Herman
Melville was the author of a story about what we'd now consider an illegal activity,
the commercial hunting of whales for oil and meat. Whaling is still
carried out by Japan, Iceland and Canada, among other nations, though
most nations voluntarily abstain in the interests of conserving these
magnificent animals - as per International
Whaling Commission guidelines.
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CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.
Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!
The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of
sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.
Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—SHOALS, ROCKS, AND BREAKERS HEREABOUTS: BEWARE! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!
Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.
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BOOK
CHAPTERS
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
CHAPTER
2. The Carpet-Bag.
CHAPTER
3. The Spouter-Inn.
CHAPTER
4. The Counterpane.
CHAPTER
5. Breakfast.
CHAPTER
6. The Street.
CHAPTER
7. The Chapel.
CHAPTER
8. The Pulpit.
CHAPTER
9. The Sermon.
CHAPTER
10. A Bosom Friend.
CHAPTER
11. Nightgown.
CHAPTER
12. Biographical.
CHAPTER
13. Wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER
14. Nantucket.
CHAPTER
15. Chowder.
CHAPTER
16. The Ship.
CHAPTER
17. The Ramadan.
CHAPTER
18. His Mark.
CHAPTER
19. The Prophet.
CHAPTER
20. All Astir.
CHAPTER
21. Going Aboard.
CHAPTER
22. Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER
23. The Lee Shore.
CHAPTER
24. The Advocate.
CHAPTER
25. Postscript.
CHAPTER
26. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER
27. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER
28. Ahab, Captain.
CHAPTER
29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
CHAPTER
30. The Pipe.
CHAPTER
31. Queen Mab.
CHAPTER
32. Cetology.
CHAPTER
33. The Specksnyder.
CHAPTER
34. The Cabin-Table.
CHAPTER
35. The Mast-Head.
CHAPTER
36. The Quarter-Deck.
CHAPTER
37. Sunset.
CHAPTER
38. Dusk.
CHAPTER
39. First Night Watch.
CHAPTER
40. Midnight, Forecastle.
CHAPTER
41. Moby Dick.
CHAPTER
42. The Whiteness of The Whale.
CHAPTER
43. Hark!
CHAPTER
44. The Chart.
CHAPTER
45. The Affidavit.
CHAPTER
46. Surmises.
CHAPTER
47. The Mat-Maker.
CHAPTER
48. The First Lowering.
CHAPTER
49. The Hyena.
CHAPTER
50. Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
CHAPTER
51. The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER
52. The Albatross.
CHAPTER
53. The Gam.
CHAPTER
54. The Town-Ho's Story.
CHAPTER
55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
CHAPTER
56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
CHAPTER
57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in
CHAPTER
58. Brit.
CHAPTER
59. Squid.
CHAPTER
60. The Line.
CHAPTER
61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
CHAPTER
62. The Dart.
CHAPTER
63. The Crotch.
CHAPTER
64. Stubb's Supper.
CHAPTER
65. The Whale as a Dish.
CHAPTER
66. The Shark Massacre.
CHAPTER
67. Cutting In
CHAPTER
69. The Funeral.
CHAPTER
70. The Sphynx.
CHAPTER
71. The Jeroboam's Story.
CHAPTER
72. The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER
73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk
CHAPTER
74. The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER
75. The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER
76. The Battering-Ram.
CHAPTER
77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
CHAPTER
78. Cistern and Buckets.
CHAPTER
79. The Prairie.
CHAPTER
80. The Nut.
CHAPTER
81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
CHAPTER
82. The Honour and Glory of Whaling.
CHAPTER
83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
CHAPTER
84. Pitchpoling.
CHAPTER
85. The Fountain.
CHAPTER
86. The Tail.
CHAPTER
87. The Grand Armada.
CHAPTER
88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
CHAPTER
89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
CHAPTER
90. Heads or Tails.
CHAPTER
91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
CHAPTER
92. Ambergris.
CHAPTER
93. The Castaway.
CHAPTER
94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
CHAPTER
95. The Cassock.
CHAPTER
96. The Try-Works.
CHAPTER
97. The Lamp.
CHAPTER
98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
CHAPTER
99. The Doubloon.
CHAPTER
100. Leg and Arm.
CHAPTER
101. The Decanter.
CHAPTER
102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
CHAPTER
103. Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton.
CHAPTER
104. The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER
105. Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
CHAPTER
106. Ahab's Leg.
CHAPTER
107. The Carpenter.
CHAPTER
108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
CHAPTER
109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
CHAPTER
110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
CHAPTER
111. The Pacific.
CHAPTER
112. The Blacksmith.
CHAPTER
113. The Forge.
CHAPTER
114. The Gilder.
CHAPTER
115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
CHAPTER
116. The Dying Whale.
CHAPTER
117. The Whale Watch.
CHAPTER
118. The Quadrant.
CHAPTER
119. The Candles.
CHAPTER
120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
CHAPTER
121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
CHAPTER
122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
CHAPTER
123. The Musket.
CHAPTER
124. The Needle.
CHAPTER
125. The Log and Line.
CHAPTER
126. The Life-Buoy.
CHAPTER
127. The Deck.
CHAPTER
128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
CHAPTER
129. The Cabin.
CHAPTER
130. The Hat.
CHAPTER
131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER
132. The Symphony.
CHAPTER
133. The Chase—First Day.
CHAPTER
134. The Chase—Second Day.
CHAPTER
135. The Chase.—Third Day.
Epilogue
Moby
Dick is the antogonist in this story of a great white 'bull' sperm whale that fought back at
whalers who tried to harpoon him.
The idea came to
Herman Melville after
he spent time on a commercial whaler, where stories abounded of the
sinking of the Essex in 1821 and Mocha
Dick, a giant sperm whale that sank around 20 ships, before being
harpooned in 1838.
Herman
realised how fixated the sailors became, and he also became with the
thought that there was a whale that nobody could catch, that represented
a real risk to the whalers hunting whales, in that it was more sport
than commercial operations.
Without
any doubt this is one of the greatest novels coming out of America at
this time and way off the beaten track, making it so interesting,
reflecting the state of whaling and the economic importance in the
developing the nation - giving the general public a taste of something
adventurous that most people never think about.
Many
films and graphic novel adaptations have been inspired by the writings
of Herman Melville, from Marvel
and Disney
comics with good cause.
One
such production in 2020 is a graphic novel about a giant humpback whale
called Kulo
Luna, that sinks a modern whaling boat, much as depicted in Herman
Melville's Moby
Dick, except that is this day and age whales have explosive harpoons
to contend with, and sonar, from which there is no escape.
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