June 30, 2019 - Chapter Forty-six

Perhaps coincidentally (although perhaps not), it occurred to me before reading this chapter that we hadn’t actually had any whaling scenes yet. Luckily, this chapter delivers, since it depicts Ahab coming the conclusion (and our narrator essentially telling us) that the sailors will need to earn money, beyond just hunting Moby Dick to satisfy Ahab’s monomania. As a result, he tells the mast-heads to keep an eye out for any whale they see – even dolphins. “This vigilance was not long without reward,” the narrator says.

This is not exactly subtle narration, but we are more than 200 pages into the novel at this point, and we have yet to encounter an actual whale, which is really saying something. Long before I ever read this novel, I can recall a character on the TV show M*A*S*H referring to the novel as a “great adventure” in giving the book to a young soldier. How well or poorly the novel delivers on that sales line is debatable, but I can’t imagine any GI in the Korean War receiving it and sticking it out for 200+ plus pages without seeing a single whale. So thankfully the novel is about to deliver.