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Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
Ishmael’s feeling that there’s something in the air, something incomprehensible but powerful that’s drawing him toward a whaling voyage, isn’t just a crazy whim. It’s his sense that he’s being Summoned as the Protagonist of a Major Quest in an Important Novel. We think Frodo Baggins probably felt the same way even as he was scampering around the Shire at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Moby-Dick has not one but two sequences in which we meet The Hero’s Companions. The Fellowship of the Whale, we could call them. (Okay, maybe not.) The doubling of this stage is significant because it reminds us that we’re fairly uncertain about who is actually the main character of this novel: Ishmael or Ahab.
First sequence: When Ishmael is forced to share a room at a crowded inn, he meets Queequeg, a South Sea Islander and harpooneer who becomes his BFF and roommate. Our introduction to Queequeg and the fast friendship that develops between Ishmael and Queequeg is the first version of this stage... after which the two of them set out together to find a whaling ship and embark on a Great Journey.
Second sequence: Once the novel moves onboard the Pequod, we’re introduced to the three mates, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, and the other two harpooneers, Daggoo and Tashtego, and finally to Captain Ahab himself. Ahab, even before he appears, starts to take center stage, and we get a pair of long chapters called "Knights and Squires" that introduce the three mates and the three harpooneers who become Ahab’s band of followers.
The journey here is looong—nearly three years, to be precise—and takes Ishmael, Queequeg, and the rest of the men on the Pequod through the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, from the New England Coast around the southern tip of Africa and east all the way to the Sea of Japan. Along the way, they’ll see everything there is to see on the ocean in the nineteenth-century, which (if you believe this novel) pretty much consists of other whaling ships, whales, and a lot of water.
Instead of meeting Galadriel or the riders of Rohan to help them on their way, the men on the Pequod meet other ships—each of which has something to tell about that area of the ocean or even the latest news on Moby Dick. Sometimes the captains of the other ships give advice that Ahab refuses to follow; sometimes they help him by mentioning where Moby Dick was last seen; and sometimes they represent alternatives to the Pequod.
Everything seems to be conspiring to keep the Pequod away from Moby Dick: the wind is gusting hard against the ship and eventually blows itself into a typhoon. Ahab tramples on his quadrant, a thunderstorm messes up the magnetic field of the ship’s compasses, and the line part of the log and line breaks—in other words, everything that could help them find their way is broken except the sun itself!
But Ahab is determined that weather, coincidence, and divine intervention can all be overcome by pure hatred. As, apparently, they can.
This three-day sequence of ordeals quickly settles down into a cozy little routine: around dawn, Ahab sights Moby Dick, lowers his boat, attacks the White Whale, the boat gets destroyed, and the Pequod has to rescue everyone. Every time we think Ahab is going to give up and go home, he lowers yet another boat and gives it another try. (We were wondering just how many spare boats there are on this ship.)
Oh, sorry, you expected them to triumph here? To kill the White Whale? To defeat Sauron and the legions of Mordor? Nope, that’s not how it works in this book.
Moby-Dick turns the quest narrative on its ear by preventing the quest’s successful fulfillment. But something is gained: Ishmael is now set to write an incredible novel about his experience, a novel not unlike the book of Jonah…
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