Moby-Dick, which started as a boring, slow-moving story which didn’t seem to go anywhere, began an accelerando at about chapter 110 (with Carl Orff’s masterpiece in Ch. 113) and reached the end of Ch. 135 with crescendo molto, to a chaotic yet totally-predictable ending (like The Infernal dance of King Kashchei from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, the last movement of Prokofiev’s Symphony #5 or the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony #9). The Epilogue, a short little coda to close the novel, is told entirely in Ishmael’s voice, which had been pretty much nonexistent for the past 20 chapters or so. Maybe the Adagio from the Prelude to Act III of Verdi’s La Traviata (Ishmael reminiscing of his fun times with his husband) or Variation VI: Andante from Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations (Op. 33) might go well with Ishmael’s mood in this section (the solo cello representing Ishmael).

Reading chapters 134 and 135, I couldn’t help but to notice yet another instance of Macbeth-ness in this novel. The way Ahab realizes that the Parsee’s prophecies are indeed happening (”The ship! The hearse! -the second hearse!” cried Ahab from the boat; “its wood could only be American!”…The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove; -ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck…) is exactly like how Macbeth realized that the prophecies the witches had made (that he must beware of Macduff, he is incapable of being harmed by any man born of woman, and that he will be safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castlewere) were true when Macduff declared that he was not “of woman born” but was instead “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb.

There are bad omens everywhere: the coffin life-buoy, the missing whale boat with a young boy in it (most likely dead), and the black sea-hawk that flew away with Ahab’s hat. However, Ahab’s obsession to kill the White Whale has completely taken him over and he’s certainly not going to be bogged down by such superstition. This is evident in his encounter with the captain of the Rachel, whom he had known from before. The captain begs Ahab to help him find his missing son, and even reminds Ahab of his own son: “I will not go till you say aye to me. Do to me as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a boy, Captain Ahab-though but a child, and nestling safely at home now-a child of your olf age too…” (Ch. 128) The fact that Ahab still refuses to help Captain Gardiner find his son because he doesn’t want to waste time now that he’s getting closer and closer to Moby Dick shows just how insignificant his son is to him compared to the White Whale. Ahab realizes himself that he is crazy and has been possessed by his evil, ill will for Moby Dick : “So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.” (Ch. 127)

In class today, we discussed how there were many elements from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that are incorporated in this book. In observing ch. 113, in which Ahab makes his own harpoon using horseshoe stubbs, 12 rods of iron, Ahab’s own personal razor, and the blood of the three pagan harpoons, we discussed how everything creepy and evil happens at night in Moby-Dick (just as in Macbeth) and that Captain Ahab is just as evil as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth combined. In chapter 130 (The Cabin), Pip’s monologue reminded me a lot of Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy when she hallucinates and sees blood on her hands that won’t come off no matter what she does.

Ishmael has pretty much disappeared from the book. For the first time ever in this novel, chapters with plot continued without being interrupted by Ishmael’s endless narration and philosophizing about whales, whalers, nature, and the world. These eighteen chapters were entirely plot-oriented. Many interesting things occurred during these chapters, especially with Ahab and Starbuck.

Having arrived in the Pacific, where he is most likely to encounter the white whale, Ahab further assumes his position as the dictator of the Pequod and deems himself invincible:

“There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod. -On deck!” (Ch. 109, to Starbuck, while pointing a loaded musket towards him)

“I am immortal then, on land and on sea…Immortal on land and on sea!” (Ch. 117, after having been told that only hemp can kill him)

Tension is steadily developing between Ahab and the rest of the crew:

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask-who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings-likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. (Ch. 124)

Throughout the course of the story so far, Starbuck had always been the quiet, peaceful, and pacifist Quaker and the only voice of reason on the Pequod to argue with Ahab and denounce his actions. He was the last hope the ship had in retaining human rationality and civilization. However, in Ch. 123, Starbuck contemplated killing Ahab in his sleep by shooting him with the musket Ahab had pointed at him in Ch. 109.This change in character (from one who had opposed violence and unnecessary blood-shedding in any case possible to one who would, for even a moment, consider killing someone himself for his safety and that of the other members of the Pequod) reveals just how much Ahab’s obsession for killing Moby Dick has impacted him. Although he decided not to kill him in the end, the fact that a person so rational and humane as Starbuck contemplated killing someone is still significant. This reminded me of Lord of the Flies by William Golding, when Piggy was killed by Jack and the other hunters, leaving Ralph all alone without any allies to rely on. By changing Starbuck to a point that he picked up a musket and point it at Ahab, the hunt for Moby Dick has engulfed not only Ahab but Starbuck and all the other people on the Pequod.

In Ch. 109, Starbuck warns Ahab: “Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.” This quote is significant because it accurately sums up what has happened recently in the book: as the Pequod gets closer and closer to encountering Moby Dick, Ahab’s excessive determination to kill the whale even grows more and more overpowering to the point that it completely engulfed him and dictates everything that goes on on the Pequod. What Starbuck didn’t realize was that the hunt had also engulfed others, even himself, who would be the last person to get violent about anything.

“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm?…No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?”—glancing at the ivory leg.

“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet!”

So the Pequod finally encountered a whaling ship from which Ahab can get information about Moby-Dick. Ahab and Captain Boomer of Samuel Enderby are similar in many ways, because they both encountered, fought against, and were defeated by Moby-Dick. While Moby-Dick had bitten off one of Ahab’s legs, Boomer’s fake arm (also made of whale bone) was caused by Moby-Dick only indirectly, when a harpoon that had been stuck to the whale scratched and deeply wounded him.

This chapter was significant, because it was the first time in a pretty long time that the reader saw Ahab getting really excited. (He probably hasn’t been this excited about Moby-Dick since the very first time he told his crew about the whale in Ch. 36.) This encounter with Captain Boomer was the fourth time that Ahab was warned not to go after Moby-Dick. His determination to yet continue on his journey to self-destruction shows just how strong the grudge he has against Moby-Dick is, as well as how Ahab has been completely taken over by his emotions and ill-will for Moby-Dick.

These twelve chapters were a nice mix of plot and factual information about whales, whalers, and whaling. Reading Ch. 93, I truly felt horrible for Pip. He had been completely out of the picture for so long, and now Melville arbitrarily decided to put him back into the story and, moreover, to make him a major turning point in the story. He hadn’t been given much (if not any) attention until this chapter, and now, he’s left in the middle of the ocean for quite some time. Considering the fact that he had only been in a whaling boat a few times before and had always been a ship-keeper, this event must have had been horrifying to him. We see him again in Ch. 99, when he speaks to the Pequod’s crew about his opinions on the doubloon, making intelligent remarks with perfect grammar. This scene horrified me greatly: the thought of Pip, the young little black boy who had never had much of a place on the Pequod, now speaking more eloquently and intelligently than any of the far more educated, white characters we had already been introduced to (such as Starbuck) scared me.

Another chapter that caught my attention was chapter 94, A Squeeze of the Hand. In this chapter, we saw Ishmael enjoying himself so much in the simple act of squeezing spermaceti back into liquid. He apparently saw this as an opportunity to bond with other shipmates, and embraces the occasion; he is in an absolute state of ecstasy. This scene shocked me greatly because Ishmael had become a completely different person from how he was in Ch. 1:

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

Except for the last chapter, when the Pequod found herself in a “lake”, with a great herd of sperm whales swimming around them in a circle, not much happened plot-wise in these chapters. Instead, Ishmael took time to analyze some of the most distinct features of the whale: the spout and the tail. In his discussion of the tail, Ishmael made some very interesting comparisons between the whale to other animals, including elephants, to illustrate its magnificence and gracefulness. He even considered the tail the whales’ attempts to reach to heaven, because of the way it protrudes towards the sky. In contrast to the definitive and confident way in which he discussed the tail, Ishmael seemed unsure of what exactly to say about the spouting. The reader can seem him trying to figure out how to explain the phenomenon as he is writing the chapter. One passage from this chapter clearly showed this and also revealed an aspect of his personality as well.

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.

The second I read this quote, these thoughts came into my mind: Wait a minute…did he just say that he “may possibly use some superfluous scientific words”? Did he just call the words he usually uses when writing scientific passages “superfluous”? So, all the scientific words he had used in writing all the painfully-scientific chapters he had written—He acknowledges the fact that they were “superfluous”? He realizes that they were unnecessary?? Then, if he considers them superfluous, would that mean that he himself realizes that there isn’t much point in using these highly-scientific terms? Well, then, why does he write the way he does, with so many “superfluous scientific words”? His sole purpose in doing so must be to show off his extensive knowledge of whales and whaling in this book he has written. But wait a minute: if he calls them superfluous and unneeded, does that mean he doesn’t use these words on normal occasions (for example, when he’s just having a casual conversation about something that he doesn’t need to appear smart about)? So…if these are words he doesn’t usually use–if these are words that aren’t entirely natural to him, but were taken straight out of the sources he used for research in writing this book and are used only to make him look more intelligent than he may actually be (kind of like those types of high school students who randomly use unnecessary SAT words whenever they talk just to look smart)–and he must be even more conceited than he had seemed before. Besides, the fact that he wrote something like this in the first place–without using the “superfluous scientific words” as he normally did–is in a way by itself condescending, because he absolutely didn’t need to tell us what he wanted to say in such a way: he could have just written it the way he always does, only to make things sound harder than they actually are.

The fact he called those words that he uses even though they aren’t even natural to him “superfluous” proves the previously-made assertion that in the language of Emerson and his The American Scholar, Ishmael is indeed “the bookworm”, or “a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking”, although he considers himself Man Thinking and the American Scholar without a doubt, because he does greatly appreciate nature and he does have “action” in that he decided to go on the whaling voyage to find out for himself what the reality of the nature of life was.

In chapter 73, Stubb and Flask succeeded in killing a right whale. Ishmael gave numerous vivid descriptions of the hunt; my favorite among them was:

…and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale’s body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock.

This quote reminded me of the fact that only a day or two had elapsed since the crew of the Pequod successfully killed the sperm whale. (Because the few chapters with actual plot and action are sandwiched by long, painful chapters of in-depth description and/or analysis of whales and whaling, I had lost track of how much time had gone by.) Just like chapter 66 (The Shark Massacre), this quote effectively portrayed the bloody, savage, dangerous, and vicious nature of whaling.

The other part of the chapter was a conversation between Flask and Stubb after they had successfully killed the whale. In the conversation, both revealed their thoughts about Fedallah, the leader of Captain Ahab’s secret crew. Neither likes his presence on the Pequod, and Stubb even went as far to call him “the devil in disguise.” I found this interesting, because the rest of Ahab’s crew were Manilas, who were at the time considered to be loyal servants to devils. I’m not exactly sure if the hostile comments they make about Fedallah are purely due to racial discrimination, or there is another reason why they are so suspicious of him.

So finally we got to read The Beginner’s Guide to Whale-Butchering.  The descriptions in these chapters were the goriest I had yet come across in the story. I was especially horrified by the thought of “thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly [feasting] on its fatness” (Ch. 64) and also of those sharks being massacred by Queequeg using the whaling-spade in Ch. 66. The image of vultures feasting on the whale in Ch. 69 (titled The Funeral ) reminded me very much of the article on modern-day whaling in Norway (”The Whaling Debate- Bloody Business” by Philip D. Armour) we read before we began reading Moby-Dick, because it said in the article that after the whalers take the unnecessary blubber off the whale, “pieces hit the water with loud slaps. Soon, gulls swarm [their] 56-food fishing boat…to fight over the floating fat.” Another thing that caught my attention in these chapters was in chapter 70, when Captain Ahab  talked to the decapitated head of the whale, which was hung off the side of the ship, in such an angry manner that it completely freaked me out. After reading this very short, yet very dramatic chapter, I was once again struck with Ahab’s level of insanity and madness that we had seen in Ch. 36 when he first proposed the real mission of the Pequod he had kept for himself until then.