Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Key transition points:

• Chapter 104 ends with ancient/prehistoric focus and worship in silence
• Chapter 105 opens by posing questions about whether the whale has diminished and will perish
• Both deal with the whale’s antiquity and grandeur

I need to bridge from the ancient fossil/prehistoric discussion to the question of whether whales have diminished and will

Ishmael poses a double question about the Leviathan: whether the species has dwindled from its ancient grandeur, and whether it can survive the relentless hunt.

On the first count, fossil evidence tells a surprising story. Whales of the present day exceed their prehistoric ancestors in size—the largest Tertiary skeleton yet discovered measures under seventy feet, while modern sperm whales approach a hundred. Yet ancient naturalists claimed whales of impossible dimensions: Pliny wrote of creatures spanning acres, Aldrovandus of beasts eight hundred feet long. Ishmael rejects these fables. Egyptian mummies prove no taller than modern men; the prize cattle of England dwarf those carved on Egyptian tablets. Why should the whale alone have shrunk while every other creature has grown?

The graver question concerns survival. The American buffalo seemed numberless forty years ago; now they are gone from the prairies entirely. Does the whale face the same fate? The comparison fails. Forty whalers working four years count themselves lucky to take forty sperm whales; the same hunters on horseback would slaughter forty thousand buffalo. Moreover, the whale commands refuges beyond human reach. Driven from temperate seas, the great whales retreat to polar strongholds, diving beneath ice barriers into realms of perpetual winter where no ship can follow.

Consider the elephant: Eastern monarchs have hunted them for millennia, yet they thrive still. The whale’s domain covers twice the area of all continents combined. And because whales may live a century or more, multiple generations swim together at any moment, the living population bolstered by all who swam decades ago.

For these reasons, Ishmael declares the whale immortal as a species, whatever the fate of individuals. The whale swam before the continents rose from the sea, passed over the ground where palaces now stand. When Noah built his ark, the whale needed no shelter. If flood returns to drown the world, the whale will still breach the highest waves and spout his defiance at the heavens.

Ahab’s violent departure from the Samuel Enderby cost him more than dignity. Landing hard in his boat, then whirling on deck to bark orders, he felt his ivory leg take a splintering shock. The bone held, but he trusted it less now.

Small wonder he watched that dead limb so carefully. Before the Pequod sailed, he had been discovered unconscious one night, his prosthetic wrenched loose and driven nearly through his groin. The wound healed slowly, and Ahab understood that old sorrows breed new ones—grief’s lineage outlasts joy’s, trailing back to the gods themselves, who are not forever glad.

That accident explained his strange withdrawal before the voyage. He had hidden himself away like some Grand Lama, and those few ashore who glimpsed his condition whispered of supernatural vengeance. They conspired to muffle the truth, and only now did the story reach the Pequod’s decks.

But Ahab turned practical. He summoned the carpenter and ordered a new leg fashioned from the stoutest jaw-ivory on hand. The forge came up from the hold; the blacksmith set to work. By morning, the captain would stand on fresh bone.

Viewed from a cosmic distance, individual humans appear wondrous, yet in the mass they seem mere duplicates. The Pequod’s carpenter defies this pattern—a humble figure who remains distinctly singular.

Years of voyaging through distant seas have made him master of countless mechanical crises. His workbench serves as theater for manifold skills: he shapes belaying pins to fit, constructs elaborate cages from whale bone, paints constellations on oars, pulls teeth with wooden vices. No demand exceeds his readiness, whether practical or whimsical.

Yet this very proficiency conceals an unsettling emptiness. He regards teeth as raw ivory, men as mechanisms to be operated. His indifference mirrors the universe’s own silence—active in countless modes, yet eternally mute. A lifetime of wandering has worn away all personal clingings, leaving him a pure instrument, opened and used as circumstances require.

Still, he is no mere automaton. Within this hollowed man persists some unaccountable life-principle that has endured six decades. His body serves as a sentry-box, and inside, a voice keeps solitary watch—talking endlessly through the darkness to remain awake.

Let me analyze the two chapters:

Chapter 107: The Carpenter

• Describes the carpenter as a singular, unique figure despite the cosmic view that humans appear duplicative
• Details his vast mechanical skills and readiness for any task
• Describes his unsettling emptiness - he views teeth as ivory, men as mechanisms
• His indifference mirrors the universe’s silence
• A lifetime of wandering has left him a “pure instrument”
• Yet he persists - some life-principle endures in him, a voice talking endlessly in darkness

Chapter 108: Ahab and the Carpenter

• The carpenter is working on Ahab’s new leg, filing ivory, annoyed at the material
• Ahab appears and addresses the carpenter as “maker”
• Ahab fixes on the vice’s grip as something firm in a treacherous world
• Ahab imagines ordering a manufactured giant - fifty feet tall, no heart, brass brow
• Then reveals his wound that won’t heal - flesh and blood present to sensation but absent to sight
• Questions whether a man could suffer eternally without a body
• The carpenter retreats into arithmetic

The carpenter bent over his vice-bench under twin lanterns, filing an ivory joist into shape. Bone dust rose in clouds; he sneezed and cursed the stubborn material. Dead lumber, he muttered—no life in it, unlike green wood that bleeds sap. He grumbled about shinbones and finishing work while the forge’s red flame glowed forward, where the blacksmith labored over iron.

Ahab emerged from darkness with a sardonic greeting, calling the craftsman his maker. The carpenter moved to measure the stump, but Ahab’s attention fixed on the vice itself. He gripped its jaws, savoring the pinch—here at last was something firm in a treacherous world. His gaze drifted toward the forge. The blacksmith reminded him of Prometheus, that ancient fire-god who shaped men from clay and animated them with flame. What fire creates, fire claims; thus hell becomes probable. The flying soot marked the residue of that first creation.

Ahab’s imagination darkened into fantasy. He began ordering a manufactured giant—fifty feet tall, chest vast as a tunnel, no heart, brass brow, brains like a field, a skylight opening inward upon the soul. The carpenter stood bewildered, unsure whether to remain.

Then Ahab revealed the wound that would not heal. When he mounted this new leg, the old one would still haunt him—flesh and blood, present to sensation though absent to sight. One leg visible, two felt. He pressed closer: if his dissolved limb still pricked him, might not some thinking presence stand invisibly where the carpenter stood? Might a man suffer hell’s fires eternally, without a body? The carpenter retreated into arithmetic, unable to follow.