9780142437247

Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. Introduction by Andrew Delbanco Explanatory Commentary by Tom Quirk

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Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City and became a seaman at a young age. His works include Typee, The Confidence Man, and Pierre.

Andrew Delbanco is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

Tom Quirk is the Catherine Paine Middlebush Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Introduction

xi

Suggestions for Further Reading

xxix

A Note on the Text

xxxi

Moby-Dick

Etymology

xxxvii

Extracts

xxxix

Loomings

3

(6)

The Carpet Bag

9

(4)

The Spouter-Inn

13

(15)

The Counterpane

28

(5)

Breakfast

33

(3)

The Street

36

(3)

The Chapel

39

(4)

The Pulpit

43

(3)

The Sermon

46

(9)

A Bosom Friend

55

(4)

Nightgown

59

(2)

Biographical

61

(3)

Wheelbarrow

64

(5)

Nantucket

69

(3)

Chowder

72

(4)

The Ship

76

(14)

The Ramadan

90

(6)

His Mark

96

(4)

The Prophet

100

(4)

All Astir

104

(3)

Going Aboard

107

(4)

Merry Christmas

111

(5)

The Lee Shore

116

(2)

The Advocate

118

(5)

Postscript

123

(1)

Knights and Squires

124

(4)

Knights and Squires

128

(5)

Ahab

133

(4)

Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb

137

(4)

The Pipe

141

(1)

Queen Mab

142

(3)

Cetology

145

(13)

The Specksynder

158

(3)

The Cabin Table

161

(6)

The Mast-Head

167

(7)

The Quarter-Deck Ahab and all

174

(8)

Sunset

182

(2)

Dusk

184

(2)

First Night-Watch

186

(1)

Forecastle---Midnight

187

(7)

Moby Dick

194

(10)

The Whiteness of the Whale

204

(9)

Hark!

213

(2)

The Chart

215

(6)

The Affidavit

221

(9)

Surmises

230

(3)

The Mat-Maker

233

(3)

The First Lowering

236

(11)

The Hyena

247

(3)

Ahab's Boat and Crew---Fedallah

250

(3)

The Spirit-Spout

253

(4)

The Pequod meets the Albatross

257

(3)

The Gam

260

(5)

The Town Ho's Story

265

(20)

Monstrous Pictures of Whales

285

(5)

Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales

290

(4)

Of Whales in Paint, in Teeth, & c.

294

(3)

Brit

297

(3)

Squid

300

(3)

The Line

303

(4)

Stubb kills a Whale

307

(6)

The Dart

313

(2)

The Crotch

315

(2)

Stubb's Supper

317

(8)

The Whale as a Dish

325

(3)

The Shark Massacre

328

(2)

Cutting In

330

(2)

The Blanket

332

(4)

The Funeral

336

(2)

The Sphynx

338

(3)

The Pequod meets the Jeroboam Her Story

341

(7)

The Monkey-rope

348

(5)

Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale

353

(6)

The Sperm Whale's Head

359

(5)

The Right Whale's Head

364

(4)

The Battering-Ram

368

(3)

The Great Heidelburgh Tun

371

(2)

Cistern and Buckets

373

(5)

The Prairie

378

(3)

The Nut

381

(3)

The Pequod meets the Virgin

384

(11)

The Honor and Glory of Whaling

395

(4)

Jonah Historically Regarded

399

(3)

Pitchpoling

402

(3)

The Fountain

405

(5)

The Tail

410

(5)

The Grand Armada

415

(13)

Schools & Schoolmasters

428

(4)

Fast Fish and Loose Fish

432

(4)

Heads or Tails

436

(4)

The Pequod meets the Rose Bud

440

(7)

Ambergris

447

(3)

The Castaway

450

(5)

A Squeeze of the Hand

455

(4)

The Cassock

459

(2)

The Try-Works

461

(5)

The Lamp

466

(1)

Stowing Down & Clearing Up

467

(3)

The Doubloon

470

(6)

The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London

476

(7)

The Decanter

483

(1)

A Bower in the Arsacides

483

(10)

Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton

493

(3)

The Fossil Whale

496

(4)

Does the Whale Diminish?

500

(5)

Ahab's Leg

505

(3)

The Carpenter

508

(3)

The Deck Ahab and the Carpenter

511

(5)

The Cabin Ahab and Starbuck

516

(3)

Queequeg in his Coffin

519

(6)

The Pacific

525

(2)

The Blacksmith

527

(3)

The Forge

530

(4)

The Gilder

534

(2)

The Pequod meets the Bachelor

536

(3)

The Dying Whale

539

(2)

The Whale-Watch

541

(2)

The Quadrant

543

(3)

The Candles

546

(7)

The Deck

553

(1)

Midnight, on the Forecastle

554

(2)

Midnight, Aloft

556

(1)

The Musket

557

(4)

The Needle

561

(4)

The Log and Line

565

(4)

The Life-Buoy

569

(4)

Ahab and the Carpenter

573

(3)

The Pequod meets the Rachel

576

(4)

The Cabin Ahab and Pip

580

(2)

The Hat

582

(5)

The Pequod meets the Delight

587

(2)

The Symphony

589

(5)

The Chase First Day

594

(10)

The Chase Second Day

604

(9)

The Chase Third Day

613

(12)

Epilogue

625

(4)

List of Textual Emendations

629

(6)

Explanatory Notes

635

(16)

Glossary of Nautical Terms

651

(4)

Maps and Illustrations

655

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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and make him the own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus , who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don't sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever to go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

N o, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tarpot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scale of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I t ake it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Grand Contested Election for the

Presidency of the United States.

WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.