The Pequod next encounters the Jeroboam, which not only lost its chief mate to Moby Dick, but also is now plagued by an epidemic. Though Moby-Dick did contain the Epilogue and so accounted for Ishmael's survival, the British reviews influenced the American reception.

If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy. You must read absolutely all of the last thirty chapters, which tell the story of what happens when Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod finally set their eyes on a rather angry Moby Dick. Moby-Dick was out of print during the last four years of Melville's life, having sold 2,300 in its first year and a half and on average 27 copies a year for the next 34 years, totaling 3,215 copies. Melville found the bulk of his data on whales and whaling in five books, the most important of which was by the English ship's surgeon Thomas Beale, Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839), a book of reputed authority which Melville bought on July 10, 1850.The earliest American review, in the Boston Post for November 20, quoted the London Athenaeum 's scornful review, not realizing that some of the criticism of The Whale did not pertain to Moby-Dick.

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. Yet he saw as "the essential" in the book "its prophetic song", which flows "like an undercurrent" beneath the surface action and morality.

Five previously unknown men appear on deck and are revealed to be a special crew selected by Ahab and explain the shadowy figures seen boarding the ship. Editors Bryant and Springer suggest that perception is a central theme—the difficulty of seeing and understanding, which makes deep reality hard to discover and truth hard to pin down. Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville's dispersed library.

Since earlier chapters were already plated when he was revising the later ones, Melville must have "felt restricted in the kinds of revisions that were feasible". Renee O'Connor plays Michelle Herman, a female counterpart of Ishmael in Moby Dick, a 2010 modern-day film adaptation in which Barry Bostwick plays Ahab. Mocha Dick was rumored to have 20 or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity.Henceforth, he uses his coffin for a spare seachest, which is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod 's life buoy. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. While Melville was simultaneously writing and proofreading what had been set, the corrected proof would be plated, that is, the type fixed in final form. In 21:6-21, the most significant verses for Melville's allegory, [4] Hagar was cast off after the birth of Isaac, who inherited the covenant of the Lord instead of his older half-brother. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.

The Dublin University Magazine asked "how does it happen that the author is alive to tell the story? 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. Queequeg's coffin comes to the surface, and it is the only thing to escape the vortex when the Pequod sinks.Vincent, the general influence of this source is to supply the arrangement of whaling data in chapter groupings.