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Chapter 121
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Moby-Dick, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Limits of Knowledge
Fate and Free Will
Nature and Man
Race, Fellowship, and Enslavement
Madness
Religion
Summary
Analysis
Tashtego—in this, the novel’s shortest chapter—tells the thunder to stop thundering, and asks the night sky for a glass of rum.
While the Captain and officers of the Pequod engage in moral disagreements and pursue ambitious ideals of vengeance or worry about their responsibilities to the ship's crew, Tashtego here represents the more pragmatic viewpoint of that crew. He just wishes the storm would stop, and that he could have some rum.
Themes
Quiz
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