Characters:
Ishmael, the narrator.
Queequeg
Father Mapple
Captain Peleg
Captain Bildad
Captain Ahab
Starbuck, First Mate
Stubb, Second mate
Flask, Third Mate

“And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING PAID,–what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!”

“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.” (Really???)

“It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”
Ah, well, as long as the sober cannibal looks like George Washington!

“One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.”
The Whale as God.

“Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.”

“Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
But David wrote, “Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.”

“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”

Recurring themes:
Cannibalism, barbarism versus civilization. The Nantucketers are “fighting Quakers, Quakers with a vengeance.”
Life and death, whiteness, darkness.
Religion, idolatry, Christianity.
Revenge, insanity.

We read Moby Dick, or The Whale for my American Literature class, and I must admit that once again just as I did in high school, I only made it about three-fourths of the way through the book. So who’s actually read Moby Dick all the way through, whiteness of the whale and all?

I was encouraged to read Susan Wise Bauer’s confession in The Well-Educated Mind: “My bete noir is Moby Dick; I know it’s one of the great works of American literature, but I have made at least eight runs at it during my adult life and have never managed to get past midpoint.” I’m only on my second try; maybe I’ll give it another read in a couple of years and see if I can finish. As you can see, I did glean something from the part I read.