Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Exhortation to Bulkington and His Oceanic Apotheosis

The chapter concludes with an urgent, almost rapturous address to Bulkington, demanding whether he truly comprehends this “mortally intolerable truth” about soul independence. The narrator addresses the terrors of the terrible, questioning whether the agony of maintaining freedom is vain. The answer comes as a triumphant exhortation: the narrator urges Bulkington to take heart and bear himself grimly like a demigod. Rather than crawling cravenly to land like a worm, Bulkington is called to embrace his oceanic destiny. The climactic image is one of apotheosis—straight up from the spray of his ocean-perishing, Bulkington’s transformation into something divine is achieved through his unwavering commitment to the landless, infinite sea.

第二十四章 The Advocate.

In Chapter 24, Ishmael acts as “The Advocate” for the whaling profession, directly addressing landsmen who consider whaling an unpoetical and disreputable pursuit, and seeking to convince them of the injustice done to those who hunt whales. He challenges the common perception that whaling is merely a “butchering sort of business” by pointing out that butchers have also included the most honored Martial Commanders, and he promises to reveal facts about the cleanliness of whale-ships compared to the defilements of battle-fields. The narrator argues that the whaleman receives the world’s “profoundest homage” since almost all illumination around the globe burns as tribute to the sperm whale fishery, and he marshals historical evidence including Dutch admirals of whaling fleets, French royal support from Louis XVI, and substantial British bounties exceeding £1,000,000 between 1750 and 1788 to demonstrate whaling’s respected past. Ishmael declares that the whale-ship pioneered exploration of the remotest parts of the earth, opening savage harbors to American and European warships and even facilitating the liberation of South American colonies from Spanish rule, while also giving Australia to the enlightened world and saving early settlers there from starvation through charitable supplies. He rebuts every objection to the dignity of his calling by citing biblical authority in Job’s Leviathan account, royal patronage in Alfred the Great’s Norwegian whale-hunter narrative and Edmund Burke’s parliamentary eulogy, Franklin’s Nantucket whaleman ancestry, and even celestial validation through the constellation Cetus, concluding that if any honor awaits him, it stems entirely from whaling, which he declares was his “Yale College and Harvard.”