Reading Guide --- Moby Dick

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Melville wrote Moby-Dick in 1850, a time when many were predicting that America would fight a bloody civil war over slavery. In what ways can the novel be read as an oblique commentary on race, on America's self-destructive obsession with whiteness? How does the racial makeup of the Pequod, as well as Ishmael's friendship with Queequeg, reinforce such a reading? 
    
2. Many readers have noted the pervasive influence of Shakespeare on Melville. Of Shakespeare's great tragic heroes—Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello—whom does Ahab most resemble? Does Ahab, like other tragic heroes, arouse both pity and terror? Does Moby-Dickdiffer in important ways from Shakespearean and Greek tragedy? 
    
3. Queequeg is one of the most intriguing characters inMoby-Dick and figures prominently in the novel's early chapters. Ishmael describes him as a "sagacious savage" who resembles George Washington "cannibalistically developed." He admires Queegueg's "serenity," his self-possession, his ability to be "content with his own company." Why has Melville developed Queequeg so vividly? How does he illuminate the more "civilized" characters, Ahab in particular? 
    
4. In "The Try Works," Ishmael quotes Solomon's statement that "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead." In what ways is Moby-Dick a novel about understanding—observing, interpreting, making meaning—and the failure to understand? Where would you place Ishmael and Ahab on the spectrum of understanding? 
    
5. Early in the voyage, Ahab tells Starbuck: "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. Who's over me?" But before the final battle with the whale he claims that "This whole act's immutably decreed... I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders."Is Ahab guilty of a kind of Promethean hubris or is he tragically fated to do what he does? Are these positions contradictory? 
    
6. There are no women in Moby-Dick. Whaling was of course a strictly male enterprise, but what consequences may be said to follow from the absence of women from this world? Do you find a displacement of sexual energies in the novel? How would you make sense, in this context, of Ahab's deformity? 
    
7. Moby-Dick alternates between precise, often matter-of-fact descriptions of whaling and the extravagant, almost mythic actions of Ahab and his crew. Do these disparate elements enhance each other? If so, how so? 
    
8. One contemporary reviewer complained that Moby-Dickwas an "intellectual chowder of romance, philosophy, natural history, fine writing, good feeling, bad sayings..." Another early critic described Melville as containing two writers: "the one sensible, sagacious, observant, graphic, and producing admirable matter—the other maundering, driveling, subject to paroxysms, cramps, and total collapse, and penning exceeding many pages of unaccountable 'bosh'." Are these criticisms in any way justified? If so, how has Moby-Dick transcended its flaws to become and remain a masterpiece? 
    
9. In "The Sermon," Melville establishes the story of Jonah and the whale as a backdrop for Ahab's later actions. How does Jonah's story both parallel and provide a counterpoint to Ahab's? 
    
10. The novel begins with Ishamael sharing a room with Queequeg at the Spouter Inn, run by Peter Coffin. At the end, Ishmael survives the wreck of the Pequod by climbing aboard Queequeg's unused coffin. What might Melville be suggesting through these parallels? 
     
11. In "Stubb's Supper," Stubb instructs "Fleece," the ship's aged black cook, to preach to the sharks feasting noisily on the remains of a whale tied alongside the Pequod. Fleece exhorts them to "Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lip!"and to curb their voraciousness. He concludes that "if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned." An example of Melville's comic genius, how does Fleece's sermon to the sharks relate to the larger themes of the novel? What other instances of comedy do you find inMoby-Dick? Of a satiric treatment of Christianity? 
     
12. Melville wrote Moby-Dick during a period when Emerson, Thoreau, and others were developing a Transcendentalist philosophy and extolling the spiritual benefits of living in nature. In what ways can the novel be seen as an argument against such views? How would you characterize nature in Moby-Dick? What view of life, suffering, redemption, does Melville seem to be dramatizing? Is this view relevant or attractive to our time?

Discussion Questions
(Below are two sets of questions: one from Penguin Group USA and other other from Random House Publishing Group.)

1. Why does the novel's narrator begin his story with "Call me Ishmael"?

2. How does Ishmael's relationship to Queequeg change from the time they meet to the sailing of the Pequod?

3. Why does Melville include stage directions in some chapters (e.g., "The Quarter-Deck")?

4. Why does Ahab pursue Moby Dick so single-mindedly?

5. Why does Melville have Fedallah offer a prophesy that Ahab interprets in his favor, but which turns out otherwise?

6. Why does Starbuck decide against killing Ahab, despite believing that it is the only way to "survive to hug his wife and child again"? Why does Starbuck fail to convince Ahab to give up his pursuit of Moby Dick ("The Symphony")?

7. Why does Ahab offer the doubloon to the first member of the crew to spot Moby Dick?

8. Why does Ishmael digress from his story to meditate on the meaning of whiteness ("The Whiteness of the Whale")?

9. Why does Melville begin the novel by adhering to the conventions and limitations of a first-person narrator, but violate them later?

10. Why is Ishmael so concerned with past efforts to represent whales, in writing as well as other media, and the extent to which these efforts have succeeded or failed?

11. Why does Ishmael include in his story so many details about life and work aboard a whaling ship?

12. Does the novel support or undermine Ishmael's contention that "some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth"?

13. Why does the coffin prepared for Queequeg become Ishmael's life buoy once the Pequod sinks?

14. Who or what is primarily responsible for the destruction of the Pequod and, except for Ishmael, her crew?"

15. Why does the Rachel rescue Ishmael?

16. How has his experience aboard the Pequod affected Ishmael?

17. On what basis should we determine the point at which ambition turns into obsession?

18. Is knowledge always at least partly harmful, either in its application or the cost of acquiring it? 
(Questions issued by Penguin.)

1. What is the significance of the whale? What do you think Melville intends in developing such a vicious antagonism between Ahab and the whale?

2. How does the presence of Queequeg, particularly his status as a "savage," inform the novel? How does Melville depict this cultural clash?

3. How does whaling as an industry function metaphorically throughout the novel? Where does man fit in in this scenario?

4. Melville explores the divide between evil and virtue, justice and vengeance throughout the novel. What, ultimately, is his conclusion? What is Ahab's?

5. What do you think of the role, if any, played by religion in the novel? Do you think religious conventions are replaced or subverted in some way? Discuss.

6. Discuss the novel's philosophical subtext. How does this contribute to the basic plot involving Ahab's search for the whale? Is this Ishmael's purpose in the novel?

7. Discuss the role of women in the novel. What does their conspicuous absence mean in the overall context of the novel?
(Questions issued by Random House.)

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