Thinking in Loop 1. Iconoclastic Delights

Moby Dick attacking a whaling boat The illustration of Queequeg in a 1902 edition Moby Dick in a 1902 edition Ishmael travels in December from Manhattan Island to New Bedford to join a whaling voyage as a green hand. At a crowded inn, he shares a bed with Queequeg, a tattooed Polynesian harpooneer and son of a king from the island of Rokovoko. The next morning, they attend Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah before heading to Nantucket. Ishmael signs aboard the Pequod under Quaker owners Bildad and Peleg. Peleg describes Captain Ahab as a "grand, ungodly, god-like man" who nevertheless has "his humanities". Queequeg joins the crew, and a man named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. Shadowy figures board the ship, and on Christmas Day the Pequod departs. Ishmael extensively discusses cetology and introduces the crew members: chief mate Starbuck, a realist Nantucket Quaker; cheerful second mate Stubb from Cape Cod; third mate Flask; and their harpooners Queequeg, the pure-blooded Indian Tashtego, and the African Daggoo. Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck, his leg replaced with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's jawbone. He nails a doubloon to the mast as a reward for the first man to sight Moby Dick, the white whale which took his leg. Ahab's vow of vengeance captivates Ishmael, despite Starbuck's objection that the voyage is meant to be for profit. The Pequod sails toward the Azores, then southwest along South America before crossing to the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope rather than rounding Cape Horn. En route, Tashtego sights a sperm whale, and the shadowy figures are revealed as Ahab's special crew, led by the Parsee Fedallah. The Pequod begins making "gams", a form of social meeting, with other ships. The Goney cannot answer Ahab's question about Moby Dick, and the Town-Ho reveals a concealed story of divine judgement involving the whale. Stubb kills a sperm whale, and the cook Fleece delivers a sermon to the sharks feasting on the whale's carcass. Later, Queequeg mounts it, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siamese twins. Stubb and Flask later kill a right whale whose head is fastened to a yardarm opposite the sperm whale's head. Ishmael philosophically compares the two heads: the right whale is Lockean, stoic, and the sperm whale is Kantean, platonic. Tashtego nearly drowns in the sperm whale's head while retrieving spermaceti but is rescued by Queequeg. Pip, a young black cabin-boy, twice leaps from a whale boat in terror; the second time he is abandoned at sea and is insane by the time they rescue him. The crew processes various harvested whale parts: liquifying congealed spermaceti, boiling blubber, decanting warm oil into casks, and stowing them in cargo. Ahab interprets the doubloon's symbolism as representing his energy, firmness, and victory. In a gam with the Samuel Enderby, its captain says he lost an arm to Moby Dick yet bears no animosity. Queequeg falls ill, prompting the carpenter to make a coffin, but Queequeg recovers and uses it as a seachest. Ahab has the blacksmith forge a special harpoon tempered in the blood of his harpooners. Fedallah prophesies Ahab's death: Ahab will see two hearses (one not made by mortal hands and the other made of American wood); Fedallah will die before Ahab; and only hemp can kill Ahab. During a typhoon, lightning strikes the mast and disorients the compass. Ahab makes a new one and orders the log be heaved, but the weathered line snaps, leaving the ship with no way to fix its location. The Rachel, commanded by a Nantucket captain, seeks survivors from one of her whaleboats which had pursued Moby Dick, including the captain's son, but Ahab refuses to join the search. In a final gam with the damaged Delight, Ahab flourishes his special harpoon and presses onward. Ahab sights Moby Dick and claims the doubloon for himself. On the first day of the chase, the whale bites Ahab's whaleboat in two, tosses the captain into the sea and scatters his crew. On the second day, it smashes the three boats hunting it; Fedallah is killed and lashed to the whale's back, which becomes the first "hearse" of his prophecy. On the third day, Moby Dick destroys the Pequod, making it the "hearse of American wood". Ahab plants his harpoon in the whale's flank, but the line loops around his neck, dragging him to his death. Queequeg's coffin escapes the suction of the sinking Pequod. Ishmael clings to the coffin until the Rachel rescues him while still searching for her lost seamen.