110 Fun Facts About Moby-Dick

Which Star Trek villain quotes Ahab's dying curse, 'for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee'?

Khan speaks Ahab's lines as he sets off the Genesis Device, hoping to take Kirk's Enterprise down with him.

Which 2015 Ron Howard film dramatizes the real whaleship disaster that inspired Moby-Dick's ending?

In the Heart of the Sea follows the crew after a giant whale cripples their ship, leaving the survivors adrift through storms and starvation.

In Moby-Dick, what is the name of Captain Ahab's whaling ship?

The Pequod sinks when Moby Dick rams her, becoming the second 'hearse' made of American wood that was prophesied for Ahab.

In Moby-Dick, what does Ahab use to temper the barbs of the harpoon he forges for the white whale?

Human blood: Ahab refuses water and has the three pagan harpooneers give their own, howling that he baptizes the iron in the devil's name.

Moby Dick is which species of cetacean?

Sperm whale: whalers hunted it for spermaceti, the waxy substance in its head used for candles and lubricants.

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

His leg: Ahab swore revenge, while the Samuel Enderby's captain, who lost an arm to the same whale, says it's best let alone.

Ahab's prosthetic limb is made from what?

A whale's jawbone: when it splinters mid-voyage, Ahab has the ship's carpenter make him a new one from jaw-ivory saved on the voyage.

In Moby-Dick, what does Ahab nail to the mast as a reward for the first man to sight the white whale?

A gold doubloon: Ahab sights Moby Dick first himself, then declares that fate reserved the coin for him alone.

In Moby-Dick, Ishmael says Queequeg's head recalls which founding father's, as seen in popular busts?

George Washington: the comparison marks a turn, as the harpooneer Ishmael first dreaded sharing a bed with becomes an unlikely friend.

In Moby-Dick, what does the carpenter build for Queequeg that later saves Ishmael's life?

A coffin: Queequeg recovers, and after the sinking the coffin shoots up beside Ishmael, who clings to it for almost a day and night.

In Moby-Dick, which ship rescues Ishmael, the sole survivor, at the end?

The Rachel: Ahab had refused to help search for her captain's missing son, yet she picks up Ishmael while still searching, finding 'another orphan'.

In Moby-Dick, which chief mate objects that Ahab's voyage is meant for profit, not revenge?

Starbuck: near the end he takes up a loaded musket and considers killing Ahab and turning the ship back for home.

Which rock band's drum-solo instrumental is titled 'Moby Dick'?

Led Zeppelin: when John Bonham played it live, the rest of the band walked off and left the stage to his drum solo.

In Moby-Dick, which cheerful second mate hails from Cape Cod?

Stubb: he tricks a French whaler into cutting loose a rotting whale, then digs valuable ambergris out of it.

In Moby-Dick, which port does Ishmael travel to first, before his ship sails from Nantucket?

New Bedford: at a crowded inn there, Ishmael must share a bed with the tattooed harpooneer Queequeg, who becomes his friend.

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

Jonah: Father Mapple reaches his pulpit, shaped like a ship's prow, by climbing a rope ladder.

In Moby-Dick, which dish do Ishmael and Queequeg eat at the Try Pots inn on Nantucket?

Chowder: the landlady also takes Queequeg's harpoon for the night, since a boarder was once found dead with his harpoon in his side.

In Moby-Dick, on what day does Ahab's ship set sail from Nantucket?

Christmas Day: yet for several days after the ship sails, nothing is seen of Captain Ahab above decks.

In Moby-Dick, who leads Ahab's secret boat crew and prophesies the captain's death?

Fedallah: he dies before Ahab, as he foretold, and his body is seen lashed to the whale's back on the chase's third day.

In Moby-Dick, what is prophesied to be the only thing that can kill Captain Ahab?

Hemp: Ahab takes the prophecy to mean the gallows, so thinks himself immortal at sea, until a whale line catches his neck.

In Moby-Dick, which young cabin boy is left alone in the ocean and loses his mind?

Pip: Ahab, touched by the mad boy, takes him under his wing and leads him to his own cabin.

In Moby-Dick, what does the white whale do to Ahab's whaleboat on the first day of the chase?

Bites it in two: Ahab is flung into the sea, yet he refuses to give up and resumes the chase the next day.

In Moby-Dick, which way does Ahab's ship sail from the Atlantic toward the Pacific whaling grounds?

Round the Cape of Good Hope: unable to reach the white whale's Pacific feeding grounds in time that season, Ahab plans a year's hunt through other seas first.

Moby-Dick is dedicated to which fellow American writer, Melville's new friend while he wrote it?

Nathaniel Hawthorne: their friendship may have spurred Melville to spend another year revising and deepening the book.

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

The Whale: Melville had promised it to his London publisher for autumn 1850, but it arrived almost a year late.

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 Moby-Dick's first, three-volume edition and censored some passages?

Richard Bentley: his edition was expurgated to avoid offending delicate political and moral sensibilities, and it sold poorly.

In Moby-Dick's cetology chapter, Ishmael sorts whales by size using the names of what?

Book formats: Ishmael then leaves his whale system deliberately unfinished, praying 'God keep me from ever completing anything.'

In Moby-Dick, what does Ahab toss into the sea early in the voyage?

His pipe: later he gives up his shaving razors too, handing them to the blacksmith to forge the barbs of his special harpoon.

Moby-Dick's ending was inspired by the real 1820 sinking of which Nantucket whaleship?

The Essex: first mate Owen Chase published an account of the wreck, and the story fascinated Melville.

Which actor played Captain Ahab in the 1998 TV miniseries of Moby Dick?

Patrick Stewart: two years earlier, as Captain Picard in Star Trek: First Contact, he had quoted Ahab's vengeful words before giving up his own revenge.

In Moby-Dick, what does the captain of the German whaler Jungfrau row over to beg from Ahab's ship?

Lamp oil: his ship has caught no whales, yet the moment whales are sighted he races Ahab's boats after them.

What did the survivors of the 1820 whaleship wreck behind Moby-Dick eventually resort to?

Cannibalism: fearing cannibals on the nearest islands, the survivors had sailed for distant South America instead.

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

Acushnet: Melville jumped ship in the Marquesas in 1842, and his stay there became his first book, Typee.

Where was Melville living, on a farm called Arrowhead, while writing most of Moby-Dick?

Pittsfield, Massachusetts: short of money, Melville sold off part of the farm in the 1850s and sold the rest to his brother Allan in 1863.

Which mountain could Melville see from his study window while writing Moby-Dick?

Mount Greylock: Melville dedicated his next novel, Pierre, 'To Greylock's Most Excellent Majesty'.

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

The Town-Ho's Story: in it Moby Dick seizes a bullying mate named Radney in his jaws, a tale of divine judgement.

Moby-Dick's language famously echoes which three sources?

The Bible, Shakespeare and Milton: Melville only got to know Shakespeare closely in 1849, when he found an edition in type large enough for his weak eyes.

Moby-Dick's Captain Ahab shares his name with a wicked ruler of Israel from which biblical book?

1 Kings: the biblical Ahab dies when an archer fires at random in battle and the arrow strikes between the joints of his armour.

In Moby-Dick, Ishmael likens the livid scar down Ahab's face to the mark a tree gets from what?

Lightning: yet no one aboard can say whether the mark was born with him or left by some desperate wound.

In Moby-Dick, which nickname does a ragged stranger say some old sailors use for Captain Ahab?

Old Thunder: the same stranger warns of a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg sail with Captain Ahab.

Which British novelist called Moby-Dick 'the greatest book of the sea ever written'?

D. H. Lawrence: yet in Melville's lifetime Moby-Dick had sold fewer than 4,000 copies.

Moby-Dick's reputation soared in a Melville revival that coincided with which anniversary?

The centenary of Melville's birth: the critic Carl Van Doren had begun championing Melville in 1917, and his efforts culminated in the 1920s revival.

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

Gregory Peck: more than 40 years later he played Father Mapple in the 1998 TV miniseries.

Which science-fiction author co-wrote the screenplay for John Huston's 1956 film of Moby Dick?

Ray Bradbury: he later fictionalized his time in Ireland writing it with Huston in the novel Green Shadows, White Whale.

Which actor-director played Father Mapple in John Huston's 1956 film of Moby Dick?

Orson Welles: the year before the film opened, he directed and starred in his own London stage version, Moby Dick—Rehearsed.

John Huston's 1956 Moby Dick shot its Massachusetts harbour scenes in which Irish town?

Youghal: a local pub there was renamed Moby Dick's in honour of the filming.

Which 1926 silent film of Moby-Dick gave Ahab a fiancée and an evil brother?

The Sea Beast: it was such a success that Warner Bros. remade it with sound in 1930, again starring John Barrymore.

In Moby-Dick, which religious group do the shipowners Bildad and Peleg belong to?

The Quakers: yet these retired whaling captains are what Ishmael calls 'fighting Quakers', among the fiercest whale-hunters.

In Moby-Dick, what does Queequeg announce he and Ishmael now are, soon after they meet?

Married: that is, 'bosom friends', though the night they met Ishmael learned Queequeg was out selling embalmed heads.

What job did Melville take in New York after his writing career faded?

Customs inspector: in his last years Melville still wrote, privately printing two volumes of poetry in editions of just 25 copies.

Which Melville novella, left unfinished when he died in 1891, was first published in 1924?

Billy Budd: Melville's widow tried to edit the manuscript but couldn't make out his intentions, even about its title.

In Moby-Dick, why did Queequeg first leave his island aboard a whaling ship?

To visit Christendom: but the whalemen's ways soon convinced him even Christians could be wicked, so he resolved to die a pagan.

In Moby-Dick, what does Queequeg's harpoon strike to win his place aboard?

A drop of tar floating on the water: Captain Peleg promptly offers him the ninetieth lay, more than any Nantucket harpooneer had been given.

In Moby-Dick, Queequeg is the son of a king from which island?

Rokovoko: Ishmael explains that it isn't down in any map, since 'true places never are'.

Which ragged stranger prophesies a dire fate for Moby-Dick's narrator and his friend before they sail?

Elijah hints darkly at prophecies, and when the pair walk on, Ishmael suspects the stranger of dogging them.

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

Fleece the cook preaches because a mate eating his whale steak orders him to make the noisy sharks keep quiet.

Which crewman nearly drowns after falling into a whale's head while bailing out its oil?

Tashtego sinks inside the severed head until a shipmate dives in, cuts a hole in it and pulls him out, which the narrator likens to delivering a baby.

Which ship, burying a sailor killed by the white whale, is the last one Ahab meets before the final chase?

The Delight, 'most miserably misnamed', lost five men the day before; Ahab turns away from the funeral, but the crew still hears the body splash.

Which navigation instrument does Ahab smash on the deck, cursing it as a foolish toy?

Ahab tramples the quadrant and vows to steer by compass and log instead, but a typhoon soon turns the compass needles and the log line snaps.

In Moby-Dick's cetology chapter, Ishmael overrules Linnaeus and declares that a whale is what?

A fish, he insists, defining the whale as a spouting one with a horizontal tail. He admits that whales breathe with lungs, the very trait Linnaeus had used to set them apart.

In The X-Files, which FBI agent names her little dog Queequeg after the harpooneer in Moby-Dick?

Dana Scully's dog trots through Quagmire, a 1996 episode that loosely retells the novel. Her partner Mulder takes the Ahab role, obsessed with finding a lake monster called Big Blue.

In Moby-Dick, the English captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost what to the white whale?

An arm, which he has replaced with a whalebone one ending in a mallet. Unlike Ahab he holds no grudge and advises leaving the whale alone, which sends Ahab storming back to his own ship.

Which Nobel-winning American novelist said Moby-Dick was the book he wished he had written himself?

William Faulkner's envy came far too late to help its author: the novel was a commercial failure in 1851, and its standing as a Great American Novel was settled only in the 20th century.

When Herman Melville died, forty years after Moby-Dick appeared, what was its commercial status?

Out of print: the final printing of his lifetime, 277 copies in 1871, sold so slowly that no more were ordered. For 34 years the book had averaged sales of 27 copies a year.

Moby-Dick's narrator says he goes to sea whenever his soul feels like which damp, drizzly month?

November in the soul is one warning sign; another is finding himself trailing after every funeral he meets. Going to sea, Ishmael says, is his substitute for pistol and ball.

Which Nobel laureate's 2017 prize lecture named Moby-Dick among three books that shaped his work?

Bob Dylan summarised the whole voyage for the Swedish Academy. A writer in Slate later suggested that he had lifted some of his phrases about the novel from the study guide SparkNotes.

On the third day of the chase in Moby-Dick, how is Ahab's ship itself finally destroyed?

The whale rams it head-on, striking the starboard bow with his forehead until the sea pours through the breach. Melville borrowed the idea from a real Nantucket ship sunk the same way in 1820.

In Moby-Dick, a Nantucket captain begs Ahab to help find a lost whaleboat carrying which relative?

His son, a boy of twelve, was in a boat last seen chasing the white whale. Ahab refuses to spare the time, yet it is this same searching ship that later plucks the lone survivor from the sea.

In Moby-Dick, what does Ishmael call Queequeg's day of fasting and silence in a locked room?

Ramadan is Ishmael's borrowed word for it, though Queequeg is no Muslim: he squats motionless all day with his little idol balanced on his head. A panicking Ishmael finally breaks the door open.

In Moby-Dick, where does Ishmael lodge the night he first shares a bed with the harpooneer Queequeg?

The Spouter-Inn won him over by looking cheap: he had walked past two brighter houses because they seemed too expensive and jolly. Its landlord had no bed free, so he offered half of a harpooneer's.

In Moby-Dick, the second mate tricks a French ship out of a rotting carcass he suspects holds what?

Ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist, is what he digs out by the handful once the French have cut the foul-smelling whale loose. Ahab's impatience stops him after six handfuls.

In Moby-Dick, the chief mate stands at the sleeping Ahab's state-room door tempted to kill him with which weapon?

A musket from the cabin rack, the very one Ahab had once pointed at him, is in the mate's hands as he argues with himself. He thinks of his family at home, wavers, and puts it back.

In Moby-Dick, which midnight supper does the second mate eat while sharks feast alongside?

A whale steak, cut at his order from the animal he has just killed, is the mate's idea of a treat. He then scolds the old cook for overdoing it, insisting that the meat should be tough and rare.

In Moby-Dick, what is Queequeg out selling around town on the night Ishmael waits up to meet him?

Embalmed heads from New Zealand were his stock, bought in the South Seas as curios. The landlord explains that he has sold all but one and wants it gone before Sunday churchgoers fill the streets.

In Moby-Dick, what does a sea-hawk snatch from Ahab as he hangs aloft watching for the white whale?

His hat is carried far ahead of the ship and dropped into the sea. Ishmael recalls that an eagle once lifted a future Roman king's cap, an omen counted good only because the bird put it back.

In Moby-Dick, the boats are lowered for a great white mass that proves to be which creature?

A giant squid, a vast cream-coloured pulp with tentacles twisting like a nest of anacondas, rises and sinks again. The chief mate takes the sight for a worse omen than the white whale itself.

Which African harpooneer in Moby-Dick lets the short third mate stand on his shoulders?

Daggoo, six feet five in his socks, tosses little Flask onto his shoulders with one fling and steadies him with a lifted hand. The mate had been craning for a view from his whaleboat.

As Ahab tempers his new harpoon in Moby-Dick, he howls a Latin mock-baptism in whose name?

The devil takes the Father's place in Ahab's Latin as the scorching iron is quenched: not in nomine patris, he howls, but in nomine diaboli.

In Moby-Dick, what ties Ishmael's belt to Queequeg while the harpooneer stands on a dead whale?

A monkey-rope joins the pair like Siamese twins while Queequeg works below among the sharks. If he slips under, custom demands that Ishmael be dragged down after him rather than cut the cord.

In Moby-Dick, what do whalemen call a sociable meeting of two ships whose crews swap visits at sea?

A gam sends both captains aboard one ship and both chief mates aboard the other to trade news and letters. Ahab wants only one item of news, so he opens every hail by asking after the white whale.

In Moby-Dick's chapter The Candles, which eerie glow sets all three masts burning in a typhoon?

St. Elmo's fire, which the sailors call corpusants, tips each mast with pale flame like three huge wax tapers before an altar. The crew is awestruck; Ahab stands up and defies the flames aloud.

In Moby-Dick, Ishmael says taking orders at sea stings worst if you have just left which job ashore?

Schoolmaster is the post he has in mind, fresh from making the tallest boys stand in awe of him. The change, he admits, takes a strong dose of Seneca and the Stoics to grin and bear.

Which homeward-bound ship in Moby-Dick has a captain who refuses to believe in the white whale?

The Bachelor is so full of oil that her sailors have caulked their sea-chests and filled those too, and they are dancing on deck. Ahab tells her captain he is too jolly and sails on.

In Moby-Dick, the crazed sailor Gabriel who cows the Jeroboam's crew was raised in which sect?

The Shakers of Neskyeuna had treated him as a great prophet. Once at sea he announced himself as the archangel of the same name and ordered the captain to jump overboard, and the crew took his side.

Which one-word title does Moby-Dick give the first chapter, where the narrator introduces himself?

Loomings starts the story proper, but two odd preliminaries come before it: an etymology of the word whale, then pages of quotations about whales gathered from other books.

The whale quotations that preface Moby-Dick are said to be gathered by a lowly 'sub-sub' what?

Librarian is the rank of this imagined drudge, a pale burrower who has combed the world's great libraries and street-stalls for every stray mention of whales. The book calls his kind a hopeless, sallow tribe.

In Moby-Dick, which instrument does the young cabin boy play for the sailors dancing at midnight?

A tambourine is the boy's instrument, and Ishmael pictures him summoned one day to the great quarter-deck on high and told to beat it in glory among the angels.

In Moby-Dick, how does Ishmael claim he preserved the measurements of a whale skeleton he once saw?

As a tattoo, he says, since in his wandering days his own skin was the only safe place for such statistics. He skipped the odd inches to leave room for a poem he was composing.

Moby-Dick's narrator is named for a biblical outcast banished to the desert, the elder son of whom?

Abraham sent the boy and his mother Hagar away after his younger son Isaac was born. Where that first Ishmael was driven into the desert, Melville's wanders upon the sea.

Which title character by Moby-Dick's author is a Wall Street clerk who politely refuses all work?

Bartleby begins as a model copyist, turning out a large volume of fine work for his lawyer employer. Then he starts meeting every request with the same mild refusal, until it is all he says.

Which debut by Moby-Dick's author drew on his time among Marquesas islanders after jumping ship?

Typee, published in 1846, and its sequel were travel adventures that sold well. The first book he wrote that was not based on his own experience, three years later, was poorly received.

Moby-Dick has been read as an attack on the self-reliance preached by which Transcendentalist?

Ralph Waldo Emerson praised the self-sufficient individual; on this reading Ahab shows where that can lead, an egoist who answers to nobody and takes a whole crew down with him.

Which American metal band based its 2004 concept album Leviathan on Moby-Dick?

Mastodon made Leviathan their first concept album, drawing its lyrics from the novel and titling one track I Am Ahab.

A 1999 Sena Jeter Naslund novel builds a life from Moby-Dick's few mentions of which Ahab relative?

His wife is mentioned only a few times by Melville, and never appears. Naslund's novel about her, subtitled The Star-Gazer, sends her off to sea disguised as a cabin boy.

Which 2015 Hideo Kojima game borrows from Moby-Dick, naming its hero Ahab and a guide Ishmael?

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain also names the hero's helicopter pilot after the novel's doomed ship, and gives a maimed ally an Ahab-like thirst for revenge.

Which American artist's stark ink drawings filled the 1930 Lakeside Press edition of Moby-Dick?

Rockwell Kent had been asked to illustrate Two Years Before the Mast and proposed Melville's novel instead. The three-volume edition of 1,000 copies sold out immediately.

Mystic Seaport usually holds its marathon reading of Moby-Dick aboard which surviving whaleship?

Charles W. Morgan is the only wooden whaleship left from the American fleet, launched in 1841, the year Melville himself went whaling. An actor playing the author reads the first and last chapters.

In Moby-Dick, what is the name of the small idol Queequeg trusts to settle the choice of a ship?

Yojo, Queequeg reports, has decreed that Ishmael must pick the ship by himself. So a greenhorn who has never been whaling makes the fateful choice alone on the Nantucket wharf.

Which cartoon duo spoofed Moby-Dick in the 1962 short Dicky Moe, aboard a ship called the Komquot?

Tom and Jerry go to sea when the cat is shanghaied by an Ahab-like captain whose crew has deserted. By the end a harpoon line has lashed Tom to the side of the whale he was sent to catch.

Which Australian plays the first mate in Ron Howard's 2015 film of the wreck behind Moby-Dick?

Chris Hemsworth dropped from 215 to 175 pounds to play a starving castaway, with the cast living on 500 to 600 calories a day. He called it the hardest film he had worked on.

Which Jaws character did Steven Spielberg plan to introduce laughing at the 1956 film of Moby Dick?

Quint, the Ahab-like shark hunter, was to be seen in a cinema mocking the film's mistakes. The idea died when the 1956 film's star, unhappy with his own performance, refused to release the footage.

In Warner's 1930 talkie of Moby Dick, how does Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt finally end?

He kills the whale and sails home to the minister's daughter who loves him, a romance the studio invented. The film leaves out Ishmael altogether.

Which 1994 Macaulay Culkin film sends a boy into a library where he meets Ahab and Moby Dick?

The Pagemaster drops its timid hero into cartoon versions of classic books, where the white whale scatters his party after battling Ahab. Long John Silver's pirate ship then picks the boy up.

Which matinee idol played Ahab in both a 1926 silent film of Moby-Dick and its 1930 sound remake?

John Barrymore had always wanted to film the novel and insisted on doing it first under his new Warner contract. When a producer admired his haggard makeup, the director said it was a hangover.

Which Oscar winner played Ahab in the 2011 Moby Dick miniseries, with Ethan Hawke as his chief mate?

William Hurt led a 25-million-dollar production shot largely in Nova Scotia, the most expensive its German backers had made. Donald Sutherland played the whalemen's preacher.

John Huston's 1956 Moby Dick blended black-and-white with colour film to imitate the look of what?

Old whaling prints were the look he was after. The muted, washed-out colour that resulted resembles what the later bleach-bypass process gives.

In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, what kind of craft bears the name of Moby-Dick's Queequeg?

A submarine bears the harpooneer's name in the eleventh book of the series. Its crew go one better, wearing portraits of Herman Melville on their uniforms.

Which novelist echoed a church scene from Moby-Dick in the prologue to his 1952 novel Invisible Man?

Ralph Ellison has his narrator recall a preacher's sermon on blackness, reprising a moment when Ishmael wanders into a Black church. His biographer says Melville's example emboldened him.

In Moby-Dick, the oldest sailor aboard Ahab's ship, a reader of signs and omens, comes from which island?

The Isle of Man gives him the only name he has in the book, the Manxman. The crew credit him with uncanny powers of discernment, and Ahab muses on his age and birthplace late in the voyage.