Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Narrator’s Resolve Ahead of the Nantucket Voyage

On the eve of his Nantucket voyage, the narrator reads the fate of whalemen who went before him and contemplates that the same fate may be his. Yet he describes growing merry again, reflecting on delightful inducements to embark and fine chance for promotion. He meditates that there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. However, he concludes with defiant resolution: he has hugely mistaken the matter of Life and Death; what they call his shadow on earth is his true substance; his body is but the lees of his better being. Therefore, three cheers for Nantucket—for let come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave his soul, Jove himself cannot.

第八章 The Pulpit.

Chapter 8 describes the arrival of Father Mapple in the whalemen’s chapel, his background as a former sailor and harpooneer, the distinctive ship‑style side ladder giving access to the lofty pulpit, the symbolic meaning of the ladder’s removal, the maritime décor of the chapel, and the metaphor of the pulpit as the prow of the world’s ship.

Introduction of Father Mapple

Father Mapple, a former sailor and harpooneer now in robust old age, enters the chapel during a storm, removes his soaked hat, coat and overshoes, and quietly approaches the pulpit. Beloved among whalemen, he retains a clerical bearing shaped by his maritime life.

The Pulpit’s Ship-Style Side Ladder

The pulpit is reached by a perpendicular side ladder modelled after a ship’s rig, fitted with wooden rounds, rope sides and ornamental red worsted man‑ropes. Father Mapple climbs hand‑over‑hand and then pulls the ladder inside, making the pulpit an impregnable enclosure.