Section 5 Summary

Lines 89-91

When the whale's viscera go and the roll
Of its corruption overruns this world
Beyond tree-swept Nantucket and Woods Hole 

• We begin the fifth section with some whale-gut imagery—lovely.
• Because the white whale in Moby Dick was stabbed, his guts (the "viscera") are slowly spilling out into the sea. The speaker equates these guts with corruption; that's right, he's making a metaphor. He's saying that, like the slow spilling of the whale's guts into the sea, corruption is taking over the world.
• But is it the whale's fault, or the fault of the man who spilled the viscera? If we consider Moby Dick, which the poem has referenced pretty often, it seems more likely that the captain's obsession with the white whale is the reason his crew died and the reason the whale was stabbed in the first place. Perhaps man's corruption is the thing that the speaker worries will "overrun" the world, in places beyond Nantucket.

Lines 92-93

And Martha's Vineyard, Sailor, will your sword
Whistle and fall and sink into the fat?

• It's been awhile since Lowell has addressed or mentioned his cousin, the drowned sailor. Here, by giving the sailor a sword, Lowell's speaker is tying the Quaker sailors to those who died at sea in other ways, like the sailors who drowned in WWII with his cousin. 
• As we saw in line 90, the "viscera" of the whale represents man's corruption, and it's threatening to overtake the world. Here, the speaker asks if the sailor will be able to draw his sword and stab that corruption like he'd stab a whale's flesh. 
• He's using another metaphor. The stabbing of the whale is the fight against the bad parts of man's nature. Can man fight their own corruption? Hmm.

Lines 94-97

In the great ash-pit of Jehoshaphat
The bones cry for the blood of the white whale,
The fat flukes arch and whack about its ears,
The death-lance churns into the sanctuary, tears 

• In Hebrew, Jehoshaphat is the valley of judgment. The sailors' bones are there, crying out for vengeance. Are they blaming the whale for what they themselves have done? That hardly seems fair, does it? 
• The poem is getting pretty graphic; here, we have the butchering of the whale by the men, who are finally getting their revenge.
• But, remember, this is taking place in the valley of judgment; our speaker is implying that they'll be judged for what they do to the whale. Consider also the epigraph, which gives man power over all the living creatures on the earth. Perhaps the sailors have violated this command, and are being judged for it.
• They've certainly violated the sanctuary; the "death-lance churns" into it. The speaker is alluding to Moby Dick (big surprise) again: "Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning." By having this action disturb a sanctuary, our speaker makes it an unholy action, one that the men are being judged for.

Lines 98-101

The gun-blue swingle, heaving like a flail,
And hacks the coiling life out: it works and drags
And rips the sperm-whale's midriff into rags,
Gobbets of blubber spill to wind and weather, 

• We get more guts and gore here—yuck.
• A "swingle" is a sword. Again, he's reminding us that these sailors aren't just those that drowned on the fishing boats long ago, but military men, too.
• The whale's insides are spilling all over, through the "wind and weather." If they're a metaphor for corruption (check out line 90), then the corruption is spreading.
• Also, it's worth checking out the speaker's use of imagery here. "Gobbets of blubber" and "coiling life" are some particularly vivid details. (Imagine he had just called them "innards." It'd be a way shorter poem.) Who knew there were so many ways to describe guts?

Lines 102-103

Sailor, and gulls go round the stoven timbers
Where the morning stars sing out together

• He's addressing his cousin again. This is another instance of the Quaker sailors being equated with the military sailors lost at sea during WWII.
• Lowell's speaker describes, for his cousin, how the sea gulls fly around the stumps of trees ("stoven" is an Old English word for stump) cut for the timber to build boats. Are they mourning those trees? 
• It isn't the first time the birds have been attributed with grieving; our speaker has given the earth and its creatures many emotions and voices. We've seen the wind screaming, the sea getting angry, and now… hey, the stars are singing. 
• The stars singing is also a Biblical reference; in Job 38:7 "the morning stars sang together" at the beginning of the world. But in this poem, things are ending, not beginning. Is our speaker contrasting death and life to make us sad about this destruction?
• That could be, or maybe he's reminding us that life goes on, and that the stars appear every new day.

Lines 104-106

And thunder shakes the white surf and dismembers
The red flag hammered in the mast-head. Hide,
Our steel, Jonas Messias, in Thy side.

• The Pequod, filled with Quaker sailors, is sinking in a violent storm at sea. But that's not how the boat sank in Moby Dick; it was the whale who broke it apart. By having the ship sink in a storm, the speaker is using it as an allegory for all ships lost at sea. The Quaker sailors are every sailor who died at sea (including Lowell's cousin and his shipmates in WWII). 
• As the Pequod sank in Moby Dick, a sailor nailed a red flag to its mast. Here, the sea "dismembers" that flag. The drowning sailors' last efforts were in vain, useless.
• Someone who wasn't on the Pequod was Jonas Messias, mentioned in line 106. So who is this guy? Jonah is a Biblical character, one who was swallowed by a whale and lived inside his belly for three days until God rescued him. The Messiah in the Bible is Jesus, who was nailed to a cross for three days but was also wounded in the side by a Roman's spear. The speaker has created a character made up from both, and he asks him to hide a sword in his side. Hmm.
• One interpretation is that the speaker is making a final plea for the drowned sailors' redemption; if Jonas Messias can "hide" their swords ("Our steel") in his own side, he's in a sense sacrificing himself to cover their transgressions (pretty Jesus like, eh?). 
• The image could also be attempting to compare the whale to a deity (again). In either case, the pleas of the men don't save them from drowning, and Section 5 ends with their request left unanswered.