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This is the second in a series of four for the Moby Dick Readalong hosted over at The Blue Bookcase.

Click here to read Moby Dick Readalong Post #1.

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This post covers Chapters 29 to 55 of Moby Dick.  And what can I say? I’m still loving it!

In these chapters, we get to read about whalers and whaling, cetology, and we also get to read the thoughts of Ahab’s chief officers Starbuck and Stubb.  Where was Flask’s? Just wondering.

In the chapters that were read, questions like “How is Ahab ever going to find Moby Dick considering the vastness of the ocean?” and “How does one identify Moby Dick among the rest of the sperm whales?” were answered.  We also learn about how Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick.

Another thing to notice is that Melville sometimes creates chapters that seem to follow the format of a play. There is a certain stage direction (e.g. Enter Ahab; To Him, Stubb) and descriptions of what characters are doing.  Chapter 40 (Midnight, Forecastle) also really takes the form of the play with the way it was scripted.  I don’t know if Melville was a fan of the theater or wanted to write for the theater or was a fan of Shakespeare (the Introduction by Charles Child Walcutt in the Bantam Classic edition that I am reading states that he drew heavily from the Bard) because there are a lot of theatrical stuff in the chapters that were just read.

In Chapter 41, aptly titled Moby Dick, we finally get a description of the sperm whale being hunted by Ahab.  Moby Dick is being distinguished from the rest of his brethren by his “peculiar snow-white wrinked forehead, and a high pyramidical white hump” and that he has a “deformed lower jaw.”  In this chapter, we also learn how Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick (he attacked, Moby Dick tore his leg off).  I also liked how Melville described Ahab’s madness:

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object.

In Chapter 41, The Whiteness of the Whale, we learn that the whiteness of Moby Dick appalled him:

What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what at times, he was to me remains unsaid.

…

It was the whiteness of the whale above all things that appalled me.

Furthermore, Melville also stated in this chapter that white is the symbol of beauty, nobility, gladness, racial superiority, divine spotlessness, and power.  However, he also adds that white “coupled with any object terrible in itself hightens that terror to the furthest bounds.”  I actually liked reading the various examples he gave for the use of the color white.

In Chapter 44, The Chart, we learn how in the world Ahab plans to track down Moby Dick.  We learn that he has obsessively kept a log of sightings and captures of sperm whales as well as taking note of currents and eddies.  Melville seems to echo my sentiments when he says “it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet” but adds “But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale’s food; and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey.“

Chapter 45, The Affidavit, has got to be one of my favorite chapters because in here Melville details whaling and cites real whaling adventures.  Although speaking through Ishmael, he tells us “I have personally known three instances where a whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain.” He then cites an example and then lists some popular whales that have been identified by whalemen.

Melville also takes this time to address two things about whaling so that people would not think of Moby Dick as a “monstrous fable, still worse and more detastable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.”  One is that most most men have an idea of the dangers of whaling but they “have nothing like a fixed, vivid conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur” and adds that this is because not every disaster is recorded.  I loved how he phrased this one:

Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan–do you suppose that that poor fellow’s name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect from New Guinea?

I also loved how he addresses the people to be more caring about how they use lamps and candles: “For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.“

The second point he wanted to make was that “The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale HAS done it.”  He then proceeds to give a few examples of sperm whales sinking ships, including the whaleship Essex, and several other adventures with whales.

In Chapter 48, The First Lowering, the crew of the Pequod get their first taste of adventure in going after a whale.  In this chapter we also find out that Ahab has been keeping other whalers who he described as individuals with “vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas.”  Oh hey, Filipinos present in classic literature.  I didn’t know what to make of it actually and have read different varying opinions on the matter.  Sad to say, this adventure was not successful.

The further chapters address things such as Ahab’s extra whaling crew, meeting other whaling boats during their voyage (The Albatross, The Town-Ho) and about the Town-Ho’s experience with Moby Dick.

Lastly in Chapter 55, Ishmael (or I would like to think Melville through Ishmael) considers a couple of graphical depictions of whales but he seems to insult them all and tells us: “So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.” Of course, its a lot different these days with the advancement of technology, “proper pictures” of whales have already been taken. :)

Just to share a picture (its not a sperm whale but its a really beautiful picture nonetheless):

© Brian Skerry

Adult Southern Right Whale | by Brian Skerry