July 18, 2019 - Chapter Seventy-one


Lest we forget the important roles played thus far in the novel by foreshadowing and prophesy, we get a taste of both again in this chapter. Here, the foreshadowing is the same – the Pequod will come to a bad end as a result of its pursuit of Moby Dick. The prophet takes the form of the Angel Gabriel – a hand aboard the Jeroboam, a whaling ship with which the Pequod makes contact – who it turns out was already a religious fanatic before he came aboard the Jeroboam and promptly went crazy. Finally, there is the matter that the Jeroboam is afflicted by a plague when it is encountered by the Pequod, which evokes the Oedipus the Tyrant, in addition to the name of the whaling shape evoking the Biblical idolater king. It’s kind of a smorgasbord of allusions.

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