a real force driving the book’s events or whether it is something that exists primarily in characters’ minds.
As Ishmael and Queequeg head towards the Pequod to set sail, a mysterious and intimidating stranger named Elijah (like the Biblical prophet) drops ominous hints about the voyage they have ahead. Prophecies, portents, and superstitions are a major part of life on board the Pequod. No one believes more strongly in fate than Ahab, whose monomaniacal pursuit of Moby Dick is based, not just on the desire for revenge, but a belief that it is his destiny to slay the whale. This belief, combined with his egotism, actually leads him to ignore three major omens which suggest the voyage is doomed: the breaking of his quadrant, the compass needles going haywire after a storm, and the snapping of the ship’s log-line. It remains unclear whether it is fate or Ahab’s own free will that leads to his ruin.
Nature and Man
The novel centers on man's multi-faceted interaction with nature, whether by trying to control or tame it; understand it; profit from it; or, in Ahab’s case, defeat it. The book implies that nature, much like the whale, is an impersonal and inscrutable phenomenon. Man tends to treat nature as an entity with motives or emotions, when in fact nature is ultimately indifferent to man. The cautious and pragmatic Starbuck is one character who sees the whale as just an animal; he admonishes Ahab for seeking revenge on Moby Dick, saying, “To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” Ahab gives a long reply that suggests he sees the whale, not just as an animal, but as the mask for a higher entity, “some unknown but still reasoning thing… That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” The novel portrays this defiance as both insane and blasphemous, contrasting it with the attitude of Starbuck, who avoids foolish risks and remains aware that he is there to kill whales for a living “and not to be killed by them for theirs.”
Race, Fellowship, and Enslavement
The book explores many different forms of equality, fellowship, and enslavement in human relations. A notable example of fellowship and racial tolerance is Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg. Although Ishmael is initially repulsed and terrified by Queequeg’s appearance and background, he soon perceives Queequeg to be principled, loyal, affectionate, and talented. The two men become “married,” in Queequeg’s parlance, meaning that they vow to join their fates and lay down their lives for each other.
The organization of the Pequod is portrayed as more meritocratic and less racist than society at large. The crew is racially diverse, with rank and pay dependent on skill; meanwhile, the men are financially interdependent, since none of them are paid upfront and any profit will arise from collective success. This interdependence also takes a physical form: Ishmael notes that the Pequod is distinct among whaling boats in that a harpooner and the crew member in charge of holding onto him with a rope are tied together, so that if the harpooner is dragged into the sea, the corresponding crew member will be dragged down too.
The Pequod does parallel conventional society in that the captain and mates are all white, while all the harpooners working under them (as well as many lower-order crew members) are non-white. However, all members of the Pequod’s crew are subject to Ahab’s whims and bouts of frenzy; in this sense, they are all equally enslaved. Early in the novel, Ishmael asks rhetorically, “Who ain’t a slave?” He is referring to the fact that most people, and not just sailors like him, live at the beck and call of others; everybody follows orders, and everybody is subjugated in some way. Notably, Ishmael’s chosen name (“Call me Ishmael,” he says in the opening chapter, making it unclear whether it is his real or assumed name) is Biblical in origin, and refers to the prophet Abraham’s son with the slave woman Hagar.
Madness
Through the contrasting characters of Ahab and Pip, the novel presents two very different portraits of madness and its consequences. Throughout the voyage, Ahab’s madness holds sway over the sanity of other characters, most notably his reasonable and prudent first mate Starbuck. Insanity of a different kind is seen in Pip who, like Ahab, goes mad after a traumatic experience at sea. However, while Ahab’s madness propels him to action, Pip’s madness effectively paralyzes him and leaves his mind empty. Perhaps fittingly, then, Pip is the only person on board with whom Ahab develops an affectionate and protective relationship.
One of the interesting implications of madness aboard the Pequod, however, is the willingness of the members of the crew to go along with Ahab’s strange quest, even when they recognize how difficult, perhaps impossible, it would be to find a single whale in all the oceans of the world. But the crew of the Pequod does sign on for the whale-hunt, motivated not simply by the presence of the gold doubloon (which eventually goes down with the ship), but by the mania Ahab has encouraged, the “monomaniacal” pursuit for one whale.
Religion
Religion is a major point of reference for Ishmael. In New Bedford, before the voyage, he visits a “Whaleman’s Chapel” and hears a long and heated sermon, delivered by the stern Father Mapple, that centers on the story of Jonah and the whale. The sermon recounts Jonah’s futile attempt to flee God, and suggests that the harder Jonah tries to escape, the harsher becomes his punishment. Father Mapple emphasizes that, after being swallowed by the whale, Jonah does not pray for deliverance, but accepts his punishment. Only then does God relent and bring Jonah to safety. After being saved from the whale and the sea, Jonah goes on, in Father Mapple’s words, “[t]o preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood.” Jonah’s preaching parallels Ishmael’s eventual telling of his own whaling story, when he becomes (whether through luck, fate, or divine intervention) the lone survivor of the Pequod’s wreck.
Although heavy with references to the Bible and Christianity, the book does not espouse one religion, instead suggesting that goodness can be found in people of any faith. After striking up a friendship with Queequeg, Ishmael quickly becomes tolerant of his new friend’s religion, even going so far as to participate in Queequeg’s ritual homage to a carven idol—a practice explicitly forbidden by Christianity. Religious tolerance is also a notable part of life on board the ship, with so-called heathens and Christians working side by side.
Symbols
The White Whale Moby Dick, or the White Whale, is not just the dominant symbol of the novel Moby Dick—he is also one of the most recognizable symbols in 19th-century American literature. At various points throughout the novel, Ishmael and other characters compare Moby Dick directly to a god—an all-powerful, seemingly unstoppable being, one that cannot be defeated, and who imposes its desires on the world around it. Ishmael, Ahab, and Starbuck (the “least courageous” and most doubting of the ship’s mates) understand that the search for Moby Dick is not simply a mission of vengeance—although it is that, in part. They believe, instead, that the hunt is a microcosm of all humans’ struggle against nature, fate, and death itself. The crew remarks on this apparent symbolism—that the whale-hunt stands in for a life of human struggle—throughout the journey, as Ahab disregards typical whaling protocol, and announces explicitly that the goal of the voyage is the death of one whale. That Moby Dick escapes at the end of the novel, killing everyone aboard the Pequod except Ishmael, further indicates that the Whale cannot be defeated, cannot be tamed or even understood. Witnesses, prophets, and missionaries will continue to make “pilgrimages” to the White Whale in order to see it, to believe in it, and to wonder at its terrible power.
The Rope (the Line)
In Chapter 60 of Moby Dick, Ishmael describes the line, or hempen rope, attached to the end of the harpoon used on the whale-boat, and thrown at a whale in order to kill it. Ishmael notes that the line is immensely dangerous for those aboard the whale-boat, as, when it unfurls, it can catch someone and instantly strangle them or knock them off the vessel. Furthermore, the line is so complicated in its coiling that it is especially difficult, during the tumult of whale-hunting, even to know where the line is, thus making it especially dangerous. But Ishmael does not leave the idea of “the line” here; instead, he goes on to note that “all men” must deal with “lines” of their own, “halters around their necks,” obligations that tie them to other men, and to events beyond their control. In this way, the line or the rope of the whaling ship, used throughout the novel, symbolizes not just the dangers of whaling, but the complex network of dangers, accidents, and obligations surrounding all humans. Any person can be tripped up by a line at any time. Of course, Ahab, at the novel’s end, is “done in by his own rope,” meaning he is strangled by the line of his own whale-boat’s harpoon. And in this way, Ahab’s own impossible and murderous quest proves to be the cause of his death on the high seas. It is interesting to note, too, that “lines” often refer, in literary contexts, to lines of poetry—and Ahab quotes bits and pieces of the Bible and other literary works through Moby Dick. Thus the sailors on the Pequod are surrounded by physical lines, by the “lines” of fate and disaster, and by lines of the novel in which they are characters.
The Rope (the Line)
In Chapter 60 of Moby Dick, Ishmael describes the line, or hempen rope, attached to the end of the harpoon used on the whale-boat, and thrown at a whale in order to kill it. Ishmael notes that the line is immensely dangerous for those aboard the whale-boat, as, when it unfurls, it can catch someone and instantly strangle them or knock them off the vessel. Furthermore, the line is so complicated in its coiling that it is especially difficult, during the tumult of whale-hunting, even to know where the line is, thus making it especially dangerous. But Ishmael does not leave the idea of “the line” here; instead, he goes on to note that “all men” must deal with “lines” of their own, “halters around their necks,” obligations that tie them to other men, and to events beyond their control. In this way, the line or the rope of the whaling ship, used throughout the novel, symbolizes not just the dangers of whaling, but the complex network of dangers, accidents, and obligations surrounding all humans. Any person can be tripped up by a line at any time. Of course, Ahab, at the novel’s end, is “done in by his own rope,” meaning he is strangled by the line of his own whale-boat’s harpoon. And in this way, Ahab’s own impossible and murderous quest proves to be the cause of his death on the high seas. It is interesting to note, too, that “lines” often refer, in literary contexts, to lines of poetry—and Ahab quotes bits and pieces of the Bible and other literary works through Moby Dick. Thus the sailors on the Pequod are surrounded by physical lines, by the “lines” of fate and disaster, and by lines of the novel in which they are characters.
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