Chapter 41 - Moby Dick Practice Quiz — Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
by Herman Melville — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Chapter 41 - Moby Dick
What "wild, mystical" feeling does Ishmael confess to at the opening of Chapter 41?
A sympathetical feeling that made Ahab's quenchless feud seem like his own. He shouted and clinched his oath because of the dread in his soul.
Why was knowledge of Moby Dick slow to spread among the whaling fleet?
Because of the large number of whale-cruisers scattered across vast oceans, the long duration of each voyage, and the irregularity of sailing times, which obstructed the spread of specific news about any one whale.
What supernatural quality did some whalemen attribute to Moby Dick regarding his location?
Ubiquity—the belief that he had been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.
What did some whalemen believe about Moby Dick's mortality?
That he was immortal—that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed.
How does Melville define the relationship between immortality and ubiquity?
"Immortality is but ubiquity in time.” If the whale can be everywhere in space, then being everywhere in time would make him deathless.
What are Moby Dick's most prominent physical features?
A peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead and a high, pyramidical white hump. The rest of his body is streaked, spotted, and marbled with white.
What appearance does Moby Dick present when seen at high noon?
He appears gliding through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden gleamings.
What fighting tactic made Moby Dick especially terrifying to hunters?
His treacherous retreats—he would swim away with every symptom of alarm, then suddenly turn round and bear down upon his pursuers, staving their boats to splinters.
How did Ahab attack Moby Dick after his three boats were destroyed?
He seized the line-knife from his broken prow and dashed at the whale with the six-inch blade, trying to reach the whale's fathom-deep life.
How does Melville describe Moby Dick severing Ahab's leg?
Moby Dick swept his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath Ahab and "reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field."
When did Ahab's monomania develop, according to Ishmael?
Not at the moment of dismemberment, but during the long homeward voyage around Cape Horn, when his torn body and gashed soul "bled into one another" and made him mad.
What happened to Ahab during the homeward voyage after losing his leg?
He was a raving lunatic who had to be laced fast in his hammock. He swung in a strait-jacket to the mad rockings of the gales.
To what does Melville compare Ahab's narrowing monomania?
The Hudson River, which flows narrowly but unfathomably through the Highland gorge—contracted but undiminished in force.
What does Ahab pile upon Moby Dick's white hump?
"The sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down."
What self-aware statement does Ahab make about his own sanity?
"All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad."
What effect did Ahab's madness have on his intellect?
His intellect did not perish but was harnessed by his monomania, giving him "a thousand fold more potency" directed at his one vengeful purpose.
What ancient religious sect does Melville reference when describing the evil Ahab sees in Moby Dick?
The Ophites, an ancient eastern sect that reverenced a statue devil, representing the "intangible malignity which has been from the beginning."
What architectural metaphor does Melville use to describe Ahab's deepest psychology?
The Hotel de Cluny in Paris, built atop vast Roman halls (the Thermes), suggesting that beneath Ahab's surface lies an ancient, buried essence sitting "in bearded state" on torsoes.
How did the people of Nantucket interpret Ahab's behavior when he returned after losing his leg?
They thought him merely naturally grieved by his terrible casualty. His delirium at sea was ascribed to the same cause, and his later brooding did not alarm them.
Why did the Nantucketers not prevent Ahab from commanding the Pequod?
They believed his rage and moodiness made him better qualified for the violent pursuit of whaling, seeing him as the very man to "dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes."
What was Ahab's secret purpose in sailing on the Pequod?
The one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale, kept hidden as a "mad secret" from his acquaintances on shore.
How does Ishmael characterize the Pequod's officers and crew at the end of the chapter?
As "specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality"—with the crew of mongrel renegades and castaways, Starbuck's ineffectual virtue, Stubb's reckless indifference, and Flask's mediocrity.
What does Ishmael say about his own ability to explain why the crew followed Ahab?
He cannot explain it. He compares it to a subterranean miner working in all of us, whose shaft cannot be traced, and asks, "What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand still?"