Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Stubb’s Zodiacal Sermon

Stubb soliloquizes at the try-works, noting Ahab and Starbuck studying the coin with lengthy faces. He expresses puzzlement at their fascination, declaring he would spend any doubloon immediately. However, he retrieves his almanac and Bowditch’s navigator to interpret the zodiac on the coin. Stubb delivers a comic sermon equating each zodiac sign to a stage of life: Aries begets us, Taurus bumps us, Gemini represents Virtue and Vice, Cancer drags us back, Leo bites us, Virgo is our first love, Libra weighs happiness as wanting, Scorpio stings us from behind, Sagittarius shoots arrows, Capricornus batters us, Aquarius drowns us, and Pisces we sleep. He concludes with jolly resignation that the sun emerges from this cycle “all alive and hearty.”

Flask’s Materialistic View

Flask approaches the doubloon with complete practicality. He sees only “a round thing made of gold” belonging to whoever raises the whale. Dismissive of the others’ staring, he calculates its worth as sixteen dollars, equivalent to nine hundred and sixty cigars at two cents each. Unlike Stubb who smokes dirty pipes, Flask likes cigars and announces his intention to go aloft to spy them out. His interpretation reduces all the elaborate imagery to mere monetary value and personal consumption.

The Manxman’s Prophecy

Stubb announces the arrival of the old Manxman, whom he compares to a hearse-driver. The Manxman studies the doubloon, walks around to its other side where a horseshoe is nailed, and mutters about signs. He declares that if the White Whale is raised, it must happen when the sun stands in one of the zodiac signs within a month and a day. He explains he studied signs for forty years under an old witch in Copenhagen. The Manxman identifies the horseshoe as the lion sign—the “roaring and devouring lion”—and shakes his old head with foreboding about the ship’s fate.