60 Fun Facts About Moby-Dick

What are the famous first three words of the novel?

The narrator never confirms it is his real name; scholars split him into the young 'forecastle Ishmael' who sails and the older one who tells the tale.

In which year was Moby-Dick first published?

It appeared in London in October as The Whale and in New York in November under its final title, after eighteen months of writing.

What is the name of Captain Ahab's whaling ship?

The narrator says the ship is named for a Native American tribe scattered in the 1600s, and one scholar reads the ship's destruction as an echo of that tribe's fate.

Ahab's ship is named after which people?

The Mashantucket and Eastern Pequot still live on reservations in Connecticut; the name also echoes 'Pekod', a biblical word for punishment.

Moby Dick is which species of cetacean?

The novel devotes whole chapters to the animal's anatomy, from the spermaceti in its head to its skeleton.

What did the white whale take from Ahab on a previous voyage?

The captain of the Samuel Enderby lost an arm to the same whale and bears no grudge.

Ahab's prosthetic limb is made from what?

He also carries a livid rod-like scar running from his grey hair down his face and neck.

What does Ahab nail to the mast as a reward for the first man to sight the white whale?

In a chapter devoted to the coin each crewman reads its symbols differently, and Ahab ends up claiming it for himself when he spots the whale first.

Which tattooed harpooneer shares a bed with the narrator at a crowded inn before the voyage?

He is a king's son from the fictional South Pacific island of Rokovoko and prays to a small idol named Yojo.

What object, built for the tattooed harpooneer when he falls ill, ends up saving the narrator's life?

He recovers and uses it as a sea chest; after the ship sinks it bobs up out of the whirlpool and the narrator clings to it.

Which ship rescues the narrator, the sole survivor, at the end?

Her captain had earlier begged Ahab to help search for a lost whaleboat carrying his son, and Ahab refused.

Who is the chief mate of Ahab's ship, a realist Quaker who objects that the voyage is meant for profit?

The founders of a Seattle coffee company borrowed his name in 1971 after rejecting 'Starbo', a misread mining-town name.

How many other ships does Ahab's vessel meet in 'gams' during the voyage?

Each meeting plots the rising curve of Ahab's obsession; the ships that have already met the white whale are progressively more damaged.

Which cheerful second mate hails from Cape Cod?

He kills the ship's first whale, and the cook Fleece then preaches a sermon to the sharks eating the carcass.

Which port does the narrator travel to first, before the ship sails from Nantucket?

The Whaleman's Chapel there is modelled on the Seamen's Bethel, where Melville heard a sermon shortly before he shipped out himself.

Father Mapple's sermon at the seamen's chapel is about which biblical figure?

The real preacher who inspired him, Enoch Mudge, actually contributed sermons on Jonah to Sailor's Magazine.

Which two Quaker owners sign the narrator aboard the ship?

Peleg calls Ahab a 'grand, ungodly, god-like man'; the real owner of Melville's whaler was also a Quaker who crossed out 'swear' on documents and wrote 'affirm'.

On what day does the ship set sail?

Shadowy figures slip aboard first: Ahab's secret boat crew, whose Parsee leader will prophesy his death.

Who is the Parsee leader of Ahab's secret harpoon crew, who prophesies the captain's death?

He foretells two hearses, one not made by mortal hands, and that only hemp can kill Ahab; every part comes true.

According to the prophecy, what is the only thing that can kill Ahab?

The line of his own harpoon loops around his neck and drags him down, fulfilling it exactly.

Which young cabin boy is left alone in the ocean and loses his mind?

Ahab, genuinely moved, later takes him under his wing; critics call him 'the ship's conscience'.

Over how many days does the final chase of the white whale take place?

The whale bites Ahab's boat in two on the first day, smashes all three boats on the second and sinks the ship on the third.

By which route does the ship cross into the Indian Ocean?

It heads for the Azores first, then down past South America; a typhoon near Japan later sets the stage for the final confrontation.

The novel is dedicated to which fellow writer, whom Melville met at a picnic in 1850?

Melville had just reviewed his Mosses from an Old Manse; the friendship may have pushed him to deepen a straightforward whaling yarn into an epic.

Under what title was the book first published in London, a month before the American edition?

Melville changed the title at the last minute for New York; the whale's name appears without a hyphen in the text of both editions.

What was missing from the British edition, leaving reviewers thinking the narrator had drowned?

Nothing in it was objectionable; the pages were most likely lost by the printer, and British critics were baffled by a dead man telling the story.

Which London publisher issued the first, three-volume edition and censored some passages?

He printed only 500 copies, sold fewer than 300 in four months and never printed another edition.

How many copies did the first American printing run to?

About 1,500 sold in eleven days, then sales died; the book was out of print when Melville died in 1891.

Roughly how much did Melville earn from the book in his lifetime?

That was $100 less than any of his five previous books had made him; his widow got another $81 in the 1890s.

The novel's ending is based on the real 1820 sinking of which Nantucket whaleship?

First mate Owen Chase's account of the wreck reached Melville through Chase's own son during a mid-ocean gam.

The white whale was modelled on a real albino whale named what?

He was said to carry twenty or so harpoons in his back and was described in an 1839 Knickerbocker magazine article by J. N. Reynolds.

The real albino whale took his name from an island off which country?

He was reportedly killed in the late 1830s in the waters off Mocha Island.

What did the starving whaleboat survivors of the real 1820 wreck eventually resort to?

The captain, George Pollard, had steered away from the nearby Marquesas for fear of cannibals there; Melville thought all would have lived had they made for Tahiti.

What was the name of the whaler on which Melville himself served as a green hand from 1841?

He jumped ship in the Marquesas in 1842, an adventure that became his first book, Typee.

Where was Melville living, on a farm called Arrowhead, while writing most of the book?

He borrowed $3,000 from his father-in-law, the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, to buy the 160-acre property, and named it for the arrowheads turned up in the fields.

Which chapter of the novel consists of a single 36-word paragraph?

The book runs to 135 chapters, and some are barely two pages long in standard editions.

Which chapter appeared on its own in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in October 1851, before the book?

Its footnote gave the book's working title as The Whale, since the new title had not yet been settled.

Which three sources rank as Melville's key stylistic influences on the book, in order?

Melville coined words freely: 'leewardings', 'omnitooled', 'uncatastrophied' and the adverb 'Spanishly' all appear.

Ahab shares his name with a wicked ruler of Israel from which book of the Bible?

One of the ships the crew meets is the Jeroboam, named for that ruler's predecessor; the biblical Ahab provoked God more than all who came before him.

How old is Ahab during the ship's final voyage?

He has been whaling for forty years and, according to Peleg, once lay near death for three days off Cape Horn.

Which respectful nickname does the crew give Ahab?

Peleg also calls him a 'grand, ungodly, god-like man' who nonetheless 'has his humanities'.

Which novelist said of Moby-Dick that he wished he had written the book himself?

D. H. Lawrence, another champion of the 1920s revival, called it 'the greatest book of the sea ever written'.

The novel was largely forgotten until a revival that followed which anniversary in 1919?

Carl Van Doren and D. H. Lawrence led the rediscovery in the early 1920s.

Which actor played Ahab in John Huston's 1956 film?

He thought Huston should have played the part himself; Huston had wanted his own father Walter, who died in 1950.

Which science-fiction author co-wrote the screenplay for the 1956 film?

He admitted to Huston he had 'never been able to read the damned thing'; the two clashed throughout the shoot.

Who played Father Mapple in the 1956 film and used the fee to fund his own stage version?

In his production, Moby Dick—Rehearsed, Rod Steiger played Ahab.

The 1956 film's Massachusetts harbour scenes were shot in which Irish town?

Huston wanted 'a port that hadn't changed in a hundred years'; a local pub renamed itself Moby Dick's and still displays Peck's prop whalebone leg.

What was the 1926 silent film adaptation in which Ahab survives to marry his fiancée?

John Barrymore starred; more than a dozen comic-book versions have followed since.

The owner of Melville's whaler, like the fictional Bildad, belonged to which religious group?

Whenever he signed documents he erased the word 'swear' and wrote 'affirm', as Quakers refuse to take oaths.

Which two museums hold annual marathon readings of the whole novel aloud?

The Mystic reading happens aboard the whaleship Charles W. Morgan and ends on Melville's birthday, August 1.

What job did Melville hold for 19 years in New York after his writing career faded?

He was known for honesty in a notoriously corrupt service; unknown to him, future president Chester A. Arthur sometimes protected his post.

Which unfinished novella did Melville's widow find among his papers after his death in 1891?

It was not published until 1924, in the middle of the Melville revival.

Melville's tattooed harpooneer is thought to be inspired by a portrait of a chief from which people?

The chief was Te Pēhi Kupe, pictured in a book called The New Zealanders that Melville read in 1850.

What does the tattooed harpooneer hit with a single throw to win his place on the ship?

The owners immediately offer him a ninetieth lay of the profits; the narrator, a mere merchant sailor, gets far less.

Queequeg is the son of a king from which fictional island?

Ishmael meets the tattooed Polynesian harpooneer when they share a bed at a crowded New Bedford inn.

Which ragged stranger prophesies a dire fate for Ishmael and Queequeg before they sail?

He shares his name with the Old Testament prophet who opposed the wicked King Ahab.

Who delivers a sermon to the sharks feasting on a whale carcass?

The scene follows Stubb's kill; later the crew hoists a right whale's head opposite the sperm whale's, which Ishmael compares philosophically.

Which harpooneer nearly drowns inside a sperm whale's head while retrieving spermaceti?

Queequeg dives in to rescue him in one of the novel's strangest set pieces.

What is the last ship the Pequod meets before the final chase?

Ahab flourishes his special harpoon at the damaged ship and presses on, having already refused to help the Rachel search for her captain's son.

How much did publisher Richard Bentley advance Melville for the British edition in 1851?

Plus 'half profits', though the 500-copy printing sold fewer than 300 in four months and Bentley recovered only half his money.