These chapters, for the most part, were uninteresting. Ten out of these twelve chapters had no plot at all: in chapter 54, Ishmael rambled on and on about the whaler Town-Ho; chapters 55 to 57 dealt with pictures of whales and Ishmael criticizing them for being inaccurate; chapter 58 discussed the Pequod moving in an area of water with brit, or tiny crustaceans; in chapter 60, Ishmael talked about the rope that is used in whaling in great detail; and in chapters 62 and 63, Ishmael described harpoons and harpooning. Reading these chapters, I couldn’t help but to realize for myself why Moby-Dick had been such a huge failure when it was first published. The reader gets bogged down by the copious detail Ishmael puts into telling the story, and such digressions make the story very hard to follow. However, I must give Melville credit for his effort in doing the great amount of research in order to write this book: although I feel that most of the information Melville puts in this book is unnecessary, it does make the story more realistic by allowing the readers, most of who don’t know much about whales and the whaling industry, to have a sense of what it must be like to be on a whaling ship.

In chapter 59, the Pequod had an encounter with a giant squid. I enjoyed this chapter a lot, not only because it had been a while since the last time the plot had progressed, but also because there was a great sense of excitement in the beginning of the chapter when the crew of the Pequod thought they had finally encountered Moby Dick. While Starbuck considered the giant squid a bad omen and called him a “white ghost”, Queequeg was pleased by the sight of this animal because he knew from experience that there is a likelihood that a sperm whale around somewhere close. 61 chapters after the story began, the Pequod finally succeeded in killing a whale. I must admit that I was getting bored of this book…until chapter 61 came around. Reading this chapter filled with such excitement and action and realizing what great things Melville could do as a writer, I couldn’t help but to wonder why he couldn’t write the entire book in this way. The book would have been a huge success if it had been so. It was fun to see Stubb get all excited about the killing the whale: having seen the way Stubb doesn’t shut up when he is so caught up in himself, even before I read the chapter (the second I saw the subtitle “Stubb kills a Whale”), I was able to clearly imagine the state of ecstasy Stubb would be in while hunting the whale and after killing it successfully. It was also interesting how, as one can see from the subtitle, Stubb got so much credit for hunting the whale when it was Tashtego who actually harpooned and killed the whale.

One of the main topics Ishmael discussed in these chapters was Fedallah and the four men from Manila, the “five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air” at the end of Ch. 37. At first, I was startled by the thought of there being five stowaways on the Pequod who hadn’t been seen by any crew member (except for those who knew they were their, including Captain Ahab, Flask, and Stubb). However, once I learned that the five men were Ahab’s boatmates, it seemed natural for a mysterious man like Ahab to have a group of mysterious whalers kept for his own use.

From the very first time they were introduced in the book, it is obvious that Ishmael doesn’t approve of these Manillas. Although the main reason for is racial in that Filipinos were considered evil subordinates of the devil at the time, Ishmael does make some discriminatory comments about the color of their skin.

…a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere. (ch. 48)

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of this- these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give year to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey. (ch. 48)

Ishmael’s reaction to these Manilla men (as well as to Fedallah) reminded me of the way he reacted to Queequeg the very first time they met. Although there was no bed-sharing involved this time, I am sure that his encounter with the tiger-yellow men and the man with the white-plaited turban was just as scary as that with Queequeg, who had a tattooed face, who was selling heads, and had Yojo. Although Ishmael was able to overcome the racial and religious differences between him and Queequeg and had become married, I doubt that Ishmael will ever become friends with Ahab’s five men; unlike in Queeqeug’s case, Ishmael doesn’t feel at all attracted to these men, despite their being so different from him (when Queequeg’s strangeness had attracted him).

Ch. 43, in which Ishmael listens to a brief conversation between two sailors on watch. I am not exactly sure what to make of this strange noise the first sailor hears. If his convictions are true, I am greatly surprised to know that there is someone in the after-hold who hasn’t yet appeared in the book; I had simply assumed that Melville had already completed introducing the important characters on the ship to the reader, and after ch. 40, in which we were introduced to the diversity of the crew members on the Pequod, I didn’t think there would be any more new characters. It is strange how no one on the Pequod has seen this person making the noise (if the first sailor is right about the noise in the first place), considering that even Captain Ahab, who had been a very mysterious figure, had now revealed himself to the crew.

I greatly enjoyed the beginning of chapter 47, when Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving a sword-mat together. Since the ship has departed Nantucket, the two hadn’t had much time together because Queequeg was much higher in rank than Ishmael. It was just great to see them together again, weaving together in such a peaceful mood. (This makes great contrast to the second part of the chapter, when Tashtego spots a school of whales about two miles away.) While weaving, Ishmael pays attention to “the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own” and relates the weaving of the threads to his destiny. I found it interesting how Ishmael calls Queequeg’s sword hitting the loom and altering the overall pattern “chance”. This reminded me of Fortuna, the goddess of fortune in Roman mythology and personification of luck. I was introduced to this goddess when I read Dante’s Inferno last year in my Medieval Lit class. Fortuna holds in her hand the Wheel of Fortune, which arbitrarily determines what fortune or misfortune would come to individuals. The Wheel of Fortune is symbolic of the endless changes in life from prosperity to disaster, over which people have absolutely no control to prevent misfortune from coming to him or to keep the fortune he has now from leaving him. The discussion of the Loom of Time and chance must have reminded me of Fortuna; Ishmael’s emotional and psychological ups and downs, as well as the physical ups and downs of the plot, that we have seen from earlier on in the book are also related to the Wheel of Fortune, since Ishmael (or anyone else on the ship for that matter) doesn’t have any control on what is going happen next on the whaling voyage.

In these two works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, we learned of Emerson’s ideas on the relationship between man and nature. In The American Scholar, Emerson also discussed how books and action play important role in developing the true American scholar, which he refers to as Man Thinking. We have discussed so far in class how Melville wrote Moby-Dick as a satirical work poking fun at Emerson as well as at other prominent figures in American literature at the time. Having read Emerson for the first time, I now recognize the relationship between the two works.

Ishmael can be classified, not as Man Thinking, but as “a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking” because the ideas and thoughts he tells his audience in Moby-Dick are mostly derived from things he had read in books. Because he did his research on whaling and whales using books which were “written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles”, Ishmael is a portrayal of “the bookworm” as Emerson defined the term in The American Scholar. Another aspect of The American Scholar that is used in Moby-Dick as satire are the references Emerson makes near the end of paragraphs, which include Arabian proverbs, names such as Plato, Shakespeare, Cicero, Locke, Bacon, and names of places, including Sicily, Naples, Greece and Palestine. This greatly resembles the random references (biblical and non-biblical) Ishmael makes throughout his narration of Moby-Dick, showing that Melville employed Emerson’s style of writing in Moby-Dick.

It was five chapters ago that Ishmael (and the reader) found out about Moby-Dick and its significance to the  Pequod’s whaling voyage. Chapter 41 is the first chapter since then that is told in Ishmael’s voice. The very first paragraph of the chapter reveals just how excited Ishmael has become of encountering this White Whale. Despite having been on this ship for a few weeks, and despite having only known about Moby-Dick for a short amount of time, he had already grown completely obsessed with the whale.

I, Ishmael, was one of the crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical  feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learnd the history of that murderous monster  against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.

Ishmael’s main topic of interest in this chapter is the relationship between Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab. In talking about the battle between Moby-Dick and Ahab in which Ahab attempted to kill him with a knife but failed and lost his leg, Ishmael tries to make sense of the Captain’s extreme bloodthirstiness for vengeance.

Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiles on, as if at a birth or a bridal.

The quote above made me realize just how intense Captain Ahab’s encounter with Moby-Dick must have been. The quote also reminded me of Jonathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Considering the great career Captain Ahab had enjoyed as captain prior to his being defeated by the White Whale, his loss in the battle must have been as if he was going down to hell to suffer endlessly from the wrath of God for having attempted to kill the greatest of his creations. This definitely explains why he is so obsessed about killing the one whale that had screwed him up.

Chapters 36 through 40 were significant in the way that they brought movement to the plot which had been interrupted by past chapters such as Ch. 32 (Cetology). Chapter 36  (The Quarter-Deck) also marked a huge rising action in the plot as well: Captain Ahab finally appeared in front of the whole crew and clearly declared that the purpose of this voyage was to find and kill Moby-Dick, the white whale that he had lost his leg to. The news about Moby-Dick greatly excited most of the crew (especially the harpooners, who had encountered Moby-Dick before) and brought the whalers on the ship closer together under that one mission. The chapter was significant also because the reader saw tension building up between Captain Ahab and Starbuck, the first mate of the Pequod, who called Ahab’s ideas blasphemous, because of his strong ambition to avenge Moby-Dick for his lost leg:

but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.

It was interesting how Ch. 37 through 39 were told as monologues from three different characters (Captain Ahab, Starbuck, and Stubb, respectively). Up to this point in the story, there had not been a single chapter written in a voice other than that of Ishmael. These three chapters were significant because it gave the reader further insight into what these characters are really like that would have been impossible to convey had these chapters been told in Ishmael’s voice.

Ch. 40 was significant because it clearly demonstrated how the Pequod was a “melting pot” on its own. Up until this chapter, there was no indication of how diverse the members of the crew were. In this chapter, it was discovered that the crew consisted of people from various areas of the world; though most were from US or Europe, there were also a Chinese sailor, a Lascar sailor and a Tahitian sailor. The reader was also introduced to Pip, a young African-American boy. As one saw tension building up between Captain Ahab and Starbuck in chapter 36, in this chapter there is tension between Daggoo and a Spanish sailor. This chapter showed one aspect of how Moby-Dick is a work of true American literature: the diversity of the characters involved in the story is a realistic representation of the American people, because the United States, unlike any other nation in the world, is a country of immigrants with different backgrounds coming together under one common goal.

It has been seven chapters since the Pequod left Nantucket for the whaling voyage. Ishmael used some of these chapters to report on how things have been going on the ship and to discuss some of the characters in greater detail than he had before as well as to introduce new characters to the reader. On the other hand, Ishmael devoted chapters 32 (Cetology) and 33 (The specksynder) to writing about different types of whales, each whaler’s duty on the ship, and about the whaling industry in general.

I greatly enjoyed reading chapter 29 (Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb). In this chapter, Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod, was discussed using his episode of when he complained to Ahab about the way he paced about the ship. Stubb, angry at the fact that Ahab tried to silence him as though he was a dog, goes on a huge rant that takes up almost a whole page without any breaks. His tirade sounded almost as though he was a character in a play performing an intense monologue. It was interesting how the title of this chapter resembles stage directions in a script of a play.

It was great how Melville brought Stubb up again only two chapters later in Ch. 31 (Queen Mab), in which he practically does the exact same thing he did in chapter 29. Only this time, it isn’t even a real event that instigated him into starting the monologue; it was a peculiar dream he had of Ahab kicking him with his ivory leg. This scene, as well as the scene before, was depicted in an extremely comical way, with Flask, the third mate of Pequod, responding incuriously at Stubb’s incessant monologue. Flask, completely uninterested and annoyed at the fact that Stubb won’t shut up, says in his only quote in Ch. 31:

I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho’

By depicting Stubb in this way (having him do the exact same thing he had done only a few chapters ago), Melville established him almost as a stock character, a type of character used in many fictional works that evoke an immdediate sense of familiarity to those who read them; many works of fiction, whether commercial or literary, have characters similar to Stubb who continues on talking forever about themselves and things that concern them, won’t stop even though no one is really listening to what they say, and are practically talking to themselves (which they seem to enjoy doing).

In chapters 24 (The Advocate) and 25 (Postscript), Ishmael presented his view on the controversy regarding whaling while acting like a lawyer and arguing for the whaling business. He uses several points to justify whaling. First, he declares that whaling is heroic, and he compares whalers on a sperm whale-ship to soldiers on a battlefield and respects the job for the amount of courage and manliness it requires. Second, he names people of noble status who had been involved in the whaling industry, including Jan de Witt and Louis XVI of France. He then argues that the whaling industry has broadened the knowledge of the world by encouraging worldwide voyages. In the following chapter, he even mentions that oil from sperm whales-”the sweetest of all oils”-is used in coronation of kings.

These two chapters reminded me of “The Whaling Debate-Bloody Business” by Philip D. Armour, an article from the May 2006 issue of Outside Magazine which we discussed in class prior to our reading of Moby-Dick. Ishmael’s blind obsession of the heroic manliness the whaling industry requires of its men parallels that of the Norwegian whalers Armour interviewed in his article. In the article, Tor Raymond Sharkeim, co-owner and harpooner of the Norwegian whaling ship Armour went on, declared that “there’s no difference between a whale and a moose…we’re fisherman-that’s what we do.” This was similar to Ishmael’s open and clear response in Ch. 24 to the argument that whalers were, in the end, bloody butchers:

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whale-men, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by a manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honors.

The recurring theme in these five chapters was religion. This theme was portrayed mainly through Ishmael’s encounter with Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad, Queequeg’s Ramadan, and Queequeg’s meeting the two captains.

The two captains, both Quakers (Bildad being very pious and Peleg not so much), were significant additions to the story, there had not been yet been characters introduced with as great detail as the two captains were. It was interesting how Melville introduced Quaker whalers to the story, because one would naturally not expect pacifists to engage themselves in dangerous voyages to kill the largest predators ever to exist. The exchange between the two captains greatly reminded me of the reading Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God, as Captain Bildad repeatedly mentioned “the fiery pit”. Captain Bildad’s extreme religiousness, as expected of a Quaker, sharply contrasts with Queequeg’s paganism, Ishmael’s questioning God in earlier chapters, and Captain Peleg’s semi-secularity. He first discussed it in chapter 16 to rebuke Captain Peleg for not being considerate of the “widows and orphans” who also own the Pequod by paying Ishmael too much:

But as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg.

Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye insult me. It’s an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he’s bound to hell. Flukes and flames!

The topic comes back in chapter 18 when the two captains meet Queequeg for the first time. Realizing that he is a Pagan and a cannibal, they refused to allow him on the ship at first, until Queequeg demonstrated his aptitude as a harpooner. Nevertheless, Captain Peleg kept on referring to him as “Quohog” or “Hedgehog” to avoid the pagan name. Captain Bildad remained bitter about Queequeg’s joining the crew, and hysterically warned him to “Spurn the idol Bel, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!”

Contrary to the serious tone of Captain Bildad’s fear of death and Hell is the comical depiction of Queequeg’s Ramadan. Queequeg, after locking himself up in his room, sat in the middle of the room with his dark-wood idol (whose name is revealed to be Yojo) balanced on his head and refrained from eating until the sun rose the next day. Ishmael, thinking that Queequeg had a stroke while he was alone in the room, goes mad trying to pry open the locked door. The scene is significant because it reveals just how much Ishmael had become dependent on Queequeg and his presence. However, the facts that Queequeg didn’t seem to understand a bit of what Ishmael told him in the talk they had the next morning and that Ishmael was disgusted by the “one memorable occasion” Queequeg told him about when asked if he had ever had dyspepsia shows that there is still a lot of work to be done in this relationship. The scene nicely contraststo the scene from chapter 10 when Ishmael joined Queequeg in worshipping Yojo as well.

In chapters ten through fifteen, a significant change was observed in the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. Despite having only known each other for a day (and having begun their relationship in a negative way with Ishmael rudely greeting his bedfellow), the two became very close to each other in Ch. 10, when Ishmael began to appreciate and honor Queequeg for his self-collectedness, his simple way of life, his sincerity, and his ability to be content with himself in a land so foreign to him:

Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home…thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. (55)

Although his admiration of Queequeg doesn’t make him stop referring to him as a savage, Ishmael also reveals in this chapter that he is strangely attracted to Queequeg because he was so different and unique: “Yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things hat would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me” (56). He decided then to openly welcome this Pagan friend, because he felt that the Christian religion failed in helping him lead a happy life : “I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.” (56) The two grew so close to each other to the point that Queequeg declared them as being “married”. He even joined Queequeg in his evening prayer to the wooden idol, after blasphemously questioning the Christian God and what is meant by the word worship : “Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth- pagans and all included-can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible!” (57)

Reading the several questions that crossed Ishmael’s mind as he contemplated joining Queequeg in the prayer reminded me of the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards. Ishmael, despite having been “born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church”, was now questioning his God and his religion. In doing to his fellow man what he would have his fellow man do to him, he took the words of God in a wrong way and was therefore acting against him, by practicing another religion. In Ch. 13, the reader learns that Queequeg had left his native land in search for a better, happier life under the Christian God: “For at bottom-so he told me-he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were.” (60) Queequeg, after realizing that Christians “could be just as miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens”, decide to remain Pagan. Despite having such different backgrounds, Ishmael and Queequeg are very similar in that they both once had strong faith in the Christian God and believed that God would make them less miserable but later realized that they were wrong. The fact that they were both “betrayed” by God brought them even closer to each other.

Ishmael underwent a drastic change in his character as he opened up to Queequeg. He even felt it himself, when he said in ch. 10 that he “began to be sensible of strange feelings. [He] felt a melting in [himself]” (56). Once he realized that he wasn’t the one the Christian God had failed to save, he began to have a brighter outlook on life; he was no longer the pessimistic Ishmael who had been “involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral [he met]” in Manhattan. After revealing his intention of going on a whaling trip from Nantucket and after Queequeg had decided to go on the same vessel as him, Ishmael became more excited about his adventure than he ever was; he was so proud of having made a great friend in such a short amount of time (one can infer that he didn’t have any good friends back in Manhattan when he decided to go on the voyage.)

However, his unusually happy mood doesn’t last very long. Only a day or so after the two became “bosom friends”, Ishmael’s depressed, cynical view of life returns when he spots an old topmast placed in front of an old doorway at the Try Pots, the inn where he and Queequeg decided to stay for the night, that he believes looks like a gallows in chapter 15.

The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of cri was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It’s ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet? (66-67)

In these six chapters, the reader observed Ishmael’s mood swing and view of life reach the highest and lowest points thus far in the story. It can be predicted that Ishmael will experience even greater shifts in his mood as the story progresses.