MOBY DICK

CHAPTER 66: The Shark Massacre

Summary
Ishmael notes that, before the “cutting in” of the whale meat can take place, usually those involved in the whale hunt retire
below-decks and sleep until early morning. But sometimes, in the South Pacific as the Pequod is, there are so many sharks
that the cutting in must start more quickly, otherwise there would be little of the whale left in the morning. Ishmael states
that the sharks around Stubb’s whale were gnashing so violently that they sometimes bit each other, and that members of
the crew had staves to crush their skulls—although this sometimes only caused others to bite in more of a frenzy. Queequeg,
after pulling in one shark to skin it, is shocked that the apparently dead shark’s jaw almost clamped down on his hand while
he was handling it. Queequeg states that the sharks seemed possessed by some kind of ill spirit.
Analysis
A notable chapter, if only for its depiction of the constant dangerous reality of the seas surrounding the whale-ship. The
sharks here mentioned do not crop up very much in the text—and, indeed, many whalers are knocked out of their boats,
without being troubled by sharks. But sharks of this particular region are much like vultures in the deserts of the American
West, feeding on the expired carcass of the whale. In the way the sharks chomp mindlessly at the magisterial and fathomless
whale there is an echo of the sharks gnawing at the body of the marlin in Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, in which the
sharks are sometimes seen as symbols of those who disbelieved in or abandoned Christ (symbolized by the marlin) after its
death.
CHAPTER 67: Cutting In
Summary
Ishmael describes the process of cutting away the whale’s blubber, which proceeds by “corkscrewing away” long strips of
blubber, by means of winches and long staves (or knives). The crew of the Pequod crowds over to one side of the vessel to
effect this, nearly causing it to tip over, as yards upon yards of blubber are pulled from the whale and stored in the ship’s
“blubber room.”
Analysis
In this beautifully concise description, Ishmael implicitly compares the “cutting in” of a whale to the corkscrewing of a
lemon or similar fruit—the skin is taken off in a continuous “peel,” and that peel assumes a curved shape, as the whale’s
body is gradually stripped of its outer layer of blubber.
CHAPTER 68:The Blanket
Summary
Ishmael comments that it is difficult to know whether the whale’s blubber is its skin or is in fact the layer just below the
skin—for there is a “skin’s skin” to a whale, which is a fine transparent layer, that can be dried and used as a “bookmark,”
or for decorative purposes. Ishmael notes that the whale’s blubber is much like the blanket or “counterpane” of a sailor—
keeping the whale warm even in the northernmost climates of the world, near the North Pole.

Analysis
At the time, it was considered a genuine mystery how a whale was able to survive in the cold northern seas. Here, Ishmael
explains what, to contemporary minds, seems common-sensical—that a whale is protected by a layer of fat, which traps
heat inside, keeping the whale’s body at a steady temperature.
CHAPTER 69: The Funeral
Summary
Ishmael reports that the whale’s carcass is cut away from the ship after its head is taken on board (since the head contains
most of the whale oil) and the blubber is safe in the blubber room. Ishmael notes that, although vultures will pick at the
carcass for many months on the high seas, it looks like a “white phantom” there, and boats will steer clear of it as long as it
persists, since the whale without its blubber and head is a shocking sight, even to accustomed sailors.
Analysis
Unlike a human corpse, which, when buried at sea, disappears quickly under the waves with little more than a splash, the
whale’s carcass tends to float, and takes an immensely long time to decompose, once the sharks have stripped away all its
meat and blubber. Ishmael appears haunted by the continued presence of the whale’s body, even after death.
CHAPTER 70: The Sphynx
Summary
Ishmael loops back to the beheading of a whale—something he has only glossed over in the previous chapters—to say that
it is no easy business, and that Stubb, so skilled in it, was able to do it in about “ten minutes.” When the head is halfway
hoisted and dragged behind the back of the boat, Ahab walks out to it and speaks directly to it, saying that, although the
whale’s head is now silent, this head has also seen “deeper” in the ocean that any man, and that the head of the whale is in
some sense the most ancient living part of all the living beings on earth—as old as Abraham himself. Ahab’s address to the
head is interrupted by news from a sailor, that a ship has been spotted off the Pequod’s starboard side.
Analysis
Ishmael seems to engage in a science common to the time—that of phrenology, or the study of the shape of heads under the
belief that head-shape matched the shape of the brain beneath and the personality housed in that brain. This pseudoscience
was soon debunked, but a common human impulse remains in contemporary brain-scans and similar technologies—the
desire to understand what happens inside a man’s, or an animal’s, head, when we do not have direct access to that creature’s
actual thoughts. Ahab, meanwhile, is moved by the mysteries the whale has seen.
CHAPTER 71: The Jeroboam’s Story
Summary
The Pequod pulls up alongside the Jeroboam, and Stubb notices that there is a crew member on that ship named Gabriel,
whose exploits were spoken of during the gam with the Town-Ho (although this was not mentioned in the Town-Ho chapter).
Gabriel, a “Shaker” (or radical Christian) from Nantucket, was a loud and boisterous preacher on land, and once he shipped
out on the Jeroboam, he became a religious fanatic and a prophet, warning sailors about the terrible end they would meet if
they encountered the White Whale. Mayhew, captain of the Jeroboam, did not listen to Gabriel, nor did Macey, the mate,
but others of the crew took to Gabriel’s advice and considered him a true man of God. Gabriel announced that Moby Dick
was the Shaker God itself, and that no one ought to kill it.
As if to demonstrate this, Moby Dick was then spotted off the Jeroboam’s side, and a team was mounted to hunt it. But just
as this was begun, the whale leapt into the air, knocked Macey from the deck, and caused him to drown. Although Mayhew
considered this to be pure luck, others in the crew took Gabriel for a real prophet, and blamed Macey’s death on Mayhew’s
unwillingness to believe that Moby Dick was a God.
Ahab hears this story from Mayhew and Gabriel during a gam between the two boats, but states that he will still seek out
Moby Dick (over Gabriel’s loud objections). Starbuck finds a letter among the Pequod's sack for Macey, the dead mate, and
hands it to the crew of the Jeroboam, but Gabriel throws it back to the Pequod, saying that this letter ought not to be read,
for to do so would be a blasphemous business—because Macey has died. At this, the Jeroboam shifts away from the Pequod,
and the sailors of the Pequod remark on the strangeness of this gam for some time afterward.
Analysis
The Shakers were a Protestant religious sect of some influence in the 1800s. Ishmael seems especially interested in the
branches of Protestant devotion that place special emphasis on man’s fate and destiny—what the Calvinists, a sect of
Protestants, would call man’s “predestined fate.” Gabriel, another of the novel’s prophets, argues that Moby Dick is a God,
and that to fight Moby Dick is to attempt to wrestle with God himself. Gabriel (which is also the name of one of God’s
archangels, in the Bible) argues that it is immoral even to consider challenging God in this way. While Mapple swathe story
of Jonah as a tale that demanded sailors to follow their captains, Gabriel is making a similar argument about Moby Dick's
status in regard to men (and to Ahab). So Gabriel sees Moby Dick as a god who must not be faced. Ahab sees Moby Dick
as a force that must be faced. And others, later, will argue that Moby Dick is just a big white whale. Interpretations abound.
Gabriel’s prophecy, like many of the others in the novel, comes to pass—Mayhew, like Radney before him, is killed by
Moby Dick. Moby Dick’s vengeance, like God’s, is swift, decisive, and dramatic. But is this because Gabriel is right and
Moby Dick has some kind of supernatural power, or because Moby Dick happens to be a particularly big and powerful
whale?
Melville appears to have a preoccupation with a certain form of “dead letter,” or a piece of mail that is not delivered to its
intended recipient, and instead is lost in transit. Here, the letter for Macey cannot be given to Macey, because the man
himself is dead. Melville’s other great depiction of “dead letters” comes in his story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” in which the
title character is reported to work in mail office devoted to storing undelivered mail, in New York City. Gabriel is here
arguing that in dying Macey has entered the unknown, and that the unknown must not be pierced.
CHAPTER 72: The Monkey Rope
Summary
Ishmael goes back to the process of “flensing” (or skinning) the whale of its blubber, stating that the man actually doing the
cutting on the back of the whale, partially submerged in the water, was Queequeg. Ishmael was tied to Queequeg via
something called the monkey-rope, meaning that the two were bound “as Siamese twins,” and in Ishmael’s mind, this
embodied the ties between all men, the ties that keep men together and the ties that injure men, too, when something happens
“on the other end of the rope.” Queequeg finishes a long day’s work of skinning the whale while Daggoo and Tashtego
lance the sharks that are swimming nearby with their harpoons.
Analysis
Another instance of ropes, or lines, in the novel. Here, instead of simply entangling and endangering men, as does the
harpoon-line on a whale-boat, the “monkey-rope” ties together Ishmael and Queequeg. This helps each of them to continue
skinning the whale, but also makes both vulnerable—were one of the men to fall, the other would fall as well. This means
of support is also a means of potential destruction, as are so many tools aboard a whaling ship, and as are the non-physical
connections that bind men together.
CHAPTER 73: STUBB AND FLASK KILL A RIGHT WHALE; AND THEN HAVE A TALK OVER
Summary
The Pequod passes through a large area filled with krill, and this means that right whales are in the vicinity. Although the
Pequod’s crew is licensed only to hunt sperm whales, nevertheless Ahab orders that Flask and Stubb each take out a whale-
boat and catch the nearest right whale—one that puts up a fight and drags them around the Pequod several times, but which
eventually retires and dies.
Stubb and Flask then drag the right whale’s carcass back to the Pequod, and discuss why Ahab would have ordered them to
kill this particular whale, which is of little commercial use. Stubb states that Fedallah—the Persian man whom Ahab has
invited on board—is actually “the devil” in disguise, and that Fedallah believes it good luck to pair a sperm whale’s head,
behind the ship, with a right whale’s. Ishmael notes that the Pequod, dragging these two whale heads, looks like a donkey
carrying its twin burdens along the sea.
Analysis
Although it has not been mentioned until this point, there appear to be a series of different regulations and licenses for
whaling vessels, regarding the kinds of whales they can hunt, and where they can hunt them. Presumably, because sperm
whales are so valuable, few licensed sperm whale boats even consider hunting right whales.
One of the first explicit mentions of the potential “devilishness” of Fedallah, leader of the “tiger crew.” Fedallah speaks
very little in the novel, and when he does, it is exclusively to Ahab. But Fedallah also appears to be the only man to whom
Ahab will listen—and this causes some of the men to believe that Fedallah might have some form of supernatural control
over their captain. The men are always looking for signs, always interpreting those signs, always trying to penetrate the
unknown and never able to.