Previous
Chapter 68
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
Ishmael reports that the whale’s carcass is cut away from the ship after its head is taken on board (since the head contains most of the whale oil) and the blubber is safe in the blubber room. Ishmael notes that, although vultures will pick at the carcass for many months on the high seas, it looks like a “white phantom” there, and boats will steer clear of it as long as it persists, since the whale without its blubber and head is a shocking sight, even to accustomed sailors.
Unlike a human corpse, which, when buried at sea, disappears quickly under the waves with little more than a splash, the whale’s carcass tends to float, and takes an immensely long time to decompose, once the sharks have stripped away all its meat and blubber. Ishmael appears haunted by the continued presence of the whale’s body, even after death.
Themes
Quiz
Test Yourself
