Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

A Digression on the Rich Man Dives and the Beggar Lazarus

The narrator digresses into a comparison between the rich man Dives, who enjoys warmth and comfort while admiring the frosty night and northern lights from his ice palace, and Lazarus, who lies shivering on the curbstone with nothing but rags and a corn-cob for warmth. Though Lazarus would rather be in Sumatra or even the fiery pit than endure such cold, Dives—who despite being a temperance society president drinks only “the tepid tears of orphans”—remains oblivious to his suffering. The narrator then sets aside this moral meditation, reminding the reader that whaling lies ahead and there is plenty of that yet to come.

第三章 The Spouter-Inn.

CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn. The narrator enters a peculiar gable-ended inn and explores its strange interior, including a baffling oil painting, a wall of whaling weapons, a dark public room with a bar built into a whale’s jaw, and a sparse supper. The chapter introduces the mystery of an absent harpooneer whom the narrator is assigned to share a bed with, and concludes with a comic exchange about the harpooneer allegedly selling his head. This chapter is set at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, where the narrator is assigned to share a bed with a mysterious, heavily tattooed harpooneer from the South Seas. After the landlord explains the harpooneer’s delayed arrival due to his trade selling embalmed human heads, the narrator inspects their shared bedroom, tries on the harpooneer’s unusual shaggy coat, and is later startled by the harpooneer’s entrance, strange pagan rituals, and intimidating appearance, leading to a brief tense standoff before the two agree to share the bed for the night.