Table of Contents
What causes the Pequod to sink?
While trying to drain the oil from the head of a captured sperm whale, Tashtego, one of the Pequod’s harpooners, falls into the whale’s voluminous head, which then rips free of the ship and begins to sink.
Who Sank the Pequod?
It took Herman Melville 135 chapters to get to the part in his 1851 classic “Moby Dick” when the sperm whale and the peg-legged Captain Ahab do battle. No spoiler here: Moby Dick wins, smashing his enormous head into Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, and sinking it.
What happens to the Pequod?
At the end of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the White Whale (Moby Dick) rams into the Pequod, sinking her and killing all aboard, except Ishmael. Ahab also perishes when he gets tangled up in a harpoon line and is dragged out to sea. It is, in short, a brutal ending that offers no solace for the reader.
What killed Captain Ahab?
Entangled by the line of his own harpoon, Ahab falls overboard and drowns as the whale dives and takes him along.
Who tells Ahab the White Whale’s name?
Chapters 66–73. The sailors aboard the Pequod now see this very Gabriel in front of them. As Captain Mayhew tells Ahab a story about the White Whale, Gabriel interrupts continually.
What do the dents on Ahab’s brow symbolize?
Ask students the Literary Analysis question: What might the “dents” on Ahab’s furrowed brow symbolize? Answer: The dents might symbol- ize psychological injuries Ahab has suffered in his battle with the great whale. Answer: Ahab has dented them walking back and forth with his “bone leg.”
Who were the owners of the Pequod?
The owners are Quaker businessmen named Bildad and Peleg. They are both strict owners and tell Ishmael about Captain Ahab.
What does the crew of the Pequod symbolize?
Thanks to its ties to the extinction of the Pequot people, the name of the Pequod alone symbolizes doom and failure. By naming the ship for a tribe that didn’t survive, Melville is almost foreshadowing the deaths of the Pequod’s crew. The Pequod is necessary for the story, however.
Who saved Ishmael at the end?
the Rachel
Suddenly Queequeg’s coffin buoy shot up from the center of the fading vortex. Clinging to it for a day and a night, Ishmael finally was rescued by the Rachel, “that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”
What were Ahab’s last words?
Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear! Ahab utters these words—his last—after Moby Dick destroys the Pequod, in Chapter 135.
Is Ishmael Captain Ahab?
Ishmael plays a minor role in the plot, however, and early critics of Moby-Dick assumed that Captain Ahab is the protagonist….Ishmael (Moby-Dick)
| Ishmael | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Sailor, Oarsman, Merchant |
| Nationality | American |
Is the crew willing to help Captain Ahab?
Ahab is able to convince his crew to follow him on his vengeful mission to kill the white whale, Moby Dick, essentially through the power of rhetoric. He clearly has charisma as a captain, and when he calls the crew out onto the deck in chapter 36, he is ready to stir up the men in support of his own goals.
Who was the mysterious man on the Pequod?
The Pequod is steeped in a history of strange tales, or ”vague wonderments and half apprehensions,” mostly to do with Captain Ahab. In Chapter 19, a mysterious man named Elijah approaches Ishmael and Queequeg and demands to know if they know what they’re getting into aboard the ship.
What happens to the Pequod in Moby Dick?
After searching for months, the Pequod finally spots the white whale and gives chase. This chase lasts for days as the ship closes in on the whale. Ultimately, the whale is harpooned (by Ahab) and turns to face its pursuer. Attacking the ship, Moby Dick damages and sinks the Pequod killing everyone but Ishmael.
Is the Pequod a three masted ship?
Pequod has endured the years and the elements, but not without sustaining damage. The ship has a quarterdeck and a forecastle and is three-masted like most Nantucket whalers of the time, but all three masts are replacements, taken on when the originals were lost in a typhoon off Japan.
Who are the owners of the ship Pequod?
Captain Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship.