Year of writing:
1851
Reading time:
Description of the work:
The cult novel "Moby Dick, or the White Whale" is main job American writer Herman Melville. The novel is quite voluminous, has many lyrical digressions, and besides, it is imbued with some biblical images and is distinguished by multi-layered symbolism. Unfortunately, at the time of the release of the novel, contemporaries did not appreciate it, and only in the 1920s "Moby Dick" was rethought and accepted.
"Moby Dick" had a huge impact not only on American, but also on the world of classical literature.
We bring to your attention summary Moby Dick or the White Whale novel.
A young American with the biblical name Ishmael (in the book of Genesis it is said about Ishmael, the son of Abraham: “He will be among people like a wild donkey, his hands on everyone and everyone’s hands on him”), bored with being on land and experiencing difficulties in money, accepts decision to go sailing on a whaling ship. In the first half of the XIX century. the oldest American whaling port of Nantucket is far from the largest center of this trade, but Ishmael considers it important for himself to hire a ship in Nantucket. Stopping on the way there in another port city, where it is not unusual to meet a savage on the street, who joined the team of a whaler who visited there on unknown islands, where you can see a buffet counter made from a huge whale jaw, where even a preacher in a church climbs to the pulpit on a rope ladder - Ishmael listens to a passionate sermon about the prophet Jonah absorbed by Leviathan, who tried to avoid the path assigned to him by God, and gets acquainted in the hotel with the native harpooner Queequeg. They become bosom friends and decide to join the ship together.
In Nantucket, they are hired by the whaler Pequod, who is preparing to go on a three-year circumnavigation of the world. Here Ishmael learns that Captain Ahab (Ahab in the Bible is the wicked king of Israel, who established the cult of Baal and persecuted the prophets), under whose command he will go to sea, on his last voyage, in single combat with a whale, lost his leg and has not come out since then out of gloomy melancholy, and on the ship, on the way home, he even spent some time out of his mind. But neither this news, nor other strange events that make one think about some kind of secret connected with the Pequod and its captain, Ishmael still does not attach any importance. He meets a stranger on the pier, who embarked on obscure, but formidable prophecies about the fate of the whaler and all enlisted in his team, he takes for a madman or a swindler-beggar. And the dark human figures, at night, secretly, climbed onto the Pequod and then seemed to dissolve on the ship, Ishmael is ready to consider the fruit of his own imagination.
Only a few days after sailing from Nantucket, Captain Ahab leaves his cabin and appears on deck. Ishmael is struck by his gloomy appearance and the inescapable inner pain imprinted on his face. Holes were pre-drilled into the boards of the deck flooring so that Ahab could, having strengthened in them a bone leg made from the polished jaw of a sperm whale, maintain balance during pitching. Watchers on the masts were ordered to look especially vigilantly for the white whale in the sea. The captain is painfully closed, demands unquestioning and immediate obedience even more rigidly than usual, and sharply refuses to explain his own speeches and actions even to his assistants, in whom they often cause bewilderment. “The soul of Ahab,” says Ishmael, “during the harsh blizzard winter of his old age, hid in the hollow trunk of his body and sucked there sullenly the paw of darkness.”
For the first time, Ishmael, who went to sea on a whaler, observes the features of a fishing vessel, work and life on it. The short chapters that make up the entire book contain descriptions of tools, techniques and rules for hunting sperm whales and extracting spermaceti from his head. Other chapters, "whale studies" - from the set of references to whales prefaced to the book in the different kind literature before detailed reviews a whale's tail, a fountain, a skeleton, finally, whales made of bronze and stone, even whales among the stars - throughout the novel they complement the narrative and merge with it, giving events a new, metaphysical dimension.
One day, on the orders of Ahab, the Pequod team gathers. A golden Ecuadorian doubloon is nailed to the mast. It is intended for those who first notice the albino whale, famous among whalers and nicknamed by them Moby Dick. This sperm whale, terrifying with its size and ferocity, whiteness and unusual cunning, carries in its skin a lot of harpoons once directed at it, but in all fights with a person it remains the winner, and the crushing rebuff that people received from it taught many to think, that the hunt for him threatens terrible disasters. It was Moby Dick who cut off Ahab's leg when the captain, finding himself at the end of the chase among the wreckage of whaleboats smashed by a whale, in a fit of blind hatred rushed at him with only a knife in his hand. Now Ahab announces that he intends to pursue this whale throughout the seas of both hemispheres until the white carcass sways in the waves and releases its last black blood fountain. In vain, Starbuck's first assistant, a strict Quaker, objects to him that it is madness and blasphemy to take revenge on a creature devoid of reason, which strikes only by blind instinct. In everything, Ahab replies, the unknown features of some rational principle peep through a meaningless mask; and if you must strike - strike through this mask! The white whale obsessively swims before his eyes as the embodiment of all evil. With delight and rage, deceiving their own fear, the sailors join in his curses on Moby Dick. Three harpooners, having filled the inverted tips of their harpoons with rum, drink to the death of a white whale. And only the ship's cabin boy, the little Negro Pip, prays to God for salvation from these people.
When the Pequod first encounters sperm whales and the whaleboats are preparing to launch, five dark-faced ghosts suddenly appear among the sailors. This is the whaleboat team of Ahab himself, people from some islands in South Asia. Since the owners of the Pequod, believing that during the hunt from a one-legged captain could no longer be of any use, did not provide rowers for his own boat, he led them to the ship secretly and still hid in the hold. Their leader is an ominous middle-aged Parsi Fedalla.
Although any delay in finding Moby Dick is painful for Ahab, he cannot completely give up on whale hunting. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the Indian Ocean, the Pequod hunts and fills barrels with spermaceti. But the first thing Ahab asks when meeting with other ships is whether they have seen a white whale. And the answer is often a story about how, thanks to Moby Dick, someone from the team died or was mutilated. Even in the middle of the ocean, one cannot do without prophecies: a half-mad sectarian sailor from an epidemic-stricken ship conjures fear of the fate of the blasphemers who dared to fight the incarnation God's Wrath. Finally, the Pequod meets with an English whaler, whose captain, having harpooned Moby Dick, received a deep wound and as a result lost his arm. Ahab hurries to board it and talk to a man whose fate is so similar to his. The Englishman does not even think about taking revenge on the sperm whale, but reports the direction in which the white whale left. Again Starbuck tries to stop his captain - and again in vain. By order of Ahab, the ship's blacksmith forges a harpoon of extra hard steel, for the hardening of which three harpooners donate their blood. The Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean.
A friend of Ishmael, the harpooner Queequeg, having become seriously ill from working in a damp hold, feels the approach of death and asks the carpenter to make him an unsinkable coffin-boat in which he could set off on the waves to the star archipelagos. And when suddenly his condition changes for the better, it was decided to caulk and tar the coffin, which was no longer needed, in order to turn it into a large float - a life buoy. The new buoy, as expected, is suspended at the stern of the Pequod, surprising a lot with its characteristic shape of the team of oncoming ships.
At night, in a whaleboat, near a dead whale, Fedalla announces to the captain that neither a coffin nor a hearse is destined on this voyage, but Ahab must see two hearses at sea before dying: one built by inhuman hands, and the second, from wood, grown in America; that only hemp could kill Ahab, and even in this last hour, Fedalla himself would go ahead of him as a pilot. The captain does not believe: what does hemp, rope have to do with it? He is too old, he can no longer go to the gallows.
More and more clear signs of approaching Moby Dick. In a fierce storm, the fire of St. Elmo flares up on the tip of a harpoon forged for a white whale. That same night, Starbuck, confident that Ahab is leading the ship to inevitable death, stands at the door of the captain's cabin with a musket in his hands and yet does not commit the murder, preferring to submit to fate. The storm remagnetizes the compasses, now they direct the ship away from these waters, but Ahab, who noticed this in time, makes new arrows from sail needles. The sailor breaks off the mast and disappears into the waves. The Pequod encounters the Rachel, who had been chasing Moby Dick just the day before. The captain of the Rachel begs Ahab to join the search for a whaleboat lost during yesterday's hunt, in which his twelve-year-old son was also, but receives a sharp refusal. From now on, Ahab himself climbs the mast: he is pulled up in a basket woven from cables. But as soon as he is at the top, a sea hawk rips off his hat and takes him to the sea. Again the ship - and the sailors killed by the white whale are also buried on it.
The golden doubloon is faithful to its owner: a white hump emerges from the water in front of the captain himself. The chase lasts for three days, three times the whaleboats approach the whale. After biting Ahab's whaleboat in two, Moby Dick circles around the captain thrown aside, preventing other boats from coming to his aid, until the approaching Pequod pushes the sperm whale away from its victim. As soon as he was in the boat, Ahab again demands his harpoon - the whale, however, is already swimming away, and he has to return to the ship. It's getting dark, and on the Pequod they lose sight of the whale. All night the whaler follows Moby Dick and at dawn overtakes again. But, having tangled the line from the harpoons pierced into it, the whale smashes two whaleboats against each other, and attacks Ahab's boat, diving and hitting the bottom from under the water. The ship picks up people in distress, and in the confusion it is not immediately noticed that there is no Parsi among them. Remembering his promise, Ahab cannot hide his fear, but continues the pursuit. Everything that happens here is predetermined, he says.
On the third day, the boats, surrounded by a flock of sharks, again rush to the fountain seen on the horizon, a sea hawk reappears above the Pequod - now it carries the torn ship pennant in its claws; a sailor was sent to the mast to replace him. Enraged by the pain caused to him by the wounds received the day before, the whale immediately rushes to the whaleboats, and only the captain's boat, among the rowers of which Ishmael is now, remains afloat. And when the boat turns sideways, the torn corpse of Fedalla appears to the rowers, fastened to the back of Moby Dick with loops of a line wrapped around a giant torso. This is the first hearse. Moby Dick is not looking for a meeting with Ahab, still trying to leave, but the captain's whaleboat is not far behind. Then, turning towards the Pequod, which had already raised people out of the water, and having unraveled the source of all its persecution in it, the sperm whale rams the ship. Having received a hole, the Pequod begins to sink, and Ahab, watching from the boat, realizes that in front of him is the second hearse. No longer be saved. He directs the last harpoon at the whale. The stump line, whipping up in a loop from the sharp jerk of the downed whale, wraps around Ahab and carries him into the abyss. The whaleboat with all the rowers falls into a huge funnel on the site of an already sunken ship, in which everything that was once the Pequod is hidden to the last chip. But when the waves are already closing over the head of the sailor standing on the mast, his hand rises and nevertheless strengthens the flag. And this is the last thing you can see above the water.
Having fallen out of the whaleboat and remaining behind the stern, Ishmael is also dragged to the funnel, but when he reaches it, it already turns into a smooth foam pool, from the depths of which a rescue buoy - a coffin - unexpectedly breaks out to the surface. On this coffin, untouched by sharks, Ishmael stays on the high seas for a day, until a strange ship picks him up: it was the inconsolable Rachel, who, wandering in search of her missing children, found only one more orphan.
"And I alone escaped to tell you..."
You have read the summary of the novel "Moby Dick, or the White Whale". We suggest you go to the section "Summaries" to read other statements by popular writers.
, Cervantes , Shakespeare and Goethe . In this article, we will talk about seven main interpretations of the multifaceted symbol created by Herman Melville.
World evil, devilish power or evil fate
Whaling, which the Americans of those years lived on, was not a job for the timid. Sailors who mined expensive ambergris and spermaceti, as well as whale oil, often did not return home. Melville in his youth worked for a year and a half under a strict captain on the whaling ship Akushet and knew firsthand about the hardships of marine life. In addition, the plot of his novel was based on a real incident that happened in 1820 with the crew of another whaler, the Essex. The ship was sunk after being rammed headfirst by a huge sperm whale. Few managed to escape.
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Captain Ahab from "Moby Dick" in the pursuit of a whale, apparently, lost not only his leg, but also his mind. The hero does not care what the sea giant really is, he sees in him the source of all troubles and imagines himself to be someone like the new George, who needs to slay the dragon in order to save this world from evil.
The Unconscious and the Inner Struggle
Psychoanalysts seized on the relationship between the indefatigable Ahab and the "phallic" whale and saw in it the expression of the Oedipus complex. From the point of view of the Freudians, Ahab, who was left without a leg, simultaneously wishes the death of Moby Dick and at the same time, paradoxically, cannot imagine life without him. Something similar, according to Freud, happens to a five-year-old boy who unconsciously wants to take the place of his father next to his mother: he experiences ambivalent feelings towards the parent of the same sex. The Jungians, on the other hand, saw in the White Whale not a paternal, but a maternal figure, pointing out the similarity of the image with the Sphinx in the original myth and in their own way reading the lyrical digressions associated with the female images of the novel.
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The two opposing camps agreed that in Melville's book, Ahab expresses the repressed desires and aspirations of the individual (ie, corresponds to the structure of "It"). The image of the whale in this case turns out to be another part of the unconscious, responsible for the suppression of destructive desires and aspirations (“Super-I”). Their conflict in the suppression of critical consciousness, represented by the figure of Starbuck ("realistic I"), leads the whole person (or even society as a whole) to disaster. David Herbert Lawrence most clearly expressed this idea: in his understanding, the White Whale is the “sacred-sexual consciousness of the white man,” for whom the pursuit of power over the world becomes “a suicidal, manic hunt for oneself.”
The Punishing God or the Supreme Law of the Universe
Along with the myth of Oedipus, they found in the novel and retold in new way the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods. In reality, the fat extracted by whalers served for lighting, and spermaceti and amber were attributed not only medicinal, but also magical properties. Attempts to "steal" from the whale at the risk of life what gives light, resembles the feat of Prometheus, which will certainly end in divine punishment for the Pequod team as well.
“The one whom relentless thoughts turn into Prometheus will forever feed the vulture with pieces of his heart; and his vulture is the creature that he himself begets"
Nature, determined to take revenge on man
In the middle of the 19th century, when Moby Dick was published, the topic of environmental disasters provoked by human activity was raised very rarely. This did not prevent Melville scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries from considering the reference to the biblical story about Jonah, who ended up in the belly of a whale “at the behest of God,” from two different angles. Many of them not only saw in the "Leviathan" the Old Testament punishing god, but also perceived the conflict between Ahab and the White Whale as a metaphor for the struggle between man and nature.
Rebirth: life and death as one
The sperm whale, "giving away" its fat, bones and healing substances in exchange for the bodies of the dead "getters", becomes at the same time a symbol of life and death, and the myth of the rebirth of a person through the ritual of "sacrifice" is also associated with it. The horrific cycle of hunting, trapping, killing and butchering the whales ends each time with the symbolic “cleansing” of the sailors through the kneading of spermaceti.
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After Ahab's fiery speech at the quarterdeck, the White Whale becomes for the team that same mythological monster (hydra, dragon, sea serpent), whose death they see as the beginning of a new, better life. But Ahab and the entire crew of the Pequod are not ancient gods. They are just people, which means that by choosing this path of rebirth, they themselves turn into victims. Only one of them will be saved: the one who is able not to fight against "chaos" and "darkness", not to ignore them, but to take the position of an observer, a person who knows.
The truth that Ishmael seeks to know
From the very first pages of the novel, the young sailor discovers an increased interest in everything related to whales. He admits that sea life is able to distract him from that depressed state, from which there is no escape on land. Ishmael treats sperm whales not only as a source of wealth or fame for a sailor, he seeks to learn new things without breaking boundaries, and notices every detail, collects bit by bit information about the White Whale. The young man, in contrast to the indifferent Stubb and Ahab, who projects his thoughts and feelings outside, is capable of intuitive knowledge of the truth.
“Everyone has doubts, many know how to deny, but few people, doubting and denying, also know influx. Doubt in all the truths of the earth and knowledge on a whim of some truths of heaven - such a combination does not lead to either faith or unbelief, but teaches a person to equally respect both.
Mystery as an unsolved symbol
Literary critics often focus on the fact that the image of the White Whale Melville makes ambiguous only for the reader. Each of the characters sees the "leviathan" in their own way and is limited to this point of view. The number of interpretations of the symbol, or rather the Moby Dick mythologeme, continues to grow even now: each researcher finds new meanings in the novel, consonant with his worldview and the challenges of the era. The whale drawn by Herman Melville means too much to be anything specific. Therefore, for a thoughtful reader and a stubborn researcher, he gradually becomes what frightened the hero-narrator so much: “the visible absence of any color”, emptiness or a mystery that cannot be unraveled.
Today we will consider the most famous arbitrariness of the American writer Herman Melville, or rather its summary. "Moby Dick, or the White Whale" is a novel based on real events. It was written in 19651.
About the book
"Moby Dick, or the White Whale" (we will present a summary below) became the main work of G. Melville, a representative of American romanticism. This novel is replete with numerous lyrical arguments, has references to biblical stories, and is replete with symbols. Perhaps that is why he was not accepted by his contemporaries. Neither critics nor readers understood the full depth of the work. Only in the 20s of the 20th century, the novel seemed to be rediscovered, paying tribute to the author's talent.
History of creation
The plot of the novel was based on real events, which can be confirmed by a brief retelling. Herman Melville ("Moby Dick" became the pinnacle of his work) took the case of the Essex ship as the basis for the work. This ship went fishing in 1819 in Massachusetts. For a whole year and a half, the crew was engaged in whale hunting, until one day a huge sperm whale put an end to this. On November 20, 1820, the ship was rammed several times by a whale.
After the shipwreck, 20 sailors survived, who managed to get on boats to Henderson Island, which was uninhabited in those years. After some time, some of the survivors went to look for the mainland, the rest remained on the island. Travelers for 95 days wandered at sea. Only two survived - the captain and another sailor. They were picked up by a whaling ship. They were the ones who told what happened to them.
In addition, the pages of the novel got and personal experience Melville, who sailed on a whaling ship for a year and a half. Many of his then acquaintances turned out to be the heroes of the novel. So, one of the co-owners of the ship appears in the work under the name of Bildad.
Summary: "Moby Dick, or the White Whale" (Melville)
The main character is a young man Ishmael. He is experiencing severe financial problems, and life on land gradually begins to bother him. Therefore, he decides to go on a whaling ship, where you can earn good money, and it’s impossible to get bored at sea at all.
Nantucket is the oldest American port city. However, by the beginning of the 19th century, it ceased to be the largest fishing center, it was replaced by younger ones. However, it is important for Ishmael to hire a ship here.
On the way to Nantucket, Ishmael stops at another port town. Here you can meet savages on the streets who have landed on ships on some unknown island. Buffet counters are made from huge whale jaws. And the preachers in the churches climb up on the pulpit.
At the inn, the young man meets Queequeg, a native harpooner. Very quickly they become good friends, so they decide to enter the ship together.
"Pequod"
Still only at the very beginning of our summary. "Moby Dick, or the White Whale" is a novel that begins in the port city of Nantucket, where Ishmael and his new friend are hired on the Pequod. The whaler is preparing for a round-the-world voyage that will last 3 years.
Ishmael becomes aware of the history of the captain of the ship. Ahab on the last voyage, having entered the fight with a whale, lost his leg. After this event, he became melancholic and gloomy and most spends time in his cabin. And on the way from the voyage, as the sailors say, he was even out of his mind for a while.
However, Ishmael did not attach much importance to this and some other strange events associated with the ship. Having met a suspicious stranger on the pier, who began to predict the death of the Pequod and its entire crew, the young man decided that this was just a beggar and a swindler. And the obscure dark figures that boarded the ship at night, and then seemed to dissolve on it, he considered simply the fruit of his fantasies.
Captain
The oddities associated with the captain and his ship are also confirmed by the summary. "Moby Dick" continues with Ahab leaving his cabin only a few days after the start of the voyage. Ishmael saw him and was struck by the gloominess of the captain and the seal of incredible inner pain on his face.
Especially in order for the one-legged captain to maintain balance during a strong roll, in deck boards small holes were cut into which he placed his artificial leg, made from the jaw of a sperm whale.
The captain gives the order to the sailors to look out for the white whale. Ahab does not communicate with anyone, he is closed and requires from the team only unquestioning obedience and instant execution of his orders. Many of these commands cause confusion among subordinates, but the captain refuses to explain anything. Ishmael understands that some dark secret lurks in the gloomy thoughtfulness of the captain.
First time at sea
"Moby Dick" is a book, a brief summary of which tells about the sensations experienced by a person who first went to sea. Ishmael closely observes life on a whaling ship. Melville gives this description a lot of space on the pages of his will. Here you can find descriptions of all kinds of auxiliary tools, and rules, and the main methods of hunting whales, and methods by which spermaceti is extracted from fish - a substance consisting of animal fat.
There are chapters in the novel that are devoted to various books about whales, reviews of the structures of whale tails, fountains, and a skeleton. There are even references to figurines of sperm whales made of stone, bronze and other materials. Throughout the novel, the author inserts information of various kinds about these extraordinary mammals.
Golden doubloon
Our summary continues. "Moby Dick" is a novel that is interesting not only for its reference materials and information about whales, but also an exciting storyline. So, one day, Ahab gathers the entire crew of the Pequod, who sees a golden doubloon nailed to the mast. The captain says that the coin will go to the one who first notices the approach of the white whale. This albino sperm whale is known among whalers as Moby Dick. He terrifies sailors with his ferocity, huge size and unprecedented cunning. His skin is scarred with harpoon scars, as he often fought people, but invariably emerged victorious. This incredible rebuff, which usually ended in the death of the ship and the crew, taught the whalers not to try to catch him.
About the terrible meeting of Ahab and Moby Dick tells a summary of the chapters. G. Melville describes how the captain lost his leg when, finding himself among the wreckage of the ship, he rushed in a rage at the sperm whale with one knife in his hand. After this story, the captain announces that he is going to pursue the white whale until its carcass is on the ship.
Upon hearing this, Starbuck, the first mate, confronts the captain. He says that it is unreasonable to take revenge on a being deprived of reason for the actions that it has committed, obeying blind instinct. Moreover, there is blasphemy in it. But the captain, and then the whole team, begin to see the embodiment of universal evil in the image of a white whale. They send curses to the sperm whale and drink for his death. Only one cabin boy, Negro Pip, prays to God, asking for protection from these people.
The pursuit
The summary of the work “Moby Dick, or the White Whale” tells how the Pequod first met sperm whales. Boats begin to be lowered into the water, and at that moment those very mysterious dark ghosts appear - Ahab's personal team, recruited from immigrants from South Asia. Until that moment, Ahab kept them hidden from everyone, keeping them in the hold. The unusual sailors are led by a middle-aged, sinister-looking man named Fedalla.
Despite the fact that the captain is only chasing Moby Dick, he cannot completely stop hunting other whales. Therefore, the ship hunts tirelessly, and the barrels of spermaceti are filled. When the Pequod meets with other ships, the captain first asks if the sailors have seen a white whale. Most often, the answer is a story about how Moby Dick killed or maimed someone from the team.
New ominous prophecies are also heard: a distraught sailor from an epidemic-infected ship warns the crew against the fate of blasphemers who risked entering the battle with the embodiment of God's wrath.
One day, fate brings the Pequod to another ship, whose captain harpooned Moby Dick, but as a result was seriously injured and lost his arm. Ahab is talking to this man. It turns out that he does not think to take revenge on the whale. However, he reports the coordinates where the ship collided with the sperm whale.
Starbuck again tries to warn the captain, but all in vain. Ahab orders a harpoon to be forged from the hardest steel that is on the ship. And for tempering a formidable weapon there is blood three harpooners.
Prophecy
More and more for the captain and his team becomes a symbol of evil Moby Dick (Moby Dick). Short description focuses on the events taking place with Queequeg, Ishmael's friend. The harpooner falls ill from hard work in dampness and feels that death is imminent. He asks Ishmael to make a funeral boat for him, on which his body would glide over the waves. When Queequeg is on the mend, they decide to convert the boat into a life buoy.
At night, Fedalla tells the captain a terrible prophecy. Before he dies, Ahab sees two hearses: one made by a non-human hand, the other from American wood. And only hemp can cause death to the captain. But before that, Fedalla himself would have to die. Ahab does not believe - he is too old to be on the gallows.
Approximation
More and more signs that the ship is approaching the place where Moby Dick lives. A summary of the chapters describes a ferocious storm. Starbuck is convinced that the captain will lead the ship to destruction, but he does not dare to kill Ahab, trusting fate.
In a storm, the ship meets another ship - "Rachel". Its captain reports that he followed Moby Dick the day before, and asks Ahab to help in search of his 12-year-old son, who was carried away along with the whaleboat. However, the captain of the Pequod refuses.
Finally, a white hump is seen in the distance. For three days the ship is chasing the whale. And now the Pequod catches up with him. However, Moby Dick immediately attacks and bites the captain's whaleboat in two. With great difficulty, he manages to save. The captain is ready to continue hunting, but the whale is already swimming away from them.
By morning, the sperm whale is overtaken again. Moby Dick crashes two more whaleboats. Sinking sailors are brought aboard, it turns out that Fedalla is missing. Ahab begins to be afraid, he remembers the prophecy, but he can no longer refuse the persecution.
The third day
Beckons captain Moby Dick. A summary of all the chapters paints pictures of gloomy omens, but Ahab is obsessed with his desire. The whale again destroys several whaleboats and tries to leave, but Ahab continues to pursue him on the only boat. Then the sperm whale turns around and rams the Pequod. The ship begins to sink. Ahab throws the last harpoon, the wounded whale abruptly goes into the depths and carries away the entangled hemp rope captain. The ship is pulled into a funnel, and the last whaleboat, where Ishmael is located, is pulled into it.
denouement
Only Ishmael is left alive from the entire crew of the Melville ship. Moby Dick (a brief summary confirms this), wounded, but alive, goes into the depths of the ocean.
The main character miraculously manages to survive. The only thing that survived from the ship was the failed and tarred coffin of his friend. It is on this structure that the hero spends a day on the high seas until sailors from the Rachel ship find him. The captain of this ship still hoped to find his lost child.
"moby dick"- one of the most famous works of American literature. Contemporaries did not appreciate the novel by Herman Melville, but, years later, critics returned the multi-page work from oblivion. The story of the battle of sailors with a giant white whale was repeatedly filmed. Interestingly, the plot was based on a real case, and the trials that drank to the lot of whalers in life were much worse than those described in the novel ...
As conceived by Hermine Melville, the novel "Moby Dick" was about a whaling ship that went fishing. Its captain, Ahava, lost a leg while hunting a giant white whale and was obsessed with getting revenge on the whale no matter what. At the same time, the albino whale inspired fear in all whalers: due to its impressive size, no one could defeat the oceanic giant.
The fateful meeting of the ship "Pequod" and Moby Dick takes place. In an unequal battle, the entire crew perishes, only the sailor Ishmael remains alive, for whom this campaign was the first experience of participating in whaling.
The real story of the Essex crew turned out to be much more tragic. Failures haunted the ship from the very departure: at first the ship got into heavy storm, then was forced to drift in a distant port, waiting out bad weather. The decision to go to the "Sea Land", a special area in the South Pacific Ocean, where there were many whales, the captain accepted with caution: the journey should have been too long.
As it turned out, the fears were not in vain. Having reached the right place and went hunting, the crew saw the same Moby Dick. The whale rammed the ship several times until it sank like a piece of wood. The sailors were forced to urgently transfer to whaleboats (special lifeboats). In total, 20 sailors were saved, with them they managed to carry away almost 300 kg of biscuits, several turtles and 750 liters of water.
Way to the nearest desert island took the sailors a month. During this time, they were hungry and thirsty. Sailed to the skeleton, gladly discovered fresh water, birds and crabs. The temporary shelter supplied them with food for a week, but after the supplies were depleted, 17 people decided to sail on. Three remained on the island.
What happened next defies morality and the laws of common sense. During the next storm, the boats lost each other, but over time, the same thing began to happen on each of them. People began to die of hunger, the first two were buried by the sea, and the rest ... it was decided to eat. It was the only way to prolong the lives of those who still held on. One of the sailors was killed and eaten by lot, as it was unbearable to wait for a natural death.
Nothing is known about the fate of one of the boats (it is generally accepted that everyone on it died), the other two were in different time seen by passing ships. The surviving sailors were rescued, they also spoke about their comrades who remained on the island. The islanders were rescued on April 5 (the fateful meeting with the whale took place on November 20), they were all able to survive on the island. In total, 8 people survived from the whole crew. Amazingly, the surviving captain of the ship did not end his maritime career on this. He went to sea several more times, but each time his ships were wrecked. After a while, the owners of the ships refused to cooperate with him, and he ended his life working as a night watchman.
To understand how big the monster was that the brave sailors had to face, just look at!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
as a token of admiration
before his genius
this book is dedicated
Herman Melville
Etymology
(Information collected by the assistant teacher of a classical gymnasium, who later died of consumption)
I see him as now - so pale, in a shabby frock coat and with the same shabby brains, soul and body. He spent days dusting old dictionaries and grammar books with his unusual handkerchief, adorned, as if in mockery, with the colorful flags of all the nations of the world. He liked to dust off old grammars; this peaceful occupation made him think of death.
Etymology
......“If you undertake to instruct others and teach them that in our language the whale fish is called the word whale, while omitting, due to your own ignorance, the letter h, which alone expresses almost the entire meaning of this word, you are spreading not knowledge, but delusions” .
..."Whale*** Swedish. and Danish. hval. The name of this animal is associated with the concept of roundness, since in Danish hvalt means "arched, vaulted."
“Whale*** comes directly from Dutch and German wallen, Anglo-Saxon. walw-ian - "roll, flounder".
Hebrew -
Greek - ?????
Latin - cetus
Anglo-Saxon – wh?l
Danish – hvalt
Dutch - wal
Swedish - hwal
Icelandic - whale
English - whale
French - baleine
Spanish - ballena
Fiji - peki nui nui
Erromango - pehi nui nui
extracts
(Collected by Associate Librarian)
The reader will be able to see that this poor Junior Assistant, a simple-minded letter-eater and bookworm, has searched through entire Vatican libraries and every second-hand bookstore in the world in search of any - even casual - references to whales that he could only meet in any books. , from sacred to blasphemous. And therefore one should not in all cases understand these random whale quotations, although undoubtedly genuine, for the holy and undeniable gospel of cetology. This is not true at all. Extracts from the works of all these ancient authors and the poets mentioned here are of interest and value to us only insofar as they give us a general bird's eye view of everything that has ever been, in any connection and on any occasion, it is said , invented, mentioned and sung about Leviathan by all nations and generations, including the present.
So, goodbye, poor Junior Assistant, whose commentator I am. You belong to that joyless tribe that no wine in this world can warm, and for whom even white sherry would be too pink and strong; but with people like you, it’s sometimes nice to sit alone, feeling unhappy and lonely too, and, reveling in shed tears, imbued with friendliness to your interlocutor; and I would like to tell you directly, without prejudice, while our eyes are wet and our glasses are dry and there is sweet sadness in our hearts: “Give it up, Junior Helpers! After all, the more effort you make to please the world, the less gratitude you will get! Oh, if only I could clear out Hampton Court or the Tuileries Palace for you! But rather swallow your tears and throw up your head, soar in spirit! higher, higher, to the very top of the mainmast! for your comrades, who are ahead of you, free the seven-storied heavens for you, driving away before your arrival the true minions - Gabriel, Michael and Raphael. Here we only clink glasses with broken hearts - there you can move your unbreakable cups at once!
extracts
......"And God created great whales."
...“Behind the Leviathan the path shines,
The abyss seems gray."
..."And the Lord prepared big fish to swallow Jonah."
...“Ships sail there; there is the Leviathan whom You created to play in it.”
...“On that day the Lord will strike with His heavy sword, and great, and strong, Leviathan, the straight-running serpent, and Leviathan, the curving serpent, and will kill the serpent of the sea.”
...“And no matter what other object finds itself in the chaos of the jaws of this monster, whether it be a beast, a ship or a stone, it instantly disappears in its huge fetid throat and perishes in the black abyss of its belly.”
...“In the Indian Sea there are the greatest and largest fish that exist in the world; among them are the Whales, or Water-rollers, called Balaene, who are as long as four acres, or arpans, of land.
...“And we didn’t spend two days sailing, when suddenly one day at dawn we saw a great many whales and other sea monsters. Of these, one had a truly gigantic size. He approached us, holding his mouth open, raising waves on his sides and churning the sea in front of him.
...“He also came to our country in order to catch whales here, because the fangs of these animals give a very valuable bone, samples of which he brought as a gift to the king ***. The largest whales, however, are caught off the coast of his homeland, of which some are forty-eight, others fifty yards in length. He says that he - five others with him - killed sixty whales in two days.
“And while everything in the world, whether it be a living being or a ship, it doesn’t matter, falling into a terrible abyss, which is the throat of this monster (whale), immediately dies, swallowed up forever, the sea gudgeon himself retires there and sleeps there in full security."
