Plot Summary
Chapter 16 of Moby-Dick by opens with Queequeg informing Ishmael that his idol, Yojo, has decreed that Ishmael alone must choose the whaling vessel for their voyage. Though reluctant, Ishmael acquiesces and sets out the next morning while Queequeg observes a day of fasting and prayer. After surveying three ships—the Devil-Dam, the Tit-Bit, and the Pequod—Ishmael boards the Pequod and decides it is the vessel for them.
On the quarter-deck, Ishmael encounters Captain Peleg, a retired whaleman and part-owner of the ship, who interrogates him about his experience. Peleg is gruff and dismissive of Ishmael’s merchant service background but agrees to sign him on. Below deck, Ishmael meets Captain Bildad, the other principal owner, a devoutly parsimonious Quaker who offers Ishmael a comically low 777th lay. After a heated argument between the two captains, Peleg prevails and assigns Ishmael the 300th lay.
Character Development
Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad form a memorable comic duo. Peleg is blustering and profane yet fundamentally fair, while Bildad is piously stingy, quoting Scripture to justify his miserliness. Both are Nantucket Quakers who embody the paradox of pacifist whalemen—men who refuse to bear arms on land but have spilled “tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore.” The chapter also delivers the novel’s first extended portrait of the absent Captain Ahab through Peleg’s impassioned description of him as “a grand, ungodly, god-like man.”
Themes and Motifs
Fate and free will intertwine as Yojo’s prophecy guides Ishmael’s supposedly free choice, suggesting that destiny and agency are inseparable. The Pequod itself—named for an extinct Massachusetts Indian tribe—serves as a powerful symbol of doom, adorned with whale ivory and bone like “a cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies.” Commerce and capitalism emerge through the lay system and the ship’s fragmented ownership among widows, orphans, and chancery wards. Religion and hypocrisy surface through Bildad’s use of Scripture to excuse greed.
Literary Devices
employs rich allusion throughout—comparing the Pequod’s decks to Canterbury Cathedral’s flagstones and invoking the biblical King Ahab. The ship’s extended description is a masterful example of personification, portraying the vessel as a weathered warrior. Foreshadowing pervades the chapter: the extinct tribe behind the ship’s name, Ahab’s biblical namesake, and Peleg’s warning all hint at the tragedy ahead. The comic dialogue between Peleg and Bildad provides dramatic contrast to these darker undercurrents.