Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Chapel Congregation and Memorial Tablets

Inside, a small scattered congregation of sailors, sailors’ wives, and widows sat in muffled silence broken only by the shrieks of the storm. Each worshipper sat purposefully apart, as if each grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived, and these worshippers sat steadily eyeing several marble tablets with black borders masoned into the walls on either side of the pulpit. Three inscriptions memorialize: John Talbot, lost overboard at eighteen near the Isle of Desolation; six men from the ship Eliza’s boat crew towed out of sight by a whale; and Captain Ezekiel Hardy, killed by a sperm whale in Japan. The narrator notes several women present wore the countenance of unceasing grief.

Queequeg’s Presence and Reflection on Whalemen’s Grief

Surprised to see Queequeg seated near him, the narrator observes the sailor’s wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity. The narrator reflects that Queequeg was the only person present who noticed his entrance—precisely because he was the only one unable to read and thus not reading the inscriptions. The narrator considers whether relatives of the memorialized seamen were among the congregation, noting that the unrecorded accidents in the fishery are numerous and that several women clearly bore the trappings of some unceasing grief.

Philosophical Meditations on Death and Faith

The narrator launches into extended philosophical meditation on the memorial tablets, contrasting those whose dead lie buried beneath green grass with those commemorated by these black-bordered marbles covering no ashes. He questions why the dead tell no tales, why we prefix the word “dead” to those departed yet not to those merely traveling, why insurance companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals, and why we refuse comfort for those we maintain are dwelling in bliss. He reflects on the eternal, unstirring paralysis of antique Adam who died sixty centuries ago, and why we strive to hush all the dead. Yet despite these doubts, he concludes with the observation that Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and from these dead doubts gathers her most vital hope.