Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

第九章 The Sermon.

Chapter 9 of Moby-Dick, titled “The Sermon,” takes place aboard the Pequod in a whaleman’s chapel, where Father Mapple delivers a sermon on the Book of Jonah. The chapter opens with the congregation gathering, followed by the preacher’s devout prayer and a stirring hymn. Father Mapple then interprets Jonah’s story as a two-stranded lesson: one for all sinful men, and a more personal one for himself as a pilot of the living God. He traces Jonah’s disobedience, his flight from God by boarding a ship bound for Tarshish, his encounter with a suspicious ship’s captain, his tormented sleep during a terrible storm, the casting of lots that reveals him as the cause, his confession, his being cast into the sea, and his repentance from the belly of the whale. The sermon culminates in Father Mapple’s acknowledgment of his own greater sin as one who, like Jonah, has fled from preaching truth to falsehood, and his recognition that the divine duty is to deliver unwelcome truths in the face of hostility.

The Congregation Gathers

Father Mapple rises in the pulpit and, in a mild yet authoritative voice, directs the scattered congregation to condense, calling them starboard, larboard, and midships. The benches resound with the shuffling of heavy sea-boots and lighter women’s shoes, and the assembly falls silent, every eye fixed upon the preacher.

Father Mapple’s Prayer

Kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, Father Mapple folds his large brown hands across his chest, uplifts his closed eyes, and offers a prayer of such profound devotion that he seems to be kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.