August 19, 2019 - Chapters One Hundred Twenty-three and One Hundred Twenty-four


The two chapters for today are both named after single objects: the musket and the needle. The former is the gun that Ahab pointed at Starbuck in an earlier scene; the latter is the needle of the compass of the ship, which has apparently been knocked out of commission in the recent thunderstorm. Ahab makes this discovery when he notes that the compass is pointing east, but they are in fact traveling west (which he can tell from the position of the sun relative to the time of day). Unclear is whether the change in wind that Starbuck detects in the first chapter is related to the discovery in the second. What is clear is the sense that, by moving west, the ship is now moving away from Moby Dick.

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