149-456: Moby-Dick (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville . While some characters only appear in the shore-based chapters at the beginning of the book, and others are captains and crewmembers of other ships, the majority of the characters are officers or crewmembers of the whaling ship, Pequod . Ishmael is the narrator of the book. He recounts the whaling voyage led by Captain Ahab while also explaining
298-558: A book festival, wine and food festival, comedy festival, daffodil festival, and a cranberry festival. Several historical, literary and dramatic works involve people from, or living on, Nantucket. These include: From 1900 to 1918, Nantucket was one of few jurisdictions in the United States that banned automobiles. Nantucket can be reached by sea from the mainland by Seastreak , The Steamship Authority , Hy-Line Cruises , or Freedom Cruise Line, or by private boat. A task force
447-575: A comical " prose poem " that blends "high and low with a relaxed assurance". Similar passages include the "marvelous hymn to spiritual democracy" in the middle of "Knights and Squires". The elaborate use of the Homeric simile may not have been learned from Homer himself, yet Matthiessen finds the writing "more consistently alive" on the Homeric than on the Shakespearean level, especially during
596-415: A few handfuls. Days later, Pip , a little African American cabin-boy, jumps in panic from Stubb's whale boat and the whale must be cut loose because Pip is entangled in the line; a few days later Pip again jumps in panic, is left alone in the sea, and has gone insane by the time he is picked up. Cooled spermaceti congeals and must be squeezed back into liquid state; blubber is boiled in the try-pots on deck;
745-465: A force of linearity and Ishmael a force of digression. While both have an angry sense of being orphaned, they try to come to terms with this hole in their beings in different ways: Ahab with violence, Ishmael with meditation. And while the plot in Moby-Dick may be driven by Ahab's anger, Ishmael's desire to get a hold of the "ungraspable" accounts for the novel's lyricism. Buell sees a double quest in
894-476: A grand, ungodly, god-like man" who nevertheless "has his humanities". They hire Queequeg the following morning. A man named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. While provisions are loaded, shadowy figures board the ship. On a cold Christmas Day, the Pequod leaves the harbor. Ishmael discusses cetology (the zoological classification and natural history of the whale), and describes
1043-746: A hymnal laid on each sailor’s bunk. The crew is international, having constituents from both the United States and rest of the world. Chapter 40, "Midnight, Forecastle ," highlights, in its play manner (in Shakespearean style), the striking variety in the sailors' origins. A partial list of the speakers includes sailors from the Isle of Man , France, Iceland , the Netherlands, the Azores , Sicily , Malta , China, Chile, Denmark, Portugal, India, England, Spain, and Ireland. Although in fact 44 members of
1192-457: A long yarn about the loss of his arm; this attitude, coupled with a lack of urgency in telling where he sighted Moby Dick, infuriates Ahab, leading Boomer to query, "Is your captain crazy?" Ahab immediately quits the Enderby and is so hasty in his return to the Pequod that he cracks and splinters his whalebone leg, then further damages it in admonishing the helmsman. While appearing to be whole,
1341-544: A major political party, 25% were registered Democrats, and 10% were registered Republicans. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts allows voters to enroll with a political party or to remain "unenrolled". Throughout the late 19th and most of the 20th century, Nantucket was a Republican stronghold in presidential elections. From 1876 to 1984, only two Democrats carried Nantucket: Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson . Since 1988, however, it has trended Democratic. According to Nantucket's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
1490-523: A masque of the situation confronting man, a pageant of the humors within men, a parade of the nations, and so forth, as well as concrete and symbolic ways of thinking about the White Whale". Scholar Nathalia Wright sees the meetings and the significance of the vessels along other lines. She singles out the four vessels which have already encountered Moby Dick. The first, the Jeroboam , is named after
1639-451: A metrical pattern, the rhythms are "evenly controlled—too evenly perhaps for prose", Bezanson suggests. A third level is the idiomatic , and just as the poetic it hardly is present in pure form. Examples of this are "the consistently excellent idiom" of Stubb, such as in the way he encourages the rowing crew in a rhythm of speech that suggests "the beat of the oars takes the place of the metronomic meter". The fourth and final level of rhetoric
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#17327757675301788-401: A mysterious spell on Ishmael: "Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine". Instead of rounding Cape Horn , Ahab heads for the equatorial Pacific Ocean via southern Africa. One afternoon, as Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving a mat—"its warp seemed necessity, his hand free will, and Queequeg's sword chance"— Tashtego sights a sperm whale . Five previously unknown men appear on deck and are revealed to be
1937-399: A paragon of lived philosophic wisdom. The third mate . A short, stout man hailing from Martha's Vineyard , he approaches the practice of whaling as if trying to avenge some deep offense the whales have done him. Flask is nicknamed " King-Post " by the crew, as his physical stature reminds them of this short, strong timber that is often used to brace ships and structures. The harpooneers of
2086-427: A resident of Nantucket. When Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck , he announces he is out for revenge on the white whale which took one leg from the knee down and left him with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's jawbone. Ahab will give the first man to sight Moby Dick a doubloon , a gold coin, which he nails to the mast. Starbuck objects that he has not come for vengeance but for profit. Ahab's purpose exercises
2235-523: A spare seachest, which is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod ' s life buoy. The Pequod sails northeast toward Formosa and into the Pacific Ocean. Ahab, with one nostril, smells the musk from the Bashee isles, and with the other, the salt of the waters where Moby Dick swims. Ahab goes to Perth, the blacksmith, with a bag of racehorse shoenail stubs to be forged into the shank of
2384-551: A special crew selected by Ahab and explain the shadowy figures seen boarding the ship. Their leader, Fedallah , a Parsee , is Ahab's harpooneer. The pursuit is unsuccessful. Southeast of the Cape of Good Hope , the Pequod makes the first of nine sea-encounters, or " gams ", with other ships: Ahab hails the Goney (Albatross) to ask whether they have seen the White Whale, but the trumpet through which her captain tries to speak falls into
2533-563: A special harpoon, and with his razors for Perth to melt and fashion into a harpoon barb. Ahab tempers the barb in blood from Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. The Pequod gams next with the Bachelor , a Nantucket ship heading home full of sperm oil. Every now and then, the Pequod lowers for whales with success. On one of those nights in the whaleboat, Fedallah prophesies that neither hearse nor coffin can be Ahab's, that before he dies, Ahab must see two hearses — one not made by mortal hands and
2682-453: A speech on the spirit of fire, seeing the lightning as a portent of Moby Dick. Starbuck sees the lightning as a warning, and feels tempted to shoot the sleeping Ahab with a musket. The next morning, when he finds that the lightning disoriented the compass, Ahab makes a new one out of a lance, a maul, and a sailmaker's needle. He orders the log be heaved, but the weathered line snaps, leaving the ship with no way to fix its location. The Pequod
2831-484: A state between 'civilized' and 'savage', with his extensive tattoos at first frightening and then fascinating Ishmael. Queequeg is the harpooneer on Starbuck's boat, where Ishmael is also an oarsman. Queequeg and Ishmael are deeply intimate at the beginning of the novel (with Queequeg going so far in Chapter 10 as to declare the two of them 'married'), but they are separated on board the Pequod , with Ishmael working before
2980-488: A throne", and "my fingers ... began ... to serpentine and spiralize ". For Arvin, the essence of the writing style of Moby-Dick lies in the manner in which the parts of speech are 'intermixingly' assorted in Melville's style—so that the distinction between verbs and nouns, substantives and modifiers, becomes a half unreal one—this is the prime characteristic of his language. No feature of it could express more tellingly
3129-501: A whale of the kind called "scragg" entered the harbor and was pursued and killed by the settlers. This event started the Nantucket whaling industry. A. B. Van Deinse points out that the "scrag whale", described by P. Dudley in 1725 as one of the species hunted by early New England whalers, was almost certainly the gray whale , which has flourished on the west coast of North America in modern times with protection from whaling. At
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#17327757675303278-517: A whaling voyage. The inn where he arrives is overcrowded, so he must share a bed with the tattooed cannibal Polynesian Queequeg , a harpooneer whose father was king of the fictional island of Rokovoko . The next morning, Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple 's sermon on Jonah , then head for Nantucket . Ishmael signs up with the Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on their whaler Pequod . Peleg describes Captain Ahab : "He's
3427-432: A yardarm opposite the sperm whale's head. Ishmael compares the two heads in a philosophical way: the right whale is Lockean , stoic , and the sperm whale is Kantean , platonic . Tashtego cuts into the head of the sperm whale and retrieves buckets of spermaceti . He falls into the head, which in turn falls off the yardarm into the sea. Queequeg dives after him and frees his mate with his sword. The Pequod next gams with
3576-487: Is "a matter of shaping what exists by the way in which we see it". The point is not that Ahab would discover the whale as an object, but that he would perceive it as a symbol of his making. Yet Melville does not offer easy solutions. Ishmael and Queequeg's sensual friendship initiates a kind of racial harmony that is shattered when the crew's dancing erupts into racial conflict in "Midnight, Forecastle" (Ch. 40). Fifty chapters later, Pip suffers mental disintegration after he
3725-557: Is 47.8 square miles (124 km ). The triangular region of ocean between Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod is Nantucket Sound . The highest points on the island include Saul's Hill at 102 feet (31 m), Altar Rock at 100 feet (30 m), and Sankaty Head at 92 feet (28 m). Nantucket was formed by the outermost reach of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the recent Wisconsin Glaciation , shaped by
3874-491: Is an 1851 epic novel by American writer Herman Melville . The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael 's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab , captain of the whaling ship Pequod , for vengeance against Moby Dick , the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance , Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews,
4023-523: Is an island about 30 miles (48 km) south from Cape Cod . Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget , it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket , a combined county/town government in the state of Massachusetts , USA . Nantucket is the southeasternmost town in both Massachusetts and the New England region. The name "Nantucket" is adapted from similar Algonquian names for
4172-515: Is damaged, he has the carpenter fashion a replacement from the sections of whalebone in storage, then calls on Perth to forge a set of fittings for it. Oldest member of the crew. He is "popularly invested with preternatural powers of discernment", has "studied signs", and is given to dark prophecies. His age and origin on the Isle of Man are the subject of one of Ahab's commentaries on the nature of man in Chapter 125, "The Log and Line". Boomer commands
4321-642: Is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius". The book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale , in a single-volume edition in New York in November. The London publisher, Richard Bentley , censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change of
4470-585: Is fog-bound. The earliest European settlement in the region was established on the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard by the English-born merchant Thomas Mayhew . In 1641, Mayhew secured Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands , and other islands in the region as a proprietary colony from Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Earl of Stirling . Mayhew led several families to settle
4619-580: Is full of poetry and eloquence; he is reminiscent of Tom in King Lear . Ahab later sympathizes with Pip and takes the young boy under his wing. Bulkington is a handsome, popular mariner whom Ishmael encounters briefly at the Spouter Inn in New Bedford (Chapter 3), when he has just returned from a four year long voyage. Later, Ishmael finds that he is also a member of the crew of the Pequod . He
List of Moby-Dick characters - Misplaced Pages Continue
4768-532: Is heavily influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, which helps moderate temperatures in the town throughout the course of the year. Average high temperatures during the town's coldest month (January) are around 40 °F (4 °C), while average high temperatures during the town's warmest months (July and August) hover around 75 °F (24 °C). Nantucket receives on average 41 inches (1,000 mm) of precipitation annually, spread relatively evenly throughout
4917-989: Is its Select Board (name changed in 2018 from Board of Selectmen ), which is responsible for the town government's goals and policies. Legislative functions are carried out by an open Town Meeting of the Town's registered voters. It is administered by a town manager, who is responsible for all departments, except for the school, airport and water departments. Nantucket is represented in the Massachusetts House of Representatives by Dylan Fernandes , Democrat, of Woods Hole, who represents Precincts 1, 2, 5 and 6, of Falmouth, in Barnstable County ; Chilmark, Edgartown, Aquinnah, Gosnold, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury and West Tisbury, all in Dukes County ; and Nantucket. Rep. Fernandes has served since January 4, 2017. Nantucket
5066-448: Is married with a son. Such is his desire to return to them that, when nearly reaching the last leg of their quest for Moby Dick, he considers arresting or even killing Ahab with a loaded musket, and turning the ship back for home. Starbuck is alone among the crew in objecting to Ahab's quest, declaring it madness to want revenge on an animal, which lacks reason; such a desire is blasphemous to his Quaker religion. Starbuck advocates continuing
5215-584: Is now heading southeast toward Moby Dick. A man falls overboard from the mast. The life buoy is thrown, but both sink. Queequeg now proposes that his superfluous coffin be used as a new life buoy. Starbuck orders the carpenter to seal and waterproof it. The next morning, the ship meets in another truncated gam with the Rachel , commanded by Captain Gardiner from Nantucket. The Rachel is seeking survivors from one of her whaleboats which had gone after Moby Dick. Among
5364-462: Is of Indian Zoroastrian (" Parsee ") descent, and is described as having lived in China. When the Pequod sets sail, Fedallah is hidden on board with the crew of Ahab's boat; he emerges only when the boats are first lowered to pursue a whale. Fedallah is referred to in the text as Ahab's "Dark Shadow." Ishmael calls him a "fire worshipper" and the crew speculates that he is a devil in man's disguise. He
5513-514: Is referred to as "Alabama Boy". He is "the most insignificant of the Pequod ' s crew". Because he is physically slight, he is made a ship-keeper (a sailor who stays aboard the ship while its whaleboats go out). Ishmael contrasts him with the "dull and torpid in his intellects" — and paler and much older — steward Dough-Boy, describing Pip as "over tender-hearted" but "at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe". Ishmael goes so far as to chastise
5662-419: Is reminded that as a slave he would be worth less money than a whale. Commodified and brutalized, "Pip becomes the ship's conscience". His views of property are another example of wrestling with moral choice. In Chapter 89, " Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish , Ishmael expounds the legal concept "fast-fish and loose-fish", which gives right of ownership to those who take possession of an abandoned fish or ship; he compares
5811-833: Is represented in the Massachusetts Senate by Julian Cyr , Democrat, of Truro , who has also served since January 4, 2017. Nantucket is in Massachusetts's 9th congressional district , which has existed since 2013. As of 2013 , it was represented in the United States House of Representatives by Bill Keating , a Democrat of Bourne. Massachusetts is currently represented in the United States Senate by senior senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat) and junior senator Ed Markey (Democrat). In 2024, 63% of Nantucket residents were unaligned with
5960-490: Is rescued, he has become (at least to the other sailors) "an idiot", "mad". Ishmael, however, thought Pip had a mystical experience: "So man's insanity is heaven's sense". Pip and his experience are crucial because they serve as foreshadowing, in Ishmael's words, "providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own". Pip's madness
6109-432: Is revealed, but only to the crew: a defiant sailor who struck an oppressive officer is flogged, and when that officer led the chase for Moby Dick, he fell from the boat and was killed by the whale. Ishmael digresses on pictures of whales, brit (microscopic sea creatures on which whales feed), squid and—after four boats are lowered in vain because Daggoo mistook a giant squid for the white whale—whale-lines. The next day, in
List of Moby-Dick characters - Misplaced Pages Continue
6258-411: Is taken. Captain Ahab is the tyrannical captain of Pequod . Prior to the events of the novel, Captain Ahab lost his leg while hunting Moby Dick, leading to a monomaniacal desire in Ahab to kill the "White Whale". It is his obsession with Moby Dick that dooms Pequod and her crew, with Ishmael as the sole survivor. Following his introduction, Ahab overtakes Ishmael as the central figure of the book. He
6407-463: Is the composite , "a magnificent blending" of the first three and possible other elements: The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on
6556-747: Is the main protagonist of the novel. The title character is a giant, largely white bull sperm whale and arguably the main antagonist of the novel. A former whaler who is a preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman's Chapel . The character Elijah (named for the Biblical prophet Elijah ), on learning that Ishmael and Queequeg have signed onto Ahab's ship, asks, "Anything down there about your souls?" When Ishmael reacts with surprise, Elijah continues: Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any — good luck to 'em; and they are all
6705-448: Is the series of nine meetings between the Pequod and other ships. These meetings are important in three ways. First, their placement in the narrative: the initial two meetings and the last two are both close to each other. The central group of five gams are separated by about 12 chapters. This pattern provides a structural element, remarks Bezanson, as if the encounters were "bones to the book's flesh". Second, Ahab's developing responses to
6854-454: Is the source of a variety of prophecies regarding Ahab and his hunt for Moby Dick, including one about the manner of Ahab's death: "Hemp only can kill thee." This prophecy later comes true in the final chapter, when a harpoon rope wraps around Ahab's neck and drags him into the sea, leading to his death by drowning. Pip (nicknamed "Pippin", but "Pip" for short). An African-American youth said to be from Tolland County , Connecticut, although he
7003-419: Is the subject of Chapter 23, "The Lee Shore", but does not appear in the rest of the novel. The pale, nervous steward of the ship. The ship's cook. A very old, half-deaf African-American with bad knees, he is presented in the chapter "Stubb's Supper" at some length. Stubb good-humoredly takes him to task on how to prepare a variety of dishes from the whale's carcass, then has him preach an admonishing sermon to
7152-579: The Encyclopædia Britannica it may have meant "far away island" or "sandy, sterile soil tempting no one". Wampanoag is an Eastern Algonquian language of southern New England. The Nehantucket (known to Europeans as the Niantic) were an Algonquin-speaking people of the area. Nantucket's nickname, "The Little Grey Lady of the Sea", refers to the island as it appears from the ocean when it
7301-527: The 2020 census , the population was 14,255, making it the least populated county in Massachusetts. Part of the town is designated the Nantucket CDP , or census-designated place . The region of Surfside on Nantucket is the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts. Town and county governments are combined in Nantucket (see List of counties in Massachusetts ). Nantucket's elected executive body
7450-535: The Bible . In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions , soliloquies , and asides . In August 1850, with the manuscript perhaps half finished, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne and was deeply impressed by his Mosses from an Old Manse , which he compared to Shakespeare in its cosmic ambitions. This encounter may have inspired him to revise and deepen Moby-Dick , which
7599-479: The Indian Ocean , Stubb kills a sperm whale, and that night Fleece, the Pequod ' s black cook, prepares him a rare whale steak. Fleece, at Stubb's request, delivers a sermon to the sharks that fight each other to feast on the whale's carcass, tied to the ship, saying that their nature is to be voracious, but they must overcome it. The whale is prepared, beheaded, and barrels of oil are tried out. Standing at
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#17327757675307748-621: The Jungfrau from Bremen. Both ships sight whales simultaneously, with the Pequod winning the contest. The three harpooneers dart their harpoons, and Flask delivers the mortal strike with a lance. The carcass sinks, and Queequeg barely manages to escape. The Pequod ' s next gam is with the French whaler Bouton de Rose , whose crew is ignorant of the ambergris in the gut of the diseased whale in their possession. Stubb talks them out of it, but Ahab orders him away before he can recover more than
7897-619: The Maria Mitchell Association and the Nantucket Whaling Museum . Nantucket is home to both visual and performing arts. The island has been an art colony since the 1920s, whose artists have come to capture the natural beauty of the island's landscapes and seascapes, including its flora and the fauna. Noted artists who have lived on or painted in Nantucket include Frank Swift Chase and Theodore Robinson . Illustrator and puppeteer Tony Sarg moved to
8046-565: The Pequod ' s own fate. Second, the increasingly impressive encounters with whales. In the early encounters, the whaleboats hardly make contact; later there are false alarms and routine chases; finally, the massive assembling of whales at the edges of the China Sea in "The Grand Armada". A typhoon near Japan sets the stage for Ahab's confrontation with Moby Dick. The third pattern is the cetological documentation, so lavish that it can be divided into two subpatterns. These chapters start with
8195-479: The Pequod are non-Christians from various parts of the world. Each serves on a mate's boat. Hails from the fictional island of Rokovoko in the South Seas, inhabited by a cannibal tribe, and is the son of the chief of his tribe. He is an extremely skillful harpooneer and a strong swimmer. He and Ishmael bond early in the novel, when they share a bed before leaving for Nantucket . He is described as existing in
8344-465: The Samuel Enderby of London, one of the ships that Ahab encounters at sea. He has not only seen Moby Dick recently, but lost his arm to him in a previous attack. Like Ahab, he has replaced the missing limb with a prosthesis made of sperm whale bone, in his case a mallet. Ahab immediately assumes he has found a kindred spirit in his thirst for vengeance, but Boomer is yet another representation of
8493-679: The South Pacific whaling grounds. The second mate . From Cape Cod , always seems to have a pipe in his mouth and a smile on his face. "Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests" ( Moby-Dick , Ch. 27). Although he is not an educated man, Stubb is remarkably articulate, and during whale hunts keeps up an imaginative patter reminiscent of that of some characters in Shakespeare. Scholarly portrayals range from that of an optimistic simpleton to
8642-588: The "[masquerade in kingly weeds of] a wild egoism, anarchic, irresponsible, and destructive". "Above all", say the scholars Bryant and Springer, Moby-Dick is language: "nautical, biblical , Homeric , Shakespearean , Miltonic , cetological , alliterative , fanciful, colloquial , archaic and unceasingly allusive ". Melville stretches grammar, quotes well-known or obscure sources, or swings from calm prose to high rhetoric, technical exposition, seaman's slang, mystic speculation, or wild prophetic archaism. Melville coined words, critic Newton Arvin recognizes, as if
8791-429: The "finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town." Nantucket probably takes its name from a Wampanoag word, transliterated variously as natocke , nantaticu , nantican , nautica or natockete , which is part of Wampanoag lore about the creation of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The meaning of the term is uncertain, although according to
8940-424: The Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. The novel uses several levels of rhetoric. The simplest is "a relatively straightforward expository style", such as in the cetological chapters, though they are "rarely sustained, and serve chiefly as transitions" between more sophisticated levels. A second level is the " poetic ", such as in Ahab's quarterdeck monologue, to the point that it can be set as blank verse . Set over
9089-577: The British nor the Patriots. Herman Melville commented on Nantucket's whaling dominance in his novel Moby-Dick , Chapter 14: "Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires". The Moby-Dick characters Ahab and Starbuck are both from Nantucket. The tragedy that inspired Melville to write Moby-Dick was the final voyage of
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#17327757675309238-520: The English vocabulary were too limited for the complex things he had to express. Perhaps the most striking example is the use of verbal nouns, mostly plural, such as allurings , coincidings , and leewardings . Equally abundant are unfamiliar adjectives and adverbs, including participial adjectives such as officered , omnitooled , and uncatastrophied ; participial adverbs such as intermixingly , postponedly , and uninterpenetratingly ; rarities such as
9387-550: The Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him" ( I Kings 16:33). An early enthusiast for the Melville Revival, British author E. M. Forster remarked in 1927: " Moby-Dick is full of meanings: its meaning is a different problem." Yet he saw as "the essential" in the book "its prophetic song", which flows "like an undercurrent" beneath the surface action and morality. The hunt for
9536-760: The Nantucket Public Schools, as well as the Nantucket Historical Association , though the two are not affiliated. The University of Massachusetts Boston operates a field station on Nantucket. The Massachusetts College of Art & Design is affiliated with the Nantucket Island School of Design & the Arts, which offers summer courses for teens, youth, postgraduate, and undergraduate programs. Nantucket has several noted museums and galleries, including
9685-448: The Nantucket whaler Essex . The island suffered great economic hardships, worsened by the "Great Fire" of July 13, 1846, that, fueled by whale oil and lumber, devastated the main town, burning some 40 acres (16 hectares). The fire left hundreds homeless and poverty-stricken, and many people left the island. By 1850, whaling was in decline, as Nantucket's whaling industry had been surpassed by that of New Bedford . Another contributor to
9834-783: The Proprietors. Anxious to add to their number and to induce tradesmen to come to the island, the total number of shares was increased to twenty-seven. The original purchasers needed the assistance of tradesmen who were skilled in the arts of weaving, milling, building and other pursuits and selected men who were given half a share provided that they lived on Nantucket and carried on their trade for at least three years. By 1667, twenty-seven shares had been divided among 31 owners. Seamen and tradesmen who settled in Nantucket included Richard Gardner (arrived 1667) and Capt. John Gardner (arrived 1672), sons of Thomas Gardner . The first settlers focused on farming and raising sheep, but overgrazing and
9983-451: The adjectives unsmoothable , spermy , and leviathanic , and adverbs such as sultanically , Spanishly , and Venetianly ; and adjectival compounds ranging from odd to magnificent, such as "the message-carrying air", "the circus-running sun", and " teeth-tiered sharks". It is rarer for Melville to create his own verbs from nouns, but he does this with what Arvin calls "irresistible effect", such as in "who didst thunder him higher than
10132-500: The ancient history of whaling and a bibliographical classification of whales, getting closer with second-hand stories of the evil of whales in general and of Moby Dick in particular, a chronologically ordered commentary on pictures of whales. The climax to this section is chapter 57, "Of whales in paint etc.", which begins with the humble (a beggar in London) and ends with the sublime (the constellation Cetus). The next chapter ("Brit"), thus
10281-399: The awareness that lies below and behind Moby-Dick —the awareness that action and condition, movement and stasis, object and idea, are but surface aspects of one underlying reality. Later critics have expanded Arvin's categories. The superabundant vocabulary can be broken down into strategies used individually and in combination. First, the original modification of words as "Leviathanism" and
10430-424: The beginning of the 18th century, whaling on Nantucket was usually done from small boats launched from the island's shores, which would tow killed whales to be processed on the beach. These boats were only about seven meters long, with mostly Wampanoag manpower, sourced from a system of debt servitude established by English Nantucketers—a typical boat's crew had five Wampanoag oarsmen and a single white Nantucketer at
10579-405: The better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon." Later in the conversation, Elijah adds: Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning;
10728-582: The bill proposed by Micajah Coffin to change the town's name to the "Town of Nantucket" was endorsed and signed by Governor Samuel Adams to officially change the town name. When the English settlers arrived on Nantucket in 1659, the island was populated by Wampanoag Native Americans , one of the Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands , who had been living there for thousands of years. As many as three thousand people lived on
10877-416: The bipolar observer/hero narrative", that is, the novel is structured around the two main characters, Ahab and Ishmael, who are intertwined and contrasted with each other, with Ishmael the observer and narrator. As the story of Ishmael, remarks Robert Milder, it is a "narrative of education". Bryant and Springer find that the book is structured around the two consciousnesses of Ahab and Ishmael, with Ahab as
11026-430: The book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil , as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status , good and evil, and the existence of God . The book's literary influences include Shakespeare , Thomas Carlyle , Sir Thomas Browne and
11175-409: The book, are developed enough to be called "events". As Bezanson writes, "in each case a killing provokes either a chapter sequence or a chapter cluster of cetological lore growing out of the circumstance of the particular killing," thus these killings are "structural occasions for ordering the whaling essays and sermons". Buell observes that the "narrative architecture" is an "idiosyncratic variant of
11324-418: The book: Ahab's is to hunt Moby Dick, Ishmael's is "to understand what to make of both whale and hunt". One of the most distinctive features of the book is the variety of genres. Bezanson mentions sermons, dreams, travel account, autobiography, Elizabethan plays, and epic poetry. He calls Ishmael's explanatory footnotes to establish the documentary genre "a Nabokovian touch". A significant structural device
11473-412: The chapter structure can be divided into "chapter sequences", "chapter clusters", and "balancing chapters". The simplest sequences are of narrative progression, then sequences of theme such as the three chapters on whale painting, and sequences of structural similarity, such as the five dramatic chapters beginning with "The Quarter-Deck" or the four chapters beginning with "The Candles". Chapter clusters are
11622-500: The chapters on the significance of the color white, and those on the meaning of fire. Balancing chapters are chapters of opposites, such as "Loomings" versus the "Epilogue", or similars, such as "The Quarter-Deck" and "The Candles". Scholar Lawrence Buell describes the arrangement of the non-narrative chapters as structured around three patterns: first, the nine meetings of the Pequod with ships that have encountered Moby Dick. Each has been more and more severely damaged, foreshadowing
11771-433: The charter for the newly formed Province of Massachusetts Bay was signed. Following the arrival of the new Royal Governor on May 14, 1692, to effectuate the new government, Nantucket County was partitioned from Dukes County, Massachusetts in 1695. European settlement of Nantucket did not begin in earnest until 1659, when Thomas Mayhew sold nine-tenths of his interest to a group of investors, led by Tristram Coffin , "for
11920-462: The coin in a way shaped by his own personality. Later, the American edition has Ahab "discover no sign" (Ch. 133) of the whale when he is staring into the deep. In fact, Moby Dick is then swimming up at him. In the British edition, Melville changed the word "discover" to "perceive", and with good reason, for "discovery" means finding what is already there, but "perceiving", or better still, perception,
12069-789: The concept to events in history, such as the European colonization of the Americas , the partitions of Poland , and the Mexican–American War . The novel has also been read as critical of the contemporary literary and philosophical movement Transcendentalism , attacking the thought of leading Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson in particular. The life and death of Ahab has been read as an attack on Emerson's philosophy of self-reliance , for one, in its destructive potential and potential justification for egoism . Richard Chase writes that for Melville, "Death—spiritual, emotional, physical—is
12218-417: The crew are mentioned, in the final chapters Melville writes three times that there are 30 crewmembers. Since there were thirty states in the union at the time, it has been suggested that, in its diversity, the Pequod was a metaphor for the 'American ship of state'. The three mates of the Pequod are all from New England . The young chief mate . A thoughtful and intellectual Quaker from Nantucket . He
12367-400: The crew members of the Pequod . Although Ishmael initially is afraid of Queequeg as a tattooed possible cannibal, he soon decides that he would "Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." While it may be rare for a mid-19th century American book to feature Black characters in a nonslavery context, slavery is frequently mentioned. The theme of race is carried primarily by Pip,
12516-412: The crew members. The chief mate is 30-year-old Starbuck , a Nantucket Quaker with a realist mentality, whose harpooneer is Queequeg; second mate is Stubb , from Cape Cod , happy-go-lucky and cheerful, whose harpooneer is Tashtego , a proud, pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head ; and the third mate is Flask , also from Martha's Vineyard , short, stout, whose harpooneer is Daggoo , a tall African, now
12665-420: The crews of both boats pursue, de Deer trying (unsuccessfully) to hinder the rival crews. De Deer is last seen pursuing a fin whale , according to Melville too swift a swimmer to be captured by 19th-century whalers. The Pequod encounters a number of other whaling ships in the course of her voyage. The captains are not named, but some play significant minor roles: Moby-Dick Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
12814-417: The death blow to the island's whaling industry, as virtually all of the remaining whaling vessels were destroyed by Confederate commerce raiders . As a result of this depopulation, the island was left under-developed and isolated until the mid-20th century. Isolation from the mainland kept many of the pre-Civil War buildings intact and, by the 1950s, enterprising developers began buying up large sections of
12963-420: The deck and stands near Fedallah. On the first day of the chase, Ahab smells the whale, climbs the mast, and sights Moby Dick. He claims the doubloon for himself, and orders all boats to lower except for Starbuck's. The whale bites Ahab's boat in two, tosses the captain out of it, and scatters the crew. On the second day of the chase, Ahab leaves Starbuck in charge of the Pequod . Moby Dick smashes into splinters
13112-418: The decline was the silting up of the harbor, which prevented large whaling ships from entering and leaving the port, unlike New Bedford, which still owned a deep water port. In addition, the development of railroads made mainland whaling ports, such as New Bedford, more attractive because of the ease of transshipment of whale oil onto trains, an advantage unavailable to an island. The American Civil War dealt
13261-473: The destroyed ship is the hearse made of American wood in Fedallah's prophecy. Moby Dick returns "within a few yards of Ahab's boat", a harpoon is darted, the line gets tangled, and Ahab stoops to free it. In doing so, the line loops around Ahab's neck. As the mortally stricken whale swims away, the captain is drawn with him out of sight. Queequeg's coffin comes to the surface, and it is the only thing to escape
13410-480: The developing money economy, losses at sea, and the detrimental effect of rum on their health. In 1763 the Wampanoag community was struck down by an epidemic of unknown origin, which killed 222 of them while leaving the English community unaffected. Some of the survivors left Nantucket and some married into the small African community on the island. Two children, Abram Quary and Dorcas Esop , who were born after
13559-471: The diminutive Black cabin boy. When Pip has almost drowned, and Ahab, genuinely touched by Pip's suffering, questions him gently, Pip "can only parrot the language of an advertisement for the return of a fugitive slave: 'Pip! Reward for Pip!'". Editors Bryant and Springer suggest that perception is a central theme—the difficulty of seeing and understanding, which makes deep reality hard to discover and truth hard to pin down. Ahab explains that, like all things,
13708-458: The duality to be found throughout the novel; in this instance, a sane and rational counterpart to Ahab. While Boomer also anthropomorphizes Moby Dick, describing the "boiling rage" the whale seemed to be in when Boomer attempted to capture him, he has easily come to terms with losing his arm, and harbors no ill-will against Moby Dick, advising Ahab to abandon the pursuit. The Enderby ' s doctor provides solid reasoning for this attitude, informing
13857-556: The epidemic and lived until 1854 and 1855, have been acknowledged as Nantucket's last native Americans. Wampanoags from Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod have since then lived on Nantucket. In 2021, the Nantucket Annual Town Meeting voted to replace the Columbus Day holiday with Indigenous People's Day . In his 1835 history of Nantucket Island, Obed Macy wrote that in the early pre-1672 colony,
14006-402: The evil whale wears a disguise: "All visible objects, man, are but pasteboard masks"—and Ahab is determined to "strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside, except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall" (Ch. 36, "The Quarter-Deck"). This theme pervades the novel, perhaps never so emphatically as in "The Doubloon" (Ch. 99), where each crewmember perceives
14155-510: The exaggerated repetition of modified words, as in the series "pitiable", "pity", "pitied" and "piteous" (Ch. 81, "The Pequod Meets the Virgin"). Second, the use of existing words in new ways, as when the whale "heaps" and "tasks". Third, words lifted from specialized fields, as "fossiliferous". Fourth, the use of unusual adjective-noun combinations, as in "concentrating brow" and "immaculate manliness" (Ch. 26, "Knights and Squires"). Fifth, using
14304-405: The final chase the "controlled accumulation" of such similes emphasizes Ahab's hubris through a succession of land-images, for instance: "The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-ball, missent, becomes a ploughshare and turns up the level field" ("The Chase – Second Day", Ch. 134). A paragraph-long simile describes how the 30 men of the crew became a single unit: For as
14453-427: The fouled lines, is lashed to the whale's back, so Moby Dick turns out to be the hearse Fedallah prophesied. Ahab plants his harpoon in the whale's flank. Moby Dick smites the whaleboat, tossing its men into the sea. Only Ishmael is unable to return to the boat. He is left behind in the sea, and so is the only crewman of the Pequod to survive the final encounter. The whale destroys the Pequod . Ahab then realizes that
14602-580: The gam by rushing back to his ship. The narrator now discusses the subjects of (1) whalers' supply; (2) a glen in Tranque in the Arsacides islands full of carved whale bones, fossil whales, whale skeleton measurements; (3) the chance that the magnitude of the whale will diminish and that the leviathan might perish. Leaving the Samuel Enderby , Ahab wrenches his ivory leg and orders the carpenter to fashion him another. Starbuck informs Ahab of oil leakage in
14751-411: The gathering: Do you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest even a man's arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White Whale's malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. Boomer jokingly tells
14900-425: The growing number of farms made these activities untenable, and the islanders soon began turning to the sea for a living. Before 1795, the town on the island was called Sherburne. The original settlement was near Capaum Pond. At that time, the pond was a small harbor whose entrance silted up, forcing the settlers to dismantle their houses and move them northeast by two miles to the present location. On June 8, 1795,
15049-405: The head of the whale, Ahab begs it to speak of the depths of the sea. The Pequod next encounters the Jeroboam , which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but also is now plagued by an epidemic. The whale carcass still lies in the water. Queequeg mounts it, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siamese twins . Stubb and Flask kill a right whale whose head is fastened to
15198-430: The history and mechanics of whaling and attempting to promote the nobility of the trade. He primarily observes the major events of the novel as opposed to being an active participant in them. In the epilogue , it is revealed that Ishmael was the only survivor of the sinking of the Pequod . The name Ishmael has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts in reference to the biblical character from which his name
15347-525: The hold. Reluctantly, Ahab orders the harpooneers to inspect the casks. Queequeg, sweating all day below decks, develops a chill and soon is almost mortally feverish. The carpenter makes a coffin for Queequeg, who fears an ordinary burial at sea . Queequeg tries it for size, with Pip sobbing and beating his tambourine, standing by and calling himself a coward while he praises Queequeg for his gameness. Queequeg suddenly rallies, briefly convalesces, and leaps up, back in good health. Henceforth, he uses his coffin for
15496-560: The ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye. The principal owners of the Pequod , two well-to-do Quaker retired whaling captains. Both have names taken from the Bible: Peleg , and Bildad . Peleg served as first mate under Ahab on the Pequod before obtaining his own command, and is responsible for all her whalebone embellishment. She comes aboard the Pequod before it sails with various things she deems necessary, such as
15645-622: The island and restoring them to create an upmarket destination for wealthy people in the Northeastern United States . Nantucket and towns on Martha's Vineyard contemplated seceding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which they considered at various town meetings in 1977, unsuccessfully. The votes were sparked by a proposed change to the Massachusetts Constitution that would have reduced
15794-418: The island in 1922, and in 1937 created an inflatable creature which sailed across the harbour as part of the "sea monster" hoax. Artist Rodney Charman was commissioned to create a series of paintings depicting the marine history of Nantucket, which were collected in the book Portrait of Nantucket, 1659–1890: The Paintings of Rodney Charman in 1989. The island is the site of a number of festivals, including
15943-523: The island in groups governed by sachems . Within two years of their arrival, the settlers had persuaded two of the sachems, Wanackmamack and Nickanoose, to relinquish their rights to the island in exchange for 66 pounds sterling , equal to £11,798 today). In 1750 the deeds were upheld by a judge from the General Court of Massachusetts in spite of petitions from the Wampanoags claiming that
16092-408: The island. Nantucket is a tourist destination and summer colony . Due to tourists and seasonal residents, the population of the island increases to around 80,000 during the summer months. The average sale price for a single-family home was $ 2.3 million in the first quarter of 2018. The National Park Service cites Nantucket, designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1966, as being
16241-458: The island; 5,478 were occupied with most of the rest being for seasonal, recreational or occasional use. 59.7% of the occupied housing units were owner-occupied, 40.3% were renter-occupied. Of the 5,478 households, 52.1% contained married or cohabiting couples. In 19.7% of households a couple were living with their children aged under 18, while a further 6% of households contained a householder living alone with their children under 18. In 2017–2021
16390-427: The leg is badly damaged and cannot be trusted; it now serves as metaphor for its wearer. Derick de Deer is a German captain in command of the whaling ship Jungfrau ( Virgin ). Melville disparages the whaling prowess of both de Deer and Germans generally. De Deer's ship has succeeded in capturing no whales, so he begs the Pequod ' s crew for oil for the ship's lamps. During this transaction, whales are sighted and
16539-529: The lowest daily minimum temperature was −3 °F (−19 °C) on December 31, 1962, January 16, 2004, and February 4, 2023 . The hardiness zone is 7b. [1] As of the 2020 United States Census , there were 14,255 people, up from 10,172 in 2010, residing in the county. The 2020 data for racial makeup of the county was 71.3% white, 7.2% black or African American, 1.9% Asian, 0.6% American Indian, 9.3% from other races, and 9.7% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 16.2% of
16688-511: The mast as a common sailor and Queequeg keeping a more privileged position aft. A Gay Head ( Wampanoag ) Native American harpooneer. The personification of the hunter, he turns from hunting land animals to hunting whales. Tashtego is the harpooneer on Stubb's boat. A tall (6' 5") West African harpooneer with a noble, graceful bearing. He is the harpooneer on Flask's boat. His height and placid demeanor contrast humorously with Flask's short stature and irascibility. Harpooneer on Ahab's boat. He
16837-550: The median income for a household in the county was $ 116,571 and the per capita income was $ 52,324. 5.9% of the population were living below the poverty line . As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the median value of homes in Nantucket County was $ 1,370,522, an increase of 22.3% from the prior year, and ranked the highest in the US by median home value. Nantucket is the only such consolidated town-county in Massachusetts. As of
16986-410: The meetings plot the "rising curve of his passion" and of his monomania. Third, in contrast to Ahab, Ishmael interprets the significance of each ship individually: "each ship is a scroll which the narrator unrolls and reads". Bezanson sees no single way to account for the meaning of all of these ships. Instead, they may be interpreted as "a group of metaphysical parables, a series of biblical analogues,
17135-466: The missing is Gardiner's young son. Ahab refuses to join the search. Twenty-four hours a day, Ahab now stands and walks the deck, while Fedallah shadows him. Suddenly, a sea hawk grabs Ahab's slouched hat and flies off with it. Next, the Pequod , in a ninth and final gam, meets the Delight , badly damaged and with five of her crew left dead by Moby Dick. Her captain shouts that the harpoon which can kill
17284-429: The more mundane pursuit of whales for their oil. But he lacks the support of the crew in his opposition to Ahab, and is unable to persuade them to turn back. Despite his misgivings, he feels himself bound by his obligations to obey the captain. Starbuck was an important Quaker family name on Nantucket , and there were dozens of actual whalemen of this period named Starbuck , as evidenced by the name of Starbuck Island in
17433-494: The novel's "central consciousness and narrative voice". Walter Bezanson first distinguishes Ishmael as narrator from Ishmael as character, whom he calls "forecastle Ishmael", the younger Ishmael of some years ago. Narrator Ishmael, then, is "merely young Ishmael grown older". A second distinction is between either or both Ishmaels with the author Herman Melville. Bezanson warns readers to "resist any one-to-one equation of Melville and Ishmael". According to critic Walter Bezanson,
17582-623: The one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to. ("The Chase – Second Day", Ch. 134). Nantucket Nantucket ( / ˌ n æ n ˈ t ʌ k ɪ t / )
17731-420: The other half of this pattern, begins with the book's first description of live whales, and next the anatomy of the sperm whale is studied, more or less from front to rear and from outer to inner parts, all the way down to the skeleton. Two concluding chapters set forth the whale's evolution as a species and claim its eternal nature. Some "ten or more" of the chapters on whale killings, beginning at two-fifths of
17880-477: The other made of American wood — that Fedallah will precede his captain in death, and finally that only hemp can kill Ahab. As the Pequod approaches the Equator , Ahab scolds his quadrant for telling him only where he is and not where he will be. He dashes it to the deck. That evening, an impressive typhoon attacks the ship. Lightning strikes the mast, setting the doubloon and Ahab's harpoon aglow. Ahab delivers
18029-469: The participial modifier to emphasize and to reinforce the already established expectations of the reader, as the words "preluding" and "foreshadowing" ("so still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene ..."; "In this foreshadowing interval ..."). Other characteristic stylistic elements are the echoes and overtones, both imitation of distinct styles and habitual use of sources to shape his own work. His three most important sources, in order, are
18178-693: The population. The median age of the population was 39.9 years; 22.2% were aged under 21 years, while 15.9% were aged over 65 years. According to the 2020 census data for Nantucket County, the largest groups by origins (alone or in any combination) were Irish Americans (2,612), English (2,492), German (1,229), Italian (901), Jamaican (635), Scottish (632), French (476), Polish (389), Portuguese (285), African Americans (251), Swedish (247) and Bulgarian (201). By Hispanic origins of any race, Salvadoran (1,143), Dominican (501), Mexican (124), Guatemalan (63), Spanish (46), Puerto Rican (41), Spaniard (34) and Colombian (32). There were 12,619 housing units on
18327-468: The predecessor of the biblical King Ahab . Her "prophetic" fate is "a message of warning to all who follow, articulated by Gabriel and vindicated by the Samuel Enderby , the Rachel , the Delight , and at last the Pequod ". None of the other ships has been completely destroyed because none of their captains shared Ahab's monomania ; the fate of the Jeroboam reinforces the structural parallel between Ahab and his biblical namesake: "Ahab did more to provoke
18476-472: The price of self-reliance when it is pushed to the point of solipsism , where the world has no existence apart from the all-sufficient self." In that regard, Chase sees Melville's art as antithetical to that of Emerson's thought, in that Melville "[points] up the dangers of an exaggerated self-regard, rather than, as ... Emerson loved to do, [suggested] the vital possibilities of the self". Newton Arvin further suggests that self-reliance was, for Melville, really
18625-414: The reader: "Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, paneled in king's cabinets". The after-oarsman on Stubb's boat is injured, however, so Pip is temporarily reassigned to Stubb's whaleboat crew. The first time out, Pip jumps from the boat, causing Stubb and Tashtego to lose their already-harpooned whale. Tashtego and
18774-586: The region, establishing several treaties with the indigenous inhabitants of Nantucket, the Wampanoag people . These treaties helped prevent the region from becoming embroiled in King Philip's War . The growing population of settlers welcomed seasonal groups of other Native American tribes who traveled to the island to fish and later harvest whales that washed up on shore. Nantucket was officially part of Dukes County , New York , until October 17, 1691, when
18923-462: The rest of the crew are furious; Stubb chides him "officially" and "unofficially", even raising the specter of slavery: "A whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama". The next time a whale is sighted, Pip again jumps overboard and is left stranded in the "awful lonesomeness" of the sea while Stubb's and the others' boats are dragged along by their harpooned whales. By the time he
19072-414: The sachems had not had the authority to sell the land. The Wampanoags converted to Christianity and took up trades that were useful to the settlers, becoming, for example, carpenters and weavers. When the whaling industry developed on Nantucket in the 18th century, Wampanoag men went to sea and often made up half or more of the crew of the whaling ships. By the 18th century, a system of debt servitude
19221-523: The sea before he can answer. Ishmael explains that because of Ahab's absorption with Moby Dick, he sails on without the customary "gam", which Ishmael defines as a "social meeting of two (or more) Whale-ships", in which the two captains remain on one ship and the chief mates on the other. In the second gam off the Cape of Good Hope, with the Town-Ho , a Nantucket whaler, the concealed story of a "judgment of God"
19370-505: The sea ever written". Its opening sentence , "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous. Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850 and finished 18 months later, a year after he had anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick , and
19519-631: The sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. ("Nantucket", Ch. 14). Bezanson calls this chapter
19668-415: The sharks gorging themselves on its blubber. The ship's blacksmith. Ahab has Perth forge a special harpoon that he carries into the final confrontation with Moby Dick. Perth is one of the few characters whose previous life is described in much detail: his life ashore has been ruined by alcoholism. The unnamed ship's carpenter, responsible for repairs to boats and other equipment. After Ahab's prosthetic leg
19817-580: The size of the state's House of Representatives from 240 to 160 members and would therefore reduce the islands' representation in the Massachusetts General Court . According to the U.S. Census Bureau , the county has a total area of 304 square miles (790 km ), of which 45 square miles (120 km ) is land and 259 square miles (670 km ) (85%) is water. It is the smallest county in Massachusetts by land area and second-smallest by total area. The area of Nantucket Island proper
19966-408: The sorting actions and transport of longshore drift . Nantucket became an island when rising sea levels covered the connection with the mainland, about 5,000–6,000 years ago. The island and adjoining islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget comprise the Town and County of Nantucket, which is operated as a consolidated town and county government. The main settlement, also called Nantucket, is located at
20115-502: The steering oar. Author Nathaniel Philbrick notes that "without the native population, which outnumbered the white population well into the 1720s, the island would never have become a successful whaling port." Nantucket's dependence on trade with Britain, derived from its whaling and supporting industries, influenced its leading citizens to remain neutral during the American Revolutionary War , favoring neither
20264-400: The subsequent rise in sea level. The low ridge across the northern section of the island was deposited as glacial moraine during a period of glacial standstill, a period during which till continued to arrive and was deposited as the glacier melted at a stationary front. The southern part of the island is an outwash plain , sloping away from the arc of the moraine and shaped at its margins by
20413-657: The sum of thirty pounds (equal to £5,363 today) also two beaver hats, one for myself, and one for my wife". The nine original purchasers were Tristram Coffin, Peter Coffin, Thomas Macy , Christopher Hussey , Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Stephen Greenleaf , John Swain and William Pile. Mayhew and the nine purchasers then each took on partners in the venture. These additional shareholders were Tristram Coffin Junior, James Coffin, John Smith, Robert Pike, Thomas Look, Robert Barnard, Edward Starbuck, Thomas Coleman, John Bishop and Thomas Mayhew Junior. These twenty men and their heirs were
20562-499: The three boats that seek him, and tangles their lines. Ahab is rescued, but his ivory leg and Fedallah are lost. Starbuck begs Ahab to desist, but Ahab vows to slay the white whale, even if he would have to dive through the globe itself to get his revenge. On the third day of the chase, Ahab sights Moby Dick at noon. Sharks appear as well. Ahab lowers his boat for the final time, leaving Starbuck again on board. Moby Dick breaches and destroys two boats. Fedallah's corpse, still entangled in
20711-609: The title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in the text of both editions as "Moby Dick", without the hyphen. Reviewers in Britain were largely favorable, though some objected that the tale seemed to be told by a narrator who perished with the ship, as the British edition lacked the epilogue recounting Ishmael's survival. American reviewers were more hostile. Ishmael travels in December from Manhattan Island to New Bedford, Massachusetts , with plans to sign up for
20860-441: The top employers in the town are: Nantucket's public school district is Nantucket Public Schools . The Nantucket school system had 1,583 students and 137 teachers in 2017. Schools on the island include: Nantucket Public Schools District information and meetings are broadcast on Nantucket Community Television (Channel 18) in Nantucket. A major museum association, the Maria Mitchell Association , offers educational programs to
21009-534: The vortex when the Pequod sinks. For a day and a night, Ishmael floats on it, until the Rachel , still looking for its lost seamen, rescues him. Ishmael is the narrator, shaping his story with the use of many different genres including sermons, stage plays, soliloquies, and emblematical readings. Repeatedly, Ishmael refers to his writing of the book: "But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself? I must, else all these chapters might be naught." Scholar John Bryant calls him
21158-480: The warm oil is decanted into casks, and then stowed in the ship. After the operation, the decks are scrubbed. The coin hammered to the main mast shows three Andes summits, one with a flame, one with a tower, and one a crowing cock. Ahab stops to look at the doubloon and interprets the coin as signs of his firmness, volcanic energy, and victory; Starbuck takes the high peaks as evidence of the Trinity ; Stubb focuses on
21307-474: The western end of Nantucket Harbor, where it opens into Nantucket Sound. Key localities on the island include Madaket , Surfside , Polpis , Wauwinet , Miacomet, and Siasconset (generally shortened to "'Sconset"). According to the Köppen climate classification system, Nantucket features a climate that is Cfb ( oceanic ), a climate type rarely found on the east coast of North America . Nantucket's climate
21456-704: The whale can be seen as a metaphor for an epistemological quest—in the words of biographer Laurie Robertson-Lorant, "man's search for meaning in a world of deceptive appearances and fatal delusions". Ishmael's taxonomy of whales merely demonstrates "the limitations of scientific knowledge and the impossibility of achieving certainty". She also contrasts Ishmael's and Ahab's attitudes toward life, with Ishmael's open-minded and meditative, "polypositional stance" as antithetical to Ahab's monomania , adhering to dogmatic rigidity. Melville biographer Andrew Delbanco cites race as an example of this search for truth beneath surface differences, noting that all races are represented among
21605-479: The white whale has yet to be forged, but Ahab flourishes his special lance and once more orders the ship forward. Ahab shares a moment of contemplation with Starbuck. Ahab speaks about his wife and child, calls himself a fool for spending 40 years on whaling, and claims he can see his own child in Starbuck's eye. Starbuck tries to persuade Ahab to return to Nantucket to meet both their families, but Ahab simply crosses
21754-428: The year. Similar to many other cities with an oceanic climate, Nantucket features a large number of cloudy or overcast days, particularly outside the summer months. The highest daily maximum temperature was 100 °F (38 °C) on August 2, 1975, and the highest daily minimum temperature was 76 °F (24 °C) on the same day. The lowest daily maximum temperature was 12 °F (−11 °C) on January 8, 1968, and
21903-466: The zodiacal arch over the mountains; and Flask sees nothing of any symbolic value at all. The Manxman mutters in front of the mast, and Pip declines the verb "look". The Pequod next gams with the Samuel Enderby of London, captained by Boomer, a down-to-earth fellow who lost his right arm to Moby Dick. Nevertheless, he carries no ill will toward the whale, which his ship's surgeon, Dr. Bunger, describes not as malicious, but as awkward. Ahab puts an end to
22052-409: Was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of
22201-416: Was set in place which provided the English settlers with steady access to a pool of Wampanoag labor. During the century that followed the arrival of the English settlers, the Wampanoag community did not thrive, and by 1763 they numbered only 358 people. Various factors contributed to this decline, including the destruction of the ecosystem that had sustained them, the disadvantages they faced in competing in
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