From meeting a cannibal to the chapel to the sermon to sharing a moment with a bosom friend, Moby-Dick is a novel that refuses to follow narrative conventions. For this post, I want to focus on chapter 14.

The beginning paragraphs of the chapter has Ishmael act as our lovely tour guide once again, inserting us the readers into the story as characters and addressing us directly much like chapter 1. He implores us to look once more, allowing us (the reader) to visualize the environment of Nantucket: “a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.” (Melville 69) However, as we read through the rest of the chapter, it turns out there is more to Nantucket than just its landscapes, as Ishmael notes of its agriculture, the people living there, and even its legend of how the town came to be. Herman Melville, through Ishmael, provides us a story within his story, a window to the past, to show how Nantucketers were able to specialize in the ocean to grow as a nation.

One thing Ishmael finds wonderous about Nantucket is how quickly it developed over time:

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! (70)

I believe Melville is trying to emphasize the richness of the ocean here, as well as give us a history lesson on Nantucketers and their worldly influence during the 19th century. Just how quickly did Nantucket go from catching crabs to conquering the seas? Ishmael doesn’t tell us the details, but it is implied that this evolution took place over a few decades. Nations take time to develop, but Nantucketers made use of openness of the sea and its inhabitants to grow quickly. The Nantucketer, as Ishmael says, “lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps.” (70) Because they are accustomed to the ocean (they do live near it), they are able to take advantage of it and do things that aren’t normally possible on land.

Understanding the ocean is a fundamental part in understanding our world. There is still so many things to see in the ocean, and when we familiarize ourselves with it, we are able to achieve things that wouldn’t be possible on land alone. I’ve still yet to read the remaining chapters for this week, however; they weren’t kidding when they said Moby-Dick was a whale of a book.