Summer of Dick

In the end, it is the Rachel – the ship we saw many chapters ago that was searching for the lost son of the captain – that rescues our sole survivor Ishmael. He quotes the Book of Job – specifically the words of a servant of Job who reports to Job that his home and family have been destroyed. In short, this servant cum messenger is the sole survivor in the same way that Ishmael is of the Pequod . For his own part, Ishmael likens himself to the lost son of the Rachel ’s captain. And here ends the novel. Having set a goal for myself of finishing this novel between Memorial Day and Labor Day, 2019, I have met it.

And here it ends, and the white whale wins. He charges the Pequod head on and destroys the ship. Ahab, disgusted with the turn of events, casts his harpoon at Moby Dick, and though the harpoon strikes the whale, the result is that the whale drags Ahab and the remaining sailors into a whirlpool that pulls everything down into the sea with it. Remarkably, after the water settles, the sea appears as if nothing had happened there, as it has been for “five thousand years.” The final scene strongly implies that what we have witnessed is merely the course of nature. Whalers come and go (as does whales), but the sea continues forever.