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''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. A sailor called Ishmael narrates the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler ''Pequod'', for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the 20th century. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself,〔Faulkner (1927)〕 and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world", and "the greatest book of the sea ever written".〔Lawrence (1923), 168〕 "Call me Ishmael" is one of world literature's most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius", and draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies and asides. The work was first published as ''The Whale'' in London in October 1851 and then under its definitive title ''Moby-Dick'' in New York in November. There were hundreds of slight but important differences between the two editions. The London publisher censored or changed sensitive passages and Melville made revisions as well, including the last-minute change in the title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in both editions as "Moby Dick", with no hyphen.〔Tanselle (1988) "Editorial Appendix," pp. 810-812〕 About 3,200 copies were sold during the author's life, earning him a little more than $1,200. ==Plot== Ishmael explains his need to go to sea and travels from Manhattan Island to New Bedford. The inn is crowded and he must share a bed with the tattooed Polynesian Queequeg, a harpooneer whose father was king of the (fictional) island of Rokovoko. The next morning Ishmael and Queequeg attend Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah, then head for Nantucket. Ishmael signs up with the Quaker ship-owners Bildad and Peleg for a voyage on their whaler ''Pequod''. Peleg describes Captain Ahab: "He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man" who nevertheless "has his humanities" (Ch. 16, "The Ship"). They hire Queequeg the following morning. A man named Elijah prophesies a dire fate should Ishmael and Queequeg join Ahab. While provisions are loaded, shadowy figures board the ship. On a cold Christmas Day, the ''Pequod'' leaves the harbor. Chapters discourse on cetology (the zoological classification and natural history of the whale), and describe the crew-members. The chief mate is 30-year-old Starbuck, a Nantucket Quaker with a realist mentality, whose harpooneer is Queequeg; second mate is Stubb, from Cape Cod, happy-go-lucky and cheerful, whose harpooneer is Tashtego, a proud, pure-blooded Indian from Gay Head, the third mate is Flask, from Martha's Vineyard, short, stout, whose harpooneer is Daggoo, a tall African, now a resident of Nantucket. When Ahab finally appears on the quarterdeck, he announces he is out for revenge on the white whale which took one leg from the knee down and left him with a prosthesis fashioned from a whale's jawbone. Ahab will give the first man to sight Moby Dick a doubloon, a gold coin, which he nails to the mast. Starbuck objects that he has not come for vengeance but for profit. Ahab's purpose exercises a mysterious spell on Ishmael: "Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine" (Ch. 41, "Moby Dick"). Instead of rounding Cape Horn, Ahab heads for the equatorial Pacific Ocean via southern Africa. One afternoon, as Ishmael and Queequeg are weaving a mat — "its warp seemed necessity, his hand free will, and Queequeg's sword chance" (Ch. 47, "The Mat-Maker") —, Tashtego sights a sperm whale. Immediately five hidden figures appear who Ahab has brought as his own boat crew. Their leader, Fedallah, a Parsee, is Ahab's harpooneer. The pursuit is unsuccessful. Southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, the ''Pequod'' makes the first of nine sea-encounters, or "gams", with other ships: Ahab hails the ''Goney'' (Albatross) to ask whether they have seen the White Whale but the trumpet through which her captain tries to speak falls into the sea before he can answer. Ishmael explains that because of Ahab's absorption with Moby Dick, he sails on without the customary "gam", which defines as a "social meeting of two (or more) Whale-ships", in which the two captains remain on one ship and the chief mates on the other (Ch. 53, "The Gam"). In the second gam off the Cape of Good Hope, with the Town-Ho, a Nantucket whaler, the concealed story of a "judgment of God" (Ch. 54, "The Town-Ho's Story") is revealed, but only to the crew: a defiant sailor who struck an oppressive officer is flogged, and when that officer led the chase for Moby Dick he fell from the boat and was killed by the whale. Chapters 55-60 discuss pictures of whales, brit (microscopic sea creatures on which whales feed), squid and — after four boats lowered in vain because Daggoo mistook a squid for the white whale — whale-lines. The next day, in the Indian Ocean, Stubb kills a sperm whale, and that night Fleece, the ''Pequod''s black cook, prepares him a rare whale steak. Fleece delivers a sermon to the sharks who fight each other to feast on the whale's carcass, tied to the ship, saying that their nature is to be voracious but they must overcome it (Ch. 64, "Stubb's Supper"). The whale is prepared, beheaded, and barrels of oil are tried out. Standing at the head of the whale, Ahab begs it to speak of the depths of the sea. The ''Pequod'' next encounters the ''Jeroboam'', which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but is now plagued by an epidemic. The whale carcass still lies in the water. Queequeg mounts it, tied to Ishmael's belt by a monkey-rope as if they were Siamese twins. Stubb and Flask kill a right whale whose head is fastened to a yardarm opposite the sperm whale's head. Ishmael compares the two heads in a philosophical way: the right whale is Lockean, stoic, and the sperm whale as Kantean, platonic. Tashtego cuts into the head of the sperm-whale and retrieves buckets of oil. He falls into the head, and the head falls off the yardarm into the sea. Queequeg dives after him and frees his mate with his sword. The ''Pequod'' next gams with the ''Jungfrau'' from Bremen. Both ships sight whales simultaneously, with the ''Pequod'' winning the contest. The three harpooneers dart their harpoons, and Flask delivers the mortal strike with a lance. The carcass sinks, and Queequeg barely manages to escape. The ''Pequod''s next gam is with the French whaler ''Bouton de Rose'', whose crew is ignorant of the ambergris in the head of the diseased whale in their possession. Stubb talks them out of it, but Ahab orders him away. Days later an encounter with a harpooned whale prompts Pip, a little Negro cabin-boy from Alabama, to jump out of his whale-boat. The whale must be cut loose, because the line has Pip so entangled in it. Furious, Stubb orders Pip to stay in the whaleboat, but Pip later jumps again, and is left alone in the immense sea and has gone insane by the time he is picked up. Cooled sperm oil congeals and must be squeezed back into liquid state; blubber is boiled in the try-pots on deck; the warm oil is decanted into casks, and then stowed in the ship. After the operation, the decks are scrubbed. The coin hammered to the main-mast shows three Andes summits, one with a flame, one with a tower, and one a crowing cock. Ahab stops to look at the doubloon and interprets the coin as signs of his firmness, volcanic energy, and victory; Starbuck takes the high peaks as evidence of the Trinity; Stubb focuses on the zodiacal arch over the mountains; and Flask sees nothing of any symbolic value at all. The Manxman mutters in front of the mast, and Pip declines the verb "look". The ''Pequod'' next gams with the ''Samuel Enderby'' of London, captained by Boomer, a down-to-earth fellow who lost his right arm to Moby Dick. Nevertheless, he carries no ill will toward the whale, which he regards not as malicious but as awkward. Ahab puts an end to the gam by rushing back to his ship. The narrator now discusses the subjects of 1) whalers supply; 2) a glen in Tranque in the Arsacides islands full of carved whale bones, fossil whales, whale skeleton measurements; 3) the chance that the magnitude of the whale will diminish and that the leviathan might perish. Leaving the ''Samuel Enderby'', Ahab wrenches his ivory leg and orders the carpenter to fashion him another. Starbuck informs Ahab of oil leakage in the hold. Reluctantly, Ahab orders the harpooneers to inspect the casks. Queequeg, sweating all day below decks, develops a chill and soon is almost mortally feverish. The carpenter makes a coffin for Queequeg, who fears an ordinary burial at sea. Queequeg tries it for size, with Pip sobbing and beating his tambourine, standing by and calling himself a coward while he praises Queequeg for his gameness. Yet Queequeg suddenly rallies, briefly convalesces, and leaps up, back in good health. Henceforth he uses his coffin for a spare sea-chest, which is later caulked and pitched to replace the ''Pequod''s life-buoy. The ''Pequod'' sails northeast toward Formosa and into the Pacific Ocean. Ahab with one nostril smells the musk from the Bashee isles and with the other the salt of the waters where Moby Dick swims. Ahab goes to Perth, the blacksmith, with bag of race-horse shoe-nail stubs to be forged into the shank of a special harpoon, and with his razors for Perth to melt and fashion into a harpoon barb. Ahab tempers the barb in blood from Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo. The ''Pequod'' gams next with the ''Bachelor'', a Nantucket ship heading home full of sperm oil. Every now and then the ''Pequod'' lowers for whales with success. On one of those nights in the whaleboat, Fedallah prophesies that neither hearse nor coffin can be Ahab's, that before he dies Ahab must see two hearses — one not made by mortal hands and the other made of American wood — that Fedallah will precede his captain in death, and finally that only hemp can kill Ahab. As the ''Pequod'' approaches the Equator, Ahab scolds his quadrant for telling him only where he is and not where he will be. He dashes it to the deck. That evening an impressive typhoon attacks the ship. Lightning strikes the mast, setting the doubloon and Ahab's harpoon aglow. Ahab delivers a speech on the spirit of fire, seeing the lightning as a portent of Moby Dick. Starbuck sees the lightning as a warning, and feels tempted to shoot the sleeping Ahab with a musket. Next morning when he finds that the lightning disoriented the compass, Ahab makes a new one out of a lance, a maul, and a sailmaker's needle. He orders the log be heaved, but the weathered line snaps, leaving the ship with no way to fix its location. The ''Pequod'' is now heading southeast toward Moby Dick. A man falls overboard from the mast. The life-buoy is thrown, but both sink. Now Queequeg proposes that his superfluous coffin be used as a new life-buoy. Starbuck orders the carpenter take care it is lidded and caulked. Next morning the ship meets in another truncated gam with the ''Rachel'', commanded by Captain Gardener from Nantucket. The ''Rachel'' is seeking survivors from one of her whaleboats which had gone after Moby Dick. Among the missing is Gardiner's young son. Ahab refuses to join the search. Twenty four hours a day Ahab now stands and walks the deck, while Fedallah shadows him. Suddenly a sea hawk grabs Ahab's slouched hat and flies off with it. Next the ''Pequod'', in a ninth and final gam, meets the ''Delight'', badly damaged and with five of her crew left dead by Moby Dick. Her captain shouts that the harpoon which can kill the white whale has yet to be forged, but Ahab flourishes his special lance and once more orders the ship forward. Ahab shares a moment of contemplation with Starbuck. Ahab speaks about his wife and child, calls himself a fool for spending forty years on whaling, and claims he can see his own child in Starbuck's eye. Starbuck tries to persuade Ahab to return to Nantucket to meet both their families, but Ahab simply crosses the deck and stands near Fedallah. On the first day of the chase, Ahab smells the whale, climbs the mast, and sights Moby Dick. He claims the doubloon for himself, and orders all boats to lower except for Starbuck's. The whale bites Ahab's boat in two, tosses the captain out of it, and scatters the crew. On the second day of the chase, Ahab leaves Starbuck in charge of the ''Pequod''. Moby Dick smashes the three boats that seek him into splinters and tangles their lines. Ahab is rescued, but his ivory leg and Fedallah are lost. Starbuck begs Ahab to desist, but Ahab vows to slay the white whale, even if he would have to dive through the globe itself in order to get his revenge. On the third day of the chase, Ahab sights Moby Dick at noon, and sharks appear as well. Ahab lowers his boat for a final time, leaving Starbuck again on board. Moby Dick breaches and destroys two boats. Fedallah's corpse, still entangled in the fouled lines, is lashed to the whale's back, and so Moby Dick turns out to be the hearse Fedallah prophesied. "Possessed by all the fallen angels" (Ch. 135), Ahab plants his harpoon in the whale's flank. Moby Dick smites the whaleboat, tossing its men into the sea. Only Ishmael survives. The whale now fatally attacks the ''Pequod''. Ahab then realizes that the destroyed ship is the hearse made of American wood in Fedallah's prophesy. The whale returns to Ahab, who stabs at him again. The line loops around Ahab's neck, and as the stricken whale swims away, the captain is drawn with him out of sight. Queequeg's coffin comes to the surface, the only thing to escape the vortex when ''Pequod'' sank. For an entire day Ishmael floats on it, and then the ''Rachel'', still looking for its lost seamen, rescues him. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Moby-Dick」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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